Metanarrational Monsters, Part Four – Mummy: Fear of the Past

Posted on October 30, 2011 by hollerscholar

Part 4 of 8

Archetype Three: Mummy –

Fear of the Past

For a moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes, wonderful things…

-Howard Carter,

speaking of his discovery of King Tut’s Tomb[1]

         The late 1800s represented the golden age of Egyptian archeology. The long-forgotten kingdoms of the desert had seemingly awoken from their long slumber and announced themselves to the present generation via a steady stream of discoveries that were plastered the front pages of worldwide newspapers and stoked the imaginations of both young and old alike. But one discovery virtually stopped the presses like none other: the legendary tomb of King Tut had been discovered! When world-renowned Egyptologist Howard Carter first lifted his candle into the dark recesses of Tut’s tomb and later carried out his solid gold sarcophagus in 1922, he also carried treasure into the imaginations of future Hollywood scriptwriters.

But those who would write the scripts for generations of mummy movies lacked no fertile soil for their idea of a curse-carrying mummy. When King Tut’s tomb was opened to the media, an amateur student of hieroglyphics who was also an English reporter, mistranslated a warning to grave robbers found on the wall in Tut’s tomb as saying, “I will kill any one who enters the tomb.”[2] This fueled the idea that there was a curse on the tomb. It did not help when Lord Carnarvon, who had assisted in the discovery of the tomb, died one year later from what may have been nothing more then a mosquito bite.[3] And so it was -10 years after the watershed discovery of King Tut’s tomb, fueled by a mistranslated warning to tomb robbers and the death of one its discoverers – that the first mummy horror script appeared in 1932.[4]

Perhaps, it is in this sense that the mummy metanarrative represents a kind of evolution in cultural monster making. As mentioned previously, the Transformational Love Monster archetypically factors into many of the mummy stories – and it did with all the subsequent script variations of mummy movies that followed. Just as the Hammer production in 1959 did, each took the cultural mythos of the discovery of King Tut and incorporated the classic ethos of Transformational Love. There is little doubt that the socio-creative dynamics that brought the mummy to life on the silver screen will bring other monsters to life as well. Will the events in Japan create a radioactive-archetype that takes on a life and category of its own? Who knows? But this much can be said – that as long as people remain fascinated with the stories of mummies and the past lives they represent – there is no doubt that Hollywood will continue to produce mummy movies and as long as the creative fires and the fears that tend to them burn within those who make movies – we will surely see more monsters –those both old and those quite innovative.

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Gy8RTzSdI&feature=player_embedded#at=47  Egyptologist Zaho Hawass explaining the mistranslated curse and his take on the curse.

[4] The Monster Show – A Cultural History of Horror, pg. 20.

Posted in Cinema Studies, Cultural Mythology, Dystopicism & Fear, Existentialism, Horror (Classic), Philosophy Studies, Propaganda Studies, The Mummy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Metanarrational Monsters, Part Three – Wolfman: Fear of the Unrestraineable Nature of Oneself

Posted on October 29, 2011 by hollerscholar

(Part 3 of 8)

Archetype Two: Wolfman  –

Fear of the Unrestraineable Nature of Oneself

David: I’m a werewolf.

Alex: Are you all right?

David: I don’t know, I’ll let you know the next full moon.

                           -An American Werewolf in London [1981].

         The werewolf mythology first lit up the screen under the creative banner of prolific writer/director Curt Siodmak in his smash hit The Wolf Man[1], [2] [1941].[3] Siodmak took the myth and embellished it with the classic idea of silver being the bane of the hirsute protagonist[4] and created one of Hollywood’s most terrifying creatures.

