DEATHMATCH AND DEATHBLOW

One of my title words sounds like the name of an Image superhero, and the other sounds like it might as well be one. But these are, for the time being, working titles for the tropes I discussed in GIVE-AND-TAKE VS. THE KILLING STROKE—neither of which names were ever more than provisional placeholders.

The trope I call “deathblow” subsumes two structurally related sub-tropes. One sub-trope represents the concentration of will/power in order for a megadynamic character to overthrow a character of far greater dynamicity, and in GIVE-AND-TAKE I cited the example of Odysseus and his men wounding Polyphemus in such a way to cripple, though not totally enervate, the Cyclops. The other sub-trope is practically the obverse of the first and concerns a character of superior dynamicity concentrating will/power to overthrow a character of lesser dynamicity. In the essay SELF-MASTERY MEDITATIONS PT. 3, I used the temporary term “reverse killing stroke” to signify both Classical examples like Dionysus’s destruction of Pentheus and pop-cultural examples like the Spectre hurling “the wrath of God” down upon lowly criminals.

The trope I call “deathmatch” is more unitary, and for most of this blog’s history it was the sole trope by which I defined the mode of the combative: that of roughly matched adversaries matching their respective forms of “might” against one another. In the essay ON MASTERING SELF-MASTERY I mentioned a variation on this form, that of the “indirect commander” who doesn’t usually contend with an opponent himself but has “henchmen” who do his fighting for him, which was the case with almost all of the Fu Manchu novels. But the “deathmatch” in all forms requires the opposition of roughly equivalent incarnations of dynamicity, as opposed to the “inferior vs. superior” and “superior vs. inferior” sub-tropes.

Now, in 1913’s THE ETHIC OF THECOMBATIVE PART 2, I wrote “One only proceeds away from the condition of ‘non-might’ by acquiring ‘might’ oneself.” But over the years I progressed away from the idea that megadynamicity was determined only by a certain level of physical power, and I allowed for the idea that the condition of “self-mastery” could be equally significant. In 1912 I rated Jack Burton of BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA as merely “mesodynamic” because he wasn’t an extraordinary all-around fighter. However, in the series WEAKLINGS WITH WEAPONS I viewed Burton’s mastery of his “one good trick” as a factor that allowed him to enter the ranks of the megadynamic. Yet I would still disallow from those ranks many characters who conquer superior forces through the use of tricks that don’t indicate self-mastery, such as the folktale-kids Hansel and Gretel. By the same token, there are many examples of “superior force” that don’t connote self-mastery. The Spectre shows self-mastery whenever he punishes a mortal transgressor with some diabolical fate, but there exist dozens of monsters who reverse the Hansel and Gretel paradigm, luring hapless victims into traps but not really doling out well-crafted punishments. In fact, Freddy Kruger starts as this sort of subcombative ghost. But with the third installment the filmmakers begin to endow Freddy’s opponents with the ability to engage in oneric “deathmatches” with the evil spirit—. Oddly, it’s after that film that Freddy himself starts making more use of the “deathblow” trope.

And though it seems obvious to me, I should note at this point that "deathmatch" and "deathblow" are metaphors, and as such can apply to situations where no life is actually taken, or even truly threatened, as in the ONE POUND GOSPEL stories of Rumiko Takahashi, where the starring boxer is never in literal peril of losing his life.

ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO KILLER NARRATIVE PT .4

End-thoughts on the Narrative--

In previous installments all of my examples of fictional psycho-killers have been singular. However, it's possible to have more than one psycho-killer in a given narrative. Again using films as an easy resource, "dual psychos" are a favorite device in the realm of the "fake psycho" narrative. For instance, 1964's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, which numerous critics deem the first of the Italian "giallo films," has two people donning the mask of the killer at different times during the story.

Thereafter, the dual-psycho film became common, ranging from 1971's BAY OF BLOOD to 1996's SCREAM. However, it's relatively rare to encounter two psycho-killers who are not initially associated with one another, and when this trope is used, it tends to yield comic results, as with the 1987 film PSYCHOS IN LOVE.

The comedy may stem from violating the "one gimme" premise associated with most films in the subgenre. However, this may tend to be more true of films in either the naturalistic or uncanny domains, given that FREDDY VS. JASON works as "straight" horror despite its use of assorted comic touches. 

However, marvelous psychos don't seem to lend themselves to the concept of the extended family. The most famous iteration of the "weird family" trope arises from the American "old dark house" film, implicitly named for the 1932 film THE OLD DARK HOUSE. 

