Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Abject Female – Lilith, Pandora, Darkchylde

The she-monster's hardly a new phenomenon. The idea of a female, untamed nature which must be leashed, or else will wreak havoc, closely reflects anthropocentric and mythological encounters with monsters (Warner, 1994, p4)

Darkchylde, Lilith, and Pandora are three examples of the abject female. The abject disturbs identity, system, order; does not respect borders, positions, rules' (Kristeva, 1982, p4). The 'possessed or invaded' monstrous body is inherently tied to abjection because, as Creed succinctly argues, it transgresses the boundary between self and other (1993, p32) and therefore does not respect borders or identity. The figure of the 'uncontrollable' female has been propagated through such mythological figures as Lilith and Pandora. The character of Ariel in the comic Darkchylde is just one representation which this mythical female archetype has metamorphosed. The mythological female figures of Lilith and Pandora also provide a co-existent site of abjection and the monstrous.


Lilith

In Jewish mythology Lilith is Adam's first wife before Eve. Her only appearance in the Christian Bible of today is in Isiah 34:14, where she is referred to as 'the night creature' who meets with 'the howling creature'. There are varying accounts of Lilith's history but most concur that she wouldn't lie beneath Adam due to her belief that they were created equally from the dust of the earth. Lilith and Adam argued about this equality, with Lilith finally retreating to the Red Sea. God sent three angels to return Lilith to Adam, however when they found her, she would not return, stating that death would be preferable to submission. The consequence of her defiance was that one hundred of her demon offspring would be killed each day. Lilith then proclaimed that she would kill newborns – boys up to eight days after birth, girls up to twenty – except those that were protected by the names of the three angels.

Eliezer Segal (1995) posits Lilith's story as originating in a medieval book called The Alphabet of Ben-Sira which seems designed to upset the sensibilities of traditional Jews. In particular the heroes of the Bible and the Talmud are frequently portrayed in the most perverse colours. Segal writes he cannot rule out that, along with an 'impious digest of risqué folk tales' or a 'polemical broadside aimed at Christians', The Alphabet of Ben-Sira may have been an anti-Jewish satire. He claims that through bad scholarly studies, Lilith ended up in the Jewish Midrash (the canon of works that are written to elucidate and explain Bible stories) without her origin being questioned. Even as a story Lilith becomes abject in transgressing storylines and not staying in her place. Angelo Rappoport in his Ancient Israel: Myths and Legends describes Lilith as 'long haired and winged' (1990). A further interesting complication posits Lilith as the Queen of Sheba who is beautiful from the waist up but from the waist down is ugly and hairy, and possibly also male! (Khephera,1997). This simple gender reversal harks back to the idea that for a female to hold any sort of power or agency, she must be either be hiding something ugly or be a male in disguise.


Pandora

Pandora is the first woman of Greek mythology and, like Lilith, is a woman whose desire for freedom and autonomy positions her as transgressing the boundaries of patriarchal law. Created by the Greek gods from earth and water as the price paid for Prometheus' theft of fire, Zeus directed the gods to give Pandora the face of the eternal goddesses; the skills of weaving; a desire that wears out the body; a mind of a treacherous nature; and lies, flattery and disloyalty in place of a heart. As she is made of many parts, Pandora can be described as 'the ambiguous, the composite' (Kristeva, 1982, p4). She is 'the bane of men, a destroyer of civilization as powerful as fire' (Young-Eisendrath, 1995, p4). Pandora's greatest 'gift' to the earth was her discovery and subsequent opening of a jar (later to become a box) which unleashed death, disease, evils and all the troubles of mankind. Hope is the only spirit that remained on closure of the jar. Before Pandora there was no evil, laborious work, or sickness. Thus with the opening of the jar Pandora divides the Gods and man with mortality bringing to mankind 'the ultimate defeat, death itself' (Young-Eisendrath, 1995, p5). Her beauty is powerful as fire but based on lies and deceit (Young-Eisendrath, 1995, p5) exemplifying Kristeva's theory of abjection beautifully, being 'immoral, sinister, scheming and shady' (1982, p4).


Darkchylde

Pandora and Lilith are the progenitors of a genetic line of abjection that leads to Ariel. Darkchylde is the story of seventeen year old Ariel Chylde who lives with her abusive father, Robert. Of her mother we only know that she "left" when Ariel was very young, although the assumption is that she's dead. Ariel is the possessor of the Darkchylde giving her the ability to transform into demons from the Nightmare Realm. These generally manifest when she or people close to her are threatened with harm. When the threat has been neutralised, Ariel and the demon separate. Ariel regains her human form and the demon scarpers back to the nightmare realm. To complicate matters, Kauldron, a human exile from the nightmare realm, has taken control of several demons before they have had a chance to return to the Nightmare Realm. Ariel must then save herself and her town from Kauldron and the demons under his control. Ariel's first transformation into a monster occurs during an incestuous attack by her father which ends when Ariel kills him. She is then helped by Perry, a male love interest, and his father Jack, a bigwig in the government agency SENTRY that deals with strange phenomena. After Ariel's second transformation she's taken to SENTRY headquarters and subjected to experiments and tests (for her own good, of course). However, Ariel escapes with the help of Jack, Perry and three sympathetic demons from the nightmare realm – Sage, War and Piece. As it happens, Sage is the spiritual representation of Ariel's dead mother, and as her name suggests, is a voice of wisdom and guidance. By the end of the comic Ariel has wreaked bloody carnage on most of the characters and the town of Salem; actions that lead to her exile.

