AFFECTIVE FREEDOM AND THE UNCANNY PT. 3

At the end of THREE PROBABILITIES  I said:

Some specific examples of the different intersections of probability and sublimity seems called for. I'll be drawing on my examples from TEN DYNAMIC DEMONS, since that's one of the essays in which I invoked the now untenable, Aristotle-derived association of "the impossible and improbable."

For the time being I'll supply just one of the ten: the trope I labeled "perilous pyschos."  For this trope I chose the literary-and-cinematic figure of Norman Bates.

I considered drawing a comparison between the fictional character of Norman-- whose film I reviewed here -- and a film based on the principal real-life model for Norman, ED GEIN.  I do find GEIN to be a film bereft of the subtler types of antipathetic effect, of dread and awe: it is first and foremost a film about fear, where physical peril is the dominant threat.  Though GEIN tells the true story of the real psycho's misdeeds, it takes the form of "fictionalized reality" rather than a pure documentary. The film begins with a few quotes from persons who knew Gein or persons involved in his murders, but following this preface-like section, the film depicts all real-life events in a fictionalized manner, portraying events that a pure documentary could not legitimately represent, as with a scene where Gein traipses around his yard in his "woman-suit." Yet, even though GEIN pursues the tropes of fiction, it seems inappropriate to draw comparisons between even a fictionalized version of a real person and a completely fictional figure.

But it is appropriate to compare one version of Norman with another.  Here's the Anthony Perkins version, whom I view as "uncanny" due to the nature of his madness.

And here's another version, from the recent A&E teleseries BATES MOTEL.

MOTEL shuffles a few of the basic configurations of the original PSYCHO-- the nervous young man (still in high school here), his domineering mother, and the titular motel.  However, MOTEL shows none of the intensity of the madness depicted either by Bloch or by Hitchcock.   The ten episodes thus far aired have dealt with assorted mundane menaces-- a crooked sheriff, a white-slavery ring, a rapist-- who makes the mistake of raping Norman's mother, who retaliates by knife-murdering him-- and Norma Bates herself, who may be narcissistically devoted to her son but falls very short of the sort of dreadful madness one sees in Bloch and Hitchcock.  If the teleseries lasts long enough to develop the character of Norman-- who is depicted as nothing more than a slightly geeky, but not repulsive, young fellow who captivates some of the local girls-- BATES will certainly have him doing some of the same sort of things that the Bloch-Hitchcock character does.  But in the predominantly naturalistic atmosphere of the series, it seems unlikely that it will conjure forth any of the uncanny atmosphere utilized by either Bloch or Hitchcock.

A side-point: at the end of AFFECTIVE FREEDOM AND THE UNCANNY PT 1 I demonstrated the conditions under which a particular film-- in this case, the serial ACE DRUMMOND-- could have been naturalistic, uncanny or marvelous, depending on whether or not certain elements were present in the diegesis.  I viewed ACE as being dominated by the antipathetic affect of "awe" because I felt that this affect "trumped" those of "fear" and "dread," even though the other two were present and could have been dominant given the aforesaid alterations.  I want to add that it is feasible in some cases for the "subtler" affects to be "trumped" as well.  Hitchcock's suspense-drama SHADOW OF A DOUBT possesses a naturalistic phenomenality, for the monstrous "Merry Widow Killer" is principally a physical threat to anyone who discovers his identity, including his niece, "Young Charlie."  Yet though fear is the controlling affect, there are instances in which the film does depict moments of dread, a dread that stems from Young Charlie's anitpathy to her very relatedness to her insane relative.  This antipathy, at base a fear of psychological absorption by a threatening "Other," is not dwelled upon in SHADOW.  But roughly seventeen years later Hitchcock returned to a far more intense meditation upon that theme, thanks to his encounter with Robert Bloch's work.

THE GOLDEN AGE SUPERHERO: TWO TYPES IN ONE

Before commencing with more analyses of the superheroine, it's necessary to make a few basic statements about the nature of the superhero, irrespective of gender, as the figure took shape in the late 1930s.

