STRENGTH TO DREAM, THE SEQUEL

 In the first two parts of STRENGTH TO DREAM, STRENGTH TO AWAKEN, respectively here and here, I pursued a comparison between Samuel T. Coleridge's comment about "the suspension of disbelief" and Stephen King's response to that concept. I then followed up with a third essay based on my two categories of the metaphenomenal. I applied some of my observations to King's comments in his 1981 book DANSE MACABRE, concluding that what he and Coleridge called "disbelief" was more like "disengagement." Naturally, since King only talked about the metaphenomenal in general terms, there were no explicit comparisons between what he wrote in DANCE MACABRE and my NUM theory.

However, when I reread BATMAN #400, reviewed here, I was reminded that this very special anniversary issue included an essay by King, entitled "Why I Chose Batman." In this essay, King explains that as a comic-reading kid he far preferred Batman to Superman, and the reason he gives for that preference seems to be rooted in his personal sense of disbelief-- even though the way he frames that disbelief would seem to contradict everything he wrote in his DANSE essay. In that essay, King seems to disparage those who can't allow themselves to roll with a good fantasy-yarn:

They simply can't lift the weight of fantasy. The muscles of the imagination have grown too weak.

Now, in the following segment of the 1986 essay, King seems to be endorsing a lack of imaginative muscle.

I remember the ads for the first SUPERMAN movie...the ones that said YOU'LL BELIEVE A MAN CAN FLY. Well, I didn't... But when Batman swung down into the Joker's hideout on a rope or stopped the Penguin from dropping Robin into a bucket of boiling hog-fat with a well-thrown Batarang, I believed. These were not likely things, I freely grant you that, but they were possible things.

Now, King probably did not know anything about any theories about fantasy-fiction, least of all those of Tzvetan Todorov and his theory of the uncanny, which I've refuted here numerous times. But he-- or at least his younger self-- is validating his Batman preference over Superman (though he says he did like the Man of Steel somewhat) simply because he didn't think Batman violated Young King's sense of what was possible in the real world. And nowhere in "Chose" does Older King invalidate what Young King thought about these matters, even though five years earlier he'd turned a pitying eye on audiences who couldn't place credence in Nyarlathotep, the Blind Faceless One.

Of course, everyone has blind spots, and I'm reasonably sure that King, having been asked to celebrate the Caped Crusader for an anniversary special, just reeled off his kid-memories to serve that purpose. He certainly wasn't making an aesthetic statement. However, what he said is not unique, since a lot of comics-fans have expressed a similar preference for the Bat-dude over the Super-dude. And often the criteria of these fans is similar: Batman seems possible, Superman impossible. 

Of course, in fiction nothing is impossible; readers only make that judgment if they are of the belief that fiction MUST reflect the reality of everyday experience. Years ago I played around with the idea that I might define the marvelous and the uncanny in terms of probability. But as I recall, I abandoned this notion, because I don't think fiction must reflect everyday experience, and indeed, fiction is attractive specifically because it is not tied to external reality, the reality of "one cause=one effect." Some people don't want fiction to indulge in impossibilities, and that's their prerogative, but by King's own 1981 standards, their disengagement from overt fantasies might be deemed a sign of imaginative underdevelopment.

Lastly, just to pick at King's analysis on one more point, I don't know exactly what Batman comics he read. But I don't think that there was ever a time when Batman didn't have substantial encounters with marvelous, "impossible" phenomena. King cites examples of bizarre criminals that in themselves conform to the domain of the uncanny. Since he was born in 1947, he wouldn't have seen the hero's contentions with vampires or mad scientists who change people into destructive giants. But if he was reading comics in the 1950s, then he certainly would have seen Batman contending with super-crooks who used freeze-rays and force-fields, even if he King made it a point not to buy any of the "Batman vs. aliens" entries.

On a side-note, King's essay also mentions in passing the same-year success of Frank Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. In 1986, this only meant a new validation for Batman after years of being deemed the Number Two DC hero after the company's Kryptonian mascot. But neither King nor anyone else could have guessed how sweeping the influence of Miller, and after him Tim Burton, would prove, so that today, more often than not, the Gotham Guardian gets top billing over the Metropolis Marvel. And so King's essay seems slightly prescient, even if I don't think people prefer Batman for exactly the same reasons he specified.