Obvious comparisons can be drawn between the three characters', long hair, wings and beautiful outward appearance, but the theme of woman as harbinger of death, and the abject nature of their creation, are much more striking parallels. Ariel's outwardly shy and 'beautiful' appearance serves to hide the devouring monster who is 'out of place', an 'impossibility', and a somatic symptom of cultural ideals of women. She is a 'monster' who brings pain, suffering and destruction to patriarchy and phallocentric society. Kristeva's description of abjection illustrates Ariel's metamorphosis into monstrousness beautifully:

A massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness, which, familiar as it might have been in an opaque and forgotten life, now harries me as radically separate, loathsome (1982, p2).
The emergence of the monstrous in Darkchylde draws heavily on violent, birthing images. In fact as Ariel and demon separate, Ariel actually gives 'birth' to demons (like Lilith). Ariel describes her own metamorphosis into a monster:
it's something quite close to hell having your bones twist, snap and change shape. Having your skin stretch until it feels like it's going to rip, right as your blood reaches its boiling point. In many ways it isn't like dying and being born again… it is dying and being born again (Queen, 1999, p120).
Ariel monstrous birth of herself as demon is a violent act of expulsion through which her nascent body tears itself away from the matter of her maternal insides (Kristeva, 1982, p101). The above passage is Ariel's description of her final transformation in the comic, where we actually see Ariel give violent birth to herself as monster. This scene is pivotal as Ariel instigates the change to monster herself, a symbolic transformation from victim to aggressor and therefore in a second and more personal way, is imbricated in the process of 'becoming', as Kristeva explains:
it is thus that […] "I" am in the process of becoming an other at the expense of my own death. During that course in which "I" become, I give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit. Mute protest of the symptom, shattering violence of a convulsion (Kristeva, 1982, p3).
The monstrous body in Darkchylde exhibits the abject qualities of border transgression and violent birth (the maternal body as it transgresses bodily boundaries), occupying the site of the threatening abyss, marking the subject's place of birth and obliteration, and which continually threatens to draw them back in (Grosz, 1986, p110). This concept is made tangible in the descriptive narration of Ariel's transformation:
Inside her soul Ariel feels a deep and terrible abyss yawn wide… and something wicked in the darkness smiles and reaches out to her (Queen, 1999, p53).
Ariel experiences abjection at its height when she finds the impossible within; when she finds that the impossible – the ability to summon demons from inside herself – constitutes her very being (Kristeva, 1982, p5), exhibiting that at her centre she is abject. Ariel acknowledges this impossibility as something very evil lying beneath her skin, feasting on her soul for seventeen years (Queen, 1999, p88). This impossibility, this abjection, is what Kristeva identifies as 'not at all an otherness with whom I identify and incorporate, but an Other who precedes and possesses me, and through such possession causes me to be' (1982, p10). This possession results in abjection of the self, which is defined as:
the culminating form of that experience of the subject to which it is revealed that all its objects are based merely on the inaugural loss that laid the foundations of its own being. There is nothing like the abjection of the self to show that all abjection is in fact recognition of the want on which any being, meaning, language, or desire is founded (Kristeva, 1982, p5).
Ariel's loss of her mother is of course her inaugural loss. The subsequent desire to be with her mother produces Ariel as abject, and as what Kristeva relates as a somatic symptom: 'in the symptom, the abject permeates me. I become abject' (1982, p11). The symptom can be expressed as 'a language that gives up, a structure within the body, a non-assimilable alien, a monster' (1982, p11). Ariel's portrayal as a monster is thus a somatic symptom of the abject nature that underlies cultural and societal ideals of women.

After Ariel's first transformation, where she kills her father by 'spewing' fire from her mouth, Perry finds Ariel 'sick and vomiting… confusion and pain leaking from her eyes… she's beautiful and I couldn't be more terrified' (Queen, 1999, p38). This foregrounds Ariel's 'leaky' abject, (and therefore frightening) female nature, where body fluids refuse to stay in their place. When she's not a monster, Ariel is constantly crying, the first sign of her transforming is energy emitting from her eyes. She flows between forms, not respecting corporeal boundaries. Even the abstract emotions of confusion and pain become fluid, leaking out of her body. Her body is presented as 'out of control' in both human and monstrous forms. Grosz argues:
Can it be that in the West, in our time, the female body has been constructed not only as lack or absence but with more complexity […] as lacking not so much […] the phallus, but self-containment […] a formlessness that engulfs all form, a disorder that threatens all order? (1986, p203).
Ariel is unable to control herself when transforming, unable to contain her insides 'seeping' out into monstrous forms that threaten all order, specifically the symbolic order. Ariel's imprisonment by SENTRY is indicative of the symbolic orders attempt to contain the feminine and the abjection it exudes. This 'uncontrollable force' must be locked up and tested to see what happens, how boundaries are transgressed, to see how the abject woman can be controlled.

The monstrous body, the excessive and leaky body, a treacherous nature, a possessed body, a maternal/birthing body – all are somatic symptoms of the abject. This is an absolutely startling array of representations of the feminine in the one book and of the one female! The question needs to be asked, why is there so many symptoms displayed in the one woman? What is it about Ariel that commands such an array of abject representations? In contradistinction to her progenitors Lilith and Pandora, Ariel has the ability to generate life on her own without a male, making her all the more deadly. Ariel as monstrous woman is a signifier which effaces the father as signified (Shildrick, 1996, p5) disrupting the 'proper' the paternal origin, that is seen from as early as Aristotle as the single source of life. Ariel's ability to produce without a male is such an astounding and threatening feat (from a patriarchal, phallocentric point of view), that she must be offset with abject qualities. These representations also exhibit patriarchy's denial of real motherhood, and a real maternal ideal, as a positive role.

Ariel's abject nature reinforces her as 'other', in flux and unstable, which consequently reinforces the male as whole, clean, and stable. Ariel's frightening otherness undermines phallocentric ideals that position the male as a producer and active. Subsequently, Ariel is denied the right to exist in patriarchal phallocentric society, even in her 'pleasurable form', and must be sent away to 'somewhere'. When Ariel returns to her 'pleasurable form' she is instantly returned to her passive human state seeking Perry for direction and recognition. Agency is thus instantly transferred to the male and the symbolic order; a disappointing end to the hope that Ariel would actually benefit from her decision to give the villain Kauldron 'more than he could handle' (Queen, 1999, p118).

