Edited by

Paul L. Yoder Peter Mario Kreuter

Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil

Edited by

Paul L. Yoder Peter Mario Kreuter

Oxford, United Kingdom

Dr Robert Fisher Series Editor

Advisory Board Dr Margaret Sonsor Breen Professor Margaret Chatterjee Dr Salwa Ghaly Professor John Parry Dr David Seth Preston Professor Bernie Warren Professor Diana Medlicott Revd Stephen Morris Dr Jones Irwin Professor Michael Goodman Professor Asa Kasher Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E

Volume 4 A volume in the At the Interface project Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil

First published 2004 by the Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom Second Edition December 2004

Inter-Disciplinary Press 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval systrem, without permission in writing from the publishers.

ISBN: 1-904710-21-2

Table of Contents
Introduction ix

Opening Remarks as the Conference on Monsters and Monstrosity: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil Stephen Morris 1

Session 1

Monsters Communist and Nazi

Monstrification of the Monster: How Ceauescu Became the Red Vampire Peter Mario Kreuter 5 Nazi Demons and Sicilian Monsters Eleanor Chiari 15

Session 2

Monsters Down South and in the Big City

From Aliens to African American Creatures Two Examples of Monsters in Ecuadorian Short Stories Wladimir Chavez V. Monstrous Metropolis Inga Bryden

27 37

Session 3

Monsters Hopeful and Friendly

New Territories: Biology, Architecture, and the Hopeful Monster Chris Smith 57 We Scare Because We Care: How Monsters Make Friends in Animated Feature Films Richard Stamp

69

Session 4

Frankenstein and Friends

Frankenstein to Frankenberry: Morphing of the Monster Myth in Pop Culture Paul L. Yoder 83

Frankenstein: Mary Shelleys Horror of Split Consciousness Kamila Vrankova

93

Session 5

Monster Medicinal
Invading Boundaries: Hybrids, Disease, and Empire Kate Hebblethwaite 105

Session 6

Monsters Miscellaneous
Vengeful Virgins in White: Female Monstosity in Asian Cinema Colette Balmain 123 Little Mermaids Swimming in the Patriarchal Sea Nur Ozgenalp Monsters in the Roman Sky: Heaven and Earth in Manilius Astronomica Dunstan Lowe 133

143

Session 7

Monsters Attack
From Bluebeard and The Robber Bridegroom to Buffalo Bill and Hannibal the Cannibal: A Look at Two Recurring Characters in Art Verana-Susanna Nungesser 157 Creature Conflict: Man, Monster and the Metaphor of Intractable Social Conflict Cary Morrison 167

Session 8

Monsters Medieval Revisited

There Is No Hero Without a Dragon: A Revisionist Interpretation of the Myth of St. George and the Dragon Estelle Mar 179

Session 9

Monsters Undead and Giant

Vamp-irony: The Bestiality of the Socratic Irony Eva Antal 191

Tracking the Zombie Diaspora: From Subhuman Haiti to Posthuman Tuscon John Cussans 203 The Ethical Ambiguity of the Monster: Good and Evil as Human Possibilities in Michel Tourniers Le Roi des Aulnes Hanna Meretoja 215

Session 10

Monsters Psychological
The Sick and the Dead: Some Vampires, Soren Kierkegaard, and the American Psychiatric Association Peter Remington 233 Monsters in Isolation and Monsters-at-Large: The American Psychodrama and its Practical Application Emily McMehen 247

Session 11

Monsters of Childhood
Where the Wild Things Are: Sendaks Picture Book and the Monsters Personified, Sanctified, and Glorified Phil Fitzsimmons 261 Dysmorphic Bodies of Alice in Wonderland Lois Drawmer 273

Depraved Paedos and Other Beasts: The Media Portrayal of CHild Sexual Abusers in Ireland and the U.K. Michael Breen 285 Notes on Contributors 293

Introduction
The wind rustles along the outside of the house; the sheer curtains softly flutter in the breeze as the smell of a midnight rain wafts through the partially opened bedroom window. You squeeze the blanket and try to close your eyes. Behind the closet door, in the quiet of the darkness, you hear the voices softly calling you... From the cave drawings of the early Magdalenian period to the digitally recorded cinematic special effects of machete-wielding Jason Vorhees; from Grendel and his overly protective mother, to Stephen Kings clown Pennywise--what is the fascination with these creatures that haunt us, prey on our fears, stalk the darkness, and hide in dusty corners? It is not enough to simply define the monster as a being that strikes terror in us, or to borrow a phrase from Mary Shelley, [to] speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror. The animated works of Walt Disney and the illustrated picture books of Maurice Sendak show us that the monster is much more than simply an image to scare us, such as the tag line from Disney/Pixars Monster Inc.: We scare because we care. If we were to place these lovable animated monsters, Sully and Mike, from Monsters Inc. or the green ogre Shrek from the Dreamworks film of the same name with the works of Peter Mario Kreuter or Eleanor Chiari, (the opening papers of this conference) we would see just how broad and problematic a definition of the monster can be. Hanna Meretoja speaks to the fluid moral codes of monstrosity in The Ethical Ambiguity of the Monster: Good and Evil as Human Possibilities in Michel Tourniers Le Roi des Aulnes. The borders that define morality are often blurred by culturally specific ethical interpretations as readers bear the responsibility of reconciling mythical models with socially constructed moral values. While monsters, as this conference illustrates, come in all shapes and sizes, to serve purposes both gratifying and disturbing, to be loved or hated (often both at the same time), the one common denominator that unites them all is their function as an Other. The monster is that which finds itself outside, in one way or another, the boundaries that define what it means to be human. It may be very human on the outside, for instance, Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho, or the opposite, such as Mary Shelleys Frankensteins monster or John Gardners interpretation of Grendel. So by allowing that the monster is detached in at least a marginal form from the qualities one associates with being human (either internally or externally) the monster then, by the very nature of its existence, is free from the constraining social ties of law cultural, spiritual, moral, or in many cases, physiological. It is the monster that forms a symbolic identity of the id, the unbridled emotional drive of the psyche that is free to give in and explore wants, needs and desires,

Introduction

___________________________________________________________ without consequence. The monster provides a way for us to rationalize these feelings, and to portray them as an image with which to attach a code of semiotic relevance in order to further understand our own, often irrational, emotions. So literary monsters become manifestations of real life emotional drives, as Peter Mario Kreuter, Eleanor Chiari, and Michael Breen discuss. These papers posit an emotional framework outside that of literary constructions. Such works establish the monster as that of the real, not solely the art of make-believe. The subtext not only develops a historical context to serve as a background for the monster but also situates and questions how we define monsters and the monstrous. However, much of what follows places the monster within a realm of the fictional and the relevance of place in regard to authorship as well as setting. Moving from an overused and often misused term Magical Realism to the genre of Fantastic Literature, Wladimir Chavez V. examines the monsters of Ecuadorian Literature. Yet, surrounding such culturally specific paradigms we not only develop independent forms of universal emotional constructions, but also the boundaries that allow for varying forms of monstrosity. For the contemporary writer, the urban setting becomes reflective of the monstrous, and the city is re-imagined in the context of modernity. Inga Byyden examines these boundaries and how the metropolis, and those within it, form an ever-changing identity of the monstrous. But the monsters role as place can only achieve an affective nature if we associate that role (at least partially) with how the individual defines himself. The key to the monsters power lies in its ability to penetrate the very nature of our soul and strip it clean of a self-identity. Perhaps this characteristic of the monstrous is what so attracts us to the persona of the vampire, a being who utterly sucks us dry in order to maintain his, or as much early folklore tells us, her, mode of existence. The inherent formlessness of the shape-shifter is probably most prevalent in the guise of the vampire, a word first cited in the OED in the early 1730s, suggesting that it may be related to the Turkish word uber meaning a witch. This quite possibly was the result of an epidemic of reported vampire sightings that swept across Europe around the same time period. But while the folklore of the vampire finds its genesis well before the eighteenth century, its role as usurper finds its greatest voice as a critique of empirical authority. Eva Antal approaches the vampire, through the context of Soren Kierkegaard, as a metaphor and the discourse of irony as a means of figurative bloodsucking. Peter Remington, remaining in the framework of Kierkegaard, delves into the world of Anne

Introduction

xi

___________________________________________________________ Rice and psychologically deconstructs the emotional toll acting upon the vampire. Medical advances have been a fertile imaginary field for growing the most horrendous of monsters, such as Dr.s Jekyll, Moreau, and Frankenstein, just to mention a prominent trio of monstrous tamperers. Medical technology forms the ultimate metaphor for all that threatens through an apparent limitless maze of possibility and promise. What has the power to extend life or cure disease, surely has the power of rendering one naked of humanity, creating an Other, severed from the bounds of the human condition. Theo Vurdubakis and Kate Hebblethwaite both articulate this danger and the resulting terrifying threat to ones own selfidentity. Yet no discussion of the danger to this self-identity, and the role science plays in such a discourse would be complete without conjuring images of Frankensteins monster, a metaphor so incorrectly adopted by political pundits warning against the dangers of medical research that one wonders what Mary Shelley would think. Of all of the monster novels, Frankenstein is one of the most referenced, least read, and most widely misunderstood texts on the market. It is more than a novel that focuses on the physical nature of the monster, or Hollywoods insistence that somewhere in that head (flat of course) there must be a deranged brain. Even Kenneth Branaghs 1994 film version could not, as hard as it tried, completely distance itself from this myth. We must always remember that Victor Frankenstein accomplished exactly what he set out to do, but it is the monsters relationship with the outside world, much as an authors relationship with a text, that goes horribly wrong. Kamila Vrankova examines the emotional motivations of Frankensteins monster in a psychoanalytic relationship between author and text, creator and created. Paul Yoder builds outward to examine the relationship, not between author and text, but between text and reader. Continuing to focus on psychoanalytic interpretations, we are lead to examine how readers of monsters, as well as an audience of cinematic terror, become desensitized to the horrific, producing parodical effects. But as I pointed out earlier, the role of the monster is not simply a matter of terrifying. Often a monsters scare because we care attitude works to define and solidify our role in a world we are just beginning to understand. In this light it is easy to see why these types of monsters appeal so warmly to children. They show us that the world may be full of monsters, only in the sense that they are not so much un-human as simply un-familiar. When we view the monster through such lenses, the shape of the monstrosity, or lack there-of, also appropriately shifts identity roles both for the reader and viewer. Nur Ozgenalp redefines the vision of the monster through the image of Hans Christien Andersons tale The Little

xii

Introduction

___________________________________________________________ Mermaid and the subsequent Disney film version. Using this story as a representative example of the function narrative plays in defining dominant identity roles in both male and female children, the reinforcement of patriarchal construction forms a recurring subtext of these narratives and raises the important questiondo we shape the narrative, or does the narrative shape us? This question may very well point us to the answer of why we need monsters, as all the papers presented at this conference in one way or another seem to address. The role of the monster shapes the narrative of our lives, from the monstrosity of Manilius Astonomica, which transcends heavenly borders, forever threatening celestial order, to those of adolescence we happily chase down Alices rabbit hole. As Estelle Mares title so aptly asserts, There is No Hero Without a Dragon. We are defined by what we are not, both for the good and for the bad, and it is the monster that most clearly forms this identity. Whether it is an image that repulses us, frightens us, or ultimately we turn to embrace, the monster and the monstrous define the very emotional drives that make us human. Without them there are no heroes. But more important, without them we are left unable to express those emotions that lurk at the very heart of our psyche and find release only in the darkest shadows of our own creations. Whether the monsters are real or imaginary, fierce or friendly, they exist so that we can escape. What this conference hopes to provide is the closet door, closed to the demons of the night. Step up, turn the knob, and lets see what waits on the other side. Paul L. Yoder Peter Mario Kreuter

Opening Remarks at the Conference on Monsters and Monstrosity: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil Budapest 2004 By Stephen Morris
It is so very appropriate that we open our conference on Monsters this afternoon in Budapest. Dracula opens in Budapest. Jonathan Harkers first journal entry (3 May) describes his impression of the city: Budapest seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule. Budapest is the location of the hospital Jonathan recovers in, following his escape from the vampires castle. Mina comes to Budapest to be with him in late August and marries him in that hospital before bringing him home to England. Jonathan said that in Budapest he was leaving the West and entering the East. We are likewise making a transition here in Budapest. We are leaving behind the rational, the cold and logical and we are entering the realm of myth and metaphor, the realm of the subconscious and the deeper abysses of the human mind and heart, the place of the deep memories of the human race. We will be spending three days exploring this dark terrain and will, hopefully, illuminate those hidden, irrational recesses We may be entering the realm of the irrational but that does not mean we are not serious or undisciplined in our work. Everyone here was no doubt greeted with laughter and skepticism upon announcing your travel plans: Youre going to a conference about what?! A conference about monsters gets a grin and requires at least some explanation.

Opening Remarks

___________________________________________________________ That explanation involves the frightening, dark side of humanity the side we like to pretend isnt there, isnt serious, isnt real, is not modern and therefore is not important. But it is only by acknowledging the monstrous side of humanity and admitting that is present, is serious, is real that we can begin to appreciate how superficial is our construct of the modern and therefore how important it is to understand what is most monstrous about ourselves.

Session 1 Monsters Communist and Nazi

The Monstrification of the Monster. How Ceauescu became the Red Vampire Peter Mario Kreuter
Abstract Without any doubt the Ceauescu regime has been one of the most cruel and most paranoid of all communist regimes after World War II. In Europe its only comparable to Albania under Enver Hoxha. Especially the time after 1980, when the Titan of the Titans decided to pay back the debts of the Romanian state only within a few years, became a very dark one in European history. The three F reigned in Romania: foam (hunger), fric (fear) and frig (cold). The cruelty of his reign, that lasted nearly 25 years, has been visible in a drastic way when we look at his end in the only bloody revolution in communist Europe in December 1989. Therefore it was more than amazing to me to see particularly the Western media reporting about him and his family creating many stories which made a (reel-like) hypermonster out of the (real) monster. Instead of telling the truth about his mediocre character, his youth in communist organizations or his political advancement under the protection of the later party leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, newspapers and political commentaries have been filled with stories about presumed bank robberies in the late 40s, blood infusions with the blood of newborn babies and political rivals in the party killed by him personally. So what? What was the reason to do this? While the reports on Enver Hoxha have been quite objective containing only few moments of speculation, the whole information about Nicolae Ceauescu has been speculative, ridiculous exaggerating and full of histories by hearsay that have never ever been critically checked and passed on until today. It is the aim of my paper to present the major monstrifications to the audience and to discuss them in the wider range of both a psychological and a historical level. Keywords Nicolae Ceauescu, gloryfication, monstrification, Romania, Romanian Revolution 1989 An entire epoch of corruption, terror, lies and denouncements, misery and starvation, hatred and suspicion, the fear of tomorrow is linked to the name of Ceauescu. The ten-headed monster of Scorniceti penetrated everywhere, cities and villages in the mountains or at the seaside, young and old people, no matter their sex, nationality or religion, forgiving nothing, avoiding nothing. All the day round, in the evening and at night,

Monstrification of the Monster

___________________________________________________________ the monster spied on every movement and on every breath, invading us with his stammering and primitive thinking, with gestures of a psychopath, with language and grammar mistakes.1 When Ion Mihai Pacepas book Red Horizons was first published in 1987, one could have assumed that the book was the result of the sick fantasy of its author who was one of the highest ranking officers of the Securitate until his defection.2 And even if some parts of the book are considered today as being exaggerating, nevertheless, it draws a clear picture of the political ruthlessness and moral decay of the Ceauescu clan and the miserable conditions the Romanian people had to live in. In Western Europe and the United States, Ceauescu was considered for many years as a kind of political joker, a thorn in the flesh of the communist system led by the USSR.3 Based on the withdrawal of the Soviet troops in 1958,4 he was able to create a special Romanian kind of communism, mixing up hardline Stalinism with nationalism and rhetoric fragments of worldwide peace, nonalignment and nonintervention in internal affairs.5 Therefore, his repressive internal policy against all kinds of dissidents, political or national, was tolerated or at least ignored. A change of the Western policy only began in the late Seventies, especially after the revolts in the Schiltal in 1977. The rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev with his policy of perestoika and glasnost or the publishing of Pacepas book marked the beginning decline of the Romanian autocratic regime. When the so-called revolution started in Timioara/Temeswar on 16th December 1989, the whole Western world looked at Romania and the gruesome end of communism in this nearly forgotten edge of Europe.6 For several days, newspapers in Germany, France or Great Britain reported abundantly about the bloody fall of one of the strangest and most paranoid dictatorships in world. Not surprisingly that shortly after the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceauescu and the end of the hot phase of the uprising the first publications about the Ceauescu dictatorship were put on the market.7 The quality of these early publications was relatively low, especially when dealing with the last years of his reign and the uprising against him. But it was amazing to see how uncritical Western journalists and book authors accepted the semi-official numbers of dead or the histories told about the dictator and his family. A publication in German played a special role. The book was written in the first months of 1990 and printed in June of the same year by a would-be journalist named Joachim Siegerist. Siegerist, born in 1947 in Germany and of an obscure Balto-German origin from Latvia,8 became notorious for his smear campaigns against the former chancellor and leader of the German Social-Democrats Willy Brandt, leading 1986 to an

Peter Mario Kreuter

___________________________________________________________ awful rabble-rousing book full of half-truth and inflammatory harangues, garnished with a primitive anti-communism which seemed to come directly out of the tomb of McCarthy.9 Immediately after the fall and death of Ceauescu, he travelled through Romania, spoke to a lot of people and made hundreds of photos. It is not really clear how he did find his interview partners but it is amazing how many different people he spoke to. The result of his hard work was the book Ceauescu the red vampire, already mentioned before.10 Like most of his books, it was printed in a small publishing house of a friend of him. Siegerists book opens with one of the most gruesome fairy tales about Nicolae Ceauescu: the infusion of baby-blood.11 As for nearly all stories in his book, neither in this case Siegerist gives any sources or references where he did find his data about the presumed blood donation of newborn babies to the growingly old dictator.12 The style of the description as of the whole book is sensational and smutty. Scenes like out of the hell. 20 babies, pitiful screaming, are laying neatly in a row on sterilised operating tables. So-called doctors are bending over the babies and drawing them blood out of their veins with 19/10mm-drain tubes. Altogether nearly three litres. Baby-blood for Nicolae Ceausescu, the red vampire of Romania. In a small room near the babies, the cleansed blood is given to the dictator for about two hours. Every month the same horrifying spectacle. [] I read this unbelievable horror story in an English newspaper at the beginning of January 1990 for the first time. I couldnt believe it. Then I travelled to Romania myself. One thing in advance: the story about the baby-blood is true. One of the responsible socalled doctors is now in jail.13 But that is only the start to 480 pages of pulp fiction. One can find a photo of the young Nicolae Ceauescu with a caption having nothing in common with the simple portrait the photo shows: Ceausescu in the electoral campaign 1946 in this time he committed his first personal murder. The victim: bank director Lupu.14 The book contains more than 100 photos, but a lot of them have nothing to do with the theme of the book, like the six photos made in a cancer ward for children15 or the 15 photos made in one of the gruesome orphanages for mentally handicapped people.16 Yes, Ceauescu was responsible for the awesome conditions they have to live in, but Siegerist is insinuating that he even was responsible personally for the fact of cancer and madness as well! For the aim of this paper, some chapters in the middle of the book are in the centre of interest. One of them, On the torture cemetery of the Securitate in Temesvar,17insists to be an authentic report of one of the torture and slaughter places of Ceauescus secret police Securitate. The chapter consists of eight pages, four of them covered with photos. Three of

Monstrification of the Monster

___________________________________________________________ these photos show Siegerist at the torture table of the Securitate on the poorhouses cemetery in Temesvar or In the hand [of the author] the rest of a shovel used to bury the remainders of the victims tortured to death.18 The picture of page 199 became famous because it was printed in a lot of international newspapers in those December days of 1989, showing a row of half decomposed bodies so-called victims of the Securitate, tortured to death or shot during the revolution. The state of decomposition shows clearly that this cant be the truth, some of the victims are more or less skeletons, and some of them show the scars of an official autopsy, but no sign of violation or torture. Siegerist indicates the complete number of victims of the revolution with 60.000, a ridiculously exaggerated number.19 A few years ago, Thomas Kunze published the real number of people killed in the uprising in 1989. Following the official data of the Romanian government, exactly 1.104 people were killed, 162 of them before the 22nd December, 942 after this day. 495 victims were counted in Bucharest itself. The total number contains 260 soldiers killed in action and 65 members of the Interior Ministry.20 Of course, in 1990, Siegerist could not know the exact number of the dead, but the use of a photo which obviously doesnt show victims of the uprising and the manipulative way of the whole book led us to one single explication: a notorious anticommunist hack writer used the hardest time of the younger Romanian history to produce a repulsing example of political demagogy. By the way: the same man who told Siegerist in 1990 about Ceauescus murder of bank director Lupu pretends in 1999 that the case was never ever really enlightened21 In the case of Siegerist, the aim of the monstrification of Nicolae Ceauescu is quite clear. But why does a popular presentation of dictators in history still insists upon 10.000 victims of the uprising in 2000?22 Another example: Immediately after the execution of the dictator and his wife, stories about a possible Gypsy or Tataric origin of Ceauescu were going round in Romania.23 One can accept this, but why did the author of the first German language biography of Ceauescu, written after his end, use this information by hearsay in his own book without any critical check of the origin or the sources?24 And why did the newspapers accept every information about the riots and the fighting in Romania and the way of life of the Ceauescu clan without any critical comment in the stormy days of 1989?25 On the one hand, one should not forget how strange, how crazy Ceauescus dictatorship was. Especially the time after 1980, when the Titan of the Titans decided to pay back the debts of the Romanian state in only a few years, became a very dark one in European history. The three F reigned in Romania: foam (hunger), fric (fear) and frig (cold).

Peter Mario Kreuter

___________________________________________________________ But on the other hand, Ceauescu was no mass murderer like Stalin or Pol Pot, and his ideology as such was not exaggerating in such a strange way as that of Kim Il Sung in North-Korea or Enver Hoxha in Albania. He was not a good speaker like Fidel Castro, he was no charismatic personality like Lenin, and he even was no leader to a new form of socialism like Tito was. Ceauescu was a simple man from a rural area of Romania, nearly uneducated and primitive. But due to his natural sense for power and his friendship with the party leaders of post-war Romania, dating from their common time in prison, he was able to take control over a central position in the communist party, the cadre department. There he started his career, and after the death of Gheorghiu-Dej in 1965, he was able to enforce his position with his knowledge about the main personnel of the Romanian communist party. Between 1965 and 1971, he played the role of a reformer, and his masterpiece was his refusal to take part in the quelling of the Czechoslovak reform movement in 1968. After 1971, he began to install his neo-stalinistic regime with nationalistic traits. Unlike his predecessors, Ceauescu tried to enforce and to stable his regime not by pure terror and brutality, but with the aid of corruption of the main persons and carefully measured terror. Romania was not a country of Gulags or working camps, it was the land of snoopers, privileges and scramble for posts and benefits. An almighty Securitate watched over the country and intimidated potential dissidents with various methods, and only in case of urgent real force was used against an adversary. There was in Romania this Byzantinic cult of personality who became more and more ridiculous and browbeating at the same time. Titan of the titans, sweetest kiss of the fatherland, genius of the Carpathians, son of the sun this are only some of the semi-official addresses used to celebrate Ceauescu.26 As a portrait, he was ubiquitous in the country, in schools, in factories, even in most of the books printed in Romania. There was nearly no communist party, there were no historical predecessors and no comrades, there was only Comrade Nicolae Ceauescu, later on together with his wife Elena. There were projects like the new city centre of Bucharest, which led to the destruction of more than 20% of the old town and the construction of Casa poporului, the second biggest building in the world, three times bigger than the whole complex of Versailles. There was the plan of the systematisation of rural Romania, the concentration of the people in agro-industrial zones and the destruction of more than half of the villages and small towns. Ceauescu even planned to make an industrial zone out of the complete Danube Delta.

10

Monstrification of the Monster

___________________________________________________________ And then there were these hard years between 1980 and 1989, when nearly everything of the Romanian production went into export in order to pay back the debts of the Romanian state within a few years only. As a result, people in Romania lived in a dark, cold and depressive country especially in wintertime. Neither was there terror in the classical definition of the word, it was just a collateral phenomenon of the policy of a dictator, who was absolutely not interested in the fate of his people. All this is so strange, so unbelievable and so unexplainable. 24 years Ceauescu, and nearly no attempt to start a revolution! And if one tries to check out the real fundaments of his reign, he will be surprised to find nothing more than hypocrisy, bombastic personally cult and personal enrichment of all those being inflicted in the system. It was surreal, it was Absurdistan, it was something that is hard to describe. Therefore, this inhuman and grotesque system with Ceauescu at its head was described as monstrous, and while the uprising against him was so unclear and strange, his end so quick and unexpected, the news from Romania so disturbing and contradictory, a hyper-monster was made out of a primitive man who was the leader of a communist dictatorship. It is even today very hard to explain to an outside observer of Ceauescus Romania, this mixture of such a lot of different elements, some of them even contradictory. Monster is a very simple explanation, an explanation which may be understood, but which is not very helpful to describe the real monstrous character of Ceauescus life and times a monstrosity which is often at its climax when looking at the simple and daily life of the dictator himself. Ceauescu was a nobody, intellectually and as a personality. And till his end, he liked to eat his meals with his fingers. As a tentative summary a relatively simple conclusion can be drawn. The glorification of historical figures, so familiar to us all, is only one side of the same coin, whose reverse is monstrification. Both aspects are an integral part of what we call in common language historiography. In the last instance heroes and monsters are eventually made of the same stuff, human phantasy.

Notes
Carol Roman, Ultimele 100 de zile nefaste. Sfritul clicii Ceauescu (Bucharest: Casa de Editare GLOB, 1990), 3.
1

Peter Mario Kreuter

11

___________________________________________________________ Ion Mihai Pacepa, Red Horizons. The true story of Nicolae & Elena Ceauescus crimes, lifestyle, and corruption (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1987). 3 Thomas Kunze, Nicolae Ceauescu. Eine Biographie (Berlin: Links, 2000), 406. 4 Ekkehard Vlkl, Rumnien. Vom 19. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart (Regensburg: Pustet, 1995), 178. One should not forget that this withdrawal was nothing more than the result of the absolute stalinistic policy Ceauescus predecessor Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej followed between 1947 and 1965. It was a sign of confidence into the future course of Romanian communism, not the result of a policy of independence. 5 For a general overview see Kunze, 187-301. 6 Anneli Ute Gabanyi, Die unvollendete Revolution. Rumnien zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie (Munich / Zurich: Piper, 1990), 11-33. 7 A look in Ceauescus Romania. An Annotated Bibliography, compiled by Opritsa D. Popa and Marguerite E. Horn (Westport, Connecticut / London: Greenwood Press, 1994), 19-22, shows the dramatic interest on Ceauescus reign over Romania after the events of December 1989. In the years between 1966 and 1994, 20 books about lifetime and leadership of Nicolae Ceauescu have been published, 9 of them between 1990 and 1992. 8 Today, Siegerist, who became Latvian citizen in 1992, has changed his name to the Latvian version Joachims Zigerists and is the head of an ultranationalistic and notorious Christian splinter party in Latvia called Popular Movement for Latvia. In 1997, a German court sentenced him to one year and nine months suspended jail for racist incitement of the masses. 9 Joachim Siegerist, Willy Brandt - Das Ende einer Legende (Bremen: Moritz Deter GmbH, 11th edition, 1988). 10 Joachim Siegerist, Ceauescu - Der rote Vampir (Hamburg: Wirtschafts- und Verbands PR GmbH, 1990). 11 Ibid, 10-13. This chapter is called Foreword! What a dramatic opening! 12 The horror-story of such blood infusions is rejected by Keno Verseck, Rumnien (Munich: Beck, 1998), 9. 13 Siegerist, Ceauescu Der rote Vampir, 10-11. Just a detail is the fact that in Siegerists book nearly no Romanian name is correctly written. The author could not have any deeper interest in the country or its inhabitants he was only on his search for the crimes of a communist madman.
2

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Monstrification of the Monster

___________________________________________________________ Ibid, 40. The photo and its manipulative text are used by Siegerist as a piece of evidence for the murder. 15 Ibid, 275-290. On one of the photos (p. 281) one can see the wife of the then press spokesman of the German Embassy in Romania. 16 Ibid, 291-322. Two of them are defined by Siegerist as lunatics (p. 321). 17 Ibid, 194-201. 18 Ibid, 195 and 197. On nearly the half of all photos of the book, the author is doing something or showing something. In one case he holds a bone of a pretended victim into the lens of the camera! 19 Ibid, 31. 20 Kunze, 393 with footnote 35. 21 Ibid, 81 with footnote 190. 22 Diktatoren. Die grten Tyrannen und Despoten der Weltgeschichte (Vienna: Tosa, 2000), 29. 23 Frauendorfer, Helmuth, In den sten der Bume hngen Krnze. Eine Reise, in Der Sturz des Tyrannen. Rumnien und das Ende einer Diktatur, ed. Richard Wagner and Helmuth Frauendorfer (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1990), 11. 24 Malte Olschewski, Der Conductor Nicolae Ceauescu. Phnomen der Macht (Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1990), 54. The only sign for a pretended Tataric, Gypsy or even Turkish origin of Ceauescu is the original source of his name. The word ceau is an Ottoman word meaning courier on horseback. 25 Verseck, 11-12 and 82-85. In the extended version for the hard-copy book, I will present concrete examples taken from my own collection of German, French and English newspapers. 26 A not-at-all complete list may be found in Olschewski, 82.
14

Bibliography
Ceauescus Romania. An Annotated Bibliography. Compiled by Opritsa D. Popa and Marguerite E. Horn. Westport, Connecticut / London: Greenwood Press, 1994. Diktatoren. Die grten Tyrannen und Despoten der Weltgeschichte. Vienna: Tosa, 2000.