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However, though the HOUSE is full of weirdos, only one of them is intentionally murderous, and his status as a "psycho killer" is debatable. 1965's SPIDER BABY is probably a better exemplar of a family of psycho killers.

Of course, the first two TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE films qualify, even though Leatherface remains the primary psycho. 

 Rustic environments seem to breed families or even whole societies of psychos. The 1972 DELIVERANCE presents a whole society of degenerative hillfolk, though the film remains firmly within the naturalistic domain, unlike the more overtly weird WRONG TURN "killbilly" franchise. However, the largest psycho-killer society is almost certainly the town of hostile Southerners described by H.G. Lewis's film-title, TWO THOUSAND MANIACS!

One last note on the psycho-killer narrative is that it has proved so popular as to spawn hybrids that don't quite conform to my model. The first four films in the LEPRECHAUN series are almost indistinguishable in tone from the ELM STREET series, in that both concern a hideous supernatural being who kills indiscriminately and makes many bad jokes. However, the Leprechaun is "outside horror," in that he has no psychological motives; he's just evil. 

There are even a few serial killers who make pacts with the devil for their marvelous powers, such as the Cenobites of the HELLRAISER film-franchise. But in this and similar cases, it's understood that whether the modern-day killer calls upon Old Scratch or Leviathan, his powers are rooted in a tradition of folkloric magic outside the province of the cruder, but more normative, psycho-killer narrative.

TRANSITIVE MONSTERS PT. 2

In TRANSITIVE MONSTERS , I concluded my discussion of combative modes in two horror film-serials with this paragraph:

On a related note, I have not yet finished re-screening all of the Hammer DRACULA films. However, even if I never get around to SCARS OF DRACULA, I tend to believe that the combative mode in the key films of the series-- notably HORROR OF DRACULA and BRIDES OF DRACULA-- that all films within the series will be subsumed by the combative mode, even those that I've judged to be individually subcombative, like TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA.

In recent months, I've concluded a re-screening of all of the Hammer DRACULA films, and have reviewed all of them on my film-blog except for the last, sometimes known as THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA. The last film is an anomalous one in that the narrative emphasis is not on the vampire lord, but on "the seven brothers," a group of kung-fu fighters who become allied to Van Helsing in his quest to destroy the vampire count. Thus, what I write about the series concerns only the eight films preceding SEVEN BROTHERS-- HORROR OF DRACULA, BRIDES OF DRACULA (which doesn't actually have Dracula in it, though Van Helsing's character carries over from the first film), DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS, DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, SCARS OF DRACULA, DRACULA 1972 A.D., and THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA.

Of these eight films, the first, second, seventh and eighth are combative, while the other four are not. As I said, BRIDES does not involve Dracula, but it features a bracing climax in which Peter Cushing's Van Helsing defeats the centric monster, one Baron Meinster. This was also the only film of these eight that did not include actor Christopher Lee as Van Helsing's opponent. It's arguable that Van Helsing's destruction of Meinster-- trapping the vampire in the shadow of a cross, created by windmill-blades-- is the most strikingly original of the four combative films.

Now that I've made these observations re: the combative mode in the series, I hypothesize that the Hammer producers found it hard to conceive of any mortals opposing their forceful fiend unless the opponent was (1) Van Helsing himself, (2) forces allied to Van Helsing (the "seven brothers"), or (3) a strong Van Helsing analogue. Such an analogue appears in 1963's KISS OF THE VAMPIRE, in which a Professor Zimmer unleashes a magical curse-- in the form of a flock of bats-- upon a clutch of evil vampires.

As I mentioned in the review, this climax was one that Peter Cushing didn't want to perform for BRIDES OF DRACULA, so that the curse-work was recycled into another movie. KISS OF THE VAMPIRE was not in the Dracula/Van Helsing series, yet strangely, it's the only Hammer film outside the series that had a combative conclusion, in contrast to four other non-series entries: THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, VAMPIRE CIRCUS, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, and TWINS OF EVIL.

As my reading of the Dracula series stands, it's evenly divided between combative and sub-combative, which would make it difficult to judge the series as a whole according to my original standard, the 51 percent rule. Of course, the first part of TRANSITIVE MONSTERS was written after I formulated a more exacting formulation for judging the combative mode and related matters, the active share/passive share theory.  By this formulation, the actual number of combative stories within a mythos is not the final determinant, which gives me an "out" for any series that's evenly divided between combative and subcombative entries.