Ariel also has an interesting parallel with Ripley of the Alien movies. Mike Davis argues that when cheering on Ripley in Aliens, we're also unconsciously valorizing the symbolic [r]ejection of feminism because it has been so powerfully distorted in the figure of patriarchy's castration anxiety: the alien (2000). So too the narrative of Darkchylde has quite cleverly drawn us into its web where we have to agree that it's in Ariel's best interests to leave town, to be sent into exile. Like the figure of the Alien, Ariel as monster presents a twisted spectacle of feminine power that cannot be allowed to exist inside patriarchal boundaries. As Marina Warner argues all 'she-monsters must in one way or another be dispatched by the plot–or by the hero–as securely as any mythological dragon or monster of classical myth–preferably before they've perpetuated themselves' (1994, p3). As Warner so clearly shows, Ariel must be, and is dispatched by Perry, who is the hero only because he is the only male left who hasn't been killed! Produced as monster and as abject, Ariel is symptomatic of the fear that the symbolic order has of the feminine which must be 'kept in place'. Like Ripley, Ariel is the acceptable signifier of woman and the reassuring face of femininity; conceived from within patriarchal and phallocentric ideology (Davis, 2000).

Ariel is as a descendent of a long line of mythological abject females who unleash pain, suffering, and death onto the world, which is 'a curious reversal of the fact that women bring life into the world' (Young-Eisendrath, 1995, p4). These females are portrayed with qualities that are 'out of place' and that transgress their 'proper' boundaries. In short, at their centre they are abject. Ariel's abject nature is derived from her leaky, fluid body, her changing, maternal/birthing body, and her ability to transform into a monster. These qualities are used to offset her 'threatening' ability to generate life on her own. However this ability does not empower Ariel. As a figure who threatens patriarchal, phallocentric stability she must be dispatched, by any means possible. Ariel is thus relegated to the margins of society, exiled. The relentless attachment of the abject to the feminine in Darkchylde exposes patriarchal fear of an asymmetrical, irrational, wily, uncontrollable feminine power.


Reference

Creed, B. (1993).  The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis. London and New York. Routledge.

Davis, M. (2000). 'What's the Story Mother?': Abjection and Anti-Feminism in Alien and Aliens.' Gothic Studies 2.

Grosz, E. (1986). 'Language and the Limits of the Body: Kristeva and Abjection' in Grosz, E. (ed.)
Futur*fall: Excursions into Post-modernity. University of Sydney.

Khephera. (1997). Lilith. http://www.lilitu.com/lilith/khephframes.html

Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press.

Queen, R. (1999). Darkchylde: The Descent. La Jolla: Wildstorm Productions (DC Comics).

Rappoport, A. S. (1990). 'The Story of Lilith' in Ancient Israel: Myths and Legendshttp://www.lilitu.com/lilith/rappoport.html

Segal, E. (1995). 'Looking for Lilith' in Why didn't I learn this in Hebrew School? http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/950206_Lilith.html

Shildrick, M. (1996). 'Posthumanism and the Monstrous Body' in Body and Society. Vol. 2 (1). London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi. SAGE.

Warner, M. (1994). Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time. The Reith Lectures. Vintage.

Young-Eisendrath, P. (1995). 'Myth and Body: Pandora's Legacy in a Post-Modern World'.
http://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2004/PSY467/Young_Eisendrath_Myth_and_Body_Pandora_s_Legacy_in_a_Post_Modern_World.htm

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Review - Superior #2 by Mark Millar and Leinil Yu

Superior is Millar's attempt to return to more traditional type of comic story, one filled with magic and wonder. In this Millar follows in the footsteps of Kurt Busiek's Astro City and Alan Moore's Tom Strong. This may not seem much of a talking point but since Millar's stories (The Authority, Wanted, Kick-Ass and Nemesis) are generally wall-to-wall blood-filled, over-the-top, action extravaganzas, a little magic and wonder is definitely a different tack for Millar.

I haven't reviewed issue one because, while I bought it, I lost the copy! Where it went...

Anyway here's a quick recap. Issue one saw multiple sclerosis sufferer Simon Pooni granted a wish by Ormon, a talking monkey in spacesuit. The last talking monkey I saw was in Grant Morrison's The Filth - and a foul-mouthed simian he was! Simon's illness has left him wheelchair-bound with his parents having to help bathe and feed him - terribly embarrassing for a budding teenager. Simon is also bullied and spends most of his free time immersing himself in movies. All pretty standard stuff but let's face it, anything with a talking monkey instantly elevates the story to comic book gold! Simon's wish? To become Superior - the superhero star of the Superior movie franchise played by actor Tad Scott. Wah-lah! The monkey grants Simon's wish. This has echoes of Captain Marvel/Billy Batson and smells of adolescent power fantasy. Well, really, which superhero comics aren't adolescent power fantasies... None of it's subtle but Millar doesn't do subtle.

Issue two sees Superior/Simon convincing his friend, Chris, that he's actually Simon in Superior's body. Thankfully we're spared the "I'll tell you something that only you and I know" scene. They test out Superior's super abilities to see if they're the same as the Superior movie character version or the comic book version - some pretty standard "new superhero learns how to use their abilities" stuff, but at least a little amusing. Simon uses his frustration of living with multiple sclerosis to fuel the control of his new powers. The climax sees Superior confronted with his first major disaster. There's also a hint that Simon may not be Superior forever.


As I've come to expect from Millar the story jumps along at a nice clip but like Nemesis I feel that Millar is delivering only just enough per issue. This issue could've been told in half the pages which means we could have double the amount of story! Do we really need half page splashes of Simon/Superior learning to fly? Or him learning to use his supervision?

The issue's high point is Leinil Yu's realistic styled artwork. Each panel is meticulously drawn and striking really producing a big look.

The one thing that was disappointing was the comic's colouring, especially on Superior's face. It just looks heavy-handed at best, amateurish at worst, and takes away from Yu's fine pencil work. Pages with just Yu's pencils are reproduced in the back of the issue showing the detailed and crisp line work.The colouring really obliterates this detail. I'm assuming the colouring has been done digitally I've found this on any number of occasions in comics. It used to be worse, especially in the 1990s when the use of computers and digital imaging was just beginning. Thankfully proficiency and programs have improved but like anything it can be done badly and here, I think it is. I sometimes think that I'd prefer to see the comic printed just as pencils without the coloring.

If there's one other small criticism, while Yu's work is fantastic, the poses Superior strikes are still in the vein of superheroic. There's less conveyance of a young goofy boy in a hulking unfamiliar body. Nothing like how Frank Quitely brilliantly managed to pull off making Clark Kent look completely different, and actually hold his body different, to Superman in All-Star Superman.