Peter Mario Kreuter

13

___________________________________________________________ Frauendorfer, Helmuth. In den sten der Bume hngen Krnze. Eine Reise. In Der Sturz des Tyrannen. Rumnien und das Ende einer Diktatur, edited by Richard Wagner and Helmuth Frauendorfer, 7-16. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1990. Gabanyi, Anneli Ute. Die unvollendete Revolution. Rumnien zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie. Munich / Zurich: Piper, 1990. Kunze, Thomas. Nicolae Ceauescu. Eine Biographie. Berlin: Links, 2000. Olschewski, Malte. Der Conductor Nicolae Ceauescu. Phnomen der Macht. Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1990. Pacepa, Ion Mihai. Red Horizons. The true story of Nicolae & Elena Ceauescus crimes, lifestyle, and corruption. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1987. Roman, Carol. Ultimele 100 de zile nefaste. Sfritul clicii Ceauescu. Bucharest: Casa de Editare GLOB, 1990. Siegerist, Joachim. Ceauescu - Der rote Vampir. Hamburg: Wirtschaftsund Verbands PR GmbH, 1990. Siegerist, Joachim. Willy Brandt - Das Ende einer Legende. Bremen: Moritz Deter GmbH, 11th edition, 1988. Verseck, Keno. Rumnien. Munich: Beck, 1998. Vlkl, Ekkehard. Rumnien. Vom 19. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart. Regensburg: Pustet, 1995.

Nazi Demons and Sicilian Monsters. The Monsters of Villarbasse, Piedmontese Anxieties, and the Wounds of World War II Eleanor Canright Chiari
Abstract My paper examines the story of the monsters of Villarbasse whose crime took place in 1945 and resulted in the last execution by capital punishment in Italy (1947). The story is simple: a group of bandits went to a farm to commit a robbery. Recognized, they knocked the farmers unconscious with large wooden sticks. The victims, including a child and an old woman, were then pushed down a well where they died miserably. Public opinion condemned the killers as monsters. Certainly the number of victims, their age and manner of death, were quite dramatic; yet there may have been other reasons for declaring this crime particularly monstrous. The Sicilian (and thus foreign) origins of the killers were an enormous factor. The region where the crimes took place, Piedmont, suffered heavily from Nazi occupation during WWII. The people of entire villages were executed in manners sometimes much crueller than the murders of Villarbasse. The public reaction to the Villarbasse crime, so soon after the war, raises questions about how the spotting and public execution of monsters aims at restoring a community in crisis. Killing monsters supposedly returns a community to an earlier imagined coherence, just as new and threatening changes loom upon it. Keywords Monsters, Italy, Second World War, catharsis, reburial Today I will be talking about a group of Sicilian bandits who were executed in 1947 for a crime they committed in Piedmont in 1945, just after the war. I will first of all describe the circumstances of their crime, which provoked enormous public outcry and led people to ask for the death penalty (although capital punishment was in the process of being abolished). Ill explain the ways these bandits came to be seen as monsters and how this case fits within my understanding of traditional monster paradigms. I hope that the points I raise will be supported and challenged in later papers at this conference, and that through this case I can begin to lay out some defining points relating to monsters, at least of the threatening, violent kind. The crime went as follows: On a dark night in November 1945, four thieves made their way into a farmhouse in the rural town of Villarbasse, in Piedmont. They came into the house carrying large sticks

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Nazi Demons and Sicilian Monsters

___________________________________________________________ and threatened the people inside asking them to show them where the money was. All of a sudden one of the women recognized the voice of one of the bandits, who had been a temporary farm worker at the farm the previous summer. What had started as a mere thievery ended in bloodshed, as the bandits clobbered all ten people, including an old woman and a young boy, into unconsciousness and then pushed them into a well, their hands tied with metal yarn, their feet loaded down by cement bricks. Only a two-year-old child was left alive and was found crying in his crib the next day, in the desolate house, when people came to the farm and found that everyone was gone, vanished, or- as they said- taken away by the devil. The bodies were found in the well, swollen and disfigured, eight days later. It became clear from the autopsy that most of them had not died from the blows but died a slow death by suffocation in the well, conscious of their miserable fate, and unable to ask for help. Before I go into the monstrosity of this crime, which is of course quite horrible, we should look back on the last two years of the war and its immediate aftermath in Piedmont. After Mussolini fell, in 1943, a temporary Italian government declared an armistice with the Allied forces. Following the armistice the Nazis occupied Northern Italy and reinstated Mussolini as a puppet governor of the fascist Republic of Sal. A civil war ensued in occupied Italy when anti-fascist forces began guerrilla-type warfare and sabotage against the Nazi-fascists. Dissidents were arrested in mass, tortured and sent to concentration camps in Poland and Germany. Many were simply executed in the streets, left hanging from bridges and houses, with signs warning against rebellion1. Whenever a German was killed, ten Italian civilians would be publicly executed. In some areas of Piedmont not far from Villarbasse, entire villages were exterminated in Nazi retaliation2. On and right after liberation day- the 25 April 1945- fascist political figures were dragged into the streets, beaten and lynched. Giuseppe Solaro, the commissar of the Republican Fascist Party in Turin was hanged twice, his body mutilated and exposed on a truck along the streets of Turin where it was met by cheering crowds; it was then thrown into the Po river and shot at for sport in a competition from the Isabella Bridge.3 By November of 1945 people had seen bodies disfigured and beaten, had met prisoners returning in skeletal form from concentration camps, had themselves betrayed, beaten or even shot members of their own community. It is therefore somewhat surprising that the Villarbasse crime, for all its brutality and violence, managed nevertheless to incite such horror. Or is it? Perhaps considering the crime in light of traditional notions of the monster and the cathartic purposes that

Eleanor Chiari

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___________________________________________________________ its slaying serves could help explain peoples reactions and the symbolic effects of Italys last public execution. Let us now look at our monsters. Giovanni Puleo, Francesco La Barbera, Giovanni DIgnoti and Pietro Lala were all Sicilian, and came from a small village in the province of Palermo. They were illiterate and had led a life of petty crime, wandering regularly between Northern and Southern Italy. They qualified as monsters in three ways: 1) They showed no respect for the dead bodies of their victims 2) They seemed to express no regret after the fact, and thus exacerbated the public outcry against them 3) They were outsiders. I will now briefly develop these three points to provide a further picture of the Villarbasse case and the meanings of its resolution, while also pointing to more general notions of the monstrous. A monster could be defined as a being that mostly lives outside of human communities that kills and doesnt have respect for the human body after it is dead. Katherine Verdery in her book The Political Lives of Dead Bodies4, points out that all human communities have ideas and practices concerning what constitutes a good death, how dead people should be treated and what will happen if they are not properly cared for. Mythological monsters might consume their victims, eating them and leaving their bones on the floor of their caves; Human monsters will disfigure the bodies of the dead and, as in the Villarbasse case, try to hide their deed by improperly burying them. (It is almost a clich of the serial killer to leave body parts improperly buried in suitcases, refrigerators and floorboards). The killers of Villarbasse were seen as monsters not so much for the fact that they killed, but for the way had clobbered the bodies of their victims, disfigured them and left them hanging horridly in the well. In their complete disregard for the human body, they marked themselves as outside of the human community. The second point, which marked the Villarbasse killers as monsters was their lack of guilt for what they had done, seen as particularly disturbing since they had killed unarmed men and women, a young boy and an old lady. During their trial they bragged about their crime and used the verb abbattere (to put down) rather than uccidere (to kill) when describing how they had killed their victims. This linguistic detail was used to point out how the killers didnt really consider their victims human, and how they cold-bloodedly put them down like animals. One detail really struck the jury: after the crime, the killers had feasted on salami, which they stole from the farm. Renzo Rossotti recalls the detail of them eating salami like hungry beasts. They hands stained by blood, all that blood5. Literary critic Joseph Andriano has suggested

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Nazi Demons and Sicilian Monsters

___________________________________________________________ that one of the main characteristics of monsters is that they are dangerous and that the fear they inspire comes from the primal fear of being eaten6. The image of the killers devouring salami after the murders was not just a trivial detail but contributed to their depiction as monsters. They had cold bloodedly put down their victims with sticks; they had the earth consume them by burying them alive in the dark mouth of the well where they died, and they then went on to gorge themselves on the bloody meat of dead pigs. The final sentence of the judge was: ...for this crime that offends humanity there can be no other punishment than the death penalty. Finally, but perhaps most importantly, a key factor, which contributed to the Villarbasse killers being executed as monsters was their otherness. One of the killers, Puleo, even yelled out at the end of the trial: They are killing us because we are Sicilian!7. Long before the bodies had been found and before an incriminating jacket had pointed to Palermo, locals were sure that those who had taken away the people from the farm had to have come from outside. They continually tried to incriminate a man called Carmelo, a migrant worker from Calabria, who lived near Villarbasse at harvest time. Though completely innocent, Carmelo was almost lynched by an angry mob. Those who were found guilty in the end also lived a life at the periphery of society, moving up and down the Italian peninsula, so that one of the killers was nicknamed u turista-the tourist. In his book on Monsters David Gilmore identifies monsters as outsiders. He writes: In every cultural tradition, monsters are said to live in borderline places, inhabiting an outside dimension that is apart from, but parallel to and intersecting the human community.8 The Sicilian bandits of Villarbasse were certainly outsiders, and their life of movement at the outskirts of legal work (and ordinary capitalist society) placed them firmly within the tradition of monsters that would wander into human society from their borderline places to consume and destroy common people. As Katherine Verdery convincingly shows in her discussion of Serbian and Croat reburials in the late 1980s9, reburial is often a deeply political act in which new boundaries between the us of the wronged victims get counter posed to the them of the enemy-other. Key to the identification of the murderers of Villarbasse as monsters (before the actual culprits were found) was the discovery of the dead bodies in the well, their filmed and sensationalized extraction from the cold dark place they died in, and their reburial. This reburial, produced outrage in the newly defined community, whose boundaries were threatened by a force that showed no respect for the dead, no regret or shame for its deeds, and must have been clearly foreign and other.

Eleanor Chiari

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___________________________________________________________ Now that I have addressed the issue of the monstrosity of the Villarbasse killers, I will examine the broader purpose and meaning of their execution, in light of the symbolic slaying of monsters. As mentioned above, the spotting of monsters necessarily also results in defining them as outside of human communities, since, by definition, their monstrosity is based on their lack of humanity. The finger pointing of a monster therefore also defines the borders of human community, and reasserts the humanity of those whose outrage is triggered by the monstrous deeds they have witnessed. Wilfrida Ann Mully10 suggests that monsters are: phantastic images which occur to individuals by which the self experiences itself as lacking humanity, as unnaturally evil, stupid, or ill. I realize that it is highly problematic to extend this psychoanalytic interpretation that Mully applies to individual patients, onto a society as a whole, or onto a region. Perhaps the Villarbasse killers would have been seen as monsters regardless of the time or place in which they committed their crimes. It does seem plausible, however, to ascribe some level of unconscious behavior to groups, particularly at times of great collective trauma such as the period immediately following a war of the extent and brutality of the Second World War. If we are to accept this view, however problematic, the spotting and execution of the Villarbasse monsters can be seen as deeply cathartic for the region. This catharsis depends on the projection of the communitys evil self, lack of humanity and illness, onto the monsters. To further this point I will bring to your attention two filmed events, which provoked diametrically opposite responses in audiences around the North of Italy. The first is the filmed extraction of the swollen and disfigured Villarbasse bodies emerging upside down from the well, shown in a film made by the American occupying forces in the early days of the enquiry into the killings, which caused great horror and outrage. The other is the filmed desecration of the bodies of Mussolini11 and his lover Claretta Petacci shown just months before hanging from a gas station post in Piazzale Loreto, in Milan, which marked the symbolic end of the war and was, with some notable exceptions, received with jubilance. An angry crowd had pushed past resistance security forces and maimed and disfigured the dead bodies of the dictator and his lover, kicking in their faces. These two disfigurements and the brutal violence and lack of humanity that goes with the desecration of bodies do not, however, figure in the same symbolic plane. Remarkably, through the reburial of the wronged Villarbasse victims, a peaceful farmstead exterminated in the midst of ordinary life, those who may have accepted Mussolinis disfigurement at the end of the war were restored their humanity by their

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Nazi Demons and Sicilian Monsters

___________________________________________________________ capacity for horror in peacetime. As David Gilmore writes, in his book on Monsters12: The power of monsters is their ability to fuse opposites, to merge contraries, to subvert rules, to overthrow cognitive barriers, moral distinctions and ontological categories. Monsters overcome the barrier of time itself. Uniting past and present, demonic and divine, guilt and conscience, predator and prey, parent and child, self and alien, our monsters are our innermost selves. After the war, in which so many people were at least indirectly implicated in the extreme brutality and violence that placed everyone outside of normal human society/decency, it became crucial to react and execute those who continued to maintain a war level of brutality in peacetime. To slay the monsters was also a way of exorcising the demons of the war still hiding in ordinary life. When the maimed bodies were pulled out of the well, upside down, their faces swollen and marked by the blows they received before dying, the specters of the war and its many victims were bound to make themselves heard in public conscience. To continue with David Gilmores analysis of monsters: For most western observers the monster is a metaphor for all that must be repudiated by the human spirit. It embodies the existential threat to social life, the chaos, atavism, and negativism that symbolize destructiveness and all other obstacles to order and progress, all that which defeats, destroys, draws back, undermines, subverts the human project.13 Many observers and journalists commenting on the Villarbasse case, have linked the execution of the Villarbasse murderers with the full end of the war, suggesting quite explicitly that the last public execution was a watershed event between the world of before, still belonging to the war years, and the post war years that were slowly emerging.14 The killers of Villarbasse as monsters became a metaphor for all the evils of the war, and their execution was also a way of symbolically leaving those evils behind. This evil was at once foreign (and we can see a kind of overlap between the foreignness of the Sicilian monsters and the Nazis) and from within (the evil of fascist participation, of civil war, and implied in the brutality of the immediate post-war months).

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___________________________________________________________ I will close by quoting the prosecution lawyer interviewed years later: ...We were coming out of the ruins, especially the moral ruins, of the war, and we were still trembling. Such an enormous crime (...) asked for a signal, a sentence that (...) was (...) an answer, a sign that society gave to those who still went off the path and dreamt about blood, robberies, and killings. (...) That sentence was a way of changing, of turning a page. With good peace to those dead, for the hope of those who were growing, and entering into life.15 As in other monster slayings, an idyllic community- the we the lawyer refers to- traumatized by monstrous destruction, is given hope for the future from the blood of dead monsters. Yet this monster slaying occurs while- and perhaps because- the community feels under threat by other unknown forces. New changes, new strangers are thought to loom upon it. Reality remains unsettled and frightening as ghosts and demons continue to make themselves felt from a darkness deeper than the well at Villarbasse.

Notes
See Richard Lamb, War in Italy 1943-45 A Brutal Story (London: John Murray, 1993), Appendix. 2 See for example the village of Boves, which received the gold medal of valor for its civilian losses during the war. 3 Torino 1938/45. Una guida per la memoria (Turin: Istituto Piemontese per la storia della resistenza e della societ contemporanea, 2000), 107108; see also the website comment by his daughter Franca Solaro Giuseppe Solaro, ultimo federale di Torino. 27 maggio 1995. Cinquantenario della tragica morte. Il ricordo di Franca, LUltima Crociata, no. 5, July 1995, (19 July 2004). <http://www.italiarsi.org/padri-figli/padri-figli.htm>. 4 Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 42. 5 Renzo Rossotti, Villarbasse-Cascina Fatale, Fatale (Turin: Editrice Il Punto, 2002),114.
1

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___________________________________________________________ Joseph Andriano, Immortal Monster: The Mythological Evolution of the Fantastic Beast in Modern Fiction and Film (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999), 91. 7 Much could be said about Sicily as the quintessential space of projected backwardness, violence, and otherness much like Appalachia or Transylvania in the American or Victorian imaginary. 8 David Gilmore, Monsters, Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 12. 9 Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, Chapter 3. 10 Wilfrida Ann Mully, The Unwanted Possession: The Origin of Monsters from a Psychoanalytic Point of View, in Manlike Monsters on Trial Early Records and Modern Evidence, eds. Marjorie Halpin and Michael Ames (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980), 37. 11 Much could be said about the transformation of Mussolini from hero to hated object or about the monstrosity of fascism. For practical reasons this paper will only discuss his dead body. 12 Gilmore, Monsters, 194. 13 Ibid,12. 14 Rossotti, back-cover. 15 Ibid, 115-116.
6

Bibliography
Andriano, Joseph. Immortal Monster: The Mythological Evolution of the Fantastic Beast in Modern Fiction and Film. Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Gilmore, David. Monsters, Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy-The Literature of Subversion. London: Methuen, 1981. Lamb, Richard. War in Italy 1943-45 A Brutal Story. London: Murray, 1993. John

Eleanor Chiari

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___________________________________________________________ Mully, Wilfrida Ann. The Unwanted Possession: The Origin of Monsters from a Psychoanalytic Point of View, 37-46. In Manlike Monsters on Trial Early Records and Modern Evidence, edited by Majorie Halpin and Michael Ames, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980. Rossotti, Renzo. Villarbasse Cascina Fatale. Turin: Editrice Il Punto, 2002. Solaro, Franca. Giuseppe Solaro, ultimo federale di Torino. 27 maggio 1995. Cinquantenario della tragica morte. Il ricordo di Franca. LUltima Crociata. No. 5, July 1995. <http://www.italia-rsi.org/padri-figli/padrifigli.htm> (19 July 2004). Torino 1938/45. Una guida per la memoria. Turin: Istituto Piemontese per la storia della resistenza e della societ contemporanea, 2000. Verdery, Katherine. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Postsocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Session 2 Monsters Down South and in the Big City

From Aliens to African American Creatures: Two Examples of Monsters in Ecuadorian Short Stories Wladimir Chvez V.
Abstract When the literary critics talk about Latin America , usually they focus the attention on a limited group of books. This group is usually included in an ambiguous category called Magical Realism . Therefore, writers like Garca Mrquez on the one hand, and Isabel Allende or Laura Esquivel on the other, have obtained much popularity in Europe and the United States. This has produced horrible generalizations. In fact, many literature theoreticians suppose that any supernatural event in a plot written by a Latin American author is Magical Realism without doubt. They forget that there already exist better ways to approach a novel or a story. There are many monsters in the Literature of Latin America. It is possible to find some of them in the pre-Columbian oral traditions or in the legends during the Spanish domination or even in the Literature for children and teenagers. And monsters also exist in the plots of the Contemporary Literature for adults. In Ecuador there is a pioneering book that appeared in the 90's: Profundo en la Galaxia, by Santiago Pez. In spite of the fact that it got excellent critics, the book is almost unknown abroad. Monsters of different types appear in Pezs stories, which are a strange mix between the science of the West and the Andean tradition. Another text than deserves special attention is La Tunda, a story by the Ecuadorian Adalberto Ortiz. For the first time in Ecuadorian Contemporary Literature it is possible to find a monster from the afroEcuadorian oral tradition. It is a unique creature: it seems to generate a bizarre psychological fear. At the same time, it seems to incarnate prejudices and ignorance. I am going to evaluate the monsters in Ecuadorian Literature, with special attention to the stories of Santiago Pez and Adalberto Ortiz. I would like to prove with my dissertation that in the Andean countries it is possible to write Fantastic Literature of a high level that it is not necessarily Magical Realism. Keywords Myth, science, prejudice, Ecuador, African creatures, magical realism When the literary critics in general talk about Latin America, they often focus their attention on a limited number of books. This group is usually included in an ambiguous category called Magical Realism. Therefore, writers like Garca Mrquez on the one hand, and Isabel Allende or Laura

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From Aliens to African American Creatures

___________________________________________________________ Esquivel on the other, have obtained much popularity in Europe and the United States as distinguished representatives of a literary trend. This has produced horrible generalizations. In fact, many theoreticians suppose that any supernatural event in a plot written by a Latin American author is Magical Realism without doubt. They forget that there already exist better ways to approach a novel or a story with certain supernatural traits. There are many monsters in the Literature of Latin America. It is possible to find some of them in the pre-Columbian oral traditions or in the legends during the Spanish domination or even in the Literature for children and teenagers. And monsters also exist in the plots of the Contemporary Literature for adults. In Ecuador there is a pioneering book: Profundo en la galaxia (1994) by Santiago Pez. In spite of the fact that it got excellent reviews, the book is almost unknown abroad. Monsters of different types appear in Pezs stories, which are a strange mix between the science of the West and the Andean tradition. I am going to focus on one specific plot: Yachak. Another text that deserves special attention is La entundada (1971), by the Ecuadorian Adalberto Ortiz. Maybe for the first time in Ecuadorian Contemporary Literature it is possible to find a monster from the afro-Ecuadorian oral tradition. It is a unique creature: it seems to generate a bizarre psychological fear. At the same time, it seems to incarnate prejudices and ignorance. And finally, I would like to show that in the Andean countries it is possible to write Fantastic Literature that it is not necessarily Magical Realism. 1. Magical Realism and Fantastic Literature There is an abundant bibliography concerning Magical Realism since 1960: Pietri (his opinion was published in 1948), Carpentier (1949), Flores (1955), Irby (1957), Donahue (1966), Franco (1969), Valbuena Briones (1969), Barroso VIII (1977), etc. But what is authentically the Magical Realism? The response is difficult. Juan Barroso VIII is sure that the term Magical Realism has been used in an indiscriminated way.1 Enrique Anderson Imbert agrees: What surprises is that while the historians of Art do not use it [the concept of Magical Realism] anymore, historians of Literature exaggerate its use.2 Many specialists announce that the first one who used and consolidated the concept with his works was Garca Mrquez. Others point to the Mexican Elena Garro, the Ecuadorian author Jos de la Cuadra or even to the Chilean Maria Luisa Bombal (from the beginning of the XX century).

Wladimir Chavez V.

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___________________________________________________________ There is a diversity of opinions and delimitation becomes imperious. For the present study we use the categories proposed by Enrique Anderson Imbert in the book The Magical Realism and other essays (1976). At the same time, Introduccin a la Literatura Fantstica (1972), by Tzvetan Todorov, is extremely helpful for an approach to the area of Fantastic Literature. 2. Yachak, a story of monsters in continual mutation. The term yachak designates a wise person of the Andes. A yachak consults nature, sees partially the future, diagnoses with the help of cuyes (guinea pigs) and cure illnesses. Nowadays he is still an essential authority inside the Andean communities. There is an equivalent category: the shaman. The only difference is that the shaman is the wizard of the jungle. In this short story, the old yachak Jos Snchez wakes up one night because he feels a sickness in Pachamama (the Mother Earth). The nature shows strange symptoms. His son, Lluntu, is a beginner of yachak and sleeps in the same hut. Both decide to go to the waterfall of Peguche to ask the stones for advice. A parallel story is narrated: a space ship out of control looks for a planet to land. The monsters (the crew members of the ship) are the TSKZZ, from the planet of Orkyyun: [] they were creatures in continual mutation. The voice was going out from the feet when his brain was located in one of his eight tubular extremities, or from the green bulbous body, when his mind was resting in it.3 The inhabitants of the planet of Orkyyun are owners of an advanced technology. Their space ships, for example, are a mixture of alive creatures and mechanical gadgets. Everything is accuracy and harmony on their planet. But there is something that produces a complete chaos in the society: the fear. When the inhabitants of Orkyyun are dominated by fear, everything is lost. In case of this story, the space ship is looking for a place to land. There is fear in its occupants and fear in the own ship. In fact, when the word fear is mentioned in the story, it appears in capital letters. The inhabitants of the planet of Orkyyun know that they are going to die. Meanwhile, the old Jos Snchez starts his ritual and asks for the illness of Pachamama. The nature answers with signs. Jos Snchez orders his son to go to Quebrada Negra (Black Gorge) and obtain a shining stone. Lluntu, the son, prefers not to go because at night there is a mal aire (a

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___________________________________________________________ spirit that steals the energy until the victim dies) who lives in Quebrada Negra. After the insistence of the father, Lluntu leaves. The old yachak, close to the waterfall of Peguche, protects his son, who finally obtains the stone and purifies it blowing spirit (alcohol) over it. Lluntu manages to return with the brilliant stone to his father. The yachak examines the stone and finds tiny creatures in its interior: they are the inhabitants of Orkyyun. The space ship, which has the size of a stone, has landed on the ground in Quebrada Negra. The crew and the ship are nearly dead and only the pilot has not fainted yet. -You have made my world ill - said the yachak - you have made my son ill. -Forgive us -answered the pilot, almost fainted in the room of the control panel of the ship we are not used to damage other beings, but we are sick now. We have infected your world.4 Curiously, the yachak has considered the aliens as if they were spirits and has asked them if they are from the world of heaven (angels) or from the interior world (demons). The pilot of the ship understands part of the question and answers that they come from the sky, in a way. Nevertheless, because the intruders bring illness, the yachak decides to call them demons. The yachak order them not to damage with their illness Pachamama and they are required to leave, but the pilot answers that this is impossible, that they are terribly sick: - Who are you? - asked the yachak. - A traveler - answered the demon-. And you? - A yachak, a healer. - Heal me.5 It is here that the plot gets into a critical point. A very common reason to visit a yachak and healers in the Andean countries is to ask for a cure to mal del espanto (the disease of panic). It is an illness with its own symptoms: fever, diarrhea, vomits According to popular beliefs, the illness can be caused by many factors: a furious dog that tries to attack, some unfortunate news, a fall... The patient remains terrified after any of these experiences. In fact, he/she has the disorder of the terror. A yachak treats the illness with prayers, secret words, and blowing alcohol over the infected person. Some healers use also a red tie or a strip to diagnose the illness.

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___________________________________________________________ The yachak Jos Snchez notices that the demon (the alien) and his companions have mal del espanto. He realizes the importance of his task and executes the ritual on the aliens as if they were human beings, with prayers in Quechuan (he begs the indigenous gods and the Christian God and saints) and finishes by giving a shower of spirit over his patients. At the end of the rite, the small ship has recovered its vitality, its occupants are healthy again, and together they immediately leave the Earth. So the first monster we meet comes from the alien's class. We have said that the monsters of Orkyyun are in continual mutation and that their voices can come out of any part of their body. At the same time, the history itself shows many examples of mutation, change and adjustment. When the yachak begins his ritual and ask Pachamama for its illness, what does he use during the ceremony? First, there are elements linked to the nature: obsidians, quartzes, rocks of rivers, etc. Second, there are western elements: a bayonet from the Independence War against Spain (beginnings of the XIX century), saints stamps, crucifixes, photographies, among others There are elements of two different ways of thinking. They are a miscellany that complements itself perfectly in the mind of the yachak. It is a sample of crossbreed, and the yachak prays both to the Christian God and to the deities of his forefathers. It seems to be impossible to find examples of pure characters or situations in the story. In the same way as the yachak is a product of a crossbreeding, the aliens show a complex facet of adjustment. Their machines are not pure metal. The people of Orkkyun, who come from such an advanced planet, still allow themselves to be dominated by a feeling as basic as fear. Besides, there is a paradox: the monsters with the tubular extremities do not provoke fear. It is strange. Maybe because the yachak knows that his work potentially will lead him to speak with demons. Or maybe for the tiny size of the TSKZZ. There is also the explanation of the size: if the monster is bigger, the fear increases too. In any case, these monsters are not too original aliens (in other plots the form of aliens has been characterized as a disparate mass), though they are terribly attractive for their roll in the story. Because the inhabitants of Orkkyun are monsters, they should provoke a compulsory consequence: the appearance of the fear. The monsters and fear are an entity in the plots. But in contrast to the traditional stories, in this one the monsters (tiny and in the process of dying) are also under the effects of the terror. The fear is the sensation which all the characters have to fight against: Jos Snchez, and the fear of the spirits at the waterfall of

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___________________________________________________________ Peguche; his son Lluntu, and the fear of mal aire; the wife of Lluntu, who can not understand what is going on; and the extraterrestrials, of course. In the plot the fear is the axis, but dominates the monsters in addition. The monsters bring the terror, but at the same time they experience it. The confusion between aliens and demons becomes remarkable too. For the yachak Jos Snchez, the word extraterrestrial does not mean anything. He defines the inhabitants of the planet Orkkyun by way of elimination: the intruders neither are humans, nor animals, plants, nor part of the tangible nature. So they are spirits. But since they bring illness, they cannot be good spirits. They are demons. This sort of logic works perfectly. At the same time, all that is strange could become a monster: an alien, a malignant spirit, a deformed face... We are scared of abnormality. Nobody speaks about the normal things, which are tacit. It is the rupture of normality that also attracts us. This becomes evident in La entundada. 3 La entundada The story has a witness-narrator. It is a child (his name does not appear in the plot) who lives with a female cousin (just a few years older), his uncle and his mother. The two children play together. One day, Numancia (the female cousin), who is becoming a teenager, is kidnapped by the Tunda. But, what is a Tunda? The narrator tries to explain us: The Tunda is an ignominious beast The Tunda is a ghost... The Tunda is the Patica... The Tunda is the one with one foot The Tunda is the phantasm The Tunda is the Cuco The Tunda is the soul in the sorrow of a widow The Tunda is smutty No one really knows No one knows.6 Numancia has been kidnapped by a monster who does not have a definite form. Immediately, a group is organized to go to the jungle and rescue the girl. They take dogs, provisions, weapons and clothes. The expedition walks close to the river. Nobody has seen either the Tunda or Numancia. The black women listen terrified to the details of the new apparition of the Tunda and beg their own children for prudence and care. More people join in the crusade, but although they check caves and travel a lot of time through the forest, they do not find any track. A few months later, when the search has stopped, Numancia arrives suddenly at the family house. It is night time. The cousin and his mother are sleeping in a room next to the room of Numancias father. Numancia embraces her aunt. The narrator notices that the stomach of his cousin was

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___________________________________________________________ big, sure because she was eating shrimps and small fishes,7 thought the child. Alerted by a sound, the father of Numancia appears. He looks into the eyes of his daughter with hardness. This behavior shocks the little narrator. - Where have you been? - The father asked shortly. She did not answer, but she lowered the head. No one was glad to see Numancia again [] I embraced her with happiness and asked: - Is it true that the Tunda took you? She complied with her head. - Did it harm you? She denied with her head His father continued looking at her fiercely and nastily [] He shouted her with terrible voice: -You are like your mother! Go back to your disgusting Tunda!8 The story finishes when Numancia leaves the house of her father crying. The Tunda is a mythical being from the African Ecuadorian culture. In addition to different indigenous groups, Ecuador has also a community of a black population. They are descendants of slaves, who came to the country during the Spanish domination. Black people preserve their customs, music, dances and African traditions, but with certain changes. The Tunda, for example, seems to come from a tradition of the Bantu tribe (a tribe in Africa) and of a mythical personage of this culture: the quimbungo. The goddess Oshun is also mentioned in La entundada. In Esmeraldas, the province in Ecuador where most of the black people live, everyone has heard about the Tunda. It is said that the Tunda can take any form that it likes and keep its victims in the jungle. It seems also that the Tunda prefers to adopt the appearance of a woman. It is possible to recognize the monster because one of its feet is very small and the other one is a paw of stick in the shape of a cross. When a woman is kidnapped, she can become a concubine of the monster. Some says that the Tunda feeds its hostages with shrimps (the witness-narrator of the story supposes it). Sometimes the kidnapped can flee from the jungle and return to his/her house. Then he/she becomes entundado (expression used by the African Ecuadorian; it means the person is under bewitchery of the Tunda: he/she returns stupefied, confused forever).