Generally speaking, given a 50-50 situation, t have tended to favor the combative over the subcombative. The "King Kong" series of Merian C. Cooper comprises just two interrelated films, the 1933 KING KONG and its same-year sequel SON OF KONG, but the first film's combative characteristics have proven more culturally significant than the sequel's subcombative theme of self-sacrifice.

However, in contrast to my prediction in Part One, I've determined that the eight-film in the Dracula-focused series-- even though it includes one vampire who is a "Dracula wannabe"-- is dominantly subcombative.

To show this, I'll contrast the Dracula series to that of Freddy Krueger. I expounded upon the latter series in Part One, showing that although the first two films in the series were subcombative, the next four all stressed the idea that average teenagers could become aware of Freddy's dream-based depredations and could, with some mental training, turn themselves into "dream warriors." Though Freddy Krueger is always the star of the show, ordinary humans can "ramp up" their abilities to fight him on his own terms.

There's no such "ramping up" in any of the Hammer Draculas that don't include Van Helsing; the implication is always that ordinary humans can only muddle through and win by last-minute flashes of inspiration.

In DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS the vampire is only defeated when one of his enemies shoots holes in the ice Dracula just happens to be standing on.

In DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, the vampire's male opponent Paul manages to push Dracula off the edge of a cliff, but the only reason this stops the vampire is because he just happens to get impaled on a cross that another character tossed off the cliff earlier.

In TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, the only reason Dracula's opponents survive is because they just happen to be in a church during his attack and have access to a cross.

And in SCARS OF DRACULA, the count is defeated not by his human opponents, but by the heavens themselves, when lightning strikes the metal rod Dracula happens to be holding.

The attitude of the Hammer producers toward the potential of any character save Van Helsing contrasts strongly with that of Bram Stoker, where ordinary men like Jonathan Harker and Quincy Morris do "ramp up" to slay a monster far more powerful than they are.

I'm not trying to claim that dumb luck never plays a role in the victories of more megadynamic characters. But when a series shows no interest in giving its villain/monster a range of worthy opponents, then it suggests that they are more interested in evoking the expression of "fear" than of "courage," to draw upon the opposed affects mentioned in this essay.

And if the series is more invested in fear than in courage, this, more than its pure percentage of combative episodes, aligns it with the subcombative mode.

ADDENDA 3-3-2018: I've completed a review of THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA, a.k.a. THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES. I stated above that I didn't consider this to be part of the normative "Dracula series" because the 1974 film placed its narrative emphasis upon the "seven brothers" rather than Dracula. I've amended this opinion on the movie's focal presences to one in which Peter Cushing's Van Helsing and David Chiang's "Hsi Ching" are the principal heroes, given that Ching's six brothers and one sister are subordinate, merely functional characters. Further, I now realize that there's an even better reason to exile LEGEND from the Dracula canon: because the film's continuity doesn't jibe with that of the normative series. Thus, though I realize that a lot of film-serials have at best modest continuity-- the Godzilla serials, for example-- this kung-fu/horror melange is better understood as an entity separate from the rest of the Hammer Draculas. Yet, even if I did deem LEGEND as part of the Hammer "Drac Pack," it's presence would not undermine my argument that the series as a whole is dominantly subcombative.

STRONG CONTINUITY, WEAK CONTINUITY

It's been a month since I wrote TRANSITIVE MONSTERS, and on further reconsideration I'm going to reverse myself on some of the opinions expressed there, reason being that I don't think "the transitive effect" applies across the board to all forms of serial entertainment. The two main forms I'll adopt here are those with "strong continuity" and those with "weak continuity." I'll further stipulate that these distinctions are *in posse* rather than *in esse,* (see definition here) and that the distinctions grow from the ways in which different media use, or do not use, continuity to appeal to audiences.

In MONSTERS I said:

...by the "transitive effect" that I first described in this essay, even the subcombative films in Freddy's oeuvre become, though said effect, part of a combative mythos, just as any subcombative Superman stories-- a major example being "Superman's Return to Krypton"-- are still subsumed by the combative mythos of the Man of Steel. And the reverse applies: a sort of "negative transitive effect" means that even the two Jason films in the combative mode are subsumed by the overall subcombative mode of the mythos.

But, sticking with these two examples, I have to ask myself: does a series about a movie-character display the same level of continuity possible for a series about a comics-character?