Superior #2 is entertaining enough and is setting up the longer story nicely. Millar is one of the superstars of comic writing at the moment and it's easy to see why. He's developed a distinct style in his storytelling - bold in style, big in concept. Millar produces a spectacle, leaving lots of room for his artist to work. Still, I just wish there was more...

This: Solid and interesting
Forthcoming: Why not? Talking monkeys (and ones that grant wishes) are always a drawcard. Let's see where it's going...

Read review of Superior #3

Sunday, December 19, 2010

The Genre of the Superhero Narrative: The Marvellous-Uncanny


The following is an essay devoted to defining the superhero narrative as a literary genre. The essay is not without its problems (the least of which are its length and the images - my apologies) but I do believe it adds to the idea of the superhero narrative being a distinct form of narrative that bridges genres. If it at least generates discussion and debate then the time producing it was well spent.


The Genre of the Superhero Narrative: The Marvellous-Uncanny

'A literary genre, by its very nature, reflects the most stable, "eternal" tendencies in literature's development. Always preserved in a genre are undying elements of the archaic. True, these archaic elements are preserved in it only thanks to their constant renewal, which is to say, their contemporisation. A genre is always the same and yet not the same, always old and new simultaneously. Genre is reborn and renewed at every stage in the development of literature and in every individual work of a given genre. This constitutes the life of a genre. Therefore even the archaic elements preserved in a genre are not dead but eternally alive; that is, archaic elements are capable of renewing themselves. A genre lives in the present, but always remembers its past, its beginning'
(Bakhtin 106).

 

The Superhero: The Figure, The Narrative, The Medium

Comics and comic books are almost inseparable from the figure of the superhero. While in years past crime, romance, and horror comics were a staple part of comic book fare, these now represent only a small portion of the comic book trade which is dominated by the garishly costumed superhero. Stemming from "low-brow" pulp origins, comics share their position in popular culture with science-fiction, a genre which Rosi Braidotti writes of as having the 'imagination of disaster and the aesthetics of destruction… the more extensive the scale of the disaster, the better' (186). The DC Comics crossover storyline Final Crisis comes to mind as only one extensive disaster to be portrayed in comics (there is generally one epic crisis every year or so).

First though I wish to distinguish which comics I am talking about here, because the term, comics, is all-encompassing. A comic is not a genre (except by way of paratext), it is a medium, and an "in-between" medium at that – not cinema, not novels, not short stories, not (completely) literary, not simply art, not simply scripts – and yet incorporates aspects of all these. This conglomeration of modes may be why it has been so difficult for comics to find an encompassing term of their own other than the begrudgingly accepted, graphic novel. However, comics as a medium draws from all these conventions while simultaneously influencing them. For my purposes here comics are the medium in which superhero narratives are primarily, but not exclusively, told. More specifically, they contain narratives which invoke the figure of the superhero in its many forms. Similarly, I would also apply to the superhero narrative what Braidotti writes of science-fiction, that it is 'mercifully free of grandiose pretensions… and thus ends up being a more accurate and honest depiction of contemporary culture than other, more self-consciously "representational" genres' (182).

In his book Genre, John Frow writes that genres which tell stories 'set within a recognisable world, the thematic content will be kinds of action, the kinds of actors who perform them, and the significance that accrues to actions and actors' (76). Frow explains that these actions can be world-historical occurrences, sustained adventures, or one-off events while the actors will be recognisably human or non-human. The world formed and containing these actors and actions has a 'particular organisation of space and time and a particular… degree of plausibility' (76). This can be referred to as what Frow terms the thematic content expressed as a 'recurrent iconography' (75). The thematic content of the superhero narrative is that which makes it instantly recognisable to readers. Thus the superheroic figure can be represented in any number of ways while not specifically presenting the reader/viewer with the conventions that we come to associate with the superhero. This can be seen in evidence in television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes, and Bionic Woman, and M. Night Shyamalan's film Unbreakable (2000). Of course this also calls into question what constitutes a superheroic figure. While Reynolds (1992) points out seven conventions which were established in the first Superman story (in Action Comics 1938) – lost parents, the man-god, justice, the normal and the superpowered, the secret identity, superpowers and politics, and science as magic – these have become less relied upon as the genre has evolved. Reynolds himself notes that these only construct a 'first stage working definition of the superhero genre' (16). I reject the idea of the superhero as a "genre" in its own right. As I am elucidating here, the superhero/superheroic figure is a tool which expresses the thematic content of the superhero narrative.

I have always regarded the superhero narrative as one that is difficult to pigeonhole as a genre, as it incorporates and combines many modes of fiction, such as fantasy, science-fiction, myth, and horror, in a realistic setting. Thus a cyborg vampire appearing in an X-Men comic would not be unusual. Neither is Captain America battling the Nazis (which he did), or Batman fighting Al-Qaeda (which he will if Frank Miller has his way). I wish to position the superhero narrative in two different ways. First, using Mikhail Bakhtin and Geoff Klock, I make an argument for the superhero narrative as a literary genre. Second, again using the work of Bakhtin, as well as Tzvetan Todorov, Christine Brooke-Rose, Rosemary Jackson, and John Frow, and through developing a new model of genre, I position the superhero narrative and Franz Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' as residing in a "new" genre: the Marvellous-Uncanny.


 

The Characteristics of a Genre

Frow writes that 'the patterns of genre… are at once shaped by a type of situation and in turn shape the rhetorical actions that are performed in response to it' (14). Genre also 'embodies the type of recurring situation that evokes it, and… provides a strategic response to that situation' (Coe et al in Frow 14). Frow continues:
 
texts translate (activate, perform, but also transform) the complex meanings made available by the structure of genre, which in turn translates the information structurally embedded in the situation to which it responds (16).

For me, Frow describes and communicates that the essence of genre is metamorphic in the fact that structure and situation inform each other but also have the power to transform each other in a constant continuation. This is how genres change and re-invent themselves. If we are to follow Bakhtin, then this is how genre must work for innovation and repetition to continually evolve while remaining the same. Of course genres do not re-invent themselves literally, rather it is the responses in the form of choices made by authors in their texts that inform the process. All genres are destabilised by the eternal question which authors ask as the instigator, and inspiration, for all narratives – What if…? 