Werewolf mythology likely shares a dual root system in terms of its own genesis.  The mythical term for being a werewolf is called Lycanthropy and owes it etiology to the Greek writer Ovid.  In his book Metamorphoses,[5] Ovid tells the story of King Lycaeon. In his story, the king is visited by traveling gods. The king, however, is not impressed at all by his travelers and he suspects that they may not actually be gods at all but only mere mortals. He conducts a test to satiate his curiosity by serving the visitors human flesh during a feast, never telling them what they are eating. His reasoning is that only true gods could immediately tell that they are being served a human. In Ovid’s story, the visitors immediately realize the nature of Lycaeon’s culinary offerings and demonstrate their power as gods by cursing him with a wolf’s form: a not-so-subtle hint that he may now go about more freely, doing what he seemed to enjoy trying to get his guests to do themselves; feasting upon human flesh.[6] Later, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm – the ‘Brothers Grimm’ – who were German academics and cultural history researchers,[7] included in their famous collection, Grimm Fairy Tales, the story Rotkäppchen, or “little red cap.” The story’s title evolved into Little Red Riding Hood. The story of the two brothers and even Little Red Riding Hood continues to occupy their own rightful place within cinematic tradition, being subjects of movies of somewhat recent vintage. The Brothers Grim[8], [9] [2005], directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as the famous brothers, employs a bit of creative license by portraying the brothers as essentially being fly-by-night conmen who cunningly offer well-staged ghost exorcisms to bewildered and superstitious villagers who inadvertently happen upon a situation where the reality of magic is no deception, nor anything to be trifled with. The adventures that ensue form the basis for the stories that they then write so convincingly of and a retelling of the fairytale with Red Riding Hood [2011].[10],[11]

A second source is decidedly well known and both understood and documentable today but in years past was attributed to feared curses. The disease of Hypertrichosis involves the excess growth of body hair prematurely and/or in atypical locations.[12] Victims of hypertrichosis were legendary members of iconic ‘Freak Shows’ that traveled around and showcased bizarre and distressing human conditions. Julia Pastrana, the so-called “Bearded Lady”[13] or Adrian Jefticheiev, the world famous Jo-Jo the Dog-faced Boy[14] are classic examples of individuals who suffered from it and found their own peculiar places in the public spotlight secondary to it. Whatever the source of their mythological portent, the werewolf’s monster meta-narratives remain loose in the woods of the modern cinematic imagination.

Not always to be exclusively feared, in Meeting The Shadow – The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams quote a British Jungian analyst who argues that this ‘dark side’ can be appropriately appreciated, even celebrated.[15] In Jungian psychology, each of us have a shadow self that represents our subconscious desires. In many ways, this could be thought of as the ‘wild wolf-person’ in each of us, ready to come out at a moment’s notice. While the traditional werewolf is evoked by a full moon, Jungian psychology believes that other things can provide it a mediatory nature, perhaps, if properly controlled, allowing it a degree of beneficent existential power on the part of the individual who is wise and capable enough to use their ‘dark side’ for their own benefit.[16]

Existential ruminations aside, most people fear that part of themselves, which they cannot readily control. This forms the core of the fear of the Wolf Man archetype. The fear of potentially hidden, personal natures residing with us and those around us, waiting to spring out unexpectedly, is indeed the ways and means to many deep-seated insecurities, those both personal and inter-relational. How and what could change us is itself a topic that engenders a great deal of discussion. Much talk is made of the classic story of Phineas Gage whose personality was changed after a railroad tamping spike was driven through his head while he worked on a railroad construction crew.[17] While we may not fear railroad spikes, we might fear brain tumors altering our personality, or the slowly encroaching mental debilitations of geriatric senility. Anyone who has worked in a nursing home knows that old age does not always produce gentle grandmothers and soft-spoken, white-haired gentleman. An experienced geriatric nurse knows to always be wary of savagely swung canes.[18] Age may prove to bring out with stunning veracity the savage, violent wolf in all of us.