It's always feasible for a movie-series to stress a strong continuity between each feature-- the Lucas STAR WARS films are significant in this respect-- but most of the time, the cinema doesn't approach the idea of a series in the same manner as any medium rooted in the activity of reading. In the days prior to Lucas' innovations-- from which the current "Marvelverse" marketing-strategy is one effect-- producers strove to keep entries in a given series distinct from one another. Their motive in so doing was practical: they could never be certain whether or not a significant portion of their audiences would have seen earlier episodes. Thus I would say that "weak continuity" is the *in posse* storytelling strategy of the cinematic medium, not because all films lack strong continuity, but because most of them do. The Freddy Kreuger series is emblematic of this tendency, given that Freddy is generally destroyed at the end of one film, only to pop up in the next one with no explanation of how he survived.

Comic books used to be "weak continuity" in practice, and for the same reason: no publisher could be sure that his juvenile audience would buy even two Superman comics in a row (though there were some early experiments that used continued stories, often in the "cliffhanger" format from movie-serials). But I'd maintain that "strong continuity" was their *in posse* storytelling strategy, simply because they were in a mode that combined pictures with words that had to be read and absorbed. The particular 1960 Superman story mentioned above appeared at a time when editor Mort Weisinger apparently felt he had the "affective freedom" to expand upon the mythology of Superman and his various interrelated features, as chronicled here. We will never know whether or not his sales-success with this strategy had any influence upon Stan Lee, but it seems likely, given that some of the early Marvel titles show strong similarity to the story-tropes from the Superman comics. (The panel below shows Thor's villain Loki in his early Mr. Mxyzptlk mode.)

I will expand further on other examples of strong and weak continuities in future essays, but for now I'll wrap up this essay by stating that:

(1) even subcombative stories in the Superman comics become part of his combative mythos because the strong continuity engenders a strong transitive effect,

BUT

(2) subcomnative stories in the Freddy Krueger movies may not really integrate with the dream-monster's combative mythos, since a weak continuity engenders a weak transitive effect.

TRANSITIVE MONSTERS

This week I finally got around to finishing the last of my reviews for the "canonical" FRIDAY THE 13TH films-- that is, all the ones made before the first remake-- I may as well venture some thoughts on the way in which the Jason saga compares with the "Freddy Krueger saga." For purposes of clarity,. I regard both of these sagas as standing independent of the "monster mash" crossover between the two, 2003's FREDDY VS. JASON, which was in essence the swan song for both of their fiendish careers.

Both characters, it should be obvious, are the respective stars of their serials, and so both serials are defined by what I term the "monster-persona." In COMBAT PLAY PT. 4 I gave a quick comparative definition as opposed to the monster's statistically opposite number, the hero, in these terms:

In contrast to the hero, the monster often appears as the sole megadynamic entity in his universe, and his opponents, usually demiheroes, are not usually able to stand against him. 

This description applies for the most part to the saga of Jason. There are only two exceptions. One is the seventh installment of the saga, in which Jason is defeated by a telekinetic female opponent. The other is installment number ten, in which the Hockey-Mask Horror encounters the denizens of a futuristic world, including a martial android who manages to blow Jason to pieces. However, the actual honor of "the kill"-- the last one within the sphere of the canon-- goes to a space marine who manages to hurl Jason into Earth's atmosphere, incinerating both of them-- though with the usual caveat that the scion of Voorhees may be back some day.

In contrast, although the first two installments of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET started out in the same subcombative mode, with Freddy Krueger preying on teens in their dreams, the third installment took a different tack, as I noted in my review of NIGHTMARE #3:

Wes Craven, billed as one of four scripters on ELM 3, is probably responsible for elaborating the idea of "dream-fighting" suggested in ELM 1, but with greater attention to empowering the film's heroes in the dreams. 

Ironically, even though Craven was probably responsible for giving his demiheroes the ability to fight Freddy on his own terms, he himself repudiated the combative mode in 1994's WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE, which stood outside the "continuity" of the other six Freddy-films

So, of the ten films that comprise the loose "Jason saga," only two are combative, while of the six films that comprise the "Freddy saga," only two are subcombative. Thus, by the logic I introduced in ACTIVE SHARE, PASSIVE SHARE, the entire "Freddy saga" is combative and the entire "Jason saga" is subcombative. This parallels my judgment that the entire saga of Marvel Comics' "Rawhide Kid" had to be judged metaphenomenal while that of the same company's "Ringo Kid" was isophenomenal.

As should be apparent from the above essay, I've almost entirely abandoned the theory that an objective percentage of a given serial's stories can determine the serial's status in terms of phenomenality, of the combative mode, or of any other domain I've generally addressed.