Frow's model of genre is a reflexive model 'in which texts are thought to use or perform the genres by which they are shaped' (25). Though, he also writes that genre classifications are 'necessarily unstable and unpredictable… because… they are themselves uses of genre, performance of or allusions to the norms and conventions which form them and which they may, in turn, transform' (25).


The Superhero Narrative as a Literary Genre

Returning to Bakhtin's quote which I have used at the start of this paper, the elements he ascribes to the literary genre describe the ever evolving superhero narrative perfectly and in my opinion thus constitute it as a literary genre. To explicate this I refer to the "ages" which constitute the evolving stages of the superhero narrative. The Golden Age dates from the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1 (1938) to its near demise between 1945 and 1950 (Sassienie 21). The explosion of superhero comics in this time (dominated by the DC pantheon of characters – Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman), had simple storylines where heroes always triumphed and were never personally conflicted. The Silver Age is generally regarded as beginning with the re-publication and rejuvenation of the hero, The Flash, in DC's Showcase #4 (Oct. 1956). This was in no small part prompted by Dr Frederic Wertham's diatribe against horror comics which led to the adoption of a 'Comics Code' that effectively killed off the prolific horror comic market and led to the toning down of romance and westerns. The Silver Age was dominated by the emergence of the Marvel pantheon of characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 1960s, those being The Fantastic Four (1961), The Incredible Hulk (1962), Spiderman (1962), The Mighty Thor (1963), X-Men (1963), The Avengers (1963), Iron Man (1963), and Daredevil (1964). The stories are characterised by the introduction of heroes with personal and/or "real life" problems. From this point in their history, the comic eras become more difficult to demarcate. Depending on what is regarded as the information underpinning the defining of an era – Paul Sassienie seems to take the popularity of the superhero comic, and thus sales, as his measure, while Klock is more interested in their thematic content – the Silver Age either finished in 1969 (Sassienie 69), the early to mid 1970s, or continued until the mid 1980s with the publication of The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Watchmen (1986-7) (Klock 3). Richard Reynolds could not decide whether Watchmen was 'either the last key superhero text, or the first in a new maturity of the genre' (117). Klock suggests that they were both. Either way these two texts ushered in the era of the self-reflexive, re-visionary superhero narrative which constituted a maturing of the genre. Responses to these texts via other superhero narratives, and responses to those subsequent texts, have been produced regularly to the present. 

If thematic content is the marker, then the defining lines between eras are not strict. There is debate about when the current age started and finished (if at all). The Bronze Age, spanning the early/mid 1970s to mid/late 1980s, is characterised by stories dealing with social problems such as drugs, poverty, violence, and America's involvement in Vietnam. Probably the most notable development is the introduction of superhero characters of different ethnicities, notably those of African-American heritage – Storm from the X-Men, and the Green Lantern, Jon Stewart, to name only two. We are currently in the Modern Age, late 1980s to present, although comic writer Warren Ellis has another take, referring to the ages as "movements." He situates the third movement as starting somewhere between Frank Miller's run on Daredevil (May 1979 – Feb. 1983) and Alan Moore's Marvelman (Mar. 1982 – Aug. 1984), which came to a close around 1997. He hints at a coming fourth movement (11). Ellis's third movement functionally coincides with the emergence of the direct sales market through dedicated comic shops, and the first comic, Dazzler #1 (Mar. 1981), to be released solely through the direct sales market. It also coincides with the emergence of new formats such as the first mini-series (Jul. – Sep. 1979), the first graphic novel, and first maxi series (both 1982) (Sassienie 106).

While the superhero narrative was always a genre, for me it did not become a literary genre until this last, modern era emerged. As Klock demonstrates, using Ellis's third movement, the re-visionary comic narrative begins with The Dark Knight Returns and finds its logical path through Marvels, Kingdom Come, Astro City, Stormwatch, and The Authority, to Warren Ellis's Planetary, a superhero narrative that comes to terms with its own fictional history:

Planetary shows comic book history as a battle with an earlier version of itself – pulp novel characters struggling with Golden Age superheroes, Silver Age heroes killing off Golden Age icons (154).

Klock suggests that due to the emergence of Silver Age heroes and narratives, the previous era's narrative can never be told again: 'Planetary stages the repression of the old, the "impossibility" of writing the earlier form, when the new form literally kills the old' (159). This may be true for the Golden Age DC Comics heroes, though Alan Moore has attempted, and I think successfully, captured the style and essence of the Golden Age in his Tom Strong title.
The twelve issue series Justice (Krueger and Ross, Oct. 2005 – Aug. 2007) however is an alternative view to that of Ellis's vision of the meaning and influence of the previous era's superheroes. Justice sets the Justice League heroes of the DC Comics universe against the collected efforts of their villainous counterparts. The story begins with a similar premise to Grant Morrison's JLA: New World Order, Alex Ross and Mark Waid's Kingdom Come, and Warren Ellis's The Authority, where the question is asked: If superheroes are so powerful why don't they make the world a better place? This is the question Lex Luthor asks the citizens of Earth when he bands together a number of supervillains who seemingly have turned over a new leaf, and with their own powers and talents are doing what superheroes have failed to do – improving the world for its citizens by making changes on a global scale. This is of course a front for a bolder scheme where the villains intend dividing humanity down the middle. Brainiac will take the "weaker" humans and turn them into machines to populate his home world, while Lex Luthor will rule the remaining "elite" humans, after of course they have dispatched the Justice League and its members. In Justice the heroes and villains appear in their most recognisable, nostalgic costumes with all their sidekicks in tow – Robin (Batman), Aqualad (Aquaman), Speedy (Green Arrow) – indicating that Justice, like Kingdom Come, sits outside normal DC continuity, and not without good reason. After the Justice League triumphs in stopping the enslavement of humanity, a further more moral drive is revealed. The heroes are fighting for a future in which a future form of humanity, a form which those heroes are unable to imagine, can flourish. This suggestion is expounded in the final pages of the final issue where adult versions of DC's Legion of Superheroes look back in time at Superman landing on the roof of the Daily Planet. The message is quite clear. The battles which the heroes of a previous era fought have enabled the subsequent heroes to come into existence and flourish. Far from killing them off, it is implied that contemporary heroes are indebted to those of the previous era, and by way of association, all those which have subsequently come into existence including those invented at Marvel. In Justice Bakhtin's archaic elements remain, and Frow's reflexive model is also in effect. Justice comments on its own origins as a genre, subsequent and future readings of the genre, and the recurring situation of good vs. evil, hero vs. villain, is renewed.