But it may be another ‘s-word’ that brings out the wolf in us all (not “senility”) but rather sex. The neo-feminist writer Camille Paglia, in her book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, asserts – contra standard feminism – that there is a huge difference between the sexes, one that is much more than just cultural coding and biological plumbing. Paglia argues that the “Feminine Essence” stands in stark contrast with that of the Masculine, and that it is itself a source of a kind of ‘deep, artistic, literary, and cultural mythology’ that represents a danger, impulsiveness, risk, and earthiness – or as she describes it: the Cthulian; which forms a kind of dialectic in contrast with its presumed opposite, a masculine myth-ethos: the Apollonarian-archetype. Paglia follows after Freud who argued that the unpredictability of the impulsivity of human nature could be unmoored from its ‘Apollonarian’, steadfast, logically-mediated anchors by the wild and unpredictable Cthulian nature embodied by the Feminine Essence.[19] Could we see the werewolf monster meta-narrative as a sort of sexual intercontextual sublimation? Does it represents the conflict between the Paglian dichotomatic modalities of the Apollinarian vs. Cthulian and how the security and predictability of the ‘high and strong’ is subsequently irrevocably transfigured by the ‘low and weak’ earthiness of the Cthulian? Or could this transfiguration-reconfiguration (taking place either on such a high meta-level, or at such a deep, subconscious, foundational level) be such as that its own effects are as equally hidden to the degree that the pre-existent, innately repressed sexuality was predisposed to hide itself to begin with: does this monster play out on the grander stage of our lives, or is it a conflict that only rules the nightmare dreamscapes that we gracefully almost always never remember the moment we awake? Even those who fancy themselves to have a habit of disciplined sexuality for a lifestyle, would deeply fear the wolf that would bring out their own sexuality against their will. This destabilization metanarrative prefigures any sense of assured and fully confident sense of infallibility and has been a very distinct source for persecution of women – often to the point of building campaigns of witch hunts or the creation of comprehensive repressive cultural practices designed for the express purpose of repressing women sexually.[20] Such a fear is not based on the idea that the woman is expressly some kind of curse, rather that she is potentially capable of bringing out in the man that which he may feel that he is unable to control.

Most werewolf movies feature an individual unsuspectingly stuck with his lycopean curse. In Stephen King’s Silver Bullet,[21], [22] (1985) it is the pastor of a small church. In John Landis’ classic horror-comedy interpretation, An American Werewolf in London[23], [24]it is an American hitchhiker. However, as Landis proves with his successful horror-comedy smashup, monster metanarrative archetypes are always open to reinterpretation by the storywriter. When Stephanie Meyer wrote her best-selling Twilight series, she wrote of werewolves as a native American tribe who use their powers for protecting others and sets them up as defenders against the bad vampires that make up the core of her own stories narrative. Jacob Black, a werewolf, actually makes a play for the love of Bella against Edward Cullen, the good vampire character. These two “good monsters” vying for the same good, normal girl sets up a power dichotomy in the cultural imagination, one that sucked many a young girl into Meyer’s books. All over the roads, bumper stickers appeared supporting either “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob” while websites offered quizzes to determine which Twilight “team” you belong.[25]

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034398/ (Internet Movie Database entry for The Wolfman [1941].

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTNQEd8D4pg movie trailer for The Wolfman [1941].

[3] Monster Madness, pg. 22.

[4] Monster Madness, pg. 22.

[8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QkwDld1d4 movie trailer for The Brothers Grimm [2005].

[9] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0355295/ Internet Movie Database entry for The Brothers Grimm [2005].

[10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekKMYAOmTj0 Red Riding Hood [2011] official trailer.

[11] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1486185/ Red Riding Hood IMDb movie entry.

[15] “British Jungian analyst Liz Green points to the paradoxical nature of the shadow as both the container of darkness and the beacon pointing towards the light: ‘It is the suffering, crippled side of the personality which is both the dark shadow that won’t change and also the redeemer that transforms one’s life and alters one’s values. The redeemer can get the hidden treasure or win the princess or slay the dragon because he’s marked in some way – he’s abnormal. The shadow is both the awful thing that needs redemption, and the suffering redeemer who can provide it.’” Meeting The Shadow – The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, pg. xxv.

[16] “The aim of meeting the shadow is to develop an ongoing relationship with it, to expand our sense of self by balancing the one-sidedness of our conscious attitudes with our unconscious depths. Novelist Tom Robbins says, ‘The purpose in encountering the shadow is to be in the right place in the right way.’ When we are in proper relationship with it, the unconscious is not a demonical monster, as Jung points out.  ‘It only becomes wrong when out conscious attention to it is hopelessly wrong.” Meeting The Shadow – The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, pg. xxiv.