In that essay, the only criterion I supplied for the above judgment was that I said Rawhide's encounters with the metaphenomenal, unlike those of Ringo, comprised "a vital part of his mythos." Obviously this is in part a subjective judgment by a reader who's read the entirety of both features in their original runs-- but it's also an objective judgment on the extent to which the authors of the "Rawhide" feature felt a certain "affective freedom" in mixing their phenomenalities. And the same argument applies to the way in which the "Freddy saga" allows the monster's demihero opponents great latitude in terms of their empowerment; certainly more than the opponents of Jason receive.

Further, by the "transitive effect" that I first described in this essay, even the subcombative films in Freddy's oeuvre become, though said effect, part of a combative mythos, just as any subcombative Superman stories-- a major example being "Superman's Return to Krypton"-- are still subsumed by the combative mythos of the Man of Steel. And the reverse applies: a sort of "negative transitive effect" means that even the two Jason films in the combative mode are subsumed by the overall subcombative mode of the mythos.

On a related note, I have not yet finished re-screening all of the Hammer DRACULA films. However, even if I never get around to SCARS OF DRACULA, I tend to believe that the combative mode in the key films of the series-- notably HORROR OF DRACULA and BRIDES OF DRACULA-- that all films within the series will be subsumed by the combative mode, even those that I've judged to be individually subcombative, like TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA.

COMBAT PLAY PT. 4

As the Nietzsche citation in Part 3 should make clear, the philosopher believed in the principle of mastery, or "overcoming" (German *uberwindung*) as a necessary aspect of the human spirit. At the same time, he believed more profoundly that the possessor of a "master morality" should also practice *selbstuberwindung,* usually translated as "self-overcoming." As I observed here, Nietzsche expressed a marginal preference for the corrupt, real-life Cesare Borgia over the simon-pure fictional character Parsifal, essentially because Parsifal had no real "self" to be overcome. For similar reasons, Nietzsche expressed disgust at those whom he deemed adherents of "slave morality" because he felt that they weren't really any more free from the impulse of aggression than the representatives of "master morality." Rather, adherents of "slave morality" merely projected the illusion of self-mastery. Only those who consciously admitted the allure of mastery, of wielding power over others, had any true capacity for self-overcoming.

In other segments of COMBAT PLAY I've sought to provide somewhat more personal motives for advocating the importance of combat-fantasies, and for arguing that they can represent "positive compensation" when dealing with the travails of ordinary life. I would add-- without bringing in all the Hegelian arguments about the nature of freedom-- that it's psychically necessary for any individual human to feel as if he or she can, as the occasion demands, fight back against oppression of any kind. At the same time, the notion of "fair play" becomes important within the sphere of fiction and fantasy, possibly more important than it can ever be in the real world of political negotiation and compulsion. In my own lit-critic cosmos, the ideal of "fair play" assumes the role of "self-limitation" that is, in Nietzsche's philosophy, occupied by "self-overcoming." Clearly the importance of this concept has led me to author essays like this one, where my main concern is to account for certain pop-culture figures, such as the Golden Age Spectre, who seem to know little if any "self-limitation." In the original series, whose tone was set by scripter Jerry Siegel, there's no question that the Spectre is positioned as a hero-- and yet only occasionally does this hero encounter opponents able to wield forces equal to his own.

In the aforesaid essay DECIDEDLY SEEKING SYMMETRY, I argued that occasional heroes who worked without the limitations of the "fair play" were a "natural, and probably inevitable, counterpoint" to the statistically dominant type of hero who tends to meet his foes on a level playing-field. I say that it's inevitable because it's the nature of affective freedom that individual authors can diverge from any statistically dominant model of a given concept, be it "the hero" or anything else. The model I've established is one in which heroes and villains alike align themselves with *glory* by championing either the positive or the negative forms of the "idealizing will," while monsters and demiheroes align themselves with *persistence* by pursuing the negative or positive forms of the "existential will."  But the existence of this model, while statistically dominant, does not prevent individual creators from diverging from it. For whatever reasons, Jerry Siegel conceptualized the Spectre as having such near-omnipotence that he could "overcome" most of his villains without the limitations of fair play. I wasn't entirely serious in SYMMETRY when I labeled such heroes as "sadists," for a true sadist would not possess the Spectre's empathy toward ordinary humans oppressed by mortal evildoers. That empathy, as well as the determination to better the world through the positive form of the idealizing will, still qualifies the Spectre as a hero. Later versions of the Spectre conformed to the dominant model, giving the Ghostly Guardian more high-energy foes to combat. But had the character never appeared anywhere but in his Golden Age adventures, I might have to view him as a "subcombative superhero," in that only rarely did the original Spectre combat megadynamic entities like himself.