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___________________________________________________________ The first contrast we find is the monstrosity opposed to the innocence. There are many elements related to monsters and their consequences: the Tunda, the fear of the unknown, the fear of the loss of a dear person, the endless walk through a place full of dangers like the jungle, the mentions to the Patica (the devil), the Cuco (a sort of monster), etc. But the elements related to innocence are also important. Numancia is a girl who plays with her cousin until she was not interested anymore in our games and that made me very sad.9 She is involved into a transformation process along the plot. Step by step she becomes a beautiful teenager. Numancia was illuminated by a pretty and rare color of toffee and she was already tall enough.10 Almost at the end the child says that [she] had grown up and in her face had a new, unknown and shimmering beauty.11 Numancia surpassed the childhood and forgot the innocence as well. But what happens to Numancia does not happen to her little cousin. The narrator of the history is full of tenderness and innocence. He imagines himself talking to the owls, to the parrots, to the plants, until the adults admonish: -Mad boy - they said to me - the plants do not talk.12 What happens at the end? Why has Numancia to leave the house? When she returns she has an inflated stomach (the narrator supposes it is because the shrimps that the Tunda forced her to eat). But there is a process in which Numancia is not a child anymore. Maybe Numancia is pregnant now. One possibility is that she has been a concubine of the monster. But I have not found anything in literature saying that a concubine of the Tunda could become pregnant. On the other hand, she is not entundada (stupefied by the charm of the Tunda). It is true that she does not answer any question (she just moves the head) but it seems that the shame is the cause of her silence (once she even lowers her head, in a very explicit gesture). She insists to her cousin on the version of the Tunda, because he cannot understand the world of adults. Anyway, she says in addition that the monster did not treat her badly. If it did not treat her badly, and Numancia is not entundada, we are not talking about a monster. Numancia went away home with a lover. The father realizes of that as soon as he sees her. And he can not support that she disrespected the paternal authority. We know that there are elements of the oral tradition that support the status quo, to consolidate the power of the authority. In fact, in many parts of Ecuador there are some beliefs: to disobey a parent is punished by supernatural forces with a violent death. The children are threatened with

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___________________________________________________________ the Cuco, a monster that is going to appear in front of the disobedient kid who did not eat the soup, etc. In this case, the Tunda brings the monster of the prejudices. Numancia has left her house without saying anything to anyone, she had a lover and now is pregnant. She has suffered, she needs help, but Numancia does not have the right to return home. She is a shame for her father and for the adults. In fact, the monsters are created by the very adults, a world in opposition to the one of the narrator, crowded with innocence: No one was glad to see Numancia again. And this situation disturbed me in excess. I was filled with indignation because of the indifference of adults.13 1.3 Conclusions

The sensation of fear goes inevitably with the monsters, like the sensuality might accompany the image of the sirens in classic literature. Nevertheless there is another perspective in Yachak. In addition, the story has two basic elements: the technology and the ancestral knowledge. At first sight they would be distanced by the basic opposition of science vs. superstition, but in the plot they coexist in harmony. Santiago Pez writes about extraterrestrials and computers, at the same time as mal aire and mal del espanto. Is this short story an example of Magical Realism? No. It is a Fantastic-Marvelous story: it begins like a fantastic story, but at the end becomes a supernatural plot. With the argument of a monster that kidnaps a young woman, La entundada has some virtuous elements. One is the narrator: the story is told by a child, permeable to receive fantastic stories and unable to understand the cruel world of adulthood. And as a secondary effect, it helps us to understand the African Ecuadorian culture, its credence, and the prejudices of the entire society (not only the black community). Is La entundada a story of Magical Realism? Some notions link the Magical Realism to the mythology of indigenous groups. But The Tunda is not related to Indians, it is related to the black community (even if the Indians might have equivalent creatures). And the story does not have magical explanation. It seems to be nearer to the category identified by Todorov as Fantastic-Uncanny: the events seem supernatural in the beginning (even the adults believe in the Tunda) but finally they have a rational explanation.

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Notes
1. Barroso VIII, 1977. 9. All translations are mine. 2. Anderson Imbert, 1976, 8. 3. Pez, 1994, 10. 4. Ibid., 14-15. 5. Ibid., 15. 6. Ortiz, 1995, 119 7. Ibid., 205. 8. Ibid., 205-205. 9. Ibid., 200 10. Ibid., 199. 11. Ibid., 205. 12. Ibid., 204. 13. Ibid., 205.

Bibliography
Anderson Imbert, Enrique. (1976), El realismo mgico y otros ensayos. Caracas: Monte vila Editores. Barroso VIII, J. (1977), Realismo mgico y lo real maravilloso en El Reino de este mundo y El siglo de las luces. Miami: Ediciones Universal. Flores, A. (1985), El realismo mgico en el cuento hispanoamericano. Mxico: Premia (la red de Jons). Naranjo, M. (1996), La cultura popular en el Ecuador, Tomo IV. Cuenca: Centro Interamericano de Artesanas y Artes Populares. Quoted in Edufuturo, Cosmovisin, personajes mticos. 2004. <http://www.edufuturo.com/educacion.php?c=199> (6 April 2004). Ortiz, A. (1995), `La entundada`, in: E. Viteri (ed.) Antologa bsica del cuento ecuatoriano. Quito: Sistema Nacional de Bibliotecas. 199-207. Pez, S. (1994), Profundo en la galaxia. Quito: Abrapalabra Editores. Tzvetan, T. (1972), Introduccin a la literatura fantstica. Buenos Aires: Editorial tiempo contemporneo.

Monstrous Metropolis Inga Bryden

Abstract This paper will discuss the cultural types and meanings of `monsters' in the western city, as represented in contemporary literature and the cultural phenomenon of the urban legend. It will also consider the senses in which writers construct the city and urban experience as `monstrous'. The archetypal construction of the labyrinth (a term interchangeable with maze) has come to denote disorientation and fear: at the heart of the Cretan labyrinth was the hybrid, monstrous Minotaur which fed on human flesh. Nineteenth-century writers adapted this image to describe the industrial city labyrinthine, as in layered, alienating and `unreadable'. London 's East End is depicted as a network of `hells' (opium dens) or `webs' (gambling dens), at the centre of which lay the monstrous Other (an amalgam of urban, middle-class anxieties). Or London itself is a `strangely mingled monsterdevouring human flesh' in order to function. The paper develops this notion to consider how mythical monsters (for example, the hydra, the sphinx) are used by contemporary writers of the urban (such as Sinclair), or, drawing on cultural geography, how they might be interpreted as metaphors for the city itself. The narratives discussed articulate a desire to impose order on a perceived urban chaos; how to tame the `monster' of psychological anxiety, which cannot be mapped? The `paranoid structures of modernity' might attempt to `control' by eradicating dust/decay or through systems of surveillance (the cyclops as disembodied eye). Literary narratives also teach us to follow the red thread and `read the clues' of subterranean networks (the Underground) and hidden social connections. The paper moves from Classical myth to urban legends how do writers rework these, themselves recycled tales `full of warnings against the imaginary hazards of everyday life'? Central to urban legends are transgressive animals (feral cats, malformed pigeons, gigantic alligators) and ordinary household objects which become `instruments of domination'. If the boundaries between urban/wild, domestic/feral, human/animal are blurred, is it ultimately the city dweller who is made monstrous? Keywords Boundaries, control, labyrinth, map, maze, minotaur, monster, monstrous, Other, psychopathology, secret, thread, Underground, urban legend

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1. The City as Labyrinth The archetypal construction of the labyrinth (a term interchangeable with maze) has come to denote disorientation and fear: at the heart of the Cretan labyrinth was the hybrid, monstrous Minotaur which fed on human flesh. Taking the image of the labyrinth concealing a monster, this paper will discuss how writers have adapted this image to reveal the cultural meanings of `monsters in the contemporary city. By extension, it considers the senses in which writers construct the city, or more particularly, urban experience, as `monstrous. Related to this notion is the cultural phenomenon of the urban legend in what ways do writers respond to, or rework, urban myth? The pre-Hellenic archetype of the labyrinth implies following a single path; it is unicursal, whereas a maze implies a puzzle of interconnections, dead-ends, frustrations, and the playfulness of multiple choice. Like the Cretan labyrinth, the city is a human construction designed, in a sense, to compel continual movement. Historically, the city has been attributed with maze-like or labyrinthine qualities. As Adrian Fisher and Georg Gerster point out, early labyrinths were forts, portrayed in many cultures as walled cities which only the cogniscenti could enter.1 So the city was labyrinthine architecturally, but also in the sense of being layered and `unreadable: only if you could read the signs or clues, could you enter the city or orientate yourself around it. 2. The Nineteenth-Century Urban Space Nineteenth-century writers, as has been extensively critically acknowledged, adapted this image to describe the industrial city: labyrinthine, as in alienating and `unknowable; a repeating puzzle, concealing monstrous identities or secrets and revealing clues. The London of Dickenss Bleak House (1852-53) is famously disorientating and entrapping: Mr Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous streetBranching from this street and its heaps of ruins, are other streets and courtsthe crowdfades away up alleys and into ruins, and behind wallsand flits about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls as before.2 Londons East End in particular is depicted in such texts as a network of `hells (opium dens) or `webs (gambling dens), at the centre of which lies the monstrous Other (an amalgam of urban, middle-class anxieties). The literary construct of the metropolis as a dark, powerful,

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___________________________________________________________ and seductive labyrinth held a powerful sway over the social imagination of educated readers. It remained the dominant representation of London in the 1880s, in fiction, surveys of London poverty and sensational newspaper exposes.3 One of these newspaper exposes made an explicit link between the contemporary London underworld and the minotaur in his lair. In The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (1885) W.T. Stead drew on the myth of maidens being sent from Athens as a sacrifice - to be devoured to draw attention to the traffic in girls in Londons vice emporiums. London is transfigured as the labyrinth, and its citizens daughters are `served up nightly to the monstrous maw. As Judith Walkowitz points out, such a myth, reappropriated, was the typology of sexual danger in the city.4 Steads minotaur, like Jack the Ripper, committed anonymous, multiple sexual crimes in urban settings and both were products or purveyors of unnatural lust.5 What was perhaps most disturbing, as Peter Ackroyd suggests in his recent biography of London, was that the London Minotaur [was] moving about clad as respectably in broad cloth and fine linen as any bishop.6 Being lured into the labyrinth of the city, then, necessitated an awareness that appearances may be deceptive. How to navigate or escape, though, if there was no red thread to guide you? The figure of the flaneur a late nineteenth-century Theseus - embodied urban experience through endless strolling, avoiding, perhaps, a direct engagement with the full horror of the `monster. The flaneur has been interpreted by critics of cultural geography as an embodiment of the blend of excitement, boredom and horror evoked in the new metropolis. In other words, we might argue that the flaneur, as a shifting projection of the angst of modernity was/is the monster.7 So, the industrialising city was depicted by writers and cultural commentators as a labyrinth; it was also represented as a monster, or rather, urban experience was seen as `monstrous. Arriving in London in 1876 Henry James found that the city had become a strangely mingled monster[an] ogress who devours human flesh to keep herself alive to do her tremendous work.8 Echoes here of a female minotaur a hybrid, human-eating creature - and a reminder that the city has a primeval dimension: precisely because of its evolution over centuries, its shapeshifing abilities and its historical multi-layeredness, it has the potential to offer up monsters from the past.9 London clay, besides providing the material of London housing, has yielded evidence of sharks, wolves, crocodiles, mammoths, elephants, hippopotami, lions, buffaloes, brown bears, reindeer, giant beavers, hyenas and rhinoceri.10 Fertile ground indeed for producing monsters which haunt the imagination.

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Contemporary Writers: The Labyrinth and the Minotaur The playground of these monsters - the labyrinth - has proved extraordinarily resonant for writers of the city. Ackroyd again: this is the horror of the city. It is blind to human need and human affection, its topography cruel and almost mindless in its brutality.11 So how do contemporary writers adapt the image of the labyrinth and what is perceived as the `minotaur at its heart? The mythic dimensions of the contemporary British urban and suburban landscape fascinate Iain Sinclair. In Lights Out for the Territory: Nine Excursions in the Secret History of London, the author, accompanied by Mark Atkins the photographer, attempts to make sense of London, drifting purposefully so as to allow the fiction of an underlying pattern to reveal itself.12 In the third excursion, Bulls and Bears and Mithraic Misalignments: Weather in the City, the writer finds that surveillance is manifest in the zoned enclosure of the City proper. Trying to penetrate the Barbican Arts Complex, to get to the heart of the labyrinth, is a frustrating exercise as there was no centre.13 Sinclair maps the lanes and alleys of the City in terms of bulls and bears, revealing the baitings which left trails or scarlet tracings across the City, delineating the rituals of torture: had not the city once been measured by the distance covered by a baited bull?14 The discovery of a minotaur, Sinclair suggests, is supposed to indicate the centre of the maze. Man-animal monsters can be traced along a path that leads to the minotaur (a path which has its attendant winos and beggars). This is the red line [or red thread] that offers one of the walks through the concrete maze of the Barbican.15 The writer finally locates the minotaur the sculpture by Michael Ayrton in St Botolphs churchyard albeit off-centre, misaligned and left outside the walls. Ayrtons Minotaur is a black and greasy bullmancrouched in pain, struggling to comprehend the burden it has to bear, but only one of many hybrid forms that lurk, disguised, across the web of London: a guiltprovoking bestiary.16 Contrastingly, in Steven Sherrills The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break, the Minotaur, or M, has been transported five thousand years on and works as a line chef at Grubs Rib, North Carolina. The Prologue hints that this is the result of a shady deal done in the Labyrinth.17 M struggles to interpret human behaviour and live among humans, and in this sense the text is a study of loneliness and of how we construct `Others; how `monsters are created. Yet I would argue that the `nature of M also stands as a comment on the spread of contemporary American urbanism; indeed, there is almost a curious resonance between them. In Grubs Rib music fights with the incessant traffic outside, and both generate heat and smoke. The steps, the loading dock, the dumpster

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___________________________________________________________ gaping open like a dumb metal mouth, the pavement itself, even the weeds and bushes have a permanent layer of grease, of animal fat spilled or blown through the exhaust year after year. Everything stinks. Everything is slick and hard to hold.18 Other texts reconstruct the labyrinth in order to shift the emphasis, or perspective, on the contemporary city. This is evident in short stories by John Updike, Neil Jordan, and Graham Swift. Both Updikes and Jordans stories are set in public buildings within cities (a hospital and a public baths respectively): these can be read as microcosms of the larger urban space. In Updikes The City Carson visits yet another American city on business, but due to a mystery illness (later diagnosed as appendicitis) he spends his entire trip in hospital. The hospital is described as a labyrinth, or maze: what he saw from the window of his own room was merely the wall of another wing of the hospitaland here and there thoughtful bathrobed figures gazing outward toward the wall of which his own bathrobed figure was a part.19 Carson cannot conceive the totality and only has fractional views of the hospital/city. Moreover, like the labyrinth/city, the hospital is expanding, continually in the process of being built. Within such a disorientating context, Carson is turned inside out, metamorphosed into monstrous, gigantic shape: There materialized a host of specialists in one department of Carsons anatomy or another, so that he felt huge, like Gulliver pegged down in Lilliput for inspection.20 Whilst there is a suggestion in the story that the cause of Carsons pain is fear of the city, of the new contacts he must weld,21 the hospital is where he makes those contacts and gradually learns to reorientate himself (not with the aid of a red thread, but a spindly I.V. pole). In the far bleaker story Last Rites, it is clear that the city, in this case London, is cast as the villain, the monster responsible for `devouring the central character. Neil Jordans story describes the last visit by a young builders labourer (an Irish immigrant) to the Victorian Kensal Rise Public Baths: here, in a shower cubicle identical to all the other cubicles, the unnamed labourer commits suicide. The repeated rituals of the weekly visit to the baths, to wash off the dust and grime of the city, form a ring in the circular maze that led to the hidden purpose.22 When the hour came it was as if the secret thread behind his weeks existence was emerging into daylight.23 The rhythms of daily urban life, and the labourers involvement in literally rebuilding the city, form a cycle of boredom. After the suicide, the other bathers gaze at the body, a map of an individuals life and the life of the city: the lines on the forehead proclaimed the lessons of an acquisitive metropolis, the glazed eyes themselves demonstrating the failure, the lessons not learnt.24

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The image of the labyrinth is frequently invoked in descriptions of the `exotic, perhaps unfamiliar, city and the culture it represents. Graham Swifts Seraglio is a story about a British couple on holiday in Istanbul who have travelled in an attempt to escape their unhappiness (the husband has had an affair and the wife has had a miscarriage). Swift, via the tourist- response of the narrator and his wife, exposes the Orientalist tendency to `demonise others on the basis of received images and cultural assumptions. Istanbul is exotic and alluring, but also violent and potentially dangerous: the Bazaar itself is a labyrinth with a history of fires. People have entered, they say, and not emerged.25 Thus, the `minotaur cannot be far behind. A recent travel article describes the Tunis souk in these terms: so identical are the endless covered stalls and their wares, that to find your way out of the maze you almost feel the need to trail a piece of thread behind you as if negotiating the Minotaurs labyrinth. Nowadays a waiting minicab, the drivers business card, and a mobile phone do the job for you.26 In Swifts story the wife claims she has been interfered with in some way by a hotel porter: this precipitates recriminations on both sides and ending the holiday early.27 The physical escape route from Istanbul is by air, although the couple remain trapped in a cycle of blame and hurt: we seem to be entering a labyrinth.28 Here, the labyrinth becomes symbolic of the necessity to keep telling stories, particularly to avoid the `monstrous truth of a situation which might be painful, and also to avoid having to confront cultural differences: All stories are told, like this one, looking back at painful places which have become silhouettes, or looking forward, before you arrive, at scintillating facades which have yet to reveal their dagger thrusts, their hands in hotel bedrooms.29 Contemporary Writers: Controlling the Monstrous City The metaphor of the monster, independent of the labyrinth, also has a place within the critical tradition of writing about cities. Lewis Mumford describes the sprawling giantism30 of the modern city and argues that its evolution into a misshapen form has signalled an end to distinct boundaries (for example, between natural and urban worlds). Thus, the modern, and subsequently postmodern,urban experience is constructed as monstrous. Ackroyd acknowledges that the city has commonly been portrayed in monstrous form, a swollen and dropsical giant which kills more than it breeds.31 Other critics have appropriated 4.

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___________________________________________________________ mythical beasts in their attempts to describe what the city represents. Notably, Elizabeth Wilson has used the hybrid, riddling Sphinx (the Greek version)32 as a metaphor for the city. Subsequently, the Sphinx has come to represent urban disorder, haunting western writers on, and planners of, the city. Situated in this context, the city-narratives Im discussing can all be read as articulating a desire to impose order on a perceived urban chaos. One way of exerting some kind of control over the city space is to map it, literally and psychologically, as many of the characters in these texts do. Interestingly, it is Dracula who is credited by Iain Sinclair, in his recent account of walking around the M25 (Londons orbital motorway), as being the original psychogeographer, map fetishist.33 Draculas research into the geography of London and his plan to control the city becomes, though, a perverse mode of control, engendering further anxieties about invasion which are culturally and historically relocatable. Sinclair suggests that the impact of Stokers 1897 fiction came from the sense that it was a recurring fable of infiltration: yesterdays Undead are todays asylum seekers, the Undispersed.34 The structures of modernity might attempt to `control the monstrous, mutating city through other means: via systems of surveillance or by eradicating dust and decay. More insidiously, perhaps, it is psychological anxiety which is the `monster needing to be tamed. Social control in cities has long been about surveillance in some form, from Panopticon-style prisons and workhouses in the nineteenth century to current CCTV. The system of the eye, for the urban middle classes at least, offered control of the Other, a defence against the threat of the urban proletariat and the mysterious customs of immigrants.35 The end-point of ever-widening closed circuits of vision in contemporary city spaces is the disembodiment of the eye, what Iain Borden terms the state as cyborg36 or, I would argue, as Cyclops, a one-eyed being with an eye in its forehead to rival the greatest star.37 Even in the domestic areas of the city, demonstrated perhaps with the phenomenon of neighbourhood watch schemes, the twitch of the curtain substitutes for the firing of the shutter or the blink of an eyelid.38 In Tobias Wolffs story Next Door a repressed couple continually spy on their neighbours, perpetuating their own neuroses and constructing the sexually-active, nay animalistic, couple next-door as monstrous, incomprehensible Others: `I wake up afraidTheyre at it again.39 He is dark and hairy. Even with his shirt on you can tell that he has hair all over his back and on his shoulders, thick and springy.40 The monotony of being trapped, in surburbia and in this cycle of surveillance, is the true horror: Its awful, what we get used to.41

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The narrator who muses on this is obsessed with keeping the house clean and tidy and this desire to `control by eradicating dust, waste and decay is another means by which the `monstrous city can be subjugated. Neurosis about the dust and decay generated by the city and hidden in its dark depths is symbolically evident in many city-narratives. As Georges Bataille observes, once the layers of dust that `invade our territorial abodes have won `there will be nothing more to save us from nightmares.42 The connections between filth, dust and darkness hint at the citys concealment of secrets, and the anxiety surrounding that concealment. In one sense literary narratives teach us to follow the `red thread in this dark labyrinth and `read the clues of subterranean urban networks, such as the Underground. Furthermore, superstitious fear of the dark depths engenders urban legends the spaces beneath the city as a breeding ground for giant rats. Literary narratives also help the reader to decipher secret social connections at work which make the city ultimately systematic and so narratable.43 A number of contemporary texts see underground train networks as representing both the potential for social connections and learning about ourselves and others, and fear of the unknown. Geoff Rymans 253 (1998), which started as an interactive novel on the Web, gives us imaginary portraits of 252 passengers, plus the driver, travelling on a Bakerloo-line tube train in the London underground, on January 11 1995. We learn tantalising details of each of the characters lives, starting to make connections and spin a social web. That is, until the section at the end of the novel, The End of the Line, describes the effects of a crash on each car of the train, pandering to, and parodying, the paradoxical desire to witness monstrous events: Sensation and violence at last! Discover the horrible end of the carriage of your choice!!!44 In Banana Yoshimotos short story Newlywed, the car of an underground train is a meeting place between the young male narrator, commuting from city to suburban home, discontent with his monotonous life, and a smelly, tramp-like stranger, who metamorphoses into a beautiful young woman, a being who is `at home in the whole of the city: `I just ride around and observe. To me, trains are like a straight line with no end.45 The narrator muses Who was this being, anyway? And there I was, surrounded by the darkness, being carried farther and farther from my home. He senses the danger of getting too close to something much larger than myself; possibly a fear of insignificance. Like a wild animal would when confronted by a larger beast, I felt the urge to flee for my life.46 Interestingly, Yoshimotos story was first serialised on posters aboard Tokyos Higashi Nippon Railway commuter trains.

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___________________________________________________________ Travelling across the city by train can also reveal a landscape of ghosts; particular buildings reminding the viewer of secret histories, of the citys potentially monstrous past. The narrator of Julian Barness novel Metroland (1990) is fascinated by the train journey over a viaduct system at Kilburn, an area of London: cross-hatched streets of tall, run-down Victorian terracesA huge, regular, red-brick Victorian building stood in the middle: a monster school, infirmary, lunatic asylum I never knew, nor wanted that sort of precisionOn a late afternoon in winterit was melancholy and frightening, the haunt of acid-bath murderers.[my italics]47 Perhaps, then, the `monster needing to be tamed is not the city itself, but the psychological anxiety and imagined nightmares engendered by the city, which are absent from `conventional maps.48 The modern `metropolis was the locus of new spatial constructions and imaginary fear. It carried the stigmas attached to the nineteenth-century city, but also became the territory of phobias: neurasthenia, hysteria, agoraphobia, and claustrophobia.49 In this sense the turbulent metropolis might be termed, in Wilsons words, a transgressive space. It is an agoraphobic, giddy space, productive of hysteria, terror. The image of the labyrinth conceals this other way of experiencing the threat of urban space as too open, causing whomsoever ventures into it to become totally destabilised. Agoraphobic space tempts the individual who staggers across it to do anything and everything commit a crime, become a prostitute.50 Frank Moorhouses story The New York Bell Captain might well be termed a study in the psychopathology of space. The narrator, Francois Blase (a nom de voyage), is staying in the old Times Square Hotel in New York. He is seemingly obsessed about the notion that the hotel bell captain is stealing cans of Heineken from his room, and about whether he is tipping correctly. He imagines that there is a conspiracy amongst the hotel staff and that they are monitoring him; revealing his own fear of surveillance. The space outside of the hotel, that is, the city (where the narrator never ventures) becomes `monstrous in his mind: Already New York is dehumanising me.51 The first-person narrative betrays traveller paranoia,52 a fear of not `fitting in or comprehending US culture, as well as a fear of New York Sleight of Hand.53 Perhaps I should pull my hands into my sleeves and let New York help itself

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Francois Blase wonders.54 Indeed, the city is perceived in terms of an uncontrollable, threatening mass the streets of New York are full of muggers. This resonates with modernist discourse, in which the crowd, with its own mode of being, is a metonym for the city.55 The story ends by proposing that the mind, rather than the city, is a labyrinth: Maybe, for all they know, I am exploring the inner spaces of my mind, the subterranean caves of my personality56 Aggression and antagonism are often cited as inescapable features of civic urban life, and a key figure in urban culture is the stranger, whose appearance threatens the existing order and sharpens the identity of the established resident in a paranoid fashion. In this sense the figure of the stranger evokes the fear also expressed in fear of the crowd.57 In Beverley Farmers story A Man in the Laundrette, the stranger in an unknown city is constructed as monstrous. The female character, an Australian visitor to an American city, takes a trip to the laundrette in the neighbourhood, in an effort to explore and be accepted. Instead, she is intimidated in the laundrette by an abusive, drunk, sexually aggressive male. The narrative hints that her lack of streetwise knowledge, her inability to read the codes of the city, might be to blame: `You didnt handle him right.58 Yet there is a more sinister prospect too: the controlling boyfriend whose apartment she is staying in blames her outright for leading the stranger on. The boyfriend is described as presenting a dark profile59 and the woman is afraid of disturbing him in his study/lair: the monster is brooding at home, after all. Linking disorientation to phobias, which themselves render the urban space monstrous, is a recurring feature of writing about the city. Will Selfs essay Big Dome describes his evolving relationship with London, from growing up in the suburbs to living in Vauxhall, as characterised by disorientation, and an accumulation of narratives, or memoirs. I inhabit a city [Self writes] within which, no matter where I look, or in which direction I turn, I still find myself hideously oriented. I suffer from a kind of claustro-agoraphobia, if such a thing is possible. I fear going outside in London because it is so cramped and confining.60 The city: grinds and pulses and pullulates with a crazed sense of its own polymorphous perversity, its fanatical ability to construct stories out of its rooms and its streetsits cars and its discarded fag packets. Any object the eye pursues becomes a story, another track scored in time. Any person is a potential Medusa, Gorgon-headed with writhing, serpentine tales.[my italics]61

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___________________________________________________________ Here, both the city and its inhabitants are monstrous, existing in a labyrinth of perpetual storytelling. Indeed, Self recalls that in his earlier attempts to write the city, it becomes a growing, mutating thinga brooding, potentially violent presence.62 Surely in these descriptions the city takes the form of the Hydra: self-renewing, multiple human-headed and polluting.63 It is evident, then, that the literary imagination reveals the `urban uncanny. As Richard Lehan argues, As the modern city became more impenetrable, the hidden as something hostile and `unhomely (Unheimlichkeit) informed the literary text.64 The uncanny is born out of heterogeneous crowdsout of the city: encounters with strangers; the familiar becoming strange, and the primitive returning as superstition.65 The sense of endless possibilities which the city offers threatens stability and can lead to paranoia. This is symbolised in the restless dissatisfaction of the flaneur (of the writer him/herself), both urban observer and detective. Yet perhaps only the figure of the detective/writer is able to cut through the chaos and fathom the labyrinth. Urban Legends The notion that the primitive might return as superstition is exemplified in the cultural phenomenon of the urban legend, recycled tales full of warnings against the imaginary hazards of everyday life.66 How do contemporary writers rework these oral narratives? Central to urban legends are the car, symbol of modern urban culture; transgressive animals, usually familiar and recognisable, which swell to a gigantic size or become mutants (feral cats, malformed pigeons, gigantic alligators), and ordinary household objects which take on an alarming agency. Animals Probably the most durable urban myth in the history of cities67 is the one about alligators living in the sewers of New York. Around at least since the 1930s, the myth has spawned a cultural industry, the monstrous made material in the form of cartoons, art, films, childrens books, films, and emblazoned T-shirts. In these narratives unruly nature re-emerges as an urban phenomenon, blurring the boundary between the domesticated and the feral. Even in the familiar landscape of the residential urban, we learn that danger is just over the fence. Every nextdoor neighbours dog could reassert the boundaries of their species at any moment.68 The monstrous bestiality of urban pets is a topic of interest for the self-professed flaneur, Iain Sinclair. In The Dog and the Dish Sinclair 6. 5.

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observes everybody has their favourite pit bull story; yarns that pull the community together, like V2 myths in wartime and he cites the press headline `Crazed Devil Dog Thrown Off Balcony by way of example.69 In folklore, sightings of dogs are often warnings, and Sinclair remythologises the urban landscape via the dog. A pair of pit-bulls becomes a Cerberus monster advancing towards you, two heads on a single trunk.70 Why, in this period of the citys evolution, has the pit-bull become a totemic animal, symbolising, indeed embodying, the hate and greed of the city? Sinclair argues that by granting pit bulls a franchise to haunt us,71 we have created a monster that can be sold to the world.72 They will populate our urban myths until we can invent a worse toy.73 Cultural critics of the city have also focused on cats and birds in their discussions of the phenomenon of the urban hybrid. When the domestic cat goes through the flap, it returns to a city increasingly populated by transgressive [hybrid] animals, notes David Sibley. 74 Moreover, the city breeds its own creatures, such as feral, malformed pigeons who forget the species boundary, blurring animal and human.75 As Ackroyd argues, it is also possible that a peculiarly London type of animal is produced by urban conditions.76 This is what, perhaps, feeds the parallel logic of the city those old stories about concrete jungles, unknown dangers, irrepressible but hidden nature(s) lurking in the shadows of urban experience.77 It wouldnt matter if no-one had actually seen a fox in the city; what signifies is that everyone `knows there are foxes in the neighbourhood.78 Ordinary household objects In the neighbourhoods, in urban and suburban spaces, ordinary household objects lie in wait. In the urban legend, the domestic is constructed as a site of fear and anxiety, and familiar objects have the potential to take on a monstrous agency. For example, in Home (1), a creative montage by Adrian Passmore, the defining objects of the modern home are transformed into instruments of domination.79 `16, Ford Avenue: Instruments of domination: microwave, blender, whip, mower, chip fryer, electric blanket, unfurled belt, hi-fi, patio, alarm clock, children, pressure cooker, bills, duster, scalextric, flower border, lawn, telephone number, remote control.`Plot 3, Somewhere Close: You can have fun inviting friends around and cooking them exotic dinnersYou can match the wallpaper and the curtains. You can put a fine car on the drive. 7.