[18] Nursing assistants working in long-term care facilities have the highest incidence of workplace violence of any American worker, with 27% of all workplace violence occurring in the nursing home (NH).1,2 Aggressive and violent behavior, which is often seen in the NH, includes repetitive demands, verbal outbursts, sexual advances, and physically aggressive acts2,3-6 (Table I). Over time, such behavior creates a stressful environment for other residents and staff. Nursing home studies show that repetitive patterns of aggressive disruptive behavior occur regularly in 43-85% of NHs surveyed.3,7,8 This prevalence is likely an underestimate due to many episodes of aggression not being reported (ie, an estimated 55-80% of violent episodes).2

Staff surveillance studies show that 70% of NH staff are assaulted at least one time per month.5 Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) are physically assaulted on average nine times a month.5,8,9 Approximately half of all NH staff have been injured by these attacks at least once during their careers, with 38% of those who are injured requiring medical treatment for the injury.2,5,8

Research has indicated that 75% of assaults against NH staff occur during periods of close staff–resident contact, such as during resident transfers/turning (26-33%), or when assisting with activities of daily living (ADLs), such as dressing changes (43%), toileting (9%), feeding (12%), and bathing (19%).3,5,10 Assaults reported during these times include grabbing/pinching/hair pulling (38-40%), scratching/biting (4-28%), hitting/punching (12-51%), pushing/shoving (8-8.2%), hitting with object/throwing objects at staff (3-9%), kicking (2-27%), and spitting (1-11%).2,3,5 Typical verbal aggression includes verbal insults (18.1%), verbal threats (10.7%), and sexual advances (0.7%).3 In a study by Gates et al,10 5% of aggressive behavior (including verbal and physical assaults) resulted in injury to the staff. (From http://www.annalsoflongtermcare.com/content/nursing-home-violence-occurrence-risks-and-interventions).

[19] In her book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia agues that the masculine-essence archetype represents an “Apollinarian” – or orderly, structured and predictable meta-narrative that stands in distinct contrast to that of the Feminine Essence, or Cthulian archetype. Paglia argues that the Cthulian represents the opposite of the masculine-Apollinarian, in that it represents unpredictability, danger, disorder, and earthiness. (http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Personae-Decadence-Nefertiti-Dickinson/dp/0679735798)

[20] “The heavy sexual content of witchcraft prosecution in the sixteenth century parallels the well-documented rise in laws restraining sexual conduct. Among the legal charges on which a person could be brought up, sex-connected crimes – that is, adultery, bearing illegitimate children, abortion, infanticide, and incest – figured large, increasingly so as the two Reformations progressed. Women were more often and more severely punished then men for these crimes. The only sexual crime for which men were punished more then women were was sodomy, sometimes combined with the charges of witchcraft as well. Witchcraft, too, was often sex-related, and charges for all these crimes rose and fell together; the seventeenth century saw a peak of prosecution for abortion, infanticide, and witchcraft.” Witchcraze – A New History of the European Witch Hunts, pg. 133.

[21] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090021/ IMDb entry for Silver Bullet (1985).

[22] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hSkvsPs13I Movie Trailer for Silver Bullet (1985).

[23] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESh4t57L4Xs&NR=1 Trailer for An American Werewolf in London (1981).

[24] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082010/ IMDb entry for An American Werewolf in London (1981).

Posted in Cinema Studies, Cultural Mythology, Dystopicism & Fear, Existentialism, Horror (Classic), Philosophy Studies, Propaganda Studies, Wolfman | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Metanarrational Monsters, Part Two – Transformational Love Monster

Posted on October 29, 2011 by hollerscholar

Archetype One –
Transformational-Love Monster

Shrek: Fiona? Are you all right?

 

[Fiona looks at herself, and sees she is still an ogre]

 

Princess Fiona: Yes. But, I don’t understand. I’m supposed to be beautiful.

 

Shrek: But you are beautiful.