The Superhero Narrative: Which Genre?

To which genre does the superhero narrative belong? Before I explain the superhero narrative as a new genre and as constituting an important element in a new model of genre, I will first endeavour to explain why it does not align with existing genres.
 
The Menippea

The superhero narrative has superficial links to the traditional literary genre of the menippea found in ancient Christian and Byzantine literature, and medieval, renaissance and reformation writings. The menippea:


moved easily in space between this world, an underworld and an upper world. It conflated past, present and future, and allowed dialogues with the dead. States of hallucination, dream, insanity, eccentric behaviour and speech, personal transformation, extraordinary situations, were the norm (Jackson 14).

The superhero narrative shares with the menippea its concern with current and topical issues; the wide use of inserted genres; moral-psychological experimentation; a representation of the moral and psychic states of man; insanity of all sorts – split personality, unusual dreams; passions bordering on madness (Bakhtin in Morris 191-2); and an 'extraordinary freedom of plot and philosophical invention' (Bakhtin in Morris 189). These menippean "norms", as Jackson explains, are 'temporary suspensions of coherence' (16), stemming from its links with the carnivalesque. In contrast the superhero narrative has many of these temporary disunities as continuous themes. The superhero narrative presents itself as a realistic realm. Superheroes are the norm and villains are the disrupting influence. It is the interloper, the villain or strange occurrence that brings something stranger over and above the normal disunities of the superhero world. The overriding principle of the menippea is 'the creation of extraordinary situations for the provoking and testing of a philosophical idea, a truth' (Bakhtin in Morris 189). Again, while some superhero narratives may well embody this idea, it is not something which could be said to define the narrative. 
 
The Fantastic

The modern Fantastic comes into its own in the nineteenth century when a supernatural economy of ideas was giving way to a natural one (Jackson 24). The cosmology of heaven and hell was facing redundancy, and the cosmos was becoming internalised as an area of non-meaning (Jackson 18). The main idea Todorov explores of the pure Fantastic is that it creates a hesitation in the reader. He explains that few texts remain in the genre of the pure Fantastic for the duration of the narrative because stories of the pure Fantastic resist final explanations. Todorov's investigation of Fantastic narratives branches out towards the genres of the Fantastic-Uncanny and Fantastic-Marvellous, which serve as eventual explanations for the hesitation which the Fantastic narrative invokes. However I also see the genres of the Fantastic-Uncanny and Fantastic-Marvellous as an end unto themselves. In this a narrative may start in the Marvellous and move through the Marvellous-Fantastic, finishing in the Fantastic, the hesitation being at the end, leaving us uneasy and unsure of everything we have just read or viewed. The revelation at the end of Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense sends us rushing back through the film to experience "what really happened." The explanation is of a supernatural origin though we cannot dismiss the idea that the child is psychologically disturbed and that the events are in fact only occurring in his mind.

On a broad scale the superhero narrative has elements of the Fantastic. We should not confuse the common usage of fantasy, such as we might call J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings or Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, with the Fantastic of which most notably Todorov has theorised. Ideally these fantasy narratives come under the umbrella of the Marvellous. Jackson, who frustratingly uses the terms fantasy and fantastic interchangeably, writes that:
 
fantasy is not to do with inventing another non–human world: it is not transcendental. It has to do with inverting elements of this world, re-combining its constitutive features in new relations to produce something strange, unfamiliar and apparently "new", absolutely "other" and different (Jackson 8).

Similarly the superhero narrative does not invent a non-human world, though it accedes to allowing elements of the non-human and while the superhero narrative does invert elements of this world to produce the strange and unfamiliar this again does not constitute the totality of its elements. Jackson positions the fantastic as a paraxis – a spectral region, an imaginary world, that is located between the totally "real" and "unreal." Like the superhero narrative, the Fantastic is 'un-real', existing 'in a parasitic or symbiotic relationship to the real,' but 'cannot exist independently of that "real" world which it seems to find so frustratingly finite' (Jackson 20). This parasitic/symbiotic relationship I explicate later in this paper to develop a circular model of genre and which functionally links all genres as having similar relationships to the real.

The superhero narrative incorporates the real into the Fantastic. The superhero narrative definitely resides between the Real and the Unreal, in Jackson's paraxial realm. However Jackson's paraxial Fantastic realm shades and threatens the real while the superhero narrative does not. Therefore I see it as a non-threatening paraxial realm. In the traditional fantasy story the narrative takes place against the backdrop of the "real", creating what George Bataille refers to as 'a tear, or wound, laid open in the side of the real' (in Jackson 22).
The superhero narrative is part of an alterity of merged worlds. To demonstrate my point, the comic world has the invented cities of Metropolis (home of Superman), Gotham (Batman), Keystone (The Flash), Coast City (Green Lantern), Atlantis (Aquaman), yet when they are brought together as a team they are "The Justice League of America." In the Stormwatch title of the late 1990s the Stormwatch team clashed with rebels and villains from the fictional island of Gamorra but at the same time were held accountable to the United Nations. Thus in these narratives our world has been torn open and the Fantastic elements have been inserted. Once this is done, our world merged with the Fantastic becomes polysemic where the impossible is possible. The "real" becomes fantastic in a strange shift into the paraxial space between the "real" and the "un-real." The superhero narrative provides familiarity with the real (events happening in a world like ours) and disassociation from the real (but could not happen in our world), leaving the reader with a level of safety. Moreover, as Jackson emphasises, the Fantastic is a mode which the superhero narrative uses, though not in the same manner as that of nineteenth century literature. The Fantastic in the superhero narrative is not disturbing and does not create a hesitation in the reader. Rather it is used to exhilarate and produce excitement and wonder. The Fantastic narrative relies on the overt violation of accepted possibility (Irwin in Jackson 21), existing 'only against a background to which it offers a direct reversal' (Rabkin in Jackson 21), while also playing upon the 'difficulties of interpreting events/things as objects or as images thus disorientating the reader's categorisation of the "real"' (Jackson 20). This is the major difference between the superhero narrative and the Fantastic narrative. In the superhero narrative the background is not overtly violated by events or people. The reader is not disoriented at all as everything in the superhero narrative is accepted as real.