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___________________________________________________________ Alternatively you can invite your neighbours for dinner, but slaughter them in the double garage and bury them under a new patio with integral conservatory just a thought. Recent writing on the city has taken into account the discovery of the `darker side of the suburb. In the new myth, suburban couples take part in wife-swapping parties. Bored suburban housewives become part-time sex workers. The suburb is the haunt of the paedophile, even the mass murderer. Terrorists hide out there.80 Ron Carlsons extremely short story, Reading the Paper, plays on these fears: All I want to do is read the paper the narrator tells us when someone comes to the back door. Its that guy in the paper who escaped from the prison yesterday. He wants to know if he can come in and rape me and cut me up a little bit. Well, after he does that, my coffees cold, so I pour a new cup Then Brother Douglas arrives looking a little more blue [from caustic poison-emitting bricks in his house]His left eye is a little worse, bulging more and glowing more often these days.81 The narrators family (except her son Timmy) have been killed the previous night, run over in a movie line by a drunken driver. Timmy leaves for school and his screaming indicates that hes being dragged by a stranger into a late model datsun, light brown, the kind of truck Duke, bless his soul, always thought was silly.82 When Brother Douglas arrives in his blue Scout the narrator sees two greasers backing Dukes new T-bird out the sidelawnthat car was always the prettiest turquoise in the world. I stir a little more Cremora into my coffee83 Carlsons satire appropriates urban legends which express the urban dwellers fascination for, and revulsion from, car crashes and those whose human protagonists are freaks. What is monstrous in this glimpse into ordinary suburban life is the speakers seeming indifference to (or imagined) horrific events as she worries more about the performance of various consumer products (the Cremora which wont dissolve properly in her coffee; the washing powder which wont remove bloodstains). 8. Conclusion This paper has explored how writers have re-imagined the cityas-labyrinth and considered what forms the minotaur might take if it inhabited the dark corners of the contemporary urban space. The narratives, shaped by wider cultural discourses of cleanliness and control, explore dualities and blur boundaries between order and chaos; urban and wilderness; domestic and feral; human and animal, and human and

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machine. Even within the city, writes Jonathan Raban in a recent travel article, nature is engaged in a perpetual guerrilla warfare against culture.84 If boundaries are blurred, is it ultimately the city dweller who is made monstrous? The city is a sign of collective, ordered humanity, but, argues Gargi Bhattacharyya, it also increases the animality of modernity precisely because its inhabitants are individualised, anonymous, and selfcentred.85 Ackroyd goes further: The deranged Londoneris an animalThe city itself becomes a vast zoo in which all of the cages have been unlocked.86 This ignores debates about civic identity, cultural practices of collectivity, and the city as symbol of aspiration; a crucible of creativity. What does endure, though, is the labyrinth through which these `escaped creatures roam. The labyrinth, as city, cannot be conceived in its entirety and is perpetually mutating.

Notes
Adrian Fisher and Georg Gerster, The Art of the Maze (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990), 16. 2 New Oxford Illustrated Dickens (London: 1948-58), 22, 310-11. 3 Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight (London: Virago, 1992), 17. 4 Ibid, 97-98. 5 Ibid, 131. 6 Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography (London: Vintage, 2001), 584. 7 Elizabeth Wilson, The Invisible Flaneur, in The Contradictions of Culture: Cities, Culture, Women, ed. Elizabeth Wilson (London: Sage, 2001), 87. 8 Henry James, London, in Essays in London and Elsewhere (London: 1893). 9 New Oxford Illustrated Dickens, 1, 1. 10 Ackroyd, 9. 11 Ibid, 584-85. 12 Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory (London: Granta, 1997), 4. 13 Ibid, 106. 14 Ibid, 107. 15 Ibid, 112. 16 Ibid. 17 For a description of the Minotaur and explanation of the myth see Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings (London: Vintage, 2002), 100-101.
1

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___________________________________________________________ Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2003), 4. 19 John Updike, The City, in The Penguin Book of the City, ed. Robert Drewe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997), 25. 20 Ibid, 22. 21 Ibid, 9. 22 Neil Jordan, Last Rites, in Drewe, ed., 58. 23 Ibid, 57. 24 Ibid, 61. 25 Graham Swift, Seraglio, in Drewe, ed., 153. 26 Felice Hardy, Hannibal Lecture, The Guardian: Travel, 10 April 2004. 27 Swift, in Drewe, ed., 157. 28 Ibid, 164. 29 Ibid, 165. 30 Lewis Mumford, The City in History (Harmondsworth, Penguin: 1960), 619. 31 Ackroyd, 1. 32 Borges, 134-35. 33 Iain Sinclair, London Orbital (London: Penguin, 2003), 488. 34 Ibid, 486. 35 Iain Borden, CCTV, in City A-Z, eds Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift (London: Routledge, 2000), 35. 36 Ibid, 36. 37 Borges, 111-112. 38 Borden, in Pile and Thrift, eds, 36. 39 Tobias Wolff, Next Door, in Drewe, ed., 92. 40 Ibid, 94. 41 Ibid, 98. 42 Georges Bataille, Ouevre completes de Georges Bataille, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 197, quoted in Alastair Bonnett, Dust (1), in Pile and Thrift, eds, 62.
43
44 18

James Donald, Detectives, in Pile and Thrift, eds, 57.

Geoff Ryman, 253 (London: Flamingo, 1998), 343. 45 Banana Yoshimoto, Newlywed, in Drewe, ed., 41. 46 Ibid, 42. 47 Julian Barnes, Metroland (London: Picador, 1990), 60. 48 Harvey Molotch, Maps (2), in Pile and Thrift, eds, 144.

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See Antony Vidler, Bodies in Space/Subjects in the City, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies (Fall, 1993), quoted in The Blackwell City Reader, eds Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 47. 50 Wilson, 88. 51 Frank Moorhouse, The New York Bell Captain, in Drewe, ed., 168. 52 Ibid, 175. 53 Ibid, 173. 54 Ibid, 169. 55 See Richard Lehan, The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 72-74. 56 Moorhouse, in Drewe, ed, 177. 57 Kevin Robins, Collective Emotion and Urban Culture, in Managing Cities: The New Urban Context, eds P. Healey et al (Chichester: John Wiley, 1995), quoted in Elizabeth Wilson, The Contradictions of Culture: Cities, Culture, Women (London: Sage, 2001), 70. 58 Beverley Farmer, A Man in the Laundrette, in Drewe, ed., 148. 59 Ibid, 138. 60 Will Self, Big Dome, in London: The Lives of the City, Granta 65, Spring 1999, 117. 61 Ibid, 118-19. 62 Ibid, 123. 63 Borges, 82-83. 64 Lehan, 74. 65 Ibid. See Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1992). 66 Jan Harold Brunvand, Too Good to be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends (London and New York: Norton, 1999),158. 67 Brunvand, 182. 68 Gargi Bhattacharyya, Animals, in Pile and Thrift, eds, 12. 69 Sinclair, Lights Out, 56. 70 Ibid, 58. 71 Ibid, 60. 72 Ibid, 59. 73 Ibid, 60. 74 David Sibley, Cats, in Pile and Thrift, eds, 34. 75 Steve Hinchliffe, Pigeons, in Pile and Thrift, eds, 179-182. 76 Ackroyd, 418. 77 Bhattacharyya, in Pile and Thrift, eds, 12.

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___________________________________________________________
78

Elizabeth Wilson, Dogs in Space, in The Contradictions of Culture: Cities, Culture, Women (London: Sage, 2001), 129. 79 Adrian Passmore, Home (1), in Pile and Thrift, eds, 107.

Elizabeth Wilson, Writing the Romance of the Suburbs, in The Contradictions of Culture: Cities, Culture, Women (London: Sage, 2001), 111.
81 82

80

Ron Carlson, Reading the Paper, in Drewe, ed., 48. Ibid, 47. 83 Ibid, 48. 84 Jonathan Raban, Light Fantastic, The Independent on Sunday: Time Off, 28 March 2004, 1. 85 Bhattacharyya, in Pile and Thrift, eds, 12. 86 Ackroyd, 422.

Bibliography
Ackroyd, Peter. London: The Biography. London: Vintage, 2001. Barnes, Julian. Metroland. London: Picador, 1990. Borges, Jorge Luis. The Book of Imaginary Beings. London: Vintage, 2002. Bridge, Gary and Watson, Sophie, eds. The Blackwell City Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Brunvand, Jan Harold. Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends. London and New York: Norton, 1999. Dickens, Charles. Bleak House (1852-53). New Oxford Illustrated Dickens. 21 vols. London, 1948-58. Drewe, Robert., ed. The Penguin Book of the City. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997. Fisher, Adrian and Gerster, Georg. The Art of the Maze. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990. James, Henry. Essays in London and Elsewhere. London: 1893.

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Lehan, Richard. The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Mumford, Lewis. The City in History. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960. Ryman, Geoff. 253. London: Flamingo, 1998. Sinclair, Iain. Lights Out for the Territory: Nine Excursions in the Secret History of London. London: Granta, 1997. Sinclair, Iain. London Orbital. London: Penguin, 2003. Pile, Steve and Thrift, Nigel, eds. City A-Z. London: Routledge, 2000. Self, Will. Big Dome. London: The Lives of the City, Granta 65. Spring 1999. 117-125. Sherrill, Steven. The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2003. Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1992. Walkowitz, Judith. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London. London: Virago, 1992. Wilson, Elizabeth. The Contradictions of Culture: Cities, Culture, Women. London: Sage, 2001.

Session 3 Monsters Hopeful and Friendly

New Territories: Architecture and the Hopeful Monster Chris L. Smith

Abstract The monster I am concerned for is of the hopeful' variety and it (re)emerges in philosophy at the juncture between the work of Gilles Deleuze and David Hume. Desiring to sire a monstrous offspring, Deleuze takes Hume ' s work and poses the problem; how is a subject constituted? Subjectivity, according to both Deleuze and Hume, is a habit and a fiction, but this is not to suggest that the expression of subjectivity should be disregarded. Rather, this subjectivity need be considered in terms of its acts and its margins . For them, nothing happens at the centre; there is no core of identity, but rather dispersed processes configure at the margins of self: The margins which bring it into proximity with the monstrous. The paper is concerned with one hopeful monster and three primary texts. Two texts from two disciplines are explored; Richard Goldschmidt's The Material Basis of Evolution (1932) and Marco Frascari's Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory (1991). I am concerned with the textual construction of the hopeful monster' in each text and for the monstrous acts they signify. Goldschmidt is interested in the monster as a biological subject that allows him to attack Darwin's theory of natural selection. Frascari ' s fetish for the monster relates to what he describes as the excrescences and orifices of architectural design and the monstrous subject is deployed specifically against the architecture of humanism. A third text, Deleuze's Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume's Theory of Human Nature (1953) is functional. This text provides the primary concepts through which the assemblages of the previous two are explored; through which the new and interdisciplinary territories of the monster are carved. Keywords Anthropomorphism, architectural theory, Gilles Deleuze, Marco Frascari The work of Deleuze is valuable in re-configuring a theoretical process to investigate the alternate potentials of subjectivity; of dealing with what Rosi Briadotti calls "the living process of the transformation of the self".1 Deleuze and Guattari call into question the interaction between selves as occurrences and the forces through which they are actualized. There is, in their work, a privileging an affective scope of philosophy that is inclined to be in conflict with the logics of Reason and a valuing of intensity of

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___________________________________________________________ thought over any notion of rightness of thought. According to Briadotti, for Deleuze thought is "a way of establishing concrete material and semiotic connections among subjects that are conceived in terms of a multiplicity of impersonal forces".2 The monster will be discussed primarily because it is bound up in the ongoing processes of constructing subjectivity and because such a fictional body signifies an anxious assemblage of diagrams and representations; concrete material and semiotic connections.3 I am concerned with the configuration of these assemblages, and the potential disruptions that such assemblages may cause disciplines. The monster of immediate concern is of the hopeful variety and (re)emerges at the juncture between the work of Deleuze and David Hume. Desiring to sire a monstrous offspring, Deleuze takes Hume's work and poses the problem of; how a subject is constituted from that which is given?4 Subjectivity, according to both Deleuze and Hume, is a habit and a fiction, but this is not to suggest that the expression of subjectivity should be disregarded. Rather, this subjectivity need be considered not only in terms of occurrence but in terms of the forces which condition its deployment. For them, nothing is essential and there is no nucleus of identity but rather dispersed processes configure at the margins of self: The margins which expose it to the monstrous. The paper is concerned with one hopeful monster and two primary texts. The first is Marco Frascaris Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory (1991). I am concerned with the textual construction of the monster in the text and for the monstrous acts it signifies. Frascari's fetish for the monster relates to what he describes as the excrescences and orifices of architectural design and the monstrous subject is deployed against the architecture of humanism. The second text, Deleuzes Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Humes Theory of Human Nature (1953) is functional.5 This text provides a number of concepts through which the assemblages of the other are explored, through which new territory is carved. 1. The monster and the normal man of architecture Deleuze not only expands Hume's notion of the self by celebrating its construction, but approaches the history of philosophy in general by way of a gesture, which he describes in terms of an act of unrequited sodomy.6 Through this derisive and violent act, Deleuze imagines the philosopher with whom he becomes so conjoined conceiving a monstrous offspring:

Chris L. Smith My way of getting out of it at the time was, I really think, to conceive of the history of philosophy as a kind of buggery or, what comes to the same thing, immaculate conception. I imagined myself getting onto the back of an author, and giving him a child, which would be his and which would at the same time be a monster. It is very important that it should be his child, because the author actually had to say everything that I made him say. But it also had to be a monster because it was necessary to go through all kinds of decentrings, slips, break ins, secret emissions.7

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The monstrous offspring of the study of subjectivity belongs to both Deleuze and Hume and to neither. It belongs to both to the extent that Deleuzes writing of Hume certainly allows him to articulate a number of the key points of Hume and then to incorporate and advance them himself. It belongs to neither to the extent that in working with Hume; Deleuze is producing that which is of ambiguous origin (immaculate in some senses). It is by way of this ambiguity that Deleuze is able to advance Hume's project of exploration of how the subject is constituted from that which is given.8 He utilizes the idea of the given as an account of how the subject is formed, but is not content to solely rely on the given. This is substantiated in multiple passages throughout Difference and Repetition, where Deleuze remarks that we must explain the given itself: "Difference is not diversity. Diversity is given, but difference is that through which the given is given as diverse".9 Much of the discourse of the monster centres on the construction of difference, both conceptually and methodologically. The monster is the sign of difference, and on this count Deleuze and Foucault agree: "Thought 'makes' difference, but difference is monstrous".10 The monster disrupts the hegemony of similarity and the same; it is a speciation event that disturbs expectations, proceeds at a marvellous speed and importantly it transgresses boundaries. The monster is also valuable in that it makes smooth space of given fatherlands and mother-tongues. When Frankenstein's monster realises his difference from humans, he is most appalled by the fact that he does not belong to either the place or the language of others: "When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me".11 If the body defined by Foucault is the site of the materialisation of discourse, where tortuous practices are the sign of law and power, then the body of a hopeful monster creates its own sites and its own inscriptions.12 Throughout the work of Deleuze (and with Guattari) there is an absorption with the problem of how fields of sensibility, with their own

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___________________________________________________________ assemblages of givens, may be constituted. The account of actualization, the passage from the virtual to the actual and the focus on immanent connections made between one 'body' and an Other, make the notions of subjectivity extended from Hume a wonderfully transgressive monstrous offspring. With any consideration of the body of architecture the given tends to be the classical Vitruvian figure, iconised in Da Vincis sketch of human proportion superimposed with Euclidean geometry. This dialectical image operates as an emblematic origin for any discussion of the architectural body and as with all origins it remains difficult to escape. There is no lack of will on the part of architects and architectural theorists to depose the Vitruvian normal man of architecture. The motivation behind the deposition is based on the figures inherent link with anthropocentric humanism and mimesis. The will to depose the normal man of architecture is, however, no measure of the success of any deposition. The discourse of architectural figurality has consumed itself with an attack on the individual constructs that serve as signs to the existence of the line of genealogical descent: It is the normal (and normally Vitruvian) body that contemporary theorisations have chosen as the site upon which to inscribe their denunciation rather than the genealogy that the body signifies. The architectural discourse of the body would appear, even in Frascaris text Monsters of Architecture, to depart from behind the given normal man. The monster as conceptual persona The text Monsters of Architecture does stand adjacent to much of the contemporary discourse concerning the architectural body. The evocation, however, of the concept of monster in Frascaris text is as evasive as the monster itself. In Monsters of Architecture, Frascari claims that an anthropomorphic method is inherent to the production of architecture. He posits that this given corporeal presence is initiated at the stage of conception and developed through the practice of architectural drawing. For Frascari, this corporeality must yield an imaginative and meaningful subject-image that results from the coalescence of sensation, representation and perception.13 His account of architecture opens itself to new means of thinking about the interaction of bodies, and he assembles a monster as a conceptual persona from which to create and construe the objects of architecture. The monster momentarily transgresses the force of Frascaris text in select small textual morsels (phrases, sentences, paragraphs), such as that relating to the grotesque body: 2.

Chris L. Smith The grotesque body is a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, continually created; and it is the principle of others bodies. The logic of the grotesque image ignores the smooth and impenetrable surface of the neoclassical bodies, and magnifies only excrescences and orifices, which lead into the bodies depths. The outward and inward details are merged. Moreover, the grotesque body swallows and is swallowed by the world. This takes place in the openings and the boundaries, and the beginning and end are closely linked and interwoven.14

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It is lamentable that the occurrence of the monster, ripe with the potential of what Deleuze calls decentrings, slips, break ins, secret emissions and Frascari calls excrescences and orifices is not allowed the concrete material and semiotic connections to which it aspires because of the forces to which it is subjected. It is suggested that Frascaris monster of architecture is for the main part little more than a pathological test of the normativity of Vitruvian man. Though, for Frascari, the grotesque body swallows and is swallowed by the world, this monster of architecture is substantially underfed.15 The consuming phenomenology of Monsters of Architecture exposes the monster (however fertile in the textual morsel) to the contemporary preoccupation of affirming the health of Vitruvian figurality. It is the transgressive potential of the monster that is in question: The folding of beginnings and ends into the phenomenological body construct is the loss of transgression in an ambiguous unity of bodily being and subjectivity.16 The hopeful monster is not that which exists in-between but, as transgressor, is connection. That the monster within this text is not a monster of this text is explored by the extraction of the concepts monster and metonym from the theoretical threat that the text of Frascari itself represents to the key concepts. 3. Mimesis, metonym and monster When the genealogy of the Vitruvian man is referenced, it is the consuming and persistent mimetic which is maintained between body and architecture that is fundamental. The analogical force is the line of descent, the genotype, of the Vitruvian men.17 As the mimetic is reliant upon a teleological construction it is intrinsically anthropocentric. In an architectural visitation of the deliberation between freeplay and history described by Derrida, Peter Eisenman asserts that;

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New Territories [t]his mimetic condition (that is, architecture as metaphoric representations), despite continuous stylistic changes, remained constant for four hundred years. Then, in the late nineteenth century, with the advent of mass technology and the development of the relativistic human sciences- biology, sociology, psychology, and anthropology- man could no longer maintain his anthropocentric focus or take for granted his centric position and, correspondingly, the naturalness of his social organisations.18

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The distinction that is made within Monsters of Architecture from the mimetic understanding of the architecture-body relation is to an understanding of architecture as metonymic of body; an embodiment. The potential of the concept to desecrate the Vitruvian genealogy is rich. The removal of the ocular space which exists between the body and its exterior represents a deletion of geometric intercession and a possible resolution of dualism. Here, is a potential for the body to constitute its own norms in relational discourse via the tool of metonym, without the normativity implicit to anthropomorphic forms of figurality. This would be the case, were it not for Frascaris own reconstruction of the metonym directly within the idiom of anthropomorphism. The discursive legacy of Merleau-Ponty, employed toward a profound resolution of Cartesian dualisms within Frascaris text, severely curtails the potential of the concepts.19 The theoretical operative of the text relies on two criteria that consistently deliver the concepts of metonym and monster back to mimesis and figurality: The intentionality of the phenomenological model and lack of a real external to perception, confounds the potential of monster and metonym alike. Intentionality refers, to the non-diagrammatic projective or teleological drive. For Merleau-Ponty intentionality refers to directedness or significance: It is intentional, which means that it does not rest in itself as a thing, but that it is directed and has significance beyond itself.20 In Phenomenology of Perception (1945), he defines intentionality in broader terms as "the same demand for awareness and the same will to seize the meaning of the world as that meaning comes into being".21 For the monster, the denial of significance in itself and the will to seize meaning suggest it cannot exist as difference in itself. The absence of a real external suggests reliance upon internal essence or what Deleuze (and Guattari) refer to as the subject-thought with which phenomenology concerns itself.22 Merleau-Ponty argues that seeing as a corporal outcome inevitably precedes perception as an interior

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___________________________________________________________ process.23 According to him, since immanence always comes from an outside, no rigorous examination of the thing in itself will illuminate it. In view of the detail that immanence is already internal to the thing from the instant of its origin, no quantity of inspection of external conditions (social, cultural, economic, authorial) will bring us any closer to understanding it. Frascari intimates that the representational space of the architectural image is the space of remote mental inhabitation and differs from the physical space of the body and can only be conceptualised through the analogical projection of synaesthesia.24 This anthropocentric approach attempts to interiorize the visceral and tactile material dimensions of the building in order to engage the bodily senses as though one were actually physically situated within the spaces of the projected design (what one may have regarded as an exterior multiplicity). The metonymic relation with the potential to rid the body of the illusions of anthropocentrism, and to externalize self as multiplicity is instead engaged internally as a trope. According to Frascari; [t]he role of radical anthropomorphism is to introduce another fertile procedure for the making of architecture. The trope principally used in anthropomorphism is metonymy, a unity of contrasting elements that forms a conventional sequence through which sense is displaced or deferred.25 To conceive of an anthropomorphism devoid of sense, (that which can be presumed to be consciousness), is not the presentation of an embodiment devoid of the stability and unity that consciousness presupposes which would consequent a liberation of the concept from anthropomorphic normativity. The displacement of sense that Frascari suggests is the deferral to a pre-objective primordial relationship we have to our bodies and the world, a coherence that anthropomorphic intentionality presupposes.26 For Merleau-Ponty, the self is constructed in terms of the cogito.27 Although Merleau-Pontys use of cogito differs fundamentally from that of Descartes, it is no less destructive. Consciousness, for him, is not Cartesian mental matter balanced with, or "contained" in that which is physical. Rather, Merleau-Ponty proposes human existence in terms of the "lived-body" (le corps propre), that is intended to denote a body as it is lived and, unlike a Cartesian material object, the lived-body is a "pre-objective" concrete unity of interdependent physical and psychological characteristics.28 The lived-body is a unity of thought-in-act. It is an organization of powers for interpreting and internalizing the world. In this sense, though the cogito is translated as "I

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___________________________________________________________ can" rather than "I think" it remains I; an expression of anthropocentric unity. The phenomenological character that Frascaris text assigns the metonym and the monster removes from that monster its potential to transgress: The monster is contained as external pathology measured against the unitary, stable anthropoid. Conclusions Frascari posits that the locality of myth within architecture requires an embodiment; an embodiment as monster. Proposing that the secularisation of myth within architecture, the demythization of the Enlightenment, removed from architecture a significant plane of architectural understanding, Frascari suggests a reanalysis of the relationship between function and representation that stems from 18th Century expositions.29 This is a search, not for a removal of the superfluous dualistic list Frascari reconstructs from the narrative of architecture, but for the embodiment of the chiasma, the between ground or gap between the signifier and the signified in the form of the monster.30 For Frascari; [t]he embodiment of myth in architecture serves to reduce the absolutism of reality, creating a breathing space, making a symbolic niche that protects the human animal symbolicus from the fundamental anxiety activated by the relationship between his biological nature and the natural environment.31 It is as embodiment that the monster functions as a relief of the anxiety or lack of confidence that exists between a human (animal symbolicus) as a fixed identity and its exterior. Of concern, is that the monster is merely pathology to a normal man in that the breathing space created is not a transgression where the space is assembled between an established state and a new norm. The monster in the theoretical encastement of phenomenology remains an assertion of the stability of the anthropomorph; swallowed as a test of the health of normal men.32 The presence, in the textual morsel, of a logic of the grotesque image [that] ignores the smooth and impenetrable surface of the neoclassical bodies, and magnifies only excrescences and orifices33 is compromised in locating the monster firmly between normal men and perceptions. Though the image of the monster may be constructed as an armouring of the body of normal men within Frascaris Monsters of Architecture, this does not discount the assertion that the image ignores, and for this we can be hopeful. 4.

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Notes
Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 100. 2 Briadotti, 111. 3 Moira Gatens, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Powers and Corporeality, (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), viii 4 Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity; an Essay on Humes Theory of Human Nature, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 109. 5 Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, (New York: Zone Books, 1991). 6 Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations; 1972-1990, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 6; refer also to; David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Ernest C. Mossner, (London: Penguin Books, 1985 [1739]), 300. 7 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 8. 8 David Hume, Essays and Treatises on several subjects, volume III, section 4, part I, 43-45; section 5, 66-67. 9 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 222. 10 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 29; refer also; Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (New York: Vintage, 1973), 156. 11 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (London: Arrow Books, 1973), 120. 12 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 135-138; And, mighty is the signifier that constitutes the chain; Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze, and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 112. 13 Schawn Jasmann, Virtual Architecture and the Role of Inscription, in Hybrid Reality: Art, Technology and the Human Factor, ed. Hal Thwaites (Montreal: International Society on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, 2003), 422-427. 14 Marco Frascari, Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory, (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1991), 32. Portions of the text were presented at the Space Symposium in Andros, Greece, in August 1985, at the Special Session on Architectural
1

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___________________________________________________________ Monsters, at the Annual Meeting of the Semiotics Society of America in October 1985, and in a lecture at the Architectural Association in London in 1985, an excerpt of which is published as; Marco Frascari, Some mostri sacri of Italian architecture, AA files 14 (1987): 42-47. 15 Frascari, 32. 16 That Frascari predisposes his concept of architectural monster to the further encastement of a phenomeno-logical framework is illustrated by an enthusiastic review of the text by Perez-Gomez; Alberto Perez-Gomez, Monsters of Architecture (book review), Journal of Architectural Education 46/1 (1992): 60. 17 Robert McAnulty, Body Troubles, in Strategies in Architectural Thinking, ed. John Whiteman, Jeffrey Kipnis and Richard Burdett (Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1992), 180-97; and Dalibor Vesely, The Architectonics of Embodiment, in Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, ed. George Dodds and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 2002), 28-43. 18 Peter Eisenman, Houses of Cards (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 170. 19 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Humanities Press, 1962). 20 Merleau-Ponty, 213. 21 Merleau-Ponty, xxiv. 22 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 378. 23 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1968), 3-14. 24 Frascari, 9-10. 25 Frascari, 7. 26 That the monster of Frascari departs from any other base than that of the anthropomorphic is not given consideration in the text, where it is, further, the regret that the architectural discipline has forgotten the process of the Vitruvian figurata similitudine; Frascari, 111. 27 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 3f. 28 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 416. 29 Frascari, 7. 30 Frascari, 112. 31 Frascari, 9.

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32 33

Canguilhem, 286-7. Frascari, 32.

Bibliography
Braidotti, Rosi. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Canguilhem, Georges. The Normal and the Pathological. Translated by Carolyn R. Fawcett and Robert S. Cohen. New York: Zone Books, 1991. Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbera Habberjam. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Deleuze, Gilles. Empiricism and Subjectivity; an Essay on Humes Theory of Human Nature. Translated by Constantin V. Boundas. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations, 1972-1990. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Eisenman, Peter. Houses of Cards. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1973. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. Frascari, Marco. Some mostri sacri of Italian architecture. AA files 14 (1987): 42-47.

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___________________________________________________________ Frascari, Marco. Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1991. Gatens, Moira. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Powers and Corporeality. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by Ernest C. Mossner. London: Penguin Books, 1985 [1739]. Jasmann, Schawn. Virtual Architecture and the Role of Inscription. In Hybrid Reality: Art, Technology and the Human Factor, edited by Hal Thwaites, 422-427. Montreal: International Society on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, 2003. McAnulty, Robert. Body Troubles. In Strategies in Architectural Thinking, edited by John Whiteman, Jeffrey Kipnis and Richard Burdett, 180-197. Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1992. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. New York: Humanities Press, 1962. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1968. Perez-Gomez, Alberto. Monsters of Architecture (book review). Journal of Architectural Education 46/1 (1992): 60. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. London: Arrow Books, 1973. Vesely, Dalibor. The Architectonics of Embodiment. In Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, edited by George Dodds and Robert Tavernor, 28-43. Cambridge Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 2002.

We scare because we care. How Monsters make Friends in Animated Feature Films Richard Stamp
Abstract From their inception Disney's animated feature-length films have held two elements in tandem: the thematic promotion of an ethical-political principle (indicated in the first epigraph) of friendship from Bambi and Thumper via Pete's Dragon to Woody'n'Buzz; and the animator's prerogative of depicting non-human subjects' from cute woodland animals and magical creatures to malicious predators. In short: what interests me about Disney is this highly potent, but by no means unambiguous, ideological confluence of friendship and the non-human or the monstrous This paper is interested in the ethical and political problematics produced by this confluence; in particular, with respect to the more recent CGIbased films that have begun to monopolise Hollywood animated feature production. Following on from work by Byrne and McQuillan (1999) and Giroux (1999/2000) on the cultural politics of Disney, it will examine the ideological and pedagogical operations at work in the highly successful thematic of the friendly monster' in films such as Monsters Inc (Disney/Pixar, 2001) and Finding Nemo (Disney/Pixar, 2003). The paper focuses on the ambiguous effects of portraying monster characters in these two films, whether they are monsters proper' (such as Sully and Mike) or fish (Bruce the Shark and friends'): there is the sense that these films rehabilitate' their monsters through demonstrating, or learning, friendship skills respect, responsibility and responsiveness, etc. By becoming (better) friends, they become (more) human scaring must become caring. He's a good monster now, isn't he daddy?' My daughter's question relates to wider debates over the ethics and politics of friendship (as indicated by the second epigraph): are there only ever human friends? Is becoming friends' always humanising? And what kind of humans'? Can friends ever remain with the monstrous'? Might there not be an imperative to love the monstrous (the enemy, the fiend) within the most traditional concept of friendship? Always to love (and respect ) the fiend in the friend In this respect, it will also be interesting to consider the strategies used by the makers of Shrek (Dreamworks, 2001) in an attempt to distance their monster from Disney's dominant model.