 

Donkey: I was hoping this would be a happy ending…

 

[Shrek and Fiona kiss]

 

–  From Shrek [2001]

 

 

 

It many seem a bit odd to begin a discussion of monster archetypes with one that involves the idea of love. After all, monsters are supposed to be scary and horrifying, right? For some people, however, such as those with autistic disorders that interfere with perceptual and inter-relational capabilities (like Aspergers Syndrome,[1] for example) the idea of finding a relationship with another person can be seen as a genuinely terrifying and/or monstrous task.

 

The example of the transformational-love monster is one that is both very deeply historical and varied. An early example of this is the classic story of Beauty and the Beast, in which a young, beautiful prince trapped in the body of a monster can only be freed by love. This archetype is one that is re-imagined in various iterations throughout pop culture both in music videos, such as Meat Loaf’s[2] I Would Do Anything For Love,[3] and a recent series of films, Shrek, which explore the ideas of being a monster and being turned back into a prince. In Shrek, the idea is reversed (as a comic foil) as both the characters of Shrek and Princess Fiona are actually intermittently turned from ogre back to human and vice versa, through the plots of the different respective movies. In the end, however, Princess Fiona chooses to remain an ogress – to remain like the natural state of the ogre that she truly loves.[4] Her choice has made her a fixture in the cinematic imagination and a search on the Internet will find homemade tributes to her produced by her many fans celebrating the true beauty of her own transforming love.[5]

 

Shrek[6] built its plot device upon the foundation of the classic story of Beauty and the Beast, which is an indelible part of the public imagination. Beauty and the Beast serves as a kind of repository for thematic ideas that find traction in virtually every aspect of culture and media, even rock and roll, as is the case with Meat Loaf’s before mentioned music video for his classic song, But I Won’t Do That, from Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell [1993]. The video won him a Grammy award for Best Rock Solo Performance, though music critics hated it and it was put on many of their “Worst Of” lists of 1993.[7] In the video[8] Meatloaf plays an apparent beast – though there are also allusions a vampire mythos/meta-narrative. Through the apparent power of love, Meatloaf is transformed from his beastly appearance into that of a normal man. As is the nature of cultural artifacts that have become pervasive in the collective civil conscious, they too are subject to both reinterpretations and even outright lampooning.[9]

 

But even before there was rock and roll music, the Transformational Love Monster was alive and well on the stage with Philip Glass’ 1946 opera La Belle et la Bête, aka Beauty and the Beast.[10] Glass’ work was again brought back in 1994, as an opera sung as the soundtrack to the movie,[11] which is regarded as one of the greatest cinematic interpretations of the classic.[12] The source for the original mythology, however, was not a music video or an opera but rather a literary story, one written by the French writer Madame Gabrielle–Suzanne de Villeneuve in 1740.[13] Villeneuve’s story itself also reaches back into an important substrate for folklore and fairytales: the fantasies of animal brides and bridegrooms coupled with the tantalizing mystery of transformational magic.[14]

 

It is this deep-seeded fascination with the power of love and magic to transform both the devoted and the beloved that gives the Transformational Love Monster its powerful affect upon the imaginations of both young and old. Many young people will remember the cinematic interpretation of the Beauty and the Beast story in Disney’s animated version [1991][15] and the later Broadway[16] musical version, which is still in production and on tour.[17]

 

Whereas the ethos behind Beauty and the Beast speaks of true love’s power to change the monstrous into something beautiful, older movie goers may remember a movie, Bella Lugosi’s The Invisible Ghost [1941],[18],[19] that bespoke something very different and much darker about the power of love: that it could make the ugly beautiful, but it was also capable of transforming the peaceful into something quite terrifying. In this black and white classic, Bella Lugosi plays Charles Kessler, an upstanding citizen in his community. Kessler is shown to be a bit of an oddball, as on the day of his and his wife’s anniversary, he sits down and pretends to have dinner with her. The only problem is, she isn’t there, and he doesn’t act like it. He believes she has run away but that she is destined to return. However, the truth is something quite different. His wife has partially recovered from a devastating car accident and is in the care of his gardener, in the basement of the small house he lives in nearby. During a storm, however, she ventures out. Mr. Kessler, one dark and stormy night, looks out and sees his wife and is struck mad by her visage. He goes into a zombie state and claims the first of many of his future victims. In the morning Kessler awakes, never knowing that he is a murder. Kessler is never suspected until the end of the film when one of the police detectives find his wife wandering around outside and bring into the house. Upon bringing her into the room, Mr. Kessler experiences his break and then subsequently tries to kill one of the officers. Only then do the authorities know who the true killer is.[20]