By the same parallel, the nature of affective freedom also makes it possible for individual authors to diverge from the statistically dominant model of "the monster." In contrast to the hero, the monster often appears as the sole megadynamic entity in his universe, and his opponents, usually demiheroes, are not usually able to stand against him. In SYMMETRY I mentioned Freddy Krueger as an exception to this rule, in that the majority of his films end when another megadynamic entity-- usually the so-called "final girl"-- manages to defeat the dastardly dream-creature with her own display of dynamicity.

However, a better-known example would probably the combative relationship between the starring monsters of the original ALIENS film-franchise and their most "persistent" demihero-enemy, Ellen Ripley. Ripley starts out as a typical demihero, and in her first appearance she only manages to stave off the assault of one monstrous extraterrestrial by getting him in the right place for his elimination, rather than beating him one-and-one.

In the second film, however, Ripley resorts to mechanical aid to fight a Queen Alien on its own terms, and even though Ripley loses that battle and must once more trick the creature into defeat, the narrative places far more emphasis on Ripley as a megadynamic figure.

Though the character also does not directly defeat any Aliens in the last two films in the original franchise either, Ripley continues to display a megadynamic formidability, so that she is, unlike most monster-victims, a combative demihero. The fact that the Aliens' most prominent human foe can fight them back doesn't alter their persona as monsters, but their divergence sets them slightly to one side of the dominant model for monsters, just as Original Spectre's divergence sets him slightly to one side of the dominant hero-model.

DECIDEDLY SEEKING SYMMETRY

While some critics are fine with preserving a simplistic, dualistic symmetry-- as in "art is art and trash is trash and never the twain shall meet"-- in my long-running narratological project I find myself looking for symmetries that extend at least into quixotic quaternities.

For instance, I've repeatedly defended heroic fiction against the notion that its primary function is to appeal to its audience's tendencies toward sadism, fascism, or both. Probably my most representative argument against the "sadism" accusation, principally voiced by Gershon Legman and Frederic Wertham, is 2008's POP GOES THE PSYCHOLOGY, while  this year I re-examined the fascism argument in WORKING VACATIONS.  

The Legman-Wertham arguments are poorly reasoned, forcing the material under consideration upon a Procrustean bed of theory. However, because the "sadism argument" addresses, even in the form of a dumb dualism, the dynamics of power between protagonist and antagonist, it's a little more difficult to dismiss across the board. In POP GOES THE PSYCHOLOGY I presented my reasoning as to why the combat between hero and villain typical of the adventure-genre is a near-complete reversal of the paradigm of the sadistic victimizer:

...it seems obvious to me that when heroes fight villains in adventure-tales, the narrative action could not be less like a lynching, much less a Sadean sadist torturing helpless victims or a gangster shooting down old ladies in the street. Wertham and Legman dance around the difference by trying to make it sound as if the villains are merely stand-ins for despised minorities and the like, which argument remains a linchpin of Marxist oppositional thought, both in modern comics-criticism and elsewhere. But neither author can totally expunge this difference of narrative action: in the adventure-genre, *the villain can defend himself.* He may be fated to lose the struggle-- indeed, until recently he always did-- but the struggle itself is essential to the adventure-genre, as it manifestly is not with the crime genre.

Yet, though I continue to endorse this argument, I've always admitted that there are a few adventure-heroes-- specifically those of the 'super" variety--  who depart somewhat from the dominant narrative action of the adventure-genre. In this respect I'm thinking principally of the Golden Age stories of two DC characters-- Superman and the Spectre-- who are only occasionally pitted against enemies who can ably defend themselves against the hero's godlike powers. This narrative departure did not continue to dominate either character's exploits in the Silver Age or in any ages thereafter. But if the majority of Golden Age superheroes gave their villains as little opportunity to fight back as Superman and Spectre did during that period, then *maybe* the fulminations of Legman and Wertham would have been justified.

I could just say, "Yeah, some authors enjoyed the spectacle of omnipotent heroes beating the tar out of whining, helpless villains," and let it go at that. But because I value symmetry in my narratological system-- particularly in the quixotic quaternity I term "the four persona-types"-- it occurs to me that the "sadistic hero" provides a natural, and probably inevitable, counterpoint to the more frequent "courageous hero." Further, this narrative propensity mirrors in reverse the evolution of the hero's inverse persona, the demihero-- for it's far more rare to see a demihero face down the monster who persecutes him, than to see him either fall victim to said monster or to escape the monster by sheer dumb luck.