While I've gone on record as stating that I think many types of genre-creations belong to what I term "the superhero idiom," it's obvious that "superheroes" constitute their own independent genre.  This genre is determined the same way as any other, on the presence of repeated, recognizable tropes that fit certain expectations of the audience.

Steranko's 2-volume HISTORY OF THE COMICS remains one of the best resources in terms of exploring the multitude of influences upon early comic books, including then-contemporary films, radio shows, prose-stories in books and magazines (particularly the pulps), and of course comic strips.  But of all the generic hero-types that influenced the normative superhero, two types seem particularly influential.

The first I term the "miracle hero." The term "hero" here connotes only "protagonist," for many of these characters-- who without exception possess some sort of super-ability or talent-- are not heroic in the moral sense of the word. Wells' INVISIBLE MAN remains one of the earliest of the "miracle heroes," though in terms of his persona he conforms to what I term "the monster."  Another, whose persona-type is also less than heroic, is the super-strong Hugo Danner of Philip Wylie's GLADIATOR, which may or may not have been an influence on Siegel and Shuster's SUPERMAN.

The second I term the "urban avenger."  This type need not have any uncanny or marvelous propensities whatever; it can include masked types like the Green Hornet, but also all manner of cops, detectives, spies, or general troubleshooters, as long as their main beat is the city.  One may generalize that when the "avenger" type is transported to other climes-- ranging from the Lone Ranger's "Old West" to the Phantom's "Bengali jungle"-- that these might be termed "exotic avengers" insofar as they contrast with the environment of the urban centers from which most popular culture is promulgated.

While there are a handful of other contributing genres, these two genre-types influence the early superhero-- and superheroine-- more than any other.  That said, even characters who had super-powers-- Superman, the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner-- do not tend to explore their own miraculous natures in depth.  They are quickly dragooned into the pattern of the "urban avenger," of patrolling a given city in search of injustices to avenge.

This early pattern will be seen to have particular impact on the ways in which early superheroines were first constituted, and how this would change in the Silver Age.

PBS: "PRETTY BAD (with) SUPERHEROINES"

I didn't expect a general-interest documentary like PBS' SUPERHEROES: A NEVER-ENDING BATTLE to touch on a lot of fine textual points about comic book superheroes.  However, I did think that if the doc's creators brought up a given subject, they would pursue it to some sort of logical conclusion.

Understandably, the first of the doc's three parts dealt with the Golden Age of superhero comics.  The script, which aimed to be an upbeat examination of the history of American superheroes, quite logically did not dwell overlong on the lack of strong nonwhite heroes, though the issue of racism was addressed.  However, the script-- which included commentary from "Wonder Woman" actress Lynda Carter and from one of the comics' writers--  seemed to be building to a point about the history of female characters in a genre aimed-- at least by some of its proponents-- at male customers.  But though the first part provides strong coverage of the background of the most successful comics superheroine of the period-- as well as her eccentric creator-- the other two sections of the doc seem indifferent to most other developments in the arena of superheroine-creation.  Many well-known male heroes are covered in detail during those two sections-- Spider-Man, the Punisher, Spawn-- and even a few nonwhite male heroes, like Luke Cage and the Black Panther, are referenced.  But by the end of the doc, though one sees various "sisters in spandex" in passing, an outsider could be forgiven for thinking that the superheroine domain begins and ends with Wonder Woman.

I know that a general-interest documentary could not have expatiated on the significance of the plethora of other Golden Age Amazons.  Today it means nothing to say that Harvey Comics' "Black Cat" (1941-1951) stayed in print for almost the entire duration of the Golden Age itself.  It also would have meant little to celebrate feminine crimefighters whose names-- Black Canary, Liberty Belle, Blonde Phantom-- did not become, any more than Black Cat's, figures with which non-fans might conjure.  But were none of the heroines of the later "Ages" as worthy of mention as Wonder Woman?