 

In the extremely popular video game Chrono Cross, the story unfolds of a young man, Kid, who is searching for his lost love, Serge, across the dimensions of space and time. In this case, time travel and quantum physics play the transformative agents that separate two loves.[21] The end of the game poetically leaves the question of whether they find one another in the end potentially and heartbreakingly unanswered. [22]

 

The transformational love monster is perhaps the most categorically promiscuous of all the archetypes. Love and its transformative effects are often intrinsic plot devices that run along other monster archetypes in many classic interpretations. For instance, in the Hammer production of The Mummy [1959],[23], [24] it is the Egyptian high priest Kharis’s desire to be with his secret love, the stunningly beautiful and recently deceased and mummified Princess Ananka, that compels him to attempt the blasphemy of trying to bring her back from the dead. Kharis (played by Christopher Lee) is cursed to protect his queen for all eternity as punishment for his crime when he is caught trying to read the sacred scroll of life in an attempt to bring the object of his desire back to life.[25]  In this version, The Mummy represents the unpredictability of love and how even the processes of love can be confusing, painful and ultimately the cause for a curse upon those who are involved. When we see the Transformational Love Monster archetype, the horror of the mummy – lurching and struggling as he walks – fades into the background and the viewer feels sympathy for Kharis. Perhaps what has happened to him is nothing that could not happen to our own selves were we in his same situation. The horror of the mummy is sublimated into our understanding of our own hearts. We are compelled to wonder if we ourselves would become just such a mummy monster were we found guilty of trying to access the forbidden and the extraordinary to be reunited with our own lost and secret loves. In this movement, the mystery of the past is appropriated as our own potential mystery and we participate in the question that it both asks and leaves unanswered: could love ever make us such a monster?

 

If Meatloaf’s song I Would Do Anything For Love is representational of a song involving Transformational Love that has a happy ending – there are many more songs that tell a different story. Love songs sing all along the whole of gamut of human emotions – and the sad ones, as Elton John once sang – say so much.[26] Perhaps none is as beautiful as the haunting lyrics of the late Jeff Buckley’s song Hallelujah.[27],[28]

 

 

 

i heard there was a secret chord

 

that david played and it pleased the lord

 

but you don’t really care for music, do you

 

well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth

 

the minor fall and the major lift

 

the baffled king composing hallelujah

 

 

 

hallelujah…

 

 

 

well your faith was strong but you needed proof

 

you saw her bathing on the roof

 

her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you[29]

 

she tied you to her kitchen chair

 

she broke your throne and she cut your hair

 

and from your lips she drew the hallelujah

 

 

 

hallelujah…

 

 

 

baby i’ve been here before

 

i’ve seen this room and i’ve walked this floor

 

i used to live alone before i knew you

 

i’ve seen your flag on the marble arch

 

but love is not a victory march

 

it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah

 

 

 

hallelujah…

 

 

 

well there was a time when you let me know

 

what’s really going on below

 

but now you never show that to me do you

 

but remember when i moved in you

 

and the holy dove was moving too

 

and every breath we drew was hallelujah

 

 

 

well, maybe there’s a god above

 

but all i’ve ever learned from love

 

was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

 

it’s not a cry that you hear at night

 

it’s not somebody who’s seen the light

 

it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah

 

 

 

hallelujah…

 

 

 

In her book Against Love, Laura Kipnis makes a polemical argument against love as a wonderful and beautiful thing “poking holes” and arguing that it has does have a dark side[30], readily capable of make Kharis-like creatures out of us: monsters of us all. Perhaps – for some of us – it already has.

 

 

[2] Meat Loaf is the stage name of musician and actor Marvin Lee Aday, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001533/bio).

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GNhdQRbXhc, I Would Do Anything For Love, official music video.