The Marvellous

The genre of the Marvellous is an immediately definable place of 'rich, colourful fullness' (Jackson 42) produced from a supernatural economy investing 'otherness with supernatural qualities' (Jackson 24). Characterised by a minimal functional narrative, the Marvellous has a narrator who is omniscient and has absolute authority (Jackson 33). In a supernatural economy 'otherness is transcendent, marvellously different from the human' (Jackson 23), while in a secular economy otherness is 'read as a projection of merely human fears and desires transforming the world through subjective perception' (Jackson 23). The creation of the superhero and a city for them to protect merges these supernatural and secular economies. The superhero, created through a desire – out of a lack of order – is marvellously different from the human though not unrecognisably so. The superhero is an overriding influence, a protector of society and morals, doing for the public what they cannot do themselves. However the Marvellous narrative is seen to transport the reader to an entirely different world or secondary universe (Jackson 42). These realms are only linked to the "real" through allegorical or conceptual association (Jackson 43). This is not the realm of the superhero narrative although it does have elements of science fiction, romance, magic, and supernaturalism that characterise the Marvellous.



Superhero Narrative: The Marvellous-Uncanny

In this section I draw distinctions between the superhero narrative and Kafka's short story, 'Metamorphosis', in support of my claim for both to be situated in the genre of the Marvellous-Uncanny. 


Brooke-Rose writes of 'Metamorphosis':
 
We are in the Marvellous, since a supernatural event is introduced at the start, yet is accepted at once and provokes no hesitation. The event is nevertheless shocking, impossible, yet becomes paradoxically possible, so that in a sense we are in the Uncanny (66).

The superhero narrative is much like 'Metamorphosis' inasmuch as a strange event provokes no hesitation in the reader or the characters of the text when trying to offer either supernatural or natural explanations because everything is already 'abnormal and bizarre' (Brooke-Rose 67). Like the Fantastic narrative, the superhero narrative establishes its reality initially as mimetic ("realistic", presenting an "object" world "objectively") but then moves into another mode which would seem to be Marvellous ("unrealistic", representing apparent impossibilities) were it not for its initial grounding in the real (Jackson 20). The superhero narrative positioned initially as mimetic, set against a realistic setting (such as our world), moves towards the Marvellous when a strange event which is impossible (a man being able to fly) causes no hesitation. But paradoxically it is also possible, and thus Uncanny (because the world is not specifically ours – a merged world). Brooke-Rose alludes to this generic anomaly of certain narratives as being unable to be placed in a specific genre in her book Rhetoric of the Unreal where she reinscribes Todorov's linear model (Figure 1.1). Todorov's model travels from Uncanny to Marvellous with the pure Fantastic as a line in the middle (representing its limited narrative possibilities). Brooke-Rose takes Todorov's model and makes it circular by placing Realistic fiction between the Uncanny and the Marvellous, with the Fantastic again only occupying the limit between the Fantastic-Uncanny and the Fantastic-Marvellous (Figure 1.2). 

 
Fantastic

Uncanny 
Fantastic-Uncanny 
Fantastic-Marvellous 
Marvellous 

 
Figure 1.1 Todorov's Model of Genre

 
Figure 1.2
Brooke-Rose's Model of Genre

She sees this model as an answer to science fiction's use of realistic narrative forms. If as in Brooke-Rose's diagram Realism fills the gap between the Uncanny and the Marvellous, this pre-supposes (via Todorov) that the Fantastic is somehow directly opposed to realism, which is simply unfounded. That is, even the Fantastic has elements of Realism not withstanding ordinary human activities (a point Brooke-Rose does actually take into account). Further, by turning Todorov's linear model into a pie chart in which she places Realism in-between the Uncanny and the Marvellous to take into account Darko Suvin's argument for science fiction as its own genre, she nevertheless falls into the trap Todorov fell into in making a model to distinguish between literary modes. She finds that her extrapolated Todorov model does not account for Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' which is 'Uncanny + Marvellous' (Brooke-Rose 84), remaining a generic anomaly which Todorov dismissed simply as a genre of its own. But if we rearrange Brooke-Rose's circular diagram, placing Realism in the centre and combining the Marvellous and Uncanny into the new hybrid genre of the Marvellous-Uncanny (Figure 1.3), like the hybrid genres of Fantastic-Uncanny and Fantastic-Marvellous, Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', and the superhero narrative, can finally have a place where it has a parasitic/symbiotic relationship with each of the surrounding genres. The Marvellous-Uncanny explains supernatural events as having them accepted as the norm. The metamorphic characters of superhero narratives and Kafka's metamorphic Gregor thus reside in the same place.





Figure 1.3 Proposed New Model of Genre

The emergence of the superhero narrative constitutes the genre of the Marvellous-Uncanny before being recognised as one. The genre itself has produced characters to exist in these narratives. So to explain the characters, the genre had to exist, the previous narratives had to exist, to enable the characters to be produced, and indeed, allow them to be produced. I would even go so far as to say that, using the same argument as just presented for the superhero narrative, the genre of the Marvellous-Uncanny would be home to the mythic narrative, and Reynolds description of the superhero narrative as a modern mythology resonates further than originally intended. The superhero narrative and the characters which inhabit these narratives can be recognised as part of a lineage of heroic and god-like characters.