I think that there have been many, but their prevalence is qualified by a "sea-change" in the history of superhero comics.  Since the 1960s, many of the most famous female crimefighrers have not been solo combatants, but have flourished within superhero groups.  Indeed, the idea of the "team book" became far more significant in post-Silver Age comics-history, apart from the role of female heroes in those teams.  Most of these fighting-femmes came to prominence in teams, as with the Invisible Girl/Woman, Marvel Girl, the Wasp, Elasti-Girl, and Scarlet Witch.  A few characters introduced as team-members went on to star in independent features of some note-- such as Power Girl-- yet it's arguable that they remained more celebrated as members of teams.  Similarly, heroines who started in their own features and failed to sell adequately-- as with the She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel-- often ended up being recycled into team-situations.  To be sure, this recycling often took place with male heroes as well.

Another issue inadequately raised is that of the "one-off" superheroine, who owes her existence to a male hero's mythos.  This category would include not only sidekick-types of the sort that commentator Trina Robbins sneered at in the doc, as with "Batgirl" and "Hawkgirl," but also characters like reformed Bat-villainess Catwoman.  That said, I could make the case that Catwoman, whose feature has now been published almost continously since the early 1990s, has proven a more substantial figure than the Punisher, a spin-off from the Spider-Man feature.  And I say that as one who did enjoy the PBS doc putting the Punisher's first exploits into contemporary sociological perspective.

Invisible (Girl) Woman, Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Elasti-Girl, Marvel Girl, Storm, Shadowcat, Power Girl, the (Helena Wayne) Huntress-- these are not figures of no importance in the history of superheroes, nor are they necessarily (contra Robbins) figures overshadowed by their male compeers.  It's a shame that the scripters of the PBS doc couldn't figure out some way to address their relative importance, whether or not they'd appeared in big-screen films or not. 

In my next essay I'll offer some thoughts as to why the most important female characters of the Silver and Bronze Ages were so "team-centric."

AFFECTIVE FREEDOM AND THE UNCANNY, PT. 2

Before preceding on to a detailed example of uncanny affectivity such as I proposed at the end of THREE PROBABILITIES, I want to emphasize a point that came up in my recent film-blog review of a trio of uncanny films: all B-westerns starring the masked hero "the Durango Kid."

Prior to that review, I had examined just one other Durango Kid film-- the 1952 KID FROM BROKEN GUN, the last in the long-running series. I pointed out that BROKEN GUN had only one uncanny aspect, which is also the case with the other three films:

In almost all ways GUN is a naturalistic western like hundreds churned out by the studios of the time. Nothing except the "outre outfit" of the Durango Kid moves it into the domain of the uncanny-metaphenomenal. But as I've noted elsewhere, particularly my review of this "Lone Ranger" film, the hero's mask in this sort of film becomes more than just a mundane device, as it is for some of the villain's hirelings, who also go about masked with bandannas for a few minutes. Though I doubt that I'll ever see the majority of these outlaw-chasing oaters, I'd tend to classify them all as metaphenomenal works. The scene in which the black-clad masked man threatens the villain with execution gives that scene a touch of the uncanny that one would never get from a similar threat made by Gene Autry.

However, even though I insist on this same formalism in my interpretation of other "oaters" in this series, when I reviewed the other three I had to admit they made less impressive use of their metaphenomenal potential.

By saying that [the statement re: Durango as executioner], I didn't mean to suggest that a given Durango Kid would not fit my category of "the uncanny" unless it conveyed such an emotion. The only reason to regard these films as metaphenomenal is based on the POTENTIAL to create such emotions, not in the actual execution. Though the masked western-hero of this series never became a name to conjure with, along the lines of the Lone Ranger-- or even Marvel's "Two-Gun Kid"-- his masked persona removes him from the rank and file of oater-heroes like Roy Rogers and the rest, irrespective as to whether the filmmakers do anything with the potential.