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___________________________________________________________ Keywords Animation, children, friendship, deconstruction, corporate culture, technology Monsters, Inc. goes back to some of the ideas explored by Disney all those years ago, with what children are frightened of as the idea at the heart of the movie.1 As soon as one perceives a monster in a monster, one begins to domesticate it, one begins, because of the as such - it is a monster as monster - to compare it to the norms, to analyse it, consequently to master whatever could be terrifying in this figure of the monster.2 By way of fleshing out these two quotations, I would like to begin with a few facts and figures: Fact #1. At the beginning of this year, the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, Steve Jobs, unveiled record fourth quarter and financial year results (net income of $83.9M and $124.8M respectively). Fact #2. This announcement, co-incidentally, came in advance of a much rumoured showdown between the 18 year old company and its rather larger 80-plus year old corporate partner, The Walt Disney Studios (part of the multimedia entertainment giant, The Walt Disney Company approximate worth of around $5 billion). This split brought an end the 13year film development and co-production deal between Pixar and Disney. Fact #3. As well as making highly successful animated feature films, Pixar develop and market their own software: in fact, for many years - before the breakthrough success of Toy Story (1995) - such sales kept the then tiny company liquid. Pixars most successful product is a rendering package called Renderman 1.1. Fact #4. Rendering is the key process by which computer animated images are layered and textured to a photo-realistic standard textures like hair, skin, fabrics, fluids, and so on. For example, the incredibly detailed blue and purple hair that coats James P. Sullivan (Sulley), Top Scarer of the eponymous power company in Pixars Monsters, Inc. (2001).

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____________________________________________________________ Fact #5. The monsters in Monsters, Inc. are not scary. (Well, not all of them, or at least not all of the time, but we shall return to this point.) For parents of young children, at least, this is perhaps the most important fact about these animated monsters. When actress Jennifer Tilly - who voices Medusa-like administrator, Celia - states in an interview (on the Collectors Edition DVD) that All the monsters in this movie are very friendly, we might concur that these monsters are not only reassuringly friendly, they are emphatically, excessively very friendly. As the Abominable Snowman points out, incredulously, in the film: Do I look abominable to you? Why cant they call me the adorable snowman, or the agreeable snowman, for crying out loud? Im a nice guy. Snow cone? But of course, we know all this even before we step foot in the cinema or press Play on our remotes. Its Disney, after all! Well, its Disney-Pixar, to be exact. I will return to the complex and conflicted amity of this partnership toward the end of this paper, but Ill be arguing that this corporate partnership bears directly upon the representations of friendship and monstership in this film. Hence my epigraph from Unkrich: his explicit backward glance towards Disney films of the past is expressed in terms of reclaiming some kernel of what made those films classic - which he puts down to scaring kids. Think of Snow White fleeing into the forest, Pinocchios numerous misadventures, or the matricidal tendencies manifested in Bambi and sublimated in the madhouse of Dumbo - then think of the opening scene of Finding Nemo (2003). It is this combined cultural and corporate inheritance, then, that marks the peculiar relation of this film to a Disney tradition, ethos, or discourse - or better still, to the Disney text. To speak of Disney as text obviously begins to situate my own approach, which should not be understood as a straightforwardly hostile critique of some unified ideological phenomenon - the proper name (and corporate trademark), Walt Disney. As Byrne and McQuillan point out in Deconstructing Disney (1999), familiar left-wing tirades against the economic and cultural hegemony of the Disney Corporation a priori miss the point: they argue that Disney asserts itself as the defender of traditional family values precisely because of such critical challenges to (what they call) its hetero-andro-conservatism.3 Like them, Im more interested in reading Disney as a site of representation of the conflicting ideologies discernable in contemporary Western societies.4 Without recognising our own complicity in the multi-mediatic space(s) of contemporary popular culture, we fail to think through what and where the

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___________________________________________________________ political possibilities of critique might be found or made. More precisely, we might ask: what modes of social agency do these films produce? Unlike them, however, I see a difference between Disney productions and the Disney-Pixar co-productions like Monsters, Inc., for this difference, as Ive said, is part of whats at stake in this film. So back to Monsters, Inc. and its non-threatening, ever-so friendly monsters One of the reasons that we (Im speaking as a parent here, in particular) can rest assured of the friendliness of these monsters is their carefully produced familiarity. Before the films US release on Thanksgiving Day 2001, or a few months later in Europe, adults and children alike would have been familiar with the beaming monster faces shining out from banks of cereal packets, TV spots and teaser trailers at the cinema and on Disney videos, as well as a series of associated products such as cups, lunch boxes, read-along story books and computer games. This co-ordinated release schedule is, of course, an increasingly essential part of the global, synergetic business of film distribution and promotion. A good example of this proleptic synergy in the case of Monsters, Inc. would be the release of tie-in CD-ROM products and videogames the week before the film opened: these titles, it says, allow kids to pre-live and re-live the movie through immersive activities and amusing game play. The object of such game-play being to drive kids to fall in love with and play their favorite [sic.] Monsters, Inc.s characters, including Sulley and Mike, even before the movie is released.5 These monsters already inhabit the socio-economic space of the commodity, as signified through the performative repetition of friendly game play. All of which makes my final fact both blindingly obvious and peculiarly paradoxical: the film feeds off childhood fears of the dark by first assuring us that there really are monsters in the closet; and then reassuring us that its nothing personal - its just business! These monsters scare kids only in order to collect their screams which supply the energy needs of their own parallel world, Monstropolis. They work for what seems to be the monopoly provider of energy for the entire city, Monsters, Incorporated - whose trademarked slogan is: We scare because we care. As we shall see, the narrative of the film is structured by a contest over this etiological collusion of fear and loving, caring and scaring. As I indicated earlier, these monsters are more than just friendly, theyre very friendly. Indeed, they have more reason to be scared of human children, whose touch they believe to be lethally toxic. So these

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____________________________________________________________ workaday Joe monsters are also heroes in their own community, risking their own lives just trying to make sure theres enough scream to go around. From the opening scene of the film, then, children are understood more as being a mortal danger to, rather than being in mortal danger from monsters. The inversion is a neat one: kids are really the ones to be scared of, theyre the real monsters. In this sense, this is very much a film made by parents for parents, whose fear and horror of their offspring, of the responsibility that comes with them, runs deeper and lasts longer than the childs perplexed powerlessness before the adult world. This might be why we place them under so much surveillance dont we scare because we care? Thus, when Jeffery Jerome Cohen states, in the last of his seven theses on monster theory, that Monsters are our children, I wonder why he neglects the inversion of this equation: Our children are monsters.6 This subtext is wittily played out in the commercial for Monsters, Incorporated in the film. It explains that the energy shortages that plague Monstropolis are due to the fact that human kids are getting harder to scare: the window of innocence is shrinking. This is a problem that Pixar films themselves are designed to overcome by an adept targeting of both children and adults: double-coding is an effective means of maximising audience returns. According to Paul Wells, Monsters, Inc. is a comic fantasy with at least two levels: the first, affective narrative is about how the accidental incursion of a human child, Boo, tests the friendship of our heroes to breaking point, and leads them to overcome their fears by realising that not only are children not toxic to touch, but their laughter is more powerful than their screams. At another level, aimed more the parents, it takes us through what Paul Wells calls the world of corporate skulduggery and blue-collar routine, gently satirising adult anxieties about work, success and personal fulfilment.7 But I find it less easy to maintain such a neat division of hermeneutic levels in this instance. For one thing, Wells fails to mention that this corporate world is also the one of productivity targets and profit-driven imperatives of technological efficiency that, in the film, are opposed quite insistently to values of friendship, loyalty and community. And whilst, on the first level, the affective narrative is evidently pedagogical in intent - that is, Sulley is pushed to recognise the consequences of his scaring (real fright on the face of the child he has come to care for and love) and risks everything to make things right (even his friendship with Mike) - the actual result achieved is a radical restructuring of the corporate culture of Monsters, Incorporated. In essence, he instigates and oversees a shift from an economy of fright to one of laughter and delight. At the end of the film, the Scare Floor is transformed by banners reading Think Happy!, and Sulley himself

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___________________________________________________________ appears (wearing a clip-on tie) on the punning cover of News Shriek magazine, with the title of James P. Sullivan, CEO, Giggle Guru. But which is the actual pedagogical goal here: being a good friend can mean making difficult decisions, even putting ones friendship at risk; or a happy worker is a more productive worker, that a friendly working environment is a more profitable one? Before tackling this question, I would like to take a closer look at exactly how this representation of the friendly monster is played out in the film as a conflict between apparently opposing values of community and corporate capitalism. First, friendly monsters The affection of parent for child and of child for parent seems to be a natural instinct not only in man but also in birds and most animals; and similarly the mutual friendship between members of the same species, especially of the human species; which is why we commend those who love their fellow men.8 Aristotles analogy of friendship and familial affection (by way of the appearance of natural instinct) is both founding and problematic: first, the principle of a mutual friendship between members of the same species provides the schema for a dominant rhetoric of friendship, which binds it to what Jacques Derrida has called a familial, fraternalist and androcentric configuration of politics9; and furthermore, it interestingly both extends and limits this analogy with respect to all bird and most animal species. Is this a glimmer, perhaps, of a decidedly non-human form of friendship? Or is it simply the anthropomorphic extension of an exemplary mode of sociality (especially of the human species)? The latter, it would seem. Men are political animals, after all. Here at the beginning of the canonical analysis of friendship in the Western philosophical tradition, Aristotle begins from the premise that friendship is both a necessary condition for all moral and political, that is communal (being of the polis), life (Friendship seems to be the bond that holds communities together) and something more than mere social glue. Friendship, he states, is justly considered to be justice in the fullest sense: it is not simply a necessity but something splendid or morally excellent. He even goes so far as to say that no one would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other good things.10 As ground for the preservation of the polis and the exemplar of justice, friendship is cast here as the essential supplement for the good life.

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____________________________________________________________ It is this most human/political virtue of friendship - its moral excellence for the flourishing of the individual as part of the community; that making friends is a good in itself, outside of relations of utility or pleasure - that we can find in Monsters, Inc. A virtue that is given voice by Mike and Sulleys duet that plays over the end credits, If I Didnt Have You: If I were a rich man With a million or two I'd live in a penthouse In a room, with a view And if I were handsome (No way) It could happen Those dreams do come true I wouldn't have nothin if I didn't have you Indeed, we are introduced to Sulley and Mikes friendship in just such quasi-Aristotelian terms: they are not simply good friends, but their friendship is directly expressed through their excellent standing in the wider community of Monstro-polis. Sulley is Monster Inc.s Top Scarer, but he walks to work when theres a scream shortage; he prefers to be called Sulley (rather than Mr Sullivan) by his fans; and he is happy to use his public fame to secure exclusive restaurant seats for his friend. But how could Mike and Sulley be such good friends without some kind of (common) enemy? The excellence of their friendship is underscored when we encounter the two villains of the film: Sulleys mentor (and father-figure), Henry J. Waternoose III and Randall Boggs, Sulleys arch-rival. Where Sulley is reassuringly furry, Waternoose is a many-eyed, many-limbed crab/spider hybrid; and Randall, also many limbed, is reptilian, with chameleon-like abilities to blend into any background: he scares through stealth and surprise, compared to Sulleys mammalian growl. It strikes me, too, that whereas Mike and Sulley retain the familiar four limbs of the human figure, Randall and Waternoose are in part signified as more monstrous by possessing more than four limbs. When it comes to cartoon monstrosity, limbs count! But Mr. Waternoose and Randall become the truly scary monsters precisely because of their identification with the two interlinked threats to Sulley and Mikes community of friends: the pursuit of ever-more efficient technocratic and technological (read: inhuman) means of industrial production - in this case, the extraction of screams from human children.

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___________________________________________________________ First, Mr. Waternoose, the patrician, paternalistic CEO of Monsters, Incorporated. He is motivated by a concern to keep afloat a family business (the family concern), in which he sees Sulley as a surrogate son (and heir): Sulley: Were just going thru a rough time sir everyone knows youre gonna get us through it. Waternoose: Tell that to the board of directors. James, this companys been in my family for three generations - I would do anything to keep it from going under. Sulley: So would I, sir. Waternoose: Now thats my boy! Yet his hubris is to place family and company before care and community. In his final confrontation with Sulley, Waternoose exhibits the truth behind his earlier statement of family concern: Ill kidnap a thousand children before I let this company die - and Ill silence anyone who gets in my way. When his fatherly demeanour slips to reveal the rapacious desire to prioritise profit before people, even members of his surrogate family, one wonders how friendly business relations had been between those three generations Perhaps they were as unfriendly as those between three members of the Disney family (Roy Sr., Walt and Roy Jr.). Indeed, might we hear in Waternooses promise-threat to silence anyone who gets in his way an echo of Disneys famously ruthless drive to litigate in defence of the family/company name? I want to suggest that we read this struggle over a family inheritance in the film in relation to the tense amity between Disney - venerable father of the animated feature film and innovator of a Fordist model of industrial production in Hollywood and its increasingly more successful, lauded heir, Pixar Animation Studios. By instigating a new economic model of production, one based on fun not fear, James P. Sullivan, CEO and Giggle Guru, has innovated a new corporate identity for Monsters, Incorporated. Likewise, Pixar Animation Studios is often identified, and arguable identifies itself as one of the rising stars of revolutionising organisational models: the companys California studio complex comprises a central atrium with caf, fussball and games rooms, an overhead walkway traversed by scooter-sped employees on their way to in-house relaxation and massage facilities. Pixar president Ed Catmull, interviewed by Forbes magazine, sees all this as integral to a culture of innovation, which he expresses precisely in terms of equality and community. At Pixar, they call work The Fun Factory.11

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____________________________________________________________ This brings me to the second, most monstrous monster: Randall Boggs. For all his stealth, Randall is clearly signified as evil from the very beginning. He may be camouflaged, but his ambition is naked: his desire to revolutionise the scaring industry with the secretly-developed Scream Extractor marks him out as a ruthless proponent of capitalisms dream equation - the absolute eradication of labour. With this machine, he boasts we wont need scarers! In Monsters, Inc., the scariest monster is the very familiar one of the de-humanising power of technology. Once again, a fundamental opposition between community-human and capitalism-technology is apparent here. However, what should we make of the fact that this very familiar conflict is thematised here in an animated film that not only uses entirely computer-based tools and techniques, but one that uses (and thus, quite precisely, demonstrates) the companys proprietary software - including such products as Renderman 1.1, which is marketed with the claim that it can help reduce person-hours and therefore film production expenses.12 Such a parallel is illuminating and problematic: where is the difference between Randall and Renderman? The answer is clear - we already knew before we watched the film Its the community, stupid! For as Miranda Joseph has argued, community magically adds value to the abstract universality of capital.13 For my purposes, this means that friendly monsters are better commodities in every sense: better because more profitable, because more added value, because more child-/adult/user-friendly and so on. This is because the oppositions peddled in the film, if taken as such, are in fact false. Always false because the apparent opposition between values of community and the inhumanity of capital, like that between the human and the monster, is the product of the failure to recognise their structural complicity. In spite of itself, then, Monsters, Inc. testifies to complicities between the very friendly and the truly monstrous, as between community and capitalism, which Joseph (borrowing from Derrida) defines as a relation of supplementarity. Thus, to return to my own unfinished epigraph, I would add that the monster, as soon as it is recognised as such, is already incorporated: the movement of accustoming oneself, but also of legitimation and consequently of normalisation, has already begun.14

Notes
1 Lee Unkrich, co-director of Monsters, Inc., cited by Paul Wells, Where the mild things are, Sight and Sound, 12:2 (Feb 2002): 26-27; 26.

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___________________________________________________________ 2. Jacques Derrida, Passages - from Traumatism to Promise, in Points Interviews, 1974-1994, ed. Elisabeth Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 372-95, 386. 3. Eleanor Byrne and Martin McQuillan, Deconstructing Disney (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 2. 4. Byrne and McQuillan, 29. 5. Disney Interactive and Pixar Animation Studios Allow Kids to Interact with Endearing Characters and Story of Disney/Pixars Monsters, Inc. 29 October 2001, (4 May 2004), <http://corporate.pixar.com/news/20011029-70862.cfm>. 6. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Foreword, in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 1-20, 20. 7. Wells, 26. 8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, tr. J.A.K. Thomson, rev. Hugh Tredennick (London: Penguin, 1953 [rev. 1976]), 1155a. 9. Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 1999), viii 10. Aristotle, 1155a. 11. It is worth noting Pixars position amongst the California-based new media technology companies - Pixar CEO Steve Jobs bought the company from George Lucas Industrial Light and Magic in 1986 for $10M - whose products are regularly tied in with Pixar films: the US cinema release of Monsters, Inc. featured an exclusive trailer for Star Wars Episode 2: The Attack of the Clones; and since then all Pixar films have carried Lucasfilms THX sound processing system. Jobs other job, of course, is at Apple Corporation. Parenthetically, on the way to Budapest to give this paper, I read that the forthcoming partial IPO of shares in Google (the internet search engine company) might raise interesting problems for precisely this kind of equality-based corporate culture: for if the company is valued at a $20bn (as seems likely), about one in ten of the 2,000 staff will become millionaires through their various stock options, thus creating a very unequal culture of haves and have-nots. See Google cash search breaks the mould, The Business, 9-10 May 2004, sec. A, p.18. 12. Renderman Products, (4 May 2004), <https://renderman.pixar.com/products/tools/renderman.html>. 13. See Miranda Joseph, The Supplementarity of Community with Capital; or, A Critique of the Romantic Discourse of Community, in

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____________________________________________________________ Against the Romance of Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 1-29. 14. Jacques Derrida, Passages, 386.

Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by J.A.K. Thomson. Revised by Hugh Tredennick. London: Penguin, 1953 (rev. 1976). Byrne, Eleanor and Martin McQuillan. Deconstructing Disney. London: Pluto Press, 1999. Derrida, Jacques. Points Interviews, 1974-1994. Edited and translated by Elisabeth Weber. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Docter, Pete and Lee Unkrich. Monsters, Inc. Los Angeles, CA: Walt Disney Home Entertanment/Pixar Animation Studios, 2001. DVD Videorecording. Joseph, Miranda. Against the Romance of Community. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Pixar, Disney Interactive and Pixar Animation Studios Allow Kids to Interact with Endearing Characters and Story of Disney/Pixars Monsters, Inc. 29 October 2001. <http://corporate.pixar.com/news/2001102970862.cfm> (4 May 2004). Pixar,CorporateOverview.<http://www.pixar.com/companyinfo/aboutus /index.html> (4 May 2004). Wells, Paul. Where the mild things are. Sight and Sound, 12:2 (Feb 2002): 26-27.

Session 4 Frankenstein and Friends

Frankenstein to Frankenberry: Morphing of the Monster Myth in Pop Culture Paul L. Yoder
Abstract Mary Shelleys novel Frankenstein, much like the monster itself, entered society ultimately to be transformed into an entity only partially resembling that of its birth. The Frankenstein monster has become an icon of societys contemporary monster, but an icon Mary Shelley would scarce be able to recognize. Much as Victors idealized creation is left to become a horrible wretch at the hands of a society unable to comprehend the true nature of the creature, so too does Shelleys thematic creation become bastardized at the hands of pop culture. But what has led contemporary interpretation of Shelleys monster to seemingly go so astray from its original portrayal? My goal in this study is to juxtapose Shelleys literary discourse in the novel Frankenstein with the visual representations found both in the stage versions produced shortly after the publication of the novel and in the pop culture representations commonly forming the foundation of many of todays horror films. The ultimate goal in this study is to define the monster based on a societal interpretation of the outsider and examine how fear of the other is internalized. It is the way in which we, as a contemporary society, perceive the concept of the other, which will ultimately lead to the way we mold the visual representation of the Frankenstein monster as a mythical archetype within the horror of pop culture. Keywords Emotional theory, Frankenstein, fear, desensitization, horror film, parody, comic horror, psychoanalysis, abject Mary Shelleys novel Frankenstein, much like the monster itself, entered society ultimately to be transformed into an entity only partially resembling that of its birth. The Frankenstein monster has become an icon of societys contemporary monster, but an icon Mary Shelley would scarce recognize. Much as Victors idealized creation is left to become a horrible wretch at the hands of a society unable to comprehend the true nature of the creature, so too does Shelleys thematic creation become bastardized at the hands of pop culture. A number of studies have traced the developing image of the Frankenstein monster from its original conception through the contemporary horror film. But the question I wish to posit here is not one that covers this well-traversed material on the changing image of the monster, but a question of how both readers and viewers may internalize the image of the monster and how this

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____________________________________________________________ internalization reshapes thematic discourse into an ever-emergent construction of fear, and ultimately, parody. The key to such an explication is not so much how the image of monsters has changed, but instead, how one internalizes the emotional content of the Monster in whatever physical shape it may present itself. Through this internalization from a feeling into an emotion, we can identify why the imagery of the monster, to maintain an affective quality, must always remain emergent. As Catherine Lutz puts it, appropriate to an examination of the Frankenstein monster, To have feelings is to be truly human.1 It is from emotions that one constructs a specific and individual identity through a semiotic connection between signifier and signified. But as we observe the world, through firsthand experience, through film, through text, etcetera, emotions develop and shift based on a sliding semiotic relationship between such signification. It is through these changing associations that one can define his or her own emotional identification with an outside narrative, and in turn, establish an ever-developing emergent identity. But it is only through an emotional recognition of the events that allow us to internalize these stories and form an increasing chain of emergent identities; thus, an individual grows and explores ever more complicated societal constructs. Before going further, it is necessary to define two important terms, feeling and emotion, so one does not erroneously draw the assumption that I intend them to be synonymous. Such a distinction is important to a discussion of monsters because it will allow us to differentiate between the momentary feeling of shock at the unexpected and the emotion of what we have internalized as truly horrific. A feeling, as I will intend it here, is a natural occurrence, a purely psychological and physiological bodily response. Such feelings can be considered infantile responses to non-internalized stimuli. An emotion is associated with the internalized feeling, when external stimuli, either concrete or abstract, becomes associated with natural feelings. Emotions, according to Martha Nussbaum, are not feelings that well up in some natural and untutored way from our natural selves, they are, in fact, not personal or natural at all, they are, instead, contrivances, social constructs.2 While Nussbaum does not draw a clear distinction between emotion and feeling, her definition is important in that it establishes emotion as a construct, one that must be assembled through an individuals interaction and semiotic development with his or her external world. Therefore, how an individual internalizes the outside world, whether through a myriad of first or secondhand experiences, will define how one emotionally identifies with the world. Stories become a teacher for how we construct our emotional identities, and therefore, as Nussbaum notes, are not natural stirrings but constructs

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____________________________________________________________ [and] if they rest upon beliefs, then they can be modified by a modification of beliefs.3 So if a belief is a form of signifier, and we associate a particular emotion as its signified, then a change in the semiotic relationship of the signifier will redefine how we internalize the emotion. Residual identity, the codes by which we previously defined ourselves, will influence modes of signification in dominant emotional identity, the way we see ourselves in a present context. The ways in which individuals of particular cultures internalize their own emotional responses will be culturally specific, and will form culturally appropriate semiotic relationships. Based on this process, emergent identities can form according to drastically differing semiotic relationships. But these relationships, as Ann Cvetkovich observes, are not inherent. Like sexuality and other physical processes, affect is not a pre-discursive entity, a fact that is often obscured by the construction of affects or bodily sensations as natural. To study the politics of affect, then, is more broadly to study the politics of cathexis and to explore how meanings are given to the energy attached to particular events and representations.4 The energy I wish to focus on most specifically in relation to the figure of the Frankenstein monster is one of fear, which, according to Robert Thomas definition in The Concept of Fear, is not only what is likely to threaten life, injure our bodies, cause physical pain, which is seen as dangerous or threatening. Whatever is construed as contrary to our gratifications, ambitions, fulfillments, can be seen as harmful, distressing, ruinous according to some criterion of value.5 Therefore, one cannot experience a moment of fear without first internalizing a preexisting-condition, applying some external stimuli to this condition, and finally interpreting a context in which the pre-existing condition could be altered to an undesirable state. Fear becomes the internalized reaction to ones possible inability to prevent a stimulus from negatively impacting the pre-existing condition. Based on the above structure of fear, one can see the role suspense plays in such a formula. When an individual is faced with fear, but he or she cannot, without substantial doubt, identify the external stimuli, the result is a moment of suspense. At this moment, the individual experiences fear even though he or she has not been able to identify the stimulus that is causing the fear. There is, in other words, nothing yet to be afraid of. Suspense then produces a physiological reaction similar to those experiencing a moment of fear, but in this case, there is no object to which the individual can project the emotion. Therefore, one can define a prefear state in which the individual has recognized a not unpleasant preexisting condition that becomes threatened by some external stimuli. The individual experiences a moment of suspense during the period prior to

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____________________________________________________________ identifying the specific identity of the stimuli, at which point suspense gives way to fear when the individual is unsure of his or her own power to interfere with and defend the pre-existing condition from destruction. Through this process, we internalize the stimulus that has caused us fear, and in turn we re-evaluate (sometimes subconsciously) our relationship to the original pre-existing condition. It is then, through this internalization that we combat the fearful stimuli by creating a new emergent identity altered from the original pre-fear state. As a result, fear cannot remain a constant; it must change in light of the perceptions of a continually altered emergent identity. From these newly forming modes of emergent identities, an audience internalizes fear from feeling into emotion, thus giving it meaning. According to Judith Halberstams insightful book Skin Shows (1995), there is an overall sense that the semiotics of a monster must remain fluid with regard to meaning, as it can be interpreted limitlessly, depending upon changing sociological perceptions. Halberstam specifically addresses the role of both text and cinema in defining this internalization of fear. Because the production of fear in a literary text (as opposed to a cinematic text) emanates from a vertiginous excess of meaning (2), a reader is not limited to a specific mode of representation with which he or she juxtaposes with a pre-fear state. One might expect to find that cinema multiplies the possibilities for monstrosity but in fact the visual register quickly reaches a limit of visibility. In Frankenstein the reader can only imagine the dreadful spectacle of the monster and so its limited only by the readers imagination.6 Thus, the finality of the internalization of visual cinematic (and stage) representations becomes the key factor in the morphing of the monster image. There has been much critical work defining the monster within Mary Shelleys text as a critique on early 19th century political roles, the rise and dangers of the industrial revolution, the role of feminine ideology, and the list goes on. But it is the very fact that the list does go on that is of central importance to the way individuals internalize their own constructs of fear. The text, precisely as Halberstam notes, does not allow a solidification of the relationship between the signifier and the signified. The textual imagery created by the imagination always remains fluid in conjunction with the readers pre-emergent identity. Not only does the physicality of the monster remain ambiguous--Shelley provides little in the way of specific description--but the thematic implications of the text, as the numerous interpretations suggest, also remain fluid based on its relationship with changing social constructs. However, the form of the horror film does not allow this same fluidity as the visual representation

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____________________________________________________________ bypasses the work of the imagination to restructure the storys thematic relevance and redefine what the imagination sees as a horrific image. To understand the apparent fluidity of the textual narrative versus the relative stagnation of the film versions, we need to consider Tzvetan Todorovs definition of the fantastic. The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.7 In this sense, the fantastic occurs at the moment of suspense, when an individual senses that the pre-fear state may be in danger but has yet to define the stimuli as either natural or supernatural. The importance of Todorovs theory, as it applies to redefining textual emergent identities, is that the fantastic implies an integration of the reader into the world of the characters; the world is defined by the readers own ambiguous perception of the events narrated.8 Once the reader makes a decision between the two choices, natural or supernatural, the moment of the fantastic is destroyed, for that which has caused the hesitation as been resolved and we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous.9 The fantastic no longer causes us to hesitate, because as a reader, we have already defined the terms with which we will read the text. Once the answer to the question is defined, the reader will never experience, in the same context, a further mode of hesitation. The basis then, for both the Fantastic and Fear is founded on an unanswered question. In the case of the Fantastic, Is this a natural or supernatural event? and in the case of Fear, Do these events threaten my earlier state of an agreeable identity? But once we provide an answer to these questions, we internalize the emotional quality and therefore redefine a new identity in which to address the abject. According to Barbara Creed, the horror film fills the definition of the abject in three ways: 1) The horror film abounds in images of abjection, foremost of which is the corpse, whole and mutilated, followed by an array of bodily wastes such as blood, vomit, saliva, sweat, tears and putrefying flesh. 2) The concept of a border is central to the construction of the monstrous in the horror film; that which crosses or threatens to cross the border is abject. Although the specific nature of the border changes from film to film, the function of the monstrous remains the sameto bring about an

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Frankenstein to Frankenberry encounter between the symbolic order and that which threatens its stability. 3) The work of abjection is in the construction of the maternal figure as abject. [. . . ] Partly consumed by the desire to remain locked in a blissful relationship with the mother and partly terrified of separation, the child finds it easy to succumb to the comforting pleasure of the dyadic relationship.10

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The above articulation of abjection is important to our discussion of internalization specifically because Creed is emphasizing borderlines and an individuals relationship to that border. What may be on the other side is the key element to abjection, and what an audience will perceive as monstrous. So how does the internalization of textual imagery differ from the visual imagery presented in a horror film, and how does this difference impact the way a reader or audience internalizes these forms of abjection? The second point above provides an answer to this question that resides in the fact that the key element of the abject is in projecting a border, a foundation determining on which side a specific signifier falls. The defining element of abject signification relies on the location in respect to perceived boundaries. But the fact that the border changes from film to film also implies that how we define the abject must also change from film to film. I argue that the boundary of abjection remains constant in the textuality of the novels depictions because the text need not change to match the sliding boundaries of imaginative abjection. In visual representations, the imagination is bypassed as the film solidifies this boundary, and thus, the temporality of the abjection remains consistent with an individuals ability to form a newly emergent identity to combat the emotional imbalance between the two sides of this border. Since the boundaries of the abject versus the non-abject are solidified in visual representations, the mode of representation must be shifted to match the changing emotional recognition of such boundary placement. However, within the context of the imaginations interpretation of textual imagery, the boundary of abjection is free to slide to match appropriate culture discourse. Therefore, the imagination is free to shift the boundaries of abjection freely as the imagery is not solidified by the text and the reader is able to continually shift the perspective of abject boundaries based on recurring modes of emergent emotional identity.