What I am also suggesting is that all genres in this model have a parasitic/symbiotic relationship with realism. Thus in this model the further from realism the narrative goes, in any genre, the more "pure" it becomes, eventually passing into the absurd. As an example, a pure science fiction story (Marvellous) would perhaps be a novel written in an alien language that is unable to be interpreted. For display purposes I have given each genre equal space in this model and they are demarcated by straight boundaries. This of course is misleading. A genre such as the pure Fantastic, which Todorov positioned as a line between Fantastic-Marvellous and Fantastic-Uncanny, would actually have less "space" allotted to it in the model as the amount of narratives applying to this genre are limited. Similarly the boundaries are not strict but blurred and fluid capable of expanding and contracting as more narratives inhabit certain genres. Ideally groups of narratives with similar themes would be identified as clusters within "boundaries." This model has the ability to expand to incorporate new stories that fit somewhere "between" other stories already in a genre following Bakhtin's idea that genres 'grow together, inosculate, or knit together' (Morson and Emerson 293). An example would be cyberpunk and its off-shoot steampunk with their relation to science-fiction and therefore the Marvellous. The model simply expands outward, becoming as big as it needs to be. This model also provides for sub-genres within classifications. Thus within the Marvellous-Uncanny could be the sub-genre of Fantastic/Marvellous-Uncanny. Bakhtin again explains: 'Each new genre merely supplements the old ones, merely widens the circle of already existing genres. For every genre has its own predominant sphere of existence' (Morson and Emerson 301). This model can also account for Bakhtin's oxymoronic category of the 'realistic-fantastic' which would lie on a threshold somewhere between pure realism, which I would position as a point, a limit, at the centre of the circle, though one which can never be reached or represented, and the other expanding boundary of Pure Fantastic.

 

Reference 

Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.

Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Malden Blackwell Publishers: MA, 2002.

Brook-Rose, Christine. A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic. Cambridge [Eng.]: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Ellis, Warren. From the Desk of Warren Ellis Vol. 1. Urbarna IL: Avatar, 2000.

Frow, John. Genre. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

Goldstein, Hilary. 'WonderCon '06: Holy Terror, Batman! Batman kicks Al Qaeda's Ass. Frank Miller's talks about upcoming book.' ign.com, 12 February 2006 http://au.comics.ign.com/articles/688/688140p1.html, (Accessed 13 May 2008).

Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London New York: Methuen, 1981.

Klock, Geoff. How to Read Superhero Comics and Why. New York, London: Continuum, 2002.

Morris, Pam, ed. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, and Voloshinov. London: E. Arnold, 1994.

Morson, Gary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Reynolds, Richard. Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1992.

Sassienie, Paul. The Comic Book: The One Essential Guide for Comic Book Fans Everywhere. New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 1994.


Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1975.
    

Sunday, December 12, 2010

All Names and Forms Disappear in Her - Mystique and Kali

The Hindu Goddess Kali
The mythological Hindu goddess, Kali, is a manifestation of the supreme Goddess Mahadevi (or sometimes simply Devi). Ajit Mookerjee writes that in reality there is only one Devi who ‘assumes various forms to fulfil various purposes, sometimes she assumes a frightening form and sometimes a benevolent form’
(1988:61). In the Devi-Mahatmya Kali sprang from the forehead of the goddess Durga and is considered Durga’s forceful form. Even though described as separate entities, Kali is Durga (and essentially Devi) in another form. She is referred to as the terrible mother due to her penchant for nurturing and/or devouring her offspring. The terrible mother is ‘an image that represents fear of ambivalence and androgyny in female sexuality’ (Otero, 1996: 273). Her motherhood is ‘ceaseless creation’; she ‘gives birth to the cosmos parthenogenetically, as she contains the male principle within herself’; and ‘is Nature, stripped of “clothes”’ (Moorkerjee, 1988:62).

Four-armed,
 two-headed Mystique
Kali and Mystique offer interesting parallels such as superheroes continue a lineage which can be to mythological beings. Kali as an emanation of the Goddess who is one, can be ‘conceived of in innumerable forms’ (Moorkerjee, 1988:63). Mystique, like Kali, wears accoutrements consisting of skulls and generally appears naked, with long dishevelled hair, thus exhibiting polyphallic symbolism. At least once Mystique has assumed a four-armed form similar to Kali’s representation.

Kali also has three eyes, and while Mystique only has two real eyes, I would like to theorise the skull on her forehead which is a constant part of her accoutrements, operates as a non functioning symbolic third eye. Though drawn in various hues of blue, Kali is most commonly associated as being black, or at least dark in colour: ‘just as all colours disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her’ (Moorkerjee, 1988:62) a description which recalls Mystique’s shapechanging ability and the possibility that she has forgotten her own name. Further Mystique’s real name of Raven Darkhölme reveals a certain slippage of terms. Darkhölme with the “m” removed becomes "Darkhole", while Raven, when associated with colour, is that of lustrous black. Her name could be interpreted as “Black Dark-hole”, signifying in psychoanalytic terms the black, dark, hole of the vagina, or even Freud’s Dark Continent – woman herself.

Shaggy-haired and
skull-wearing Mystique

To take this interpretation of her name further, Raven is also a root part of ravenous which as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary means: ‘Given to seizing in order to devour; voracious, gluttonous. Hence of appetite, hunger, etc.’ (‘Ravenous’, 1989), which again plays into the idea of the devouring black hole of the vagina, and recalls Kali, as all names and forms disappear in her. If all names and forms disappear in Kali, and with Mystique’s shapeshifting, this would constitute a kind of death through disappearance and brings to mind the idea of the little death of the male orgasm. The male form (seed) is devoured and disappears in the black, dark, hole of the woman. While labelled with classically “evil” characteristics, definitions and labels disappear in Mystique, like names and identities, as fast as they’re applied.


Reference

Moorkerjee, A. (1988) Kali: A Feminine Force, London: Thames and Hudson.

Otero, S. (1996) ‘Fearing our Mothers: An Overview of the Psychoanalytic Theories Concerning the Vagina Dentata Motif’, American Journal of Psychoanalysis 56, 3, pp. 269-89.

‘Ravenous’, (1989 2nd edition) Oxford English Dictionary Online, http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/cgi/entry/50198040?single=1&
query_type=word&queryword=ravenous&first=1&max_to_show=10, (Accessed 6 Nov. 2010).