As I emphasized above, a naturalistic western hero, such as Roy Rogers could have played, could have threatened a villain with death, and in that situation such a scene in this hypothetical Autry-film would be dominated by the affect of fear.  The scene in BROKEN GUN is dominated by the affect of dread because the Durango Kid's masked persona, even though he's making the same physical threat, carries a symbolic valence that a commonplace cowpoke does not.  The other three "Durango films" that I reviewed did not USE the symbolic potential of the masked persona, but it was potentially within the grasp of the scripters, regardless of what they chose to do with it.


Given that I've set up a hypothetical Roy Rogers flick to represent the dominant affect of fear, and a particular Durango Kid film to represent the dominant affect of dread, for symmetry's sake I'll show what kind of awe-inspiring affect is possible when the hero can use a plurality of marvelous powers in order to manipulate the ungodly.

AFFECTIVE FREEDOM AND THE UNCANNY, PT. 1

In THREE INTO TWO WILL GO, SOMETIMES PT. 1  I described the NUM formula-- although when I wrote the essay the category of " the naturalistic" was "the atypical"-- in the following terms:

If the anomaly takes place within a world where the cognitive order rules, and where affectivity is indeed the tail wagged by the dog, then the narrative’s phenomenality is “atypical.”


If it takes place within a world that breaks with the cognitive order, in which causs-and-effect is in some way suspended, then the phenomality is “marvelous,” and the affectivity produced is one that also strives to go beyond the cognitive order.


If the work seems to suggest that the cognitive order is violated, when in fact it is not, its phenomenality will be “uncanny” as long as the work succeeds in evoking an affectivity that symbolically exceeds the cognitive order.

I now intend to bring this in line with Cassirer's observations re: the distinctions of the "causality" concepts characteristic of empirical thought versus the "multicausal" concepts characteristic of mythical thought, especially as conveyed through what Cassirer calls the opposing conception of causality, "magical efficacy."


Thus a Cassirer-based reconfiguration reads thus:

NATURALISTIC-- cognitivity and affectivity are defined by the causal order; i.e. "one definite cause yields one definite effect"

UNCANNY-- cognitivity is defined by the causal order, but affectivity exceeds causal order and participates in the multicausal nature of "efficacy"

MARVELOUS-- both cognitivity and affectivity exceed the causal order and participate in the multicausal nature of "efficacy"

The nature of affectivity in each phenomenality is logically glossed by the antipathetic and sympathetic affects I've detailed on the blog, each of which form a triunity.  The negative affects-- fear, dread, and awe-- were formulated by Rudolf Otto in THE IDEA OF THE HOLY, schematized by C.S. Lewis in THE PROBLEM OF PAIN,  and first examined on this blog in this essay.

Because I felt neither Otto nor Lewis had adequately defined a set of corresponding positive affects, I supplied a corresponding triunity in this essay.  Shortly later,  I revised one of the three terms in this essay, so that my corresponding set of sympathetic affects now sport the names of "admiration" (the counterpart to "fear"), "fascination" (the counterpart to "dread"), and "exaltation" (the counterpart to "awe" of the abysmal type described by Otto).

Therefore affectivity in the three phenomenalities can be aligned thusly:

In a fictive world where affectivity is defined by the causal order, the dominant sympathetic affect is "admiration" of things characteristic of the causal order, particularly what Jung called Freud's "physiological factors," while the dominant antipathetic affect is "fear" of aspects of the causal/physical order.

Where affectivity exceeds the causal order in accordance with the multicausal nature of the world's cognitivity, the dominant sympathetic affect is "exaltation" toward the multicausal, and the dominant antipathetic affect is "awe" toward it.

It's easy to descry affects of admiration and fear in naturalistic works, or affects of exalatation and awe in marvelous works.  The uncanny, however, is harder to demonstrate, precisely because the causal order rules the cognitive aspect of the uncanny work, causing many viewers-- like Todorov-- to mistake it for the purely naturalistic.  Instead, the uncanny flourishes precisely in the contrast between the monocausal nature of cognitive reality in a given work, while affectivity "symbolically exceeds the cognitive order," taking the dominant forms of "fascination" for the sympathetic affect and "dread" for the antipathetic affect.