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIiNBa0WJYw, YouTube Princess Fiona fan tribute (with Alexander Burke singing Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah as the soundrack).

[7] http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2952, information and statistic for Anything For Love.

[8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GNhdQRbXhc, I Would Do Anything For Love, official music video.

[9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTPko-aXvJM (Meat Loaf: Literal Video Version (Anything For Love).

[15] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101414/ Internet Movie Database entry for Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast (1991).

[16] http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=4602 The official Broadway Database entry for the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast.

[18] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033760/ Internet Movie Database entry for The Invisible Ghost [1941].

[19] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QDKv7SX7og movie trailer for The Invisible Ghost [1941].

[23] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzelDvRug9w trailer for The Mummy [1959].

[24] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053085/ Internet Movie Database entry for The Mummy [1959].

[28] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIw0ewEsNHs Music video of Jeff Buckley singing Hallelujah.

[29] An allusion to the biblical story of Samson and Delilah.

[30] “It’s a new form of mass conscription: meaning it’s out of the question to be summoned by love, issued your marching orders, and then decline to pledge body and being to the cause. There is no way of being against love precisely because we moderns are constituted as beings yearning to be filled, craving connection, needing to adore and be adored, because love is vital plasma and everything else in the world just tap water. We prostrate ourselves at love’s portals, anxious for entry, like social strivers waiting at the ropeline outside some exclusive club hoping to gain admission to its plushy chambers, thereby confirming our essential worth and making us interesting to ourselves. But is there also something a bit worrisome about all this uniformity of opinion? Is this the one subject about which no disagreement will be entertained, about which one truth alone is permissible? (Even cynics and anti-romantics: obviously true believers to the hilt.) Consider that the most powerful organized religions produce the occasional heretic; every ideology has its apostates; even sacred cows find their butchers. Except for love. Hence the necessity for a polemic against it. Polemics exist to poke holes in cultural pieties and turn wisdom on its head, even sacrosanct subjects like love. A polemic is designed to be the prose equivalent of a small explosive device placed under your E-Z-Boy lounger. It won’t injure you (well not severely); its supposed to shake things up and rattle a few convictions.” Laura Kipnis, Against Love – A Polemic, from the chapter Reader Advisory, pg. 4.

 

 

 

Posted in Cinema Studies, Cultural Mythology, Dystopicism & Fear, Existentialism, Horror (Classic), Philosophy Studies, Propaganda Studies, Transformational Love Monster Archetype | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Moneyed Monster Metanarratives: Selling The Monsters Within – An Exploration of Existential & Cultural Metanarrational Archetypes and Their Use in Modern Movie Marketing & Propaganda

Posted on October 29, 2011 by hollerscholar

Introduction, Part 1 of 8

The core thesis of this essay is that many horror films and stories relate back to an understanding of existential[1] and cultural meta-narratives, or the ‘big ideas’ behind the respective stories that they each seek to tell and that they purposefully capitalize upon these feeling and essentially ‘monetize’ them – or ways to make money utilizing them. These ‘Monster Metanarratives’ must be understood – if an understanding of how of they are used to sell movies is to be gained. Integral to this, then, is a subsequent understanding of what might be considered Entertainment Propaganda – or how you are sold the entertainment that the typical American consumes daily, in movies, books, television, and radio. The substrate or subject matter for Entertainment Propaganda is limited only by the imagination of the Creator and the appetite of the Consumer. However, for systematizational/reproducibility (marketing) purposes – these follow general patterns, and one of the commonly appropriated dimensions is Fear. What follows may potentially be regarded as a ‘teleological exploration of a proposed ontology of Fear’ put more simply – we will explore the sources and the ‘ins and outs’ of the forms that Fear takes,  both culturally and existentially – and (for the purposes of exploration) how it relates to the content that we are then sold containing it.  A mummy movie, for instance, is not just about a dead pharaoh’s curse, but more about our own fear of the past. A movie about a werewolf is less about how innocent people die when there is a full moon, and more about our own fear of what we may feel is the potential uncontrollability of our own human nature. A vampire movie may tell the story of an immortal being living off the lifeblood of victims, but in a real sense, watching such a movie may help the viewer both process and understand the reality that they themselves (or people they may know) may have fallen prey to real-life psychological abusers who thrive off of “sucking the emotional life” out of people around them.