As it happens, I touched on the dynamics of "hero and villain" and "demihero and monster" once more in the recent essay GOALS, OR ROLES?:

Perhaps a useful distinction also arises from the concept of "paired opposites' I've formulated: to wit, "hero is to villain as monster is to victim (or, more formally, 'demihero.')"  The monster is designed to prey on a victim who is usually weaker than he, although in many cases the demihero may "step up" and conquer the monster through strength, guile, or a combination thereof. The villain may be just as obsessed as the monster, but characters like the Joker and Lex Luthor-- who make rather good comic-book parallels to Freddy and Pinhead-- are always oriented on challenging heroes, often despite having been beaten by said heroes on many, many occasions. That kind of glory may have only negative consequences, but it's still the same glory we descry in Milton's fallen Lucifer.

Anyone who's familiar with popular fiction could hardly deny that it's far more typical to behold exemplars of the "monster persona" enacting scenarios of sadism upon helpless demihero victims than to see exemplars of the "hero persona" doing the same to their villainous opponents. Naturally, ideologues have also railed against the horror genre-- the predominant dwelling-place of monster-types-- and for Wertham if not Legman, the sadism of the monster was apparently indistinguishable from the supposedly equal sadism of the hero. Public critics of the horror-genre, though, are usually not so undiscriminating. Roger Ebert attacked slasher films relentlessly throughout the 1980s, explicitly taking issue with the subgenre's power to make viewers Do Bad Things. In contrast, this collection of short superhero-flick reviews by Ebert shows no tendency to condemn heroes in general as budding sadists. I'm not saying that Ebert rendered any substantive judgments of the superhero genre, for he was as superficial about them as he was about monsters. I merely use him as an example of a popular film-critic who had a more normative reaction to hero-fiction than one sees in the pop psychobabble of Legman and Wertham.

Summing up, the heroes who *may* incarnate a sadistic dynamic-- one for which the Spectre has become far better known than Superman--

--are a distinct minority, just as it's rare to see monsters inspire their demihero victims to fight the monsters on their own terms.

___________________


On an unrelated matter, another assertion of symmetry occurs to me with regard to my formulation of the dynamics of the combative mode. In PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX, I explored some of the ways in which works might depart from or adhere to the mode in terms of their narrative strategies. For instance, the best-known paradigm of the combative mode presents the audience with a scene in which the central hero meets his villainous opponent in equal combat.

However, I considered the problem of whether the mode was fulfilled if someone other than the hero defeated the villain:

Another variation is seen in my review of the 2012 DARK SHADOWS, wherein vampire protagonist Barnabas Collins has a violent conflict with the villain but is taken out of the fight, after which the villain is destroyed by the main character's allies. But as long as there has been some narrative plot-thread to leads inevitably to some sort of spectacular combat, it doesn't matter if the combat follows the dominant pattern of the main hero overcoming the villain.

Now, though I did not say so at the time, it occurs to me that having the villain defeated by an ally of the main hero is not markedly different from the scenario in which the main hero fights, not the main villain, but some ally or henchman  of the main villain. As example, here's a still from the 1966 film TARZAN AND THE VALLEY OF GOLD:

I don't think anyone watching the film felt Tarzan's heroism invalidated because the ape-man fought the main villain's enforcer, rather than the villain himself. By the same token, even though the Barnabas of the 2012 film doesn't succeed in defeating his foe, the fact that she is defeated by a being more or less allied to Barnabas' cause provides the same experience of combative satisfaction.

GOALS, OR ROLES?

In 2012's THE NARRATIVE DEATH-DRIVE PT. 2  I ended the essay thusly:

As a closing clarification, I am not saying that concrete goal-affects do not appear in hero-villain narratives.  Maybe the Joker sends Batman a mocking note so that Batman will come chase him, but clearly the Penguin would rather get away with the loot rather than tilt with the Caped Crusader again.  But the act of reading about Batman's struggles with both types of villains is in itself an example of an "abstract goal-affect," since the pleasures we derive from reading fiction cannot be said to promote either gain or safety in a direct relationship.

I have the general habit of recalling fragments of stuff I've written and wondering whether or not it fits into the overall schema-- which, I have no doubt, is the same way synoptic critics like Frye and Fiedler also work, since no system springs out of anyone's head a la Athena. I became concerned as to whether this statement had overemphasized the role of "goals" within the diegesis of a given story-- say, a Batman vs. Penguin story-- and had thus come into conflict with the principles stated in HERE COMES DAREDEVIL, THE MAN W/O IDENTITY:

 Daredevil is not a phenomenon with a real existence (at least not in materialistic/positivistic terms), but a fictional construct.