None of this means that affects most characteristic of one phenomenality cannot occur in another phenomenality, but those affects are not characteristic.  As a quick example, the little remembered adventure-serial ACE DRUMMOND-- reviewed here-- imperils its hero with threats that are, at varying times, naturalistic, uncanny, or marvelous, and all controlled by the serial's villain, "the Dragon."

If the villain had only been able to threaten Drummond with mundane guards, then the phenomenality of the serial would have been naturalistic, and its dominant antipathetic affect would be fear.

If the villain had been able to threaten Drummond with both his mundane guards and his "Room-with-Crushing-Walls," then the presence of the latter threat would trump the naturalistic elements and change the phenomenality to the uncanny, so that even though the affect of 'fear" still existed with respect to Drummond's battle with mundane guards, "dread" of a villain able to control a weird weapon like a '"crushing room" would make "dread" the dominant antipathetic affect.

However, as things stand, the evil Dragon could menace Drummond and his buddies with the previously cited threats and a marvelous death-ray device as well-- and indeed, the death ray gets the most narrative attention in this particular serial.  Thus the dominant antipathetic affect, overruling those of  "fear" and "dread," is one of "awe" before the villain's marvelous resources.

I will enlarge on these observations in Part 2.

TERMINOLOGICAL TRACKDOWN PT. 2

THREE INTO TWO WILL GO, SOMETIMES PT 1 was my first schematized assertion that asserted that the cognitive and affective aspects of a given work were equally important in determining its overall effect.  I stated this in contradistinction to Tzvetan Todorov, who advocated an approach based only in the cognitivity—specificially a cognitively heavily invested in Freudian hermeneutics. 

      The work of Ernst Cassirer was not a proximate influence on this division of "the cognitive" and "the affective."  The division was a routine one seen in psychological studies, often phrased roughly along the lines of Freud’s famous “reality principle” (for the cognitive) and “pleasure principle” (for the affective).  On occasion I allowed a few of my essays to repeat this dichotomy without examining it in greater depth, though in general my readings of Cassirer, as seen in my earliest posts, have helped preserve me against the errors of naïve positivism.  I always appreciated Cassirer’s advocacy of expressivity in literature, as opposed to Todorov’s all-cognitive-all-the-time orientation.  Still, not until Oct 12, 2011 did I investigate any aspect of Cassirer’s main argument re: his “concept of force” as expounded in MYTHICAL THINKING.  Cassirer affirmed that there was a justifiable approach to the “concept of force” that paralleled that of Freud’s “reality principle,” one that depended upon analyzing physical forces in an empirical/theoretical manner.  However, Cassirer certainly did not dismiss the contrary mode as some sort of fatuous “pleasure principle,” as Freud did.  Thus he designated “causality” was the domain of empirical/theoretical thinking, while he used the term “efficacy” to denote the domain of mythical thinking, which focused upon a “free selection of causes.” 

       Eventually I discerned that the “free selection of causes” Cassirer identified in archaic mythologies was identical in mode to the “fudge factors” writers use whenever they describe all manner of marvelous beings and devices.  In AFFECTIVE EFFECTS PT 2 I said:

...I would say that the "strangeness" of the metaphenomenal assumes qualities covalent with those of Cassirer's "magical efficacy." 

     Yet it's a little harder to demonstrate that writers who invoked “the uncanny” were making the same “free selection.”  Because uncanny works do not violate the causal order, many readers will not view them as being allied to the marvelous, which does violate that order. 