 

Each of these ‘monster meta-narratives’ provides lenses into both the micro-personal human condition, and that of the larger, extended, macro-cultural/social as well. These typically take the forms of archetypes (a type of an ideological[2] model), which serve to embody either types of fear, or understandings of truth or truths as they are expressed within the types of stories that they represent. In this sense, the genre of Horror serves as a kind of modern ‘mythological cannon[3]’ where meta-narratives, or ‘big truths’ about life, love, personhood, and culture are explained in the form of cautionary tales or cathartic works that seek to ease both personal and larger aggregate, communal psychological pressures and frustrations, often by reinterpreting them either directly as horror stories, or even horror-comedy narratives.[4]  In gaining a better understanding of these monster meta-narratives, we may potentially realize that the ‘monster’ we are seeing on the big screen – in the ‘big picture of life’  – may actually be none other then our own fears or, more surprisingly, our own selves.

 

In analyzing a story it is important to look at various aspects of its plot. Two important aspects, according to the famous scriptwriter Robert McKee, are the Structure and Genre[5] as well as The Inciting Incident.[6] In looking at horror films and determining exactly what the metanarratives are at work, these are the first things that we should examine. In each monster metanarrative that we will examine, the ‘big idea’ behind the movie is sometimes overt and at other times hidden in the structure of the film and the genre; in others it is the event that starts the story in motion. In many cases, this ‘big idea’ is something that hides in the background and is only seen by an adult. It can be though of as ‘symbol’ that carries meaning and is authoritative to speak to the viewer regarding a content of which is carries authority regarding.[7] These symbols can be both beautiful – or frightening, and the effect that they have is mediated by both age and a deeper understanding of how the world seems to work, once one moves into adulthood. The five years may be scared by a vampire or a zombie, but it is the 50-year-old who will be scared by what he sees in the shadow of the character of the monster.

 

The archetypes that each of these monsters represent, are distinctly representational of our personal fears and those that we both know and understand about ourselves in terms of our relations with both ourselves and the world around us. This is critical to understand – because in the Entertainment Industry, fear is only one of the many ‘substrates’ that its content creators utilize when they set out to create a story that will sell books, movie tickets, and generate entire franchises (if they are successful) that will generate sources of revenue for them. The more contextually relational a horror films ‘fear pretext’ is – the more likely that it will connect with its respective audience in a concrete way, and build the sales momentum to not just recoup its developmental and production costs – but earn generous additional receipts. In today’s media saturated world – this is only one of many ways that Entertainment Content Producers deliver marketable and franchiseable content. Let’s take a looks at some of these ‘moneyed monster metanarratives’ and the archetypical fears both historically and culturally rooted with them in terms of the fear that they attempt to sell us through propaganda dynamics.

 

 

[1] As it is used here, ‘existential’ is defined as being related to the sum of that which relates back to an understanding of what defines ‘the self’ and also including all of that which represents the self’s relations to everything around it. In other words, to speak ‘existentially’ is to speak regarding the whole of who you are, and then to include with that all of the relations you have to everything and everyone around you. Or – more simply put: what consists of your existence.

[2] ‘Ideological’ essentially means: of or relating to both the substance and structure of ideas and their consequences; those both direct and indirect.

[3] A cannon, here, is representational of an assumed set of ideas (or archetypes) that carry authority in the minds of those who accept them as being traditionally authoritative and representative of their implied content. For instance, all of the biblical scriptures that are accepted as being in the bible, are represented in their whole by the terms ‘scriptural cannon.’ The ‘catholic’ cannon, includes the apocrypha (a collection of books that are accepted  in Catholic theological tradition as being divinely inspired and spiritually authoritative), whereas the ‘protestant’ cannon does not.

[4] Monsters and Mad Scientists, pg. 81.

[5] Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, pg. 90.

[6] Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, pg. 181.

[7] The Anatomy of Story – 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, pgs. 221-227 & 243,244.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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