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____________________________________________________________ What we need most specifically to consider in such a discussion is not so much the thematic elements presented in differing film versions of the Frankenstein story, although they will play a role in defining the characteristics of imagery, but how the imagery of the monster creates modes of abjection that remain constant while the boundaries are forever shifting based on the contexts of emergent identities. For as themes go, an audience can interpret the monsters placement within the story to match whatever context it finds appropriate, as long as the visual references to the monster remain consistent with the theme the audience chooses to apply. However, my focus in this work is on the emotional context of fear and the monsters ability to produce such a sensation within the audience. So if we argue that our relationship to the boundary of abjection remains fluid in the text of Frankenstein, while the actual boundary is able to slide, but our relationship becomes fixed through visual representations, we must examine specifically why seeing the horror locks our positions in regard to infinite space but shifts the boundary itself of how we define abjection. In light of the changing borders of affect based on these ever emergent identity constructions, for the Frankenstein monster to continue to make its impact on us in a visual realm, the image of the monster must continually change to produce an affective moment. If creating a physical appearance for the monster will lead to a shifting of affective boundaries and ultimately destroy the emotionally fearful representation of the monster image, one comes to the realization that the only way to maintain the affective properties of the monster is to keep its appearance hidden from the audience. Once the audience is able to construct an identity for the monster, the semiotic connection between embodiment and abstract horror must appropriately shift. But once the image of the monster becomes solidified, imagination is no longer able to reposition the boundaries of affectation, and the result is a stagnant mode of presentation void of socially constructed emotion. Such a mode of presentation has been produced in numerous forms of pop-culture horror and science fiction films and establishes a context in which we can understand how the image of the Frankenstein monster has been ultimately left as a symbol of quick shock, as I will illustrate in the monsters conception of typical slasher film villain, or as a humorous symbol filling the role of horror parody, television childrens cartoon, or spokesfigure for sugar-coated cereal. What we cannot see frightens us most. Reason competes with imagination to establish boundaries around the external stimuli and, thus, clearly establishes a means of remaining separated from that which harms us. But reason will ultimately prove ineffective without a frame of

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____________________________________________________________ reference grounded in a context of physical reality to establish a solidified boundary between the real and the unreal, the natural and the supernatural. Without this definitive context, reason is unable to mark the separation between two modes of perception, so as an audience or a reader, we are forced to hesitate, resulting in a moment of suspense that I discussed earlier as the first stage in externalizing the feeling and producing an externally constructed emotion of fear. But once that image is removed from the imagination of the audience and placed before him or her as a physical reality with boundaries, as horrifying or unrealistic as it may be, the imagination becomes confined by these boundaries of the natural physical ties of the external stimuli. It is important to note that because the physical nature of the stimuli is specifically external, there is no need to internalize the physical creation. Since now the image is confined within boundaries, the imagination has nothing to fly to--the sublime nature of the abject is literally grounded within the walls of the real. Our initial response is not one of internalized fear because the image of the monster has been subsequently externalized. The audience may be physically startled by the presence of the monster in whatever deformity the director chooses, but specifically because of the physically external nature of the creature, this feeling of shock is never internalized into an emotion, simply an immediate natural reaction of shock. Once the physical nature of the creature is fully confined within the boundaries of comprehension, in other words, there is no longer a hesitation (in Todorovs words), reason appropriately shifts the borders of abjection to the other side of the monster. We therefore find ourselves on the same side of the border with what we previously internalized as a part of the abject, yet now, externally resituated as we theoretically begin to see the costume, the fiction, and ultimately, the absurdity of our previously internalized fear. Our fears then are nothing more than a reflection of what we see in the monster, the absurdity of what we recognize as once frightening, but a fear that no longer seems reasonably possible. What we had internalized as the horrific has proven to be nothing more than a sublime imbalance of our imaginations constructs of reality. In such a thought, we find comfort to address those horrors we are still left to internalize. We often see in the image of Frankensteins monster the absurdity of our own fears and transfer those fears to the Frankenstein myth in pop culture, an image that may shock us, may make us laugh, but ultimately an image in which we seek shelter and comfort from the unseen that frightens us most.

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Notes

Lutz, 1960, 66. 2 Nussbaum, 1990, 287. 3 Ibid., 292. 4 Cvetkovich, 1992, 24. 5 Halberstam, 1995, 2. 6 Ibid., 3. 7 Todorov, 1975, 25. 8 Ibid., 31. 9 Ibid., 25. 10 Creed, 2000, 67.

Bibliography
Creed, Barbara. Kristeva, Femininity, Abjection. In The Horror Reader, edited by Ken Gelder. New York: Routledge, 2000. Cvetkovich, Ann. Mixed Feelings. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1992. Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. Lutz, Catherine. Emotion as Psychological Location. In Emotion: A Comprehensive Phenomenology of Theories and Their Meanings for Therapy, edited by James Hillman, 90-100. Evansten, IL: Northwestern UP, 1960. Nussbaum, Martha. Loves Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Translated by Richard Howard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1975.

Frankenstein: Mary Shelleys Horror of Split Consciousness Kamila Vrnkov

Abstract My paper attempts to show that the subliminal power of Mary Shelleys narrative is closely connected with the feeling of uncertainty concerning the nature of Frankensteins monster. At the heart of the novel there is a disturbing notion of the unknown, which is paradoxically intensified through the effort to suppress it, either by developing scientific knowledge or by the voyages of discovery. Referring to the various possibilities of interpretation, the paper draws on the relationship between the Monster and its creator, and it discusses Frankenstein as a story of monstrous transformation, the transformation that is brought about by the rejection of the other, both in the outer and inner worlds. It also touches the link to the ambivalent nature of human development: the disquieting fact that people are at once powerful enough to bring in ingenious inventions and powerless to control all the consequences of their discoveries. Key Words Frankenstein, monster, horror, Other, split conscience, knowledge, freedom and responsibility, science O Horror! Let me fly this dreadful monster of my own creation! This cry from H.M. Milners play Frankenstein, or the Man and the Monster (1862), truthfully corresponds with the atmosphere permeating the novel of Mary Shelley. The dramatic potential and the subliminal power of Mary Shelleys narrative does not consist in its intricate plot but in the feeling of uncertainty concerning the central theme of the novel, the nature of Frankensteins monster. The monstrous figures occupy an important position in the horror tales of all times. They are connected with the world of folklore, with the Classical and Judeo-Christian cultures as well as with the Celtic, Old English, and Old German literature. J.A. Hadfield speaks about the primitive emotions and feelings in the form of giants, heroes, serpents, and vampires. According to him, these feelings are the representations of guilt, retribution, and fate; of lust and power, of monsters of the deep (the unconscious), and of unknown but

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___________________________________________________________ overwhelming beings which fill our nights with nightmarish dreams.1 The monstrous outcast, dwelling in the darkness and attacking the unprepared and unwary men, is as old as Genesis. Spending her youth in England and Scotland and indulging in literature from childhood, Mary Shelley may have known the Anglo-Saxon story of Grendel, a humanlike monster tormenting mankind, and some versions of the legends about monstrous offspring of Cain, about the evil spirits fighting against God. It is also possible that on her travels through Europe she heard the Middle European folk tale of Golem. In Switzerland she could have seen the carnival and the traditional ritual during which someone dressed as the wild man (half-man, halfanimal, supposed to inhabit the forests of Europe) appeared among villagers who persecuted him and killed him. Martin Tropp points out the similarity of this scene to the following episode in Frankenstein: The whole village was roused, some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously, bruised by stonesI escaped to the open country.2 According to Drake Douglas, it is quite probable that during her journeys Mary Shelley came across the ruins of a 13th century castle near Frankfurt-on-Main and heard the Frankensteinian legend connected with its stones. It is a story of a knight who was buried in the tomb near the castle and who met his death in a battle with a fierce man-eating monster which resembled a boar and which, according to the legend, was man-made.3 It was this ancient race of monsters from which the physical characteristics of Mary Shelleys creature are Frankenstein: Mary Shelleys Horror of Split Consciousness derived. However, this figure seems to be even more horrible than the classic monsters were. It is a child of a grave, half-human, half-machine, a thing quite unnatural, standing somewhere between life and death and the very moment of creation is recollected with awe: Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips. Behold from a distance, it looks like a man but its stature exceeds that of a man and it moves with superhuman speed. The Monster has no name; it is called simply the being, the wretch, the demon, the fiend, the abhored monster, the wretched devil, the horrid thing, the filthy mass that moved and talked. The absence of a name moves this figure to a more abstract dimension and underscores the creatures unerthliness. To have a name means to have a place in the ordered universe, and to give a name to something is traditionally connected with acquiring control over it. The Monsters namelessness

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___________________________________________________________ suggests its alien nature as well as the helplessness of those who have to face it. Fred Botting finds the Monster a figure which suggests the inarticulate, the blind, la diffrence in literature. He compares the interaction of Frankenstein and the Monster in Mary Shelleys novel with the way Derrida interprets Dupins search for the missing document in Poes short story The Purloined Letter. In his words, both the Monster and Poes unnoticed letter "function like a signifier, possessing its bearers as it blinds those who seek it out.4 Frankenstein is a narrative within a narrative, with a number of intertextual allusions increasing the notion of doubleness as well as the feeling of uncertainty concerning possible meanings. In the words of Louis James, the narrative is a palimpsest of subtext,5 including the Bible, the works by Aeschylus, Milton, Coleridge and Shakespeare. The intertextual nature of the novel is supported by Frankensteins reading Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa and Albertus Magnus, by the Monsterss encounters with Plutarch or Goethe, and also by the novels subtitle (A Modern Prometheus). For the ancestry of the Monster the reader can go back to Milton. Mary Shelley had read Paradise Lost before she began to work on Frankenstein and the evidence of this reading can be found everywhere in her novel; in the motto as well as in the speeches of the Monster. It is possible to say that Mary Shelley shares Milton`s understanding of a divine natural order. Taking over the idea of defining mans place in the universe and of giving form to the forces which endanger him, she suggests the following question: what shall we do with our creations, especially when they refuse to fulfil the intention of the creator? The story of the Monster resembles the fate of an abandoned child. (In this respect, Louis James points out the authors abandoned baby self and her abandoned babe.)6 After the escape of its terrified maker, the creature spends its first days in the forest near Ingolstadt. Its suffering from the alteration of light and dark, hot and cold has much in common with the pain of Miltons demons punished by being made to feel the unbearable changes of fire into ice. The Monster attempts to acquire basic knowledge by trying to understand various sensations it experiences, it experiments with fire This struggle for survival can evoke the image of a wild heathen life. Its fascination with moon and sun corresponds with the pagan adoration of the natural world. The Monsters poetical expressions (a gentle light, the orb of night moon) can remind the reader of ancient Anglo-Saxon images (kennings) or, also, of the language of Shakespeares Caliban. It is also possible to understand the troubles of

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___________________________________________________________ the Monster s lonely and uncivilized life as a polemic with Rousseaus conception of the ideal conditions of life.7 The Monsters encounter with the De Laceys, connected with its interest in literature (Milton), results in an interesting search for individual identity: Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being [] but he had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature [] I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me. Both desire for friendship and envy are awakened in the Monster, the world of the De Laceys has an attraction of inaccessible Paradise. The reader can be reminded of the torment of Satan, watching Adam and Eve, but also of the jealousy of Anglo-Saxon Grendel (It was with pain that the powerful spirit/ Dwelling in darkness endured that time,/ Hearing daily the hall filled/ With loud amusement).8 In accordance with Steinbecks interpretation of evil, drawing on the story of Cain and Abel (The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears [] And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime [],9 the violent rejection the Monster experiences drives it to violence. The sudden realization that I, too, can create desolation is the beginning of the Monster`s satanic career (the destruction of the De Laceys cottage, the murder of Frankensteins brother William, the execution of an innocent servant). Watching Frankensteins destroying its promised mate, the Monster fulfils its promise I shall be with you on your wedding-night and, after finishing the life of Frankensteins best friend Clerval, it murders his bride Elizabeth. At the end it leads Frankenstein far to the vast expanses of the Arctic Sea where it kills him and departs to seek its own death. Reading its final lament over its crimes, we are again reminded of Miltons Satan. He sufferednot the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine (F, 218) they little know How dearly I abide that boast so vain Under what torments I inwardly groan. 10 As Martin Tropp suggests, the affinity with Satan complicates the evaluation of the Monster as an unambiguously evil figure. In Mary Shelleys period Satan was admired as an unsubmissive rebel against injustice and privilege, a figure of resistance, reversal and revolution (especially in the work of Blake and Shelley).

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___________________________________________________________ Mary Shelleys insight into the mind and the emotions of the Monster helps us to understand this figure also as a human character. It is possible to read its story as a tale of prejudice and intolerance. Striking terror by its appearance and living in the world where any being must conform to the basic requirements to be accepted, the Monster is doomed to remain an outcast. It is monstrous because it is viewed as monstrous. Or, better, because its ugliness becomes an ideal tool for projecting ones hidden frustration and guilt onto it. In the context of Shelleys story, it is the guilt of Frankenstein: his desire for unlimited powers (Frankenstein, 46), his unholy experiment,11 his damnable career,12 his pursuit of knowledge which is truly monstrous.13 Throughout the whole story the Monster emphasizes the pain of exclusion and loneliness. Its speeches result in a pathetic wail of confusion and misunderstanding, aimed at the listeners` sympathy. The sympathetic approach to the Monster is reflected in P.B. Shelleys review of the novel. According to him, there is in fact no monster in Frankenstein and the creatures crimes are not the offspring of any unaccountable propensity to evil, but flow irresistibly from certain causesThey are the children of Necessity and Human Nature [] In this the direct moral of the book consists [] Treat a person wicked and he will become wicked.14 There is a problem of the soul, raising the unanswerable question about the Monsters right to live and to find its place in the world of men. Would it be a murder to kill the Monster? Anyway, seeing the Monster as a human creature, the reader is ready to condemn the human treatment of it as cruel and even criminal. A deeply emotional defence of the Monster can be found in the study of Drake Douglas: The tragedy of Frankenstein is not in the terror loosed upon the world, not in the innocent lives brought to the bloody destruction, not in the tragedy of the great House of Frankenstein; It is in the tragedy of the pitifully misunderstood Frankensteins Monster. And the tragedy of this creature is not so much that he was a monster, but that he was, withall, so much a man.15 According to Mark Jancovich, the Monster is ugly and brutal, but sensitive and abused. It becomes a monstrous figure but his monstrous actions are identified as a response to Frankensteins activities and actions.16 In Mary Shelleys novel, the fear of the other defines the outer (social) relationships as well as the inner experience of ones self. The Monsters shadowy appearances induce a dreamy mood and enable us to understand this figure as a kind of self-projection, as a double of Frankenstein. With its increasing self-awareness, the Monster drives Frankenstein to the inevitable self-destruction. Considering this relationship, Martin Tropp

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___________________________________________________________ makes a comparison between the couples Frankenstein the Monster and Miltons`s Lucifer Satan. In his terms, they play out the Romantic drama of the mind, the myth of self-exploration.17 Creating the Monster, Frankenstein in fact rises up against his own creator (like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell) and fulfils the criteria of the titanic myth, especially of Byrons version of this myth, which no longer consists in the meaningful articulation of the subjectivity, but in its deconstruction.18 Frankenstein, isolating himself and forgetting his family and friends, ignoring the world, loses the contact with reality and, in fact, loses control of himself: I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. Escaping from the created thing at the moment of animation and refusing to accept the responsibility for its existence, Frankenstein seems to deny the responsibility for the dark and danger recesses of his mind. His furious reactions on every attempt by the Monster to come near reflect his unconscious fear of the Monster`s being a part of himself (Abhorred monster! Fiend! Devil [] do you dare approach me? [] Begone, vile insect!). In this respect, Frankensteins aversion to the Monster reflects his fatal unwillingness to admit the polarities of his own personality, which may remind us of Karl Jaspers view of the battle of man and demons. Analyzing the tragic hero figures, Jaspers observes that evil powers escape man if he is able to grasp them or just understand them. Otherwise, unknowingly and unconsciously, he falls prey to the very powers that he wanted to escape.19 A similar idea is suggested, for example, at the end of Lynchs TV series Twin Peaks. The gradual development of Frankensteins personality from the dream of a noble career to the moment of identification with the Monster (I, the true murderer [], all was the work of my hand, they all died by my hands) is mirrored in the images of the buildings (the laboratory replacing, in fact, the prison-like space of gloomy Gothic castles) and of the landscape (the sublime and magnificent scenes of the Alps with immense mountains and waterfalls, the deserted grave-yards, the remote, desolate and windy islands, and, finally, the Polar areas of an empty and limitless space of the ocean). The frequent images of water in the novel can be interpreted as an ancient symbol of the mind, the mirror of the self. And the motif of a boat carried around by the wind, preceding Frankensteins encounter with the Monster, may suggest the heros yielding to the unconscious forces he cannot control any more. (To a large extent, Mary Shelleys imagination was influenced by the Romantic poetry, especially by S.T. Coleridge and his concept of inner landscape, the landscape of the soul).

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___________________________________________________________ As it was mentioned, the stories of fiendish doubles formed a part of Mary Shelleys cultural environment. However, her Monster differs from its predecessors. Unlike them, its hatred turns not only against its double but also against Frankensteins family and friends and against all mankind. The danger ceases to be a private matter, being enlarged into social and universal dimensions. The tradition of the English Gothic novel with its terror of uncertainty and disquieting expectations (Walpole, Reeve, Radcliffe), turns into a chilling cognition. The black-veil method of Ann Radcliffe, with the object of terror half-covered, is replaced by a direct presentation of horror in its naked form. On the deepest level the image of the Monster is a projection of Mary Shelley`s personal anxieties. Causing the death of her mother by her birth and living a lonely childhood with the father who did not fulfil her need of a parental love, experiencing the death of her half-sister Fanny and daughter Mary, and feeling herself guilty for the suicide of Harriet, the first wife of Shelley, Mary Shelley lived in a constant fear for the lives of those she loved. Even in the periods of stress, however, she tried to look calm and indifferent and her personality was often compared to ice. It is impossible not to remember the significance of cold and ice in the world of the Monster. She says in her journal: Have I cold heart? God knows! But none need envy the icy region this heart encircles In a letter to Byron she writes: I am said to have a cold heart there are feelings however so strongly implanted in my nature that to root them out life will go with it and in a letter to her son these feelings are compared to a stinging monster.20 Anyway even if both Frankenstein and the Monster probably find their origin in the author`s own feelings of exclusion and self-hatred, they were related to larger themes and turned into characters of a new myth. When Mary Shelley was working on her novel, the effects of the Industrial Revolution (or, of Blakes dark Satanic Mills) intensified the anxiety of the Romantic generation. For the modern reader the connection of the Monster with the dangers of technology is even more pressing. Born of a scientific ambition and endowed with the endless potential for destruction, this figure has become a symbol of modern science. In the Monster Mary Shelley created a predecessor of all the androids and robots rising against their creators, and turned the Gloomy Romantic feelings into the alarming questions of science fiction. As Fred Botting points out, with the theme of science in horror fiction there is a significant divergence from Gothic strategies: cultural anxieties in the present are no longer projected on to the past but are relocated in the future.21 The figure of Frankensteins Monster undermines all attempts at closure and reflects critically on them to open up spaces where otherness cannot be mastered.

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___________________________________________________________ Accordingly, modern monsters become subject to dispersion and multiplication of meanings. Frankensteins nightmare influenced the literary works like Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights, or Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde In the 20th-century literature, the artificial forms that are given life and gradually turn to destructive forces appear, for example, in William Gibsons novel Neuromancer (1984) or in Ridley Scotts Blade Runner, the dark side of technical development is dealt with in Terry Joness Fantastic Stories (a parallel between ancient devils and modern means of transport). It is especially the loose boundary between good and evil, between heroic and villainous figures that is employed in a number of modern comics drawing on the image of a superhero as well as in the images of cinema and television A parodized image of Frankenstein-like creature appears in Edward Scissorhands, the theme of intolerance towards the other is employed in Lynchs film The Elephant Man and the same director develops the story of sinister doubles in his Twin Peaks. It would be difficult to make a list of all the movies attempting to re-create Mary Shelleys tale itself (J.Searle Dawleys Frankenstein (1910), Joseph Smileys Life Without Soul (1915), James Whales Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), R.V. Lees Son of Frankenstein (1939), E.C. Kentons The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and The House of Frankenstein (1944), R.V. Neills Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Charles Bartons Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), H.L. Strocks I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), H.V. Kochs Frankenstein (1958), Terence Fishers Frankenstein Created Woman (1966), Paul Morrisseys Andy Warhols Frankenstein (1974), Mel Brookss Young Frankenstein (1974)). According to Berman, the process of creation and modernization promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world, but it also threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.22 In the story of Frankenstein and his Monster, Mary Shelley re-establishes the relation between an individual freedom and individual responsibility. The moral message of this story can be discerned in the final decision of Walton, the narrator echoing the figure of Coleridges wedding guest: the way out of the icy regions, the way to reconciliation and renewal, the liberation from monsters cannot be found but through a certain humility with which a man uncovers his human limitations.

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Notes
J.A. Hadfield, quoted in Martin Tropp, Mary Shelleys Monster (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), 1. 2 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (New York: Laurel-Leaf Printing, 1980), 107. All quotations from Frankenstein follow the above edition. Further page references are given in brackets after quotations. 3 Douglas Drake, Horrors! (London: John Baker, 1967), 73. 4 Fred Botting, Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Theory, (Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), 25. 5 Frankensteins Monster in two traditions, Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity, ed. Stephen Bann, (London: Reaction Books, 1994), 79. 6 Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity, 78. 7 Cf. Martin Tropp, Mary Shelleys Monster (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977). 8 Beowulf, 86-89, transl. Michael Alexander (London: Hazel Watson and Viney Ltd, 1973). 9 John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952) (London, New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 350-356. 10 John Milton, Paradise Lost, B. IV, 86-88, in The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire (London: O.U.P., 1958). 11 S.L.Varnado, The Idea of the Numinous in Gothic Literature, Literature of the Occult (New Jersey: 1981), 65. 12 Joel Porte, Religious Terror in Gothic Fiction, in The Gothic Imagination (Washington State University Press, 1974), 45. 13 Mark Jancovich, Horror (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1992), 27. 14 P.B. Shelley, quoted in Martin Tropp, Mary Shelley`s Monster, 50.
15 16
17 1

Douglas Drake, Horrors!, 135. Mark Jancovich, Horror, 27).

Martin, Tropp, Mary Shelley`s Monster, 62.

18

19

Martin Prochzka, Titanic Myth and Discourses of Subjectivity, in Romantic Discourses. Papers Delivered at the Symposium on the Bicententary of the birth of P.B. Shelley, Studien zur englishen Romantik, Bd. 7, ed. Horst Hhne (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1994), 114.

Karl Jaspers, Tragedy Is Not Enough, transl. H.A.T.Reiche (London: Gollancz, 1953). 20 Mary Shelley, quoted in Mary Shelley`s Monster, 14.

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___________________________________________________________
21

Fred Botting, Gothic (London: Routledge, 1996),162-168. 22 Quoted in Martin Tropp, Mary Shelleys Monster, 18.

Bibliography
Botting, Fred. Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Thoery. Manchester, New York: Manchester UP, 1991. Douglas, Drake. Horrors!, London: John Baker, 1967. Jancovich, Mark. Horror. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1992. Jaspers, Karl. Tragedy Is Not Enough. Translated by H. A. T. Reiche. London: 1953 Messent, Peter B., ed. Literature of the Occult. New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1981. Prochazka, Martin. Titanic Myth and Discourse of Subjectivity. Offprint, Prague, 1993. Thompson, G. R., ed. The Gothic Imagination: Essays in Dark Romanticism. Washington State UP, 1974. Tropp, Martin. Mary Shelleys Monster. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977.

Session 5 Monsters Medicinal

Invading Boundaries: Hybrids, Disease and Empire Kate Hebblethwaite

Abstract The original disrupter of boundaries, the image of the monster was also utilised during the fin-de-sicle by writers of popular fiction to symbolise the destruction of establishment conventions and cultural assumptions. Illustrating this idea, Rudyard Kiplings The Mark of the Beast (1891) and Bram Stokers Dracula (1897), the focus of this paper, can be seen to use the image of their respective hybridized beast-man monsters also to effect a paranoiac disestablishment of the bastions of Empire and Society. Physical monsters, Stokers vampire and Kiplings leper also work to invade boundaries of nationality and race. In seeking to break down the mainstays of Empire in their attempted reverse-colonisation through the processes of disease infection, the monsters (transgressors themselves) also transgress boundaries of state and individual, conceptual and physical. Moreover, in permeating such boundaries - in demonstrating their essential weakness - the vampire and the leper effectively negate all barriers of perception and the defining line between what is normal and what is monstrous becomes a matter of abstract conjecture alone. Keyword Reverse colonization of diseased native beast-man Originally defined as hybridised creatures, part man, part animal or a combination of two or more animal forms, the monster represents the ultimate transgressor of boundaries. An amalgamation of normal elements that combines to create a terrible abnormality, the physical aberration of the monster is routinely conjoined to a moral monstrosity that affronts our sense of what is virtuous. The label of monstrous is regularly applied to those beings or situations that threaten to invade or disrupt our own physical or conceptual spaces: however, in transgressing such boundaries, the monster also forces a questioning of the very stability or reliability of the boundaries themselves. In other words, monstrosity may be in the eye of the beholder but in beholding monstrosity, normality likewise becomes compromised. This paper is a very brief attempt to explain this idea within the context of two stories: Rudyard Kiplings The Mark of the Beast (1891) and Bram Stokers Dracula (1897). Both stories present the reader with patent physical monsters, Count Dracula and the Silver Man - both beastman hybrids who transgress the boundaries between man and animal.