       Nevertheless, in the first of a possible series of essays to which I alluded at the conclusion of THREE PROBABILITIES,  I will offer a proof that "the uncanny" does indeed participate in the quality of Cassirer's "magical efficacy," even though it does so in a different manner than "the marvelous" does.  I’ve repeatedly asserted that the uncanny is that category in which causality is not broken, as in works of the marvelous, but merely bent.  This “bending” is, like any similar physical alteration, must be the result of an application of force.  But in works of the uncanny, that force only appears to accede to the iron law of causality. In truth such works are dominated by a countervailing law: the law of what I have termed the “combinatory-sublime.” 

TERMINOLOGICAL TRACKDOWN PT. 1

Since I’ve stated in STALKING THE PERFECT TERM: THE THREE PROBABILITIES that it was a mistake to invoke the concept of coherence in respect to probability, I should hold forth on the original context of the concept.

 

         I articulated the concept in response to Susanne Langer’s useful distinction between “discursive symbolism” and “presentational symbolism” in her 1942 book PHILOSOPHY IN A NEW KEY. Langer did not say anything about judging particular literary manifestations of these two forms of symbolism.  In contrast, I wanted to expound on ways in which these very different symbolic discourses could be used competently or not so competently.  So the argument came down to two interdependent parts:

 

         (1) A well-known trope, like Batman- villains placing the Crusader in a death-trap rather than simply shooting him, was not a worthless endeavor simply because it flew in the face of logical, discursive symbolism.  Patently the death-trap had a function even if it was one that couldn’t be justified discursively: the device served to test the ability of Batman—or a similar hero in similar dire straits—for the enjoyment of the reader.  Hence it was justifiable in terms of Langer’s “presentational symbolism,” having no more connection with logical discourse than a symphonic piece.

 

         (2) The second part was my own idea: that even though the trope of the death-trap could not be critiqued on the basic of logic, it could be critiqued aesthetically: as to whether it communicated a certain effect.  In GESTURE AND GESTALT PART 3 I showed why one death-trap was coherent and expressive while another one was not. 

The corresponding essay PART 4 argued that the same principle of coherence should apply to tropes that were intended to be discursively meaningful, and I gave examples of, respectively, coherent and incoherent manifestations of discursive symbolism. 

I now perceive that by I linked the concept of coherence to the NUM formula  because I formed an unconscious link between the very different ways in which Langer and C.S. Lewis spoke of “presentation.” 

 

In NEW KEY Langer used the term to distinguish an aspect of human perception: to underscore that when humans were presented with sense-experiences, they did not ipso facto interpret them with respect to discursive symbolic models. 

 

In THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, though, C.S. Lewis spoke of “realism of presentation” as a socially constructed discourse, which is to say one that *was * informed by a given reader’s expectations as to what or was not believable in a logical and discursive sense.   

        I now surmise that when Lewis spoke of “realism of content,” I lined up this conceptualization with that of Tzvetan Todorov’s idea of "the marvelous," that category of all fictions that represented something “unreal” as being “real,” rather like Aristotle’s “probable impossibility.”

      Similarly, I’ve repeatedly claimed, in my rewrite of Todorov, that the differences between “the naturalistic” and “the uncanny” depend not on the reader’s perceptions of the narrative, as Todorov had it, but on the way in which an author “presents” a trope like, say, “psychotic madman on the rampage.” 

      Todorov wished to assert that whatever was not cognitively unreal was perforce “real.” I assert that the category of “the uncanny” depended on an affective factor—the presence of “strangeness”—that allied that category with that of the marvelous, so that both were categories of the metaphenomenal.   

From there, I unfortunately tried to bring in the other half of Aristotle’s famous dictum, the “possible improbability,” and judge it not by “possibility” but by coherence—hence the “coherent probability” (for the uncanny) and the “incoherent probability” for the naturalistic.  But the use of probability and/or possibility, whether invoked by Lewis or by Aristotle, are not determinative, because they depend on socially constructed criteria as to what is possible or probable. As I noted in PROBABILITY SHIFTS, the nature of probability depends on the ground rules of a given fictional cosmos, and those ground rules are created not by expectations external to the work but by the way in which the work’s author constructs the cognitive and affective aspects of the work—to which I will turn next.