Ergo, neither Daredevil nor any other PURELY fictional character is subject to the "law of identity."

By that principle, the Penguin too is a fictional construct, and though he's been constructed so that he does possess what I called "concrete goal-affects" within his own diegesis, he's defined more by his "role" as a fictional construct than by his "goal" as an actual willing subject, since he isn't one. Unless one of the raconteurs working on him re-defines his roal, the Penguin is defined by the abstract affects of villainous glory than by getting gold, jewels, etc.

Parenthetically, something like this did happen at one point with the Riddler. In some Bat-universe stories-- I can only attest to a story-arc in GOTHAM CITY SIRENS-- the Riddler reforms and becomes a private detective. For all I know the character may have turned back to crime by now, but during that arc he ceased to be a villain as such, though it's debatable as to whether he then assumed the role of "hero" or "demihero."

Fortunately, a quick survey of some of my writings on "persona-types" and the forms of will they incarnate don't seem to place undue emphasis upon the diegetic motives of characters, and I see that in ESTRANGED SPORTS STORIES I did stress "role" over "goal:"

 ...it's the intent behind the narrative, not the conscious intent of the protagonist, that denotes the nature of his persona.

This observation helps me out with a related problem I've been considerering recently. I've defined the monster-persona against the hero-persona as one relating to whether or not their primary role emphasized the "idealizing will" or "the existential will"-- two terms I devised after I wrote this passage in MONSTERS, DEMIHEROES AND OTHER WILLING BEASTS, and which I've interpolated in place of the original, now outdated terms:

King Kong, Gamera and Godzilla may follow the plots of heroes in these assorted works, but I assert that in terms of fundamental character they still represent "existential will," while the not much more intelligent Hulk represents "idealizing will."

But the concept of "existential will" is harder to sell when the monsters are clearly intelligent human beings, like my sometime examples of Doctor Moreau and Victor Frankenstein. Still, I've argued that their obsessions, even if they are motivated by a desire for glory, are subsumed by the "intent behind the narrative." Unlike a genuine glory-oriented villain like Fu Manchu, the two monstrous mad scientists embody the quality of "negative persistence" as much as do big hulking monsters like Kong and Godzilla.

Similarly, because of my tendency to identity Sadean activity as examples of Bataillean expenditure rather than acquisition-- probably best summarized here-- I find myself thinking twice regarding two monsters who are very popular for their overt Sadean qualities.

The first is Freddy Kreuger of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST series. He's become popular, I'm convinced, not because he's a nasty child molester (if indeed that was the intention in the original series) but because he stalks and slays his victims with an imaginative panache atypical of the average slasher-monster.

The second is Pinhead of the HELLRAISER film-series. He doesn't warp his infernal domain quite as flamboyantly as Freddy does with his dream-worlds. But he incarnates the idea of suffering as Sadean glory, and so he does have a highly imaginative "ideal" behind his depradations that is foreign to most monsters.

But in both cases, the narrative's intent supersedes Freddy's snarky cleverness and Pinhead's cerebral viciousness. Their obsessions imprison them far more than do those of the great villains like the aforementioned Fu Manchu, and so I can still align them more with the quality of persistence than with glory.

Perhaps a useful distinction also arises from the concept of "paired opposites' I've formulated: to wit, "hero is to villain as monster is to victim (or, more formally, 'demihero.'"  The monster is designed to prey on a victim who is usually weaker than he, although in many cases the demihero may "step up" and conquer the monster through strength, guile, or a combination thereof. The villain may be just as obsessed as the monster, but characters like the Joker and Lex Luthor-- who make rather good comic-book parallels to Freddy and Pinhead-- are always oriented on challenging heroes, often despite having been beaten by said heroes on many, many occasions. That kind of glory may have only negative consequences, but it's still the same glory we descry in Milton's fallen Lucifer.

On a closing note, I've read that Pinhead has recently been executed by his creator Clive Barker in the world of prose. Pinhead did not appear in the last HELLRAISER film, which I have not seen, and it seems unlikely that Doug Bradley will essay the role again, any more than Robert Englund will again play Freddy, after publicly claiming that he would not do so. I personally won't mind if the characters never appear in film again--

But the crossover-loving part of me wishes that someone could engineer a comic-book meeting between Freddy and Pinhead, one worthy of their respective forms of sadistic nastiness. True, one such comic-book crossover I reviewed here  turned out awful. But the idea of a good writer managing to do justice to both Freddy's American wisecracks and Pinhead's dry Brit humor is a tempting one indeed-- though admittedly, not tempting enough to make any Faustian bargains.