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___________________________________________________________ Transgressions themselves, they also transgress geographical boundaries in their attempted reverse invasions of the British Empire, and furthermore achieve these invasions through a physical disease-invasion of their victims bodies. Boundary invasion and the disruption of normality is thus effected from the very highest to the most minute levels, whilst monstrosity threatens to become normality as the monstrous osmosis advances. Following the publication of Sir George Chesneys tale of the successful German invasion of England, The Battle of Dorking (1871), dozens of stories appeared which replicated his invasion fantasy idea.1 Stoker and Kiplings narratives may be considered as belonging to this vein of fiction as the vampire and the leper respectively seek mastery over their English targets: Kiplings Indian leper from within the colonial spaces of India, whilst Dracula from within London, the very heart of Empire itself. Far from the guns and mortar of other invasion fantasies, however, Stokers Transylvanian and Kiplings Indian work to effect an imperial reverse-invasion not over the battlefields of colonial land, but rather over the bodies of the members of its colonising elite. The implementation of each monsters invasion is through the infection of a blood-contaminating disease, which has the effect of causing their English victims to undergo a physical regression down the evolutionary scale, in effect reducing them, also, to a state of monstrosity. The battle for Empire is thus reduced to the miniature of cells whilst conceptual boundaries between man and animal, monstrous and normal are invalidated by this enforced cellular transgression and transformation. Coloniser becomes the colonised, man becomes beast and normal becomes monstrous. The physical boundaries between man and animal were increasingly exposed by advances in nineteenth century science to be little more than arbitrary divisions as the biological composition of life was gradually revealed in progressively decreasing elements of structural form. In 1858, Rudolf Virchows Cellular Pathology contended that Homo sapiens, like all life forms, were essentially little more than a collection of cells: the cell is really the ultimate morphological element in which there is any manifestation of life, and that we must not transfer the seat of real action to any point beyond the cella definite correspondence in elementary form pervades the whole series of all living things.2

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___________________________________________________________ T.H. Huxley ratified this argument in his essay, On the Physical Basis of Life (1869) which maintained that Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusc, worm and polupe are all composed of structural units of the same character, namely masses of protoplasm with a nucleus.3 Reducing all life forms to their essential components not only effectively robbed mankind of his self-appointed position as the divinely instituted head of the food chain, but by association the white man as the self-appointed head of the racial chain. The prospect of cellular equality nullified all pre-conceived notions of racial or species superiority: reduced to its starkest fundamentals, hegemony became a matter of the survival of the fittest alone. The majority of Kiplings story The Mark of the Beast takes place at the club, in the station and on Stricklands farm - bastions of Englishness and Empire. Fleete, a big, heavy, genial and inoffensive man whose knowledge of the native was, of course, limited becomes gorgeously drunk at a New Years Eve celebration and desecrates a stone image of Hanuman, the Monkey-god.4 He is subsequently cursed by a naked, leprous Hindu priest who infects him with the Mark of the Beast which has the effect of slowly turning him into, a beast that had once been Fleete.5 The curse is only lifted after Strickland and the narrator capture and torture the leper a brutal and, not to be printed6 pacification of colonial uprising by the strong arm of imperialism. That this tale of reverse colonization takes places not on the battlefields of colonial land, but over the body of a colonial frontiersman reduces empire battles to the miniature of cells and germs whilst the hosts and carriers of disease themselves represent their respective countries. Indeed, the diseased lepers lack of facial features, because he was a leper of some years standing and his disease was heavy upon him7 ultimately robs him of any personal identity. The Silver Man thus becomes a symbol of India and the mystical rule of law that governs mankind in the East: East of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia, and the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and modified supervision in the case of Englishmen.8 The disease with which Fleete is afflicted returns him to a state of animalism that overthrows, and is ultimately stronger than the human form. The foreign Other thus not only signifies the threat of the diseased native against the clean English that is fought over the body of Fleete, but also, more fundamentally, the threat of the primitive, the primordial

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___________________________________________________________ and the encroaching animal against the civilised and the human. Illustrating this, the black rosettes which appear on Fleetes breast where the leper touches him are not only reminiscent of the visible signs of a plague-like bacillus, but also remind the narrator of, the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle on a leopards hide.9 As such the lepers association with the Monkey-god may be seen as an allusion to the religion of evolution that commands all men to acknowledge their primeval, bestial elements regardless of status, race or nationality. Fleete is helpless to stop the inhuman, bestial and monstrous aspects that are at the core of his being from quite literally bursting through his skin. The disease of reverse-evolution, and reverse-invasion, is cured when Strickland and the narrator torture the leper into restoring their companions humanity. In so doing, however, these Englishmen themselves stoop to the level of brute violence that, intones the narrator, disgraced ourselves as Englishmen forever.10 English and Indian, civilized and uncivilized, diseased and clean, man and beast: each is in conflict in the text, and although the English are ultimately triumphant, it is nevertheless at the expense of the knowledge that the victory was gained by lowering themselves to uncivilized, unmentionable monstrous act that, cannot be put down here.11 Kiplings story can be seen to be responding to the nineteenth century discoveries made in bacteriology. The main proponents of the germ theory of disease, Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) and Robert Koch (1843-1910) amongst them, argued that infectious disease could only be understood by looking at the living microorganisms which caused them and at the individual cell which was its locus.12 This, in turn had the effect of transferring culpability for the spread of such ailments from physical environments to the people who inhabited them. The growth of colonialism in the nineteenth century and the actual expansion of the British Empire throughout this period greatly increased contact between nations, their indigenous peoples, and their indigenous diseases. On the one hand, diseases brought by the colonisers did as much damage to the aboriginal inhabitants as the active efforts of colonisation itself, however, devastating diseases were not the prerogative of Europe alone, and Westerners were as susceptible to contamination by native infection as vice versa. Cholera, regarded by Sheldon Watts as the quintessential disease of colonialism,13 initially confined to quite a small area in India, broke out over the whole Ganges delta in 1817 and over the next fourteen years gradually spread westwards until, the whole of the British Isles had been invaded by the winter of 1832/3.14 Watts estimates that in the course of the nineteenth century, Britain lost almost 130,000 of its resident subjects to five cholera epidemics.15 In like manner,

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___________________________________________________________ malaria was considered the natives best protection against the white conquerors16 until the discovery of its cure in 1897. Infectious foreign bacteria from infectious foreigners thus threatened a kind of cellular overthrow of their colonizing overlords, a rebellion on microscopic levels. This notion of disease as revenge was articulated by Dr J. Milner Fothergill who wrote of witnessing dead slaves, themselves immune yet carriers of yellow fever, being cast into the sea from slave ships that had transported them to America: There they remain, the unseen evidence of the wrongs suffered by the black races at the hands of the white man; and when from any cause this toxic mud is disturbed, up springs and endemic outbreak of yellow fever which claims the white man as its victimYellow fever is then the echo or refrain of the horrors of the middle passage. The unsought revenge of the enslaved African upon his white-skinned oppressor!17 If cells represented people, then the body an association of cells represented society, and so an attack on the body by a foreign microbe symbolized, in miniature, an attack on the body politic. Indeed, Laura Otis draws attention to the similarity in the rhetoric used to describe Kochs key discoveries and Bismarks establishment of German colonies in the 1880s: So intense and so interrelated were the imperial and the bacterial drivesthat they expressed themselves in each others languages. One writer found that the colonial dreamers have fallen victim to a true colonial fever bacillus. In France, a new culture of bacilli was announced in the press as the new French colonies.18 However, germ theory not only brought warfare from the battlefield to the microscope, but also severed another degree of separation between man and animal, since it was increasingly demonstrated that germs similarly affected both low and high organisms.19 Furthermore, the extent to which the human state was in reality removed from the animal was increasingly questioned as the same microscopic investigations which discovered the parity of disease amongst living things, also exposed the, primitive tissue, the primary webs20 out of which all life, both animal

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___________________________________________________________ and human, was composed. If then, as Milner Fothergill argued, disease was a type of degeneration, it effectively had the capability to reverse the evolutionary process, returning mankind to its natural state of animalism: Degeneration in the nervous structures gives us a striking example of dissolution as compared to evolutionWhen degenerative changes are afoot we see the nerve structures disappearing in the inverse order of their appearance. Those which came late go first; while those which came early manifest greater resisting powerFrom these illustrations we can see, as though a glass darkly, that disease is not merely morbid change, but, to a certain extent, the undoing of evolution: a species of degradation or reversion being entailed thereby, or in other words, a dissolution, or return to more primitive and lower forms of life.21 Both the undoing of evolution and the revenge of the oppressed, germs thus exercised a considerable hold on the imagination as invasion of ones country, or ones body, whether by foreign ideas or disease represented a disruption of both political and individual identity. Kiplings Mark of the Beast, examined in the light of contemporary attitudes to microorganisms may therefore be read as an account of colonised against coloniser using the medium of colonisation itself. The Indian leper infects the English landowner and the ensuing battle is waged on geographical, biological and evolutionary lines. Stokers Dracula is similarly concerned with the notion of microscopic biological invasions as symbolic of larger scale imperial and Darwinian concerns. That Draculas concern in coming to England is to effect a Transylvanian invasion is made clear from the proud history of the Dracula clans campaigns of war and occupation with which he regales Jonathan Harker: We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordshipwe were a conquering racethe Szekelys and the Dracula as their hearts blood, their brains, and their swords can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach.22

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___________________________________________________________ The alliance of American, Dutch and British forces that is brought to bear against the Count extends this attack into a battle for Empire. Both Arthur Holmwood and Quincey P. Morris are seasoned Imperial explorers and soldiers who, told yarns by the camp-fire in the prairies; and dressed one anothers wounds after trying a landing at the Marquesas; and drunk health on the shore of Titicaca, whilst Jack Seward was their old pal at the Korea.23 Employing the rhetoric and weapons of war, the men talk of a great quest against the vampire, face to face with duty; armed against the enemy with an Indian kukri knife and English Winchester rifles, whilst even Mina Harker, in her hypnotic state, is used as a double agent to spy on the flight of Dracula.24 However, the Count is much more than a warrior intent solely on geographical conquest. Himself a beast-man hybrid, he executes his invasion of England through a cellular infection of his victims, transforming them, in turn, back to a similarly bestial state. Like Kiplings Silver Man, Dracula effects a total assimilation of his chosen victims, achieving both an internal and an external invasion. This twofold body/state assault is further reflected in the means by which Dracula plans to achieve his offensive. Harker comments on the Counts, vast number of English booksEnglish magazines and newspapersall relating to England and English life and customs and manners, his host, likewise speaks English thoroughly and expresses his wish for complete integration into the country: I am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he see me, or pause in his speaking if he hear my words, to say, Ha, ha! a stranger! I have been so long master that I would be master still or at least that none other should be master of me.25 Dracula, then, not only desires to live in England but also to be English himself: the teeming millions26 who are the Counts potential victims will thus effectively be attacked by one of their own. That Dracula was meant by Stoker to represent a biological threat is evident from the vocabulary of disease that is used throughout.27 Mina cries out that she is Unclean! unclean! after Dracula, have infect you28 with his blood: the scar that subsequently forms on her forehead may therefore be read, like the mark on Fleetes breast, as signifying a plaguespot, a pustule of disease. The Count himself is described in terms of a bacterial menace: he has the ability to transform himself into, elemental dust and so, slip through a hairbreadth space, whilst Lucys description of, a whole myriad of little specks [that] seemed to come blowing in

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___________________________________________________________ through the broken window, mirrors the whole mass of phosphorescence, which twinkled like stars seen in Draculas English lair.29 Likewise Minas account of the thin streak of mist that, grew thicker and thickerlike smoke or with the white energy of boiling water pouring in, not through the window but through the joinings of the door also brings with it the Count who, stepped out of the mist or rather [it was] as if the mist had turned into his figure.30 This air-borne disease of vampirism in which, every speck of dust that whirls in the wind [is] a devouring monster in embryo31 closely adheres to late nineteenth century theories on the contagious nature of viruses as established by Pasteur: The next step in advance was the discovery that all the so-called epidemic and endemic fevers, and many other maladies, depended on the presence in the air of certain localities, of special parasites, which, entering the blood channels of man, set up therein various forms of fermentation, the results of which were seen in the symptoms which characterise each of such complaints.32 Furthermore, the novels expert on vampires, Professor Van Helsing, is a medical doctor, who knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world.33 He counters Draculas attacks on Lucy Westenra using science rather than superstition, carrying out four separate blood transfusions and employing contemporary theories on antiseptic in his efforts to disinfect the vampire coffins with Holy Wafer, all of his lairs but one be sterilize.34 In doing this Van Helsing may be following the influence of Professor Joseph Lister (1827-1912) who connected Pasteurs theories on fermentation caused by airborne organisms and wound sepsis. Lister discovered that microbes in the air were the likely cause of putrefaction and argued for the widespread use of antiseptic in surgery to counter these disease-causing microorganisms: Admitting, then, the truth of the germ theory, and proceeding in accordance with it, we must, when dealing with any case, destroy once for all any septic organisms which may exist within the part concerned.35 The diseased threat that Dracula therefore represents is enhanced considerably by the very foreignness of the Count. Just as Milner Fothergill considered the yellow fever Westerners contracted from dead

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___________________________________________________________ African slaves to be an unsought revenge, so too does the Transylvanian invasion play to the fears of a more-than-military colonization of the Empire. Like Caesare Lombrosos assessment of criminals, foreign natives were generally regarded as being substandard in their mental and moral capabilities.36 As such they were regarded as child-like, representing a previous stage in human development and so needing the parental guidance of the Empire in order to function effectively. In like manner, Count Dracula is said by Van Helsing to be a criminal and of criminal type: Now this criminal of ours is predestinate to crime also; he too have child-brain, and it is of the child to do what he have donehe is of imperfectly formed mind.37 A foreigner and a criminal, the suppression of his defiance should present little problem. However, Van Helsing also admits that this child-like criminal is, creeping into knowledge experimentally and, all the time that so great child-brain of his was growing.38 Dracula, the diseased savage, is gradually gaining in knowledge and potential supremacy in excess of the English over whom he seeks mastery. Furthermore his methods of colonization are not those of battle and military might areas in which Imperial force was peerless, but rather the insidious attack from within both England, the heart of Empire, and the very bloodstream of its inhabitants, literally turning them into his subordinates from the inside out. Like Kiplings leper, the disease of vampirism is also tainted with degeneration that reverses the evolutionary process, returning the Counts victims to a state of animalism. Dracula himself is described as having pointed ears, peculiarly sharp white teeth, and hairs in the centre of the palm.39 He crawls down the walls of his castle, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wingsjust as a lizard moves along a wall whilst, gorged with blood in his coffin, he is a filthy leech.40 Furthermore, Dracula has the ability not only to command, but also to transform himself into animals traditionally associated with disease: rats, carriers of plague, infest his English home whilst wolves, associated with rabies, are called at will. The Count himself arrives in England in the guise of an immense dog and is also coupled with a bat, prompting Quincey Morris to recall the death of one his horses from the bite of a vampire bat, on the Pampas,41 again reinforcing the un-Englishness of this vampiric menace. Morris, Harker, Seward and Holwood themselves are described by Van Helsing as, hunters of wild beast42 in their final offensive against Dracula. Lucy Westenra, the Counts first English victim, undergoes an animalistic metamorphosis simultaneous with her transformation into vampire: her teeth become, pointed like an animals and she jealously guards her abducted child, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone.43 The human element is gradually subsumed by the stronger, more

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___________________________________________________________ resilient animal element, and a bestial colonisation of the body, Milner Fothergills warning of a return to more primitive and lower forms of life, is realized. Dracula cautions his hunters that, My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries and time is on my side.44 As with the millennial process of evolution the Count, has centuries before him and so, can afford to wait and to go slow.45 Considering this association and also the bestial nature of his infection, Draculas incursion into England represents a threat that insinuates itself into the very fibre of the Imperial elite and will result in the degeneration of its racial stock for generations to come. This is, in fact, suggested at the end of the novel with the birth of Quincey Harker in whom, as Mark Hennelly has noticed, flows the blood not only of Jonathan and Mina, but of Dracula also.46 The child is conceived after Mina is forced to drink the Counts blood and is, moreover, born on the anniversary of Draculas demise. The centuries worth of generations of Harkers to come will each carry the blood of Dracula, and will in turn pass on the animalising infection to countless numbers: the Counts threat will therefore be realized, even though he himself is killed. Like Fleetes infection with a metamorphic disease from an Indian Imperial subject in Kiplings story, racial miscegenation in Dracula is presented as a disease that results in the bestialisation of its subjects by a healthier and biologically stronger barbarous race. Reverse colonisation thus threatens all aspects of Englands confidence in its Empire, from the national body politic to the individual body, the vitiation of healthy procreation and the assumed superior humanity of its social elite. The threat may be foreign and the method ruthless but the ways and means of implementation are far from primitive or unsophisticated, reaching to the very core of the Empire. Laura Otis argued that, a disease that knows no social boundaries calls attention to the arbitrariness of those that exist.47 The foreign threat as manifested by the Silver Man and Dracula, then, represent not only a paranoiac reverse-invasion fantasy of country against country but also, through the nature of their invasions, a general disruption of the very perception of ideas of nation and race, human and animal, monstrous and normal. If normality can be transformed into monstrous with relative ease, and if monstrosity is a disease that is catching, the disturbing openness of all people to the influence of monstrosity prompts a realisation of the essential arbitrariness of all boundaries of perception. All borders between man and beast, normal and subnormal are thus rendered superficial, and monstrosity becomes monstrous in name only.

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Notes
See I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War1763-1984 (London: Oxford University Press, 1966). 2 Rudolf Virchow, Cellular Pathology, in Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology, ed. Laura Otis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 152-53. 3 T.H. Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, in The Fortnightly Review, vol. 5, ed. John Morley (London: Chapman and Hall, 1869), 134. 4 Rudyard Kipling, The Mark of the Beast, in Collected Stories, ed. Robert Gottlieb (London: Random House, 1994), 293-307. 293, 296, 294. 5 Ibid, 301. 6 Ibid, 304. 7 Ibid, 295. 8 Ibid, 293. 9 Ibid, 297. 10 Ibid, 306. 11 Ibid, 304. 12 For a more detailed discussion of the discoveries and achievements of these men, see: Paul De Kruif, Microbe Hunters (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963 ); Laura Otis, Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in NineteenthCentury Literature, Science, and Politics (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 13 Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism (New Haven: Yale University Press 1997), xvi. See I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War1763-1984 (London: Oxford University Press, 1966). 13 Rudolf Virchow, Cellular Pathology, in Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology, ed. Laura Otis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 152-53. 13 T.H. Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, in The Fortnightly Review, vol. 5, ed. John Morley (London: Chapman and Hall, 1869), 134. 13 Rudyard Kipling, The Mark of the Beast, in Collected Stories, ed. Robert Gottlieb (London: Random House, 1994), 293-307. 293, 296, 294. 13 Ibid, 301. 13 Ibid, 304. 13 Ibid, 295. 13 Ibid, 293. 13 Ibid, 297. 13 Ibid, 306. 13 Ibid, 304.
1

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___________________________________________________________
14

15 Watts, 167. 16

Frederick F. Cartwright and Michael Biddis, Disease and History (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972; reprint, Stroud: Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2000), 113-14.

Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate all the Brutes, trans. Joan Tate (New York: The New Press, 1996), 79. 17 J. Milner Fothergill, Disease: A Study (London: Balliere, Tindall & Cox, 1886 , 12. ) 18 Otis, Membranes, 31. 19 Tuberculosis of mankind is exactly the same as that of the ox or cowtrue Tuberculosis, no matter whether derived from man, the cow, pig, or rabbit, can be reproduced in an infinite series with absolutely identical. James Lambert, The Germ Theory of Disease: A Paper Read Before the Irish Central Veterinary Medical Society, April 5th 1883 (London: Balliere, Tindall & Cox, 1883), 17. The lowest, as well as the highest animals, are similarly the victims of these almost impalpable organisms. George Fleming, Actinomykosis: A New Infectious Disease of Animals and Mankind (London: Balliere, Tindall & Cox, 1886), 2. 20 George Eliot, Middlemarch, ed. J.W. Harvey (London: Penguin English Library, 1965; Penguin Books, 1994), 175-76. 21 Milner Fothergill, 11. 22 Bram Stoker, Dracula, ed. Maurice Hindle (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1993), 42-43. 23 Ibid, 83-84. 24 Ibid, 280, 305, 381. 25 Ibid, 30-32. 26 Ibid, 231. 27 Stokers preoccupation with disease and contamination may be traced as resulting from his own medical condition: according to Daniel Farson, Stokers biographer and grand nephew, the novelist dies of tertiary syphilis. Daniel Farson, The Man Who Wrote Dracula (London: Michael Joseph, 1975), 233-34. Furthermore, between the years 1896-97 syphilis was at forefront of the medical drive for the search for disease-causing microbes, as bacteriologists actively sought for the microorganism which produced it. Otis, Membranes, 135 28 Stoker, 366, 411. 29 Ibid, 308, 186, 324. 30 Ibid, 332, 333, 369. 31 Ibid, 456.

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___________________________________________________________ A.E. Bridger, Antiseptic Treatment. A Book for Ladies (London: W. Jones, 1888), 6. 33 Stoker, 147. 34 Ibid, 390. 35 Joseph Lister, Illustrations of the Antiseptic System (1867), in Literature and Science, 187-192. 36 As Havelock Ellis reasoned, the child is naturally, by his organization, nearer to the animal, to the savage, to the criminal, than the adult. Henry Havelock Ellis, The Criminal (London: Walter Scott, 1890), 212. 37 Stoker, 439. 38 Ibid, 389-90. 39 Ibid, 28. 40 Ibid, 49, 71. 41 Ibid, 196. 42 Ibid, 395. 43 Ibid, 223, 271. 44 Ibid, 394. 45 Ibid, 389. 46 Mark Hennelly, The Gnostic Quest and the Victorian Wasteland, English Literature in Transition 20 (1977): PAGE NOS, 23. 47 Otis, Membranes, 145.
32

Bibliography
Bridger, A.E. Antiseptic Treatment. A Book for Ladies. London: W. Jones, 1888. Cartwright, Frederick. F. and Michael Biddis. Disease and History. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972; reprint, Stroud: Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2000. Clarke, I.F. Voices Prophesying War 1763-1984. London: Oxford University Press, 1966. De Kruif, Paul. Microbe Hunters. London: Jonathan Cape, 1963. Eliot, George. Middlemarch, edited by J.W. Harvey. London: Penguin English Library, 1965; Penguin Books, 1994.

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___________________________________________________________ Farson, Daniel. The Man Who Wrote Dracula. London: Michael Joseph, 1975. Fleming, George. Actinomykosis: A New Infectious Disease of Animals and Mankind. London: Balliere, Tindall & Cox, 1886. Havelock Ellis, Henry. The Criminal. London: Walter Scott, 1890. Hennelly, Mark. The Gnostic Quest and the Victorian Wasteland, English Literature in Transition 20 (1977). Huxley, T.H. On the Physical Basis of Life. In The Fortnightly Review, vol. 5, edited by John Morley. London: Chapman and Hall, 1869. Kipling, Rudyard. The Mark of the Beast. In Collected Stories, edited by Robert Gottlieb, 293-307. London: Random House, 1994. Lambert, James. The Germ Theory of Disease: A Paper Read Before the Irish Central Veterinary Medical Society, April 5th 1883. London: Balliere, Tindall & Cox, 1883. Lindqvist, Sven. Exterminate All the Brutes. Translated by Joan Tate. New York: The New Press, 1996. Lister, Joseph. Illustrations of the Antiseptic System. In Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Laura Otis, 187-192. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Milner Fothergill, J. Disease: A Study. London: Balliere, Tindall & Cox, 1886. Otis, Laura. Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Politics. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. edited by Maurice Hindle. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1993.

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___________________________________________________________ Virchow, Rudolf. Cellular Pathology. In Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology, edited by Laura Otis, 152-53. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Watts, Sheldon. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

Session 6 Monsters Miscellaneous

Vengeful Virgins in White: Female Monstrosity in Asian Cinema Colette Balmain

Abstract This paper argues that monsters are mythic products of their cultures, and whilst the figure of the female monster in the [mainstream] American horror film is usually defined as monstrous as a consequence of her sexuality and gender [Barbara Creeds the monstrous feminine], vengeful woman in Asian cinema connote specific cultural myths around female power and presence which cannot be [re]located within the feminist paradigm [via Mulvey et al] generally applied to American cinema. In this paper, I consider two such representations: The figure of Eun-Suh in The Ring Virus (Mauricio Dortona and Dong-bin Kim, South Korean: 1999) and Hsieh Ya-Li in Double Vision (Shuang tong, Kuo-fu Chen, Taiwan / Hong Kong: 2003). In these films, female monstrosity, does not merely articulate male fears around female empowerment [either in a psychoanalytical or historical sense], but connotates cultural beliefs around the transformative and fluid nature of the world / universe, as contained within Buddhist and Taoist belief systems that inform these narratives and the representations of the female subject within them. Using Deleuze and Guattaris discussion of becoming in A Thousand Plateaus1, and Deleuzes work on the time-image in Cinema 2: The Time Image2; I suggest that the vengeful virgin in white epitomises the connectivity between the cosmic and the everyday which is central to Asian cultures and articulates sites of alterity and becoming which cannot be contained within traditional feminist paradigms through which gender is understood in the horror film. The first example I want to consider today is the female ghost, Eun-Suh, in The Ring Virus (Kim Dong-bin, Korea/Japan: 1999). The Ring Virus, is a remake of Hideo Nakatas 1998 smash hit Ringu: both films are based upon a novel of the same name by Japanese horror author, Koji Suziki. The Ring Virus follows basically the same plot line as Ringu watching a mysterious videotape condemns its spectators to death seven days after viewing. A female reporter and single mother, Sun-ju, teams up with Choe Yoi, a neurosurgeon, to research the death of her niece, Kang Lee. Having discovered the videotape that her niece, along with a group of other teenagers, watched seven days before they died, Sun-ju is compelled to watch the video herself and is condemned to the same fate as

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___________________________________________________________ the teenagers unless she can discover [uncover] the secret behind the video virus. The search for the meaning of the virus motivates the narrative trajectory, and provides a temporal framework for the unfolding events. At the centre of the mystery is a young child/woman, Eun-Suh in The Ring Virus [Sadako in Ringu], whose violent death at the hands of an oppressive patriarchy, has kept her attached to the world of the living in order to seek vengeance: with her long dark hair and white costume, EunSuh is both literally and symbolically a vengeful virgin in white. On a symbolic level Eun-Suh is a cinematic representation of Ji-hye Lee: a common ghost found in Korean folklore, literature and the visual arts. In cinema, the figure of Goo Mi Ho, a female ghost known for her ability to change shape can be traced back to early Korean film and was first seen in The Tale of Jang-Wha (1924). Known as Virgin Ghost in White Costume, Ji-hye Lee is a very different type of ghost to that commonly found in Western mythology. As the name suggests, The Virgin Ghost is always a woman, clothed in white with long dark hair signifying both beauty and youth. Centrally the figure of the Virgin Ghost3 symbolises Koreas suffering as a nation a nation still divided between the communist North and anti-Communist South, tensions foregrounded during the Korean War (June 24, 1950 July 27, 1953) and which still persist today.4 In the conventional horror story, a woman who was killed without any fault becomes a virgin ghost suffering from her sacrificed life. The innocent woman takes revenge on the person who killed her. She cannot go to heaven unless she is compensated for her sacrificed life, so she goes around the world until she revenges herself. She can take a rest in heaven only after retaliation []. In brief, the virgin ghost in white costume shows the Korean native sentiment, the life full of sorrows. It may also imply our ancestors' desire to recover from their pain5 In Spectral Times: The Ghost Film as Historical Allegory, Bliss Cua Lim argues that the process of haunting disrupts notions of a chronological temporality with a locatable and verifiable past. [T]he ghost narrative opens the possibility of a radicalised concept of noncontemporaneity; haunting as ghostly return precisely refused the idea that things are just left behind, that the past is inert and the present uniform.6

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___________________________________________________________ This ties in with Eastern beliefs in the transformative nature and fluidity of the Universe in which it is believed that the world is made up of um ki (ying) and yang ki (yang): The material or phenomenal world is manifested through various interactions of these two life forces. Therefore, the world is never static; it is constantly fluctuating and changing.7. In East Asian horror cinema, the transformative and fluid nature of the world is often signified through and by the female body. This becoming as articulated through bodily metamorphoses deconstructs traditional gendered binarisms: as highlighted within the anomalous gendered identity of Eun-Suh in The Ring Virus. Significantly in The Ring Virus, Eun-Suh is killed, not because she is psychic as in Ringu, but because she is coded as monstrous by patriarchal society as she is anatomically both female and male8. It is the discovery of her alterity that culminates in her dreadful death, and leads to her equally dreadful vengeance. Outside of gendered binarisms, Eun-Suh recites, resists, and ultimately redeploys phallocentric power against itself calling into question the heterosexual matrix and the stability of gendered positions within that matrix. American feminist paradigms of understanding gender representation in the horror film drawing on psychoanalytical models of presence and absence, suggest that woman is seen as monstrous by patriarchal culture because she signifies lack [the typical Freudian / Lacanian position ], or as in the case of Barbara Creed, excess9. The figure of Eun-Suh renders unintelligible such feminist paradigms of female monstrosity as she cannot be interpreted within psychoanalytical binaries, which place female identity on the side of lack and construct woman only in relational terms to the male subject. This gender shuffling 10 in East Asian cinema as Susan Napier calls it, creates not just a spatial relationship between the human and nature, but as Esther C. M. Yau and Kyung Hyun Kim point out redefines the feminine with the fantastic in its effort to better align humans with the supernatural.11 Further in Eastern film, this gender shuffling is often used to express wider questions of nationhood and identity and embodied more often than not on and through the traumatized bodies of female protagonists. This is a tradition key to our understanding of Korean cinema. In Male Crises in New Korean Cinema, Kyung Hyun Kim writes that fifth-generation [Chinese] filmmakers [] exhibited the agency of history and the allegory of nation through female characters []12. Discussing the films of Im Kwon-tack the most prolific director in Korean cinema in the 1980s and 1990s Kim writes about how Im Kwon-tack thematized the Korean national crisis through innumerable wrecked female bodies.13

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___________________________________________________________ In his discussion of the time-image, Deleuze also implies an intersection between the cosmic and the everyday and the female body in East Asian Cinema. Writing on Japanese cinema in Cinema 2: The Time Image, Deleuze cites Antonionis contention that in the West, as opposed to the East, there is an unbridgeable divide between mans banal horizon and an inaccessible and always receding cosmological horizon.14 Further, for the Japanese, one and the same horizon links the cosmic to the everyday, the durable to the changing, one single and identical time as the unchanging form of that which changes.15 This becoming of the cinematic-image is closely linked into the transformative nature of the female body as Deleuze points out: But the chain of states of the female body is not closed: descending from the mother or going back to the mother, it serves as a revelation to men, who now talk about themselves, and on a deeper level to the environment, which now makes itself seen or heard only through the window of a room, or a train, a whole art of sound. In the same place or in space, a womans body achieves a strange nomadism which makes it cross ages, situations and places [] The states of the body secrete the slow ceremony which joins together the corresponding attitudes, and develop a female gest which overcomes the history of men and the crises of the world.16 In The Ring Virus, the figure of Eun-Suh articles this female gest, bringing together the everyday and the cosmic, disrupting temporal-spatial coordinates producing a sense of temporality which encompasses present, past and future. This is most clearly demonstrated by the sequence in which Sun-Ju (the female journalist) and Cho Yol (a neurosurgeon) discover the well down which Eun-Suhs body was discarded. As the past fragments into the present, with a voice-over connecting the two disparate temporal zones, we learn of the reasons for Eun-Suhs death and the frightening vengeful ghost is transformed from monstrous other into the wronged virgin in white of traditional Korean folklore. Her wrecked body and indecipherable sex signifying the unstable nature of Korea as a nation through its traumatic and traumatized poses. Clip: Chapter 5 The Ring Virus [4 minutes]

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___________________________________________________________ Whilst The Ring Virus interprets Susikis novel within traditional and recognisable Korean folklore and is specific to its cultural location, similar figures of female materiality and spirituality can be found elsewhere in Eastern cinema in a number of different forms. I want to conclude my discussion by considering the female demon in a recent Hong Kong / Taiwanese co-production, Double Vision. Again, Taoist and Buddhist beliefs inform the representation of the female monster. On the surface, Double Vision (Shuang tong, Kuo-fu Chen, Hong Kong / Taiwan) is seemingly a run of the mill serial killer come buddy buddy film. A disgraced Taiwanese police officer, Huang Huo-tu (Tony Leunge) teams up with an American FBI agent, Kevin Richter (David Morse) to solve the inexplicable deaths of a number of high-profile Taiwanese including a prominent businessman killed by drowning inside a locked office and a recent divorcee who bears all signs of a burns victim, but yet whose body is unmarked and whose apartment shows no signs of fire damage. Found on the victims are Taoist talismans, which led the Huang and Richter to a Taoist sect, where they discover the mutilated, but still living, body of a young woman underneath the concrete floor. Convinced that the murderers are members of the Taoist cult, Richter prepares to return to America. However, that night, Richter the unbeliever is murdered, his tongue torn out and Huang realises too late that the young woman they rescued was in fact the leader of the Taoist cult. The young woman, Hsieh Ya-Li, dying from a brain tumour, is in search of the secret of immortality as embedded within Taoist beliefs: [T]ales of the eight immortals of Taoism [] were believed to be historical personages who had achieved human transcendence through rigorous refinement of body and mind into a supernatural state [] [T]hese immortals came to symbolize intellectual and spiritual freedom.17 Whilst Hsieh Ya-Li plays a less prominent part in the narrative than YunSuh does in The Ring Virus, she also embodies the intersection of the banal and the cosmic in Eastern cinemas. Significantly enough, it is Hsieh Ya-Lis victims who are named as ghosts in the narrative, or as halfhuman. This reiterates the Buddhist mantra of rewarding the good and punishing the bad that is also embedded within the figure of Ji-Hye Lee in Korean folklore. The film raises explicitly the question of the monstrous in the final sequences, within the battle between Huang and Hsieh Ya-Li. Clip: Scene 24. Double Vision. [4 minutes]

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___________________________________________________________ In this sequence, Huang is brought face to face with his past, although it is an altered and symbolic repetition of that past. He is made to face the fact that he has no honour, that he has failed his colleagues, his wife and his daughter. And it is the recognition of this failure and the importance of the here and now and ones duties towards ones family and colleagues that redeems Huang, as it is his wife and daughters love for him that allows him to return from the dead. It is difficult in this sequence to define Hsieh Ya-Li in terms of the monstrous, instead she acts as a mirror which is held up to Huang and reflects instead his transgression. This subverts the traditional feminist connection that the figure of the woman, either as victim or monster, in the horror film, functions as a signifier of male castration anxiety for which she has to either be reintroduced back into patriarchal and normative heterosexuality an impossibility in the case of Yun-Suh as we have seen, or punished for her lack. In the American horror film, the identification of woman and monster, or indeed woman as monster, more often than not has negative connotations and as Linda Williams points out writing about the psychopathic horror film: woman are increasingly punished for the threatening nature of their sexuality.18 Both Hsieh Ya-Li and Yun-Suh bear the iconographic signifiers of virginity as detailed in their androgynous figures, their white clothing, and demure appearance. Unlike female monsters in mainstream Western horror film, they encompass incompatible attributes. Whilst symbolizing passivity, their violent acts of vengeance reconstruct them outside of the conventions of female representation that we have come to associate with American mainstream cinema. Further, the films themselves unfold slowly when compared to the frenetic pace of much horror cinema, with much more detail being paid to character development and the aesthetization of the cinematic-image than associated with the rapid cutting, and climatic form of the horror genre. Writing about the potentiality of the rhizome in the introduction to A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari distinguish between the multiplicity and connectivity of the rhizome from the stratified and structured branches of the tree. They argue that the model of the tree looms large in Western reality and Western thought. In opposition to this is East, which according to Deleuze and Guattari offer[s] something like a rhizomatic model opposed in every respect to the Western model of the tree []19 They continue: Andre Haudricourt even sees this as the basis for the opposition between the moralities or philosophies of transcendence dear to the West and the immanent ones of the East: the God who sows and reaps, as opposed to the God who replants and unearths (replanting of offshoots versus sowing of seeds).20 The differences between these models of thought also is reflected in the

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___________________________________________________________ approach towards sexuality the tree model subjugate[s] sexuality in terms of reproduction, whilst the rhizome liberates sexuality both from reproduction and geniality.21 The fluidity of the rhizome is thus situated in direct opposition to the rigidity of the tree. The transformative nature of identity in Eastern cinema, seen here today, through the figures of the Eun-Suh and Hsieh Ya-Li, is both culturally located and historically inflected and produces an assemblage of human / non-human, male / female, natural / supernatural which disrupts binary divisions associated with gender representation in mainstream narrative. The suffering bodies of woman in these films, as elsewhere in Asian cinema, refuses to associate femininity with lack; female sexuality with disorder; and ultimately disengages paradigms of monstrosity from psychoanalytical models and phallocentric discourses. As I have demonstrated, vengeful virgins in white articulates sites of alterity and becoming which cannot be contained within traditional feminist paradigms through which gender is understood in the horror film.

Notes
Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. Translation and Foreword by Brian Massumi. (London: The Athlone Press, 1988) 2 Gilles Deleuze. Cinema 2: The Time Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. (London: The Athlone Press, 1989) 3 The Virgin Ghost is an example of what is called the Han-ridden ghost which is a: Korean vengeful spirit of one victimized in life and unable to rest. Han is a Korean term that means resentment for deep injustice, a feeling ingrained in the Korean people. Korea is inundated with these han-ridden ghost[s] who can only be allayed when the injustice against then has been resolved. Lawrence C. Bush. Asian Horror Encyclopaedia: Asian Horror Culture in Literature, Manga & Folklore. (San Jose: Writers Club Press, 2001), 66. Another less productive type of the virgin ghost especially in terms of a feminist analysis, is the son-gag-si the jealous virgin ghost, of marriageable age, envious of the sexual identity, of which they have been deprived, of living woman of similar ages. 4 The war ended with the setting up of the DMA or a demilitarised zone around the 38th parallel with the North Koreans on one side, and the South Koreans and Americans on the other. This is still in place today. There
1

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___________________________________________________________ has still not been a peace treaty signed between the two sides as of yet. Se e Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopaedia. [nda] [Online]. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org.wiki/Korean_war. [7th May 2004] 5 Ghosts. [nda] [Online]. Available at: http://ca.geocities.com/pnunow/ghost.htm. [4 May 2004] 6 Bliss Cua Lim. Spectral Times: The Ghost Film as Historical Allegory. Positions 9.2. Fall 2001. (Durham: Duke University Press), 288 7 Introduction to Korean Folklore [na]. [Online]. Available at: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Labyrinth/3481/koreafl2.html. [4 May 2004] 8 This is much closer to Susikis novel than either the Japanese version, Ringu, or the American version, The Ring 9 See Barbara Creed, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, feminism and psychoanalysis. In her book, Creed argues that woman terrifies not because she reflects back to the male subject the possibility of castration, woman as castrated, but because she actively threatens castration. Creed replaces the traditional theorisation of the castrated woman, signifying and signally difference, with the monstrous-feminine signalling male fears of woman as castrator. (London: Routledge, 1992). 10 This is especially true of Hong Kong Cinema in which as Helen Hoksze Leung points out has recently undergone an explosion of films that, in various ways and to different degrees, challenge the heteronormative understanding of sexuality. Helen Hok-sze Leung. Queerscapes in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema, Positions: east asia cultures critique. 9.2. (Fall 2001), ed Esther C.M. Yau and Kyung Hyun Kim. (Durham: Duke University Press), 424. 11 Esther C.M. Yau and Kyung Hyun Kim. Guest Editors Introduction. Positions: east asia cultures critique. 9.2. (Fall 2001). (Durham: Duke University Press), 283 12 Kyung Hyun Kim. Male Crises in New Korean Cinema: Reading the Early Films of Park Kwang-su. Positions: east asia cultures critique. 9.2. (Fall 2001), ed Esther C.M. Yau and Kyung Hyun Kim. (Durham: Duke University Press), 372 13 ibid. 14 Deleuze, 17 15 ibid. 16 Gilles Deleuze. Cinema 2: The Time Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. (London: The Athlone Press. 1989),196

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17

Catrien Ross. Supernatural and Mysterious Japan: Spirits, Hauntings and Paranormal Phenomena. (Yenbooks: Tokyo. 1996), 27/28 18 Linda Williams. When a Woman Looks in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Austin Press, 1996), 31 19 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 18 20 ibid. 21 ibid.

Bibliography
Bliss Cua Lim. Spectral Times: The Ghost Film as Historical Allegory. Positions: east asia cultures critique. 9.2. (Fall 2001), edited by Esther C.M. Yau and Kyung Hyun Kim, 287 330. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Bush, Lawrence C. Asian Horror Encyclopaedia: Asian Horror Culture in Literature, Manga & Folklore. San Jose: Writers Club Press, 2001. Catrien Ross. Supernatural and Mysterious Japan: Spirits, Hauntings and Paranormal Phenomena. Yenbooks: Tokyo, 1996. Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, feminism and psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1992. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Flix A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. Translation and Foreword by Brian Massumi. London: The Athlone Press, 1988. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London: The Athlone Press, 1989. Kim, Kyung Hyun. Male Crises in New Korean Cinema: Reading the Early Films of Park Kwang-su. Positions: east asia cultures critique. 9.2. (Fall 2001), edited by Esther C.M. Yau and Kyung Hyun Kim, 369 400. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Leung, Helen Hok-sze. Queerscapes in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema, Positions: east asia cultures critique. 9.2. (Fall 2001), edited by Esther C.M. Yau and Kyung Hyun Kim, 423/448. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Williams, Linda. When a Woman Looks in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, edited by Barry Keith Grant, 15 34. Austin: University of Austin Press, 19961

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___________________________________________________________ Yau, Esther C.M. and Kim, Kyung Hyun Guest Editors Introduction. Positions: east asia cultures critique. 9.2. (Fall 2001), 279 286. Durham: Duke University Press. Yau, Esther C.M. and Kim, Kyung Hyun, guest editors. Positions: east asia cultures critique. 9.2. (Fall 2001), Durham: Duke University Press.

Little Mermads Swimming In The Patriarchal Seas Nur zgenalp

Abstract Fairy Tales are known as a part of childhood which are actually also for adults. They began as oral/verbal narrations but also started having an important place in the literary world. Nowadays not only the press but also visual communication media like television and movies have started making the fairy tales sources for their fiction and non-fiction productions. Disney Cartoon movies attract both children and the adults. Fairy tales change their forms and become subjects of lots of film and TV series. So what is the secret of fairy tales? Why do they not lose their qualities but manage to stay fresh? Tuna Erdem starts her article From Cinderella to La Jaconde1 by describing the fairy tales. The sexual and existential evolution that the child passes through both seem like a miracle of metamorphosis for the child. Fairy tales uses these world of miracles, hiding their properties under their own masks. This process passes both painfully and miracolously for the child who is a candidate for being an adult; who is torn apart from the family and tries to stand on his/her own and discover who he/she really is. Human beings change in their own history as the history of the societies evolve. With every new narration the rules are reproduced again. Because of this the fairy tales are both primitive and up-to-date at the same time. Even though the reproductions have a common quality with the first one, they evolve and change and adapt to the era they are in. Especially patriarchal societies, in particular tend, use fairy tales according to these changes. In this paper, I will attempt to comparatively analyze the different narrative styles of the fairy tale Little Mermaid and the Disney film based on the same story. My goal is to understand an example of how patriarchal communities guide children who are discovering their sexualities; using fairy tales, especially the Little Mermaid which the protagonist in the story metamorphoses both physically and spiritually. Keywords Film theory, fairy tales, Disney films, patriarchal narratives 1. Little Mermaid Ive known the story of the Little Mermaid as long as I came to know myself. Nevertheless, its effect on me and my friends grew during our adolescence. When we started leaving our home towns and families going to universities in other cities, starting a new life and learning to stand on our own feet. We were young and we were willing to discover this new

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___________________________________________________________ world. Our overloaded emotions were bursting out with every book we read and every film we saw. As I grew a little bit older and mature and less romantic, I started figuring out the reasons in a more realistic, rational and analitical way: The fairy tale had achieved its objective. I found out that not only Little Mermaid but all fairy tales were trying to give the socially approved lessons. As people grew from being a child to an adult, passing through many painfull phases, they were taught the norms of the society. Some say that The children meet the fairy tales inevitably as soon as they start understanding the spoken language.2 They start getting their first impressions of male- female relationships through these fairy tales. They ask ...But, do we learn from these fairy tales an objective lesson on who we are and who others are, or do we learn a rigid lesson on how to fit in, how to oppress, and how we are supposed to behave? A male child is advised to grow up to be a handsome prince and carry on to be a succesfull king as the female child to do everything for the man of her house and life. In her article Cinderella In The Classroom: Childrens Responses To Gender Roles In Fairy-Tales,3 Elle Westland defines fairy tales as changing according to the changes in social structures: Historical work on the fairy-tale has shown how far its development depends on the dominant value system of the culture that appropriates it. Fairy tales told in the past had the cultural value systems of that society in that time and fairy tales told nowadays, even though they have the same plots, carry the social value systems of today. The protagonist of fairy tales are mostly female. ( like in the Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Cinderella, and many more...) It seems like the patriarchal system was trying to educate women in society to reach its aims. Graham Hammond4 thinks that the the system determines the role of woman not only in fairy tales but also in mythological stories. ...classic fairy and mythological tales are the examples of how and why a womans place in the world is too often unappreciated, unrecognized, or trivialized... We can take this one step forward and say that: the role of woman is constructed with every form of narrative in the societies today, which remain predominantly patriarchal. In todays narrative women are not mostly the protagonists as they did in fairy tales but they get the roles next to the protagonist male character, showing how a woman should act next to and towards a man. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their essay "The Queens Looking Glass,"5 analizes the fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and say that male dominated literature leads the women to an ideology that they should give up their self-worth and self-concept in

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___________________________________________________________ order to appeal to the stereotypes of the heroic leading men in the fairytales. I think these attacks do not only point towards women, but also to men. The male roles and positions are determined, too. Men, also, have to metamorphose from frog to prince. In Beauty and the Beast, the male character has to make himself accepted by the female protagonist no matter how ugly and how cruel he is. This pressure of dominant values of the society on men is also very important but it is a broad new thesis subject. So I will only mention about the dominat values which are related to my subject. The Fairy Tale Of Little Mermaid Hans Christien Andersen wrote the fairy tale Little Mermaid6 in 1837. The Little Mermaid was born in a Christian land so it has the properties of the Christian culture all through the tale. In addition, the fairy tale was replete with the information and the mythological stories based on the sea because Denmark is a seaside country and its people earn their lives from the sea. Christianity and the elements of the seaside society are blended into the story as cultural codes. Little Mermaid tells the story of the youngest daugher of the Sea King who rises up above the water when she turn fifteen as her six elder sisters already did. On her first experience above water, she saves a prince from drowning and falls in love with him. A human being has to love her with all of his heart for her to receive a real soul so she gives her tail and her voice to the Sea Witch in exchange of a pair of legs to earn the love of the Prince. But the prince does not love her back and marries another. Little Mermaid has to turn into foam according to the rules of the system. Her six sisters give their hair to Sea Witch to save the Little Mermaid who has to kill the Prince to go back home. But she cannot kill the Prince. The Air Fairy shows up, raises her and blesses her as she was going to turn into foam. The Little Mermaid is saved in exchange for her good deeds. The fairy tale starts with descriptions of the Sea Kingdom. Andersen uses the most magnificent objects from earth for the patriarchal Danish society to describe the wonders of the undersea: Churches and their steeples. He tells that ...it is very deep- deeper than any anchor cable can fathom; many church steeples would have to be piled one on top of the other to reach from the very bottom to the surface of the water.7 The first character the reader meets is the Sea King who is a strong male character. After the Sea King, reader meets with the mother of the king, the Sea Queen who carries twelve oysters on her tail as a sign of her nobility. From the beginning, the values of nobility in the male dominated Christian 2.

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___________________________________________________________ world is told to the young women as the target audience who will soon reach the age of marriage. In the fairy tale, we learn how the elder sisters meet with the sea surface and their experiences before we learn about the Little Mermaid. Every one of these girls passing through adolesence chooses a different spot to rise up above the sea according to their own personalities and their experiences develop according to their choices. The oldest sister likes the churches and the sound of the church bells the most in her experience. The second one describes the beauty of the sunset. After the importance of the Christian culture is underlined, the natural beauties are blessed. Every mermaid passes through this experience and they all narrate the beauty of their experiences which before they were afraid of and tried to avoid but also curiously expecting. This metamorphosis really reminds the change of a girl into a woman. The important of all, that all the elder sisters get used to the idea of visiting over the sea and they lose their interest of it when they marry one of the sea folks and settle their lives under the sea. They became good wives to their husbands and wonderful mothers to their children. Outer world becomes trivial and they set up a life as the women of their home. The Sea Queen, grandmother of the Little Mermaid, prepares her before her first rise attaching oysters as jewelry on her tail. The oysters hurt the Little Mermaid a lot. The Sea Queen explains: Well, one must suffer to be beautiful A woman should be noble; dependent to her religion, husband and children; but over all she should be beautiful. She should do everything to be liked by her man. She is not only dependent to one man as an object of desire, but to rules of all the men in the society. She should be beautiful. and skilled to have her man honored between the other men. The Little Mermaid sees a nice sunset when she first rises over the sea. Then she sees a ship full of people having fun. Between them, there is the young and handsome Prince. Fireworks of the celebration represent waves of the overloaded and complex feelings of the teen-ager Little Mermaid. The undersea starts to seem darker as the oversea brighter and the Prince as son of the brightness, noble and sixteen year old, best fit for the bridegroom candidate. She saves the Prince and lands him onto a bay which has a monastery in it. Little Mermaid swims back to the sea when she sees the girls from the monastery coming. As if the fairy tale saying Everbody should be with his/her appropriate partner. The girls running from the monasterys garden which can also be called the garden of life- deserves to marry the Prince. The garden symbolizes fertility as the monastery symbolizes morality.

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___________________________________________________________ As a result, the Little Mermaid decides to give up her voice and tail to win an immortal soul. She gives up her most precious part, her tail, trying to be the woman the Prince would love. Also she gives up her voice which symbolizes her freedom; her right to speak. No matter what she does to win the Princes love, the Prince marries another girl. Little Mermaids last test gives another lesson. To have herself back, she has to kill the Prince. She can not do it. The reason is not written clearly in the tale. Is it because of love: that she does not want to lose him? Is it that she is noble: that she could not kill another living being? Or is it because she accepts the fact that she has already lost everything she has? By either way it is taught: Do not behave badly. Behave nice and noblely, no matter what you may lose. Hans Christian Andersen saves the Little Mermaid from dying or becoming foam, thus avoiding a sad ending. The story about the Prince concludes as the theme appear: the good deeds of a person will always be rewarded. This escape seems like the end of the film Thelma and Louise or Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kids. The audience never gets to see the protagonists die because the frame freezes. They make them live in their minds and do not feel sad for their death. It is the same with the fairy tale Little Mermaid. The reader does not feel sad thinking she has lost her love and turned into foam but feels relieved by learning that she will win an immortal soul if she carry on her good deeds for 300 years more. 3. Disneys Little Mermaid Even though the film is adapted by the fairy tale it has many differences with the literary work. Characteristics of the 1989s films target audience has changed. It is a time where fairy tales are welcomed as productions for children so for also the film, the target audience was primarily composed of children. Naturally there are lots of differences between 1837s children and 1989s and what are expected of them. Even though some values stay the same (like being a nice, beautiful woman who is loyal to her man) their qualities change. Todays young girls take Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Ally McBeal as their examples. These women portray a very difficult example to reach with their physical characteristics such as their thinness and operationed bodies. On the ethical side, they show that a woman is succesful when she directs her man. They do not mind making themselves object of desires to rule their men. At the time the fairy tale was written, a girls task was to be a good housewife, looking after the children and making her husband happy. In 1990s, a womans task changes into looking beautiful because this way she can earn power and rule her man. And to be beautiful in every way

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___________________________________________________________ seems blessed. As a result something in the fairy tale Little Mermaid that has not got much attention finds a very important role for the women living in todays patriarchal society. The Little Mermaids suffer through loosing her tail and getting a pair of legs for her man turns out to be a reality in the life of modern women as plastic surgery. Looking at the history of Disneys films, the change in the target audience in time can easily be seen from the differences in the narrative styles and changes of the contents. In Disneys first film, Snow White and Seven Dwarves (1937) Snow White wonders around with her pure white face taking all the responsibilities for cleaning the house of the dwarves and treating them as her children. She spends all her life waiting for a man she never knew to rescue her. Finally the prince shows up, saves her and takes her to happiness. In 1950s Cinderella, Cinderella cleans the house and cooks all through the film. Her only wish is also to marry a man she has never met. 1958s Sleeping Beauty does nothing different from her friends. She also sews, cleans around and waits for the man she never knew. Little Mermaid portrays a slightly different character from her friends being a little more rebellious, doing what she wants. In the film, she loves a man she knew more according to the fairy tale version. The Prince has some charming qualities such as caring for living creatures (his dog). He seems like a good person. Still, we have to admit that Prince Eric is also a stereotype. The film takes one step forward than the fairy tale, covering the appropriate role of the candidate of the patriarchal society man. Men must be strong, bold, and willing to inflict themselves on women to win them. Women must be beautiful, self-effacing, demure, and charming if they hope to land a man and marry him after a long engagement.8 We never see Prince Erics mother and father and realize that they are dead. Eric has to marry someone as soon as possible to carry on his generation and to save his kingdom. Today, it is expected from a male child to grow up to be a nice man, find an appropriate wife, have a good job and finance a beautiful house. The film also opens with a vision of the male world. The scene begins with the sailing of Erics boat. Instead of narrating the undersea as it does in the fairy tale, film starts telling the conditions of the ground people at the sea. All the people on the boat are male. As the credits start, we go down under the sea and we encounter some seapeople and they are also male. From the beginning the film describes its world: Male land people. In the film, Seawitch Ursula takes the part of the noble Grandmother as importance. An old woman is portrayed as using devious plots to gain power more than by being noble. When maturity and

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___________________________________________________________ wisdom come as characteristics of a woman, it is evil. We meet Ursula putting on a make-up as if she is telling Ariel to make herself beautiful for men. Gilbert and Gubar describe this sort of behavior as "inanimate objet dart," which means turning killing into art, when a woman is stripped of what makes her unique in order to become an object of desire for men. They find similarities of the patriarchal aspects of Andersons Little Mermaid with the Chinese practice of footbinding. Woman creates herself again to conform male dominated and defined sense of beauty and loses her own identity.9 Why are her tail and her voice taken from the Little Mermaid? Why not her arms or her eyes? In China, footbinding was a tool of social control in a male dominated society. Fan Hong suggests that it is a symbol of the castration of women which Chinese civilization was unique in permitting. Chinese women could not move fast because they felt pain. So they could no longer escape from danger as quickly as they previously could have. This creates a social control over women. Chinese women were not only expected to torture themselves, but were also forced to subject themselves to this form in order to be viewed as attractive by their society. Just as the Little Mermaid was forced to accept legs in order to be seen as desirable in the world of the prince, no matter how painful it is to her. So the woman does not think it is painful and it hurts but thinks that she does it for beauty.10 Nowadays lots of women can be heard talking about how painful it is to be beautiful. It is the same with the Little Mermaid. Her tail is not the only thing that Little Mermaid gives up for her man, she loses her voice, too. Being voiceless can be translated as not having the right to speak. She can not talk and she fills the eye with beauty. In other words, she is an object to be displayed and desired. This way Ariel, the Little Mermaid turns into an object of desire appropriate for a cinematic role model. Conclusion Narrations imitates life itself as human kind creates new experiences from old narrations. Stories use real life as their raw material. Stories help us to combine our own experiences and the experiences they submit into new feelings and thoughts to lighten up the dark roads we have to pass through in the future. Because we live in patriarchal societies, the narrations shape us the way they want us to be. 4.

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Notes
1. Tuna Erdem. From Cindirella to Jaconde, Radikal Newspaper Magazine Section, Jan 30, 1999:2. 2. Hastur. Wide Awake in Dreamland : Fairy Tales, Feminism, and Patriarchy. http://www.teemings.com/issues04/dreamland.html 3. Ella Westland. Cinderella In The Classroom: Childrens Responses To Gender Roles In Fairy-Tales. in Gender and Education, 1993, Vol 5 Issue 3: 237-250 4 Graham Hammond. Trading Fins for Feet and Speech for a Soul. May 28, 2002, http://webenhanced.lbcc.edu/eng1as/hammondresearch.html 5. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. "The Queens Looking Glass." n Dont Bet on the Princ, ed. Jack Zipes. ( New York: Routledge, 1986.) 201-208. 6. Hans Christian Andersen. Little Mermaid in Its Perfectly True and Other Stories. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1938. 29-56 7. Ibid., 29. 8. Hastur. 9. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, 201-208. 10. Fan Hong. "Footbinding: Sexuality, Security and Social Control." n Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation of Womens Bodies in Modern China, ed. J.A. Mangan. ( London: Frank Cass & Co., 1997.)45-50.

Bibliography
Alp, Zeynep. (ed). Pamuk Prenses( Snow White), Uyuyan Gzel (Sleeping Beauty) in Altn Masallar( Golden Fairy Tales .)Altn Children Books, stanbul, 1986. Andersen, Hans Christian. Little Mermaid in Its Perfectly True and Other Stories. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1938. 29-56 Barthes, Roland. Myth Today in Mythologies. Hill and Wang, 1957.

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___________________________________________________________ Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. Berkley:UCP, 1985. Beauty and the Beast. dir. Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise. 1991. DVD, Walt Disney Home Video, 2002(ASIN: B00003CX8Y ) Birkinshaw, Linda. Krmz Balkl Kz(Little Red Riding Hood) Trans. Kablan, mt. Doan Egmont Publication, stanbul, 2000 Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Cornel Univ. Pr. (080149186x) Cinderella Disney. dir. Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson 1950. VHS, Disney Studios, 1995 (ASIN: 0788802194) Cohen, Lawrence Jack. Ariel Anonymous. Mothering, Fall, 1995. 42-46 Cowie, Elizabeth.Identifying in the Cinema in Representing the Women: Cinema and Psychoanalysis. Macmillan Press Ltd, Hampshire, London, 1997. Erdem, Tuna. From Cindirella to Jaconde, Radikal Newspaper Magazine Section, Jan 30, 1999:2. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. "The Queens Looking Glass." in Dont Bet on the Prince, ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 1986. 201208. Hammond, Graham. Trading Fins for Feet and Speech for a Soul. May 28, 2002, http://webenhanced.lbcc.edu/eng1as/hammondresearch.html Hastur. Wide Awake in Dreamland : Fairy Tales, Feminism, and Patriarchy. http://www.teemings.com/issues04/dreamland.html Hong, Fan. "Footbinding: Sexuality, Security and Social Control." in Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation of Womens Bodies in Modern China. ed. J.A. Mangan. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1997. 4550.

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___________________________________________________________ Jennings, Linda. Beauty and the Beast in Fairy Tales. Brimax Books Ltd, Newmarket, England,1999. Kumruluolu, Zeynep.(trans.) Cinderella in Le Piu Belle Fiabe Del Mondo. Doan Egmont Publications, stanbul, 2002 The Little Mermaid. dir. John Musker, Ron Clements. 1989. DVD, Disney Studios, 1999 (ASIN:B00001QEE7) MacCabe, Colin. Theory and Films: Principles of Realism and Pleasure. in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology ed. Rosen, Philip. NY: Columbia UP, 1986. Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology ed. Rosen, Philip. NY: Columbia UP, 1986. Perrault, Charles. Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault. trans: Angela Carter. Avon Book, NY, 1979. Silverman, Kaja. Re-Writing the Classic Text in The Subject of Semiotics. Oxford University Press, 1983. Sleeping Beauty. 1959. DVD, Walt Disney Home Video, 2003 (ASIN:B00005JKHN) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 1938. Disney Studios, 2001.( ASIN: B00003CXCQ ) Warner, Marina. "From the Beast to the Blonde: The Language of Hair II." in From the Beast to the Blonde. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. 370-386. Westland, Ella. Cinderella In The Classroom: Childrens Responses To Gender Roles In Fairy-Tales in Gender and Education 1993, Vol 5 Issue 3: 237-250

Monsters in the Roman Sky: Heaven and Earth in Manilius Astronomica Dunstan Lowe
Abstract The Astronomica of Manilius, composed at the end of Augustus' reign and with explicitly political overtones, is a poetic manual for reading (and respecting) the organisation and influences of the heavens. However, the Stoic agenda Manilius sets himself - of revealing the universe as the ultimate pattern of logic is continually confronted by the paradox that among the constellations that control this logic' are beasts and monsters, entities that exist to challenge order and civilisation. I argue that Manilius' inability to reconcile myth as poetry with astrology as science is a conscious performance of the mutual disruption of monstrousness and rationality, and that just as the stars are a divine mechanism, the earth is the spawning-ground of messy, hyper-corporeal agents of confusion. Inconsistencies within the science of Manilius' poem undermine in themselves its emphasis on the symmetry and stability of the cosmological order, while discord is acknowledged as a stellar influence on earth, with such disturbing results as human violence and monstrous births. Catasterism is the key image timeless perfection fused with ephemeral bestiality. The earth is both source of individual monsters, and elementally monstrous, as emphasis on the ferociousness of the ocean demonstrates. The single extended mythic episode of the poem, that of Perseus' battle with Cetus (the Whale-snake), which has the same vital function as that of Aristaeus in Vergil's Georgics, develops Cetus as a paradigm of the elemental monster, while the heroine Andromeda becomes a serene, starlike figure. Perseus acknowledges his affinity with the earth, through seawater and Ceto's blood, in order to attain his celestial reward. I suggest that Perseus' quest is analogous to Manilius' own poetic project, in which acknowledging the monstrosity of myth and mythographer is necessary in learning to recognise the flawed majesty of a divine clockwork built to malfunction. Keywords Monsters, Manilius, Astronomica, classical, Roman, Latin, myth, grotesque, astronomy, astrology, poetry, zodiac, Cetus, Perseus, Andromeda, hero, didactic, cosmology, stoic The explosion of Latin poetry in the Augustan era (c.30 BCE-14 CE), one of the most influential periods in the history of Western literature, was a struggle against a stellar host of classic Greek texts. In forging a Roman

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___________________________________________________________ literature to rival the cultural dominance of Greece, its authors set themselves the challenge of answering to a canon of texts from Homer to the Hellenistic era, and its rich collective legacy of myth. New classics in a range of genres, principally Vergils epic, the Aeneid, contributed to the construction of a new cultural identity to befit the nation ruling the world, while (and indeed through) acculturating the gods and monsters of Greek culture. The five-book astrological poem of Manilius, composed during the final years of Augustus reign and under his successor Tiberius,1 is part of a tradition of rendering Greek science and mythology into Roman literature.2 The poetic project of the Astronomica is, in general terms, the attempt to discover the system by which divine ratio governs heaven and earth. The result, however, is a scheme of the world in which problematic presences - among the constellations, but particularly on and of the Earth form an integral part of what in Stoic philosophy was usually assumed to be a paradigmatically rational system.3 The Stoic agenda Manilius sets himself, of demonstrating the orderliness of the universe, is not without a political element, but nevertheless repeatedly meets the paradox of what might be called a disruptive organisation. In the Astronomica, the unchanging layout and rhythms of the heavens show divine planning (1.474-535), and even sanction the current heliocentrism of the civilised world - both Rome and Tiberius belong to Libra, the Balance (4.773-9).4 However, some of the ten taxonomies of the zodiacal signs proposed in 2.150-269 are more contrived than others, while there are inconsistencies in Manilius actual science.5 The constellations are the crucial factor: has the piecemeal catasterism of miscellaneous people, creatures and objects really resulted in a paradigm of symmetry? Discord is in fact one of the principal features of the zodiac itself, and it is the resulting influence on Earth that causes man constantly to resort to violence and war (2.603-7). Even more sinister, among the various workings of fate that they bring to pass, monstrous births are singled out: permiscet saepe ferarum /corpora cum membris hominum: non seminis ille /partus eritastra novant formas caelumque interserit ora. [a superior power] often intermingles the bodies of wild beasts with the limbs of human beings: that is no natural birth the stars create these unprecedented forms, heaven introduces their features.6

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___________________________________________________________ For a point of access to divine ratio, the constellations are somewhat chaotic; some of their images are even mutilated and thus physically imperfect (2.256-64).7 Within a complex tangle of more personal enmities, the human signs, declares Manilius, oppose and vanquish the bestial (2.520-82); but of course in the stasis of the stars, this is more process than result, as exemplified by Ophiuchus and the snake, who are trapped in an eternal deadlock (1.331-6). Perseus (discussed below in connection to Andromeda) holds out Medusas head in an eternal display, not only of his own victory, but of the terrible power the monster wielded even after death. Astronomers may look up at it and survive, but not forget its ongoing existence, and therefore influence. Catasterism, which is sometimes a reward but cannot always be (why honour Leo, the Nemean lion killed by Hercules, Cancer, the crab that Juno sent to distract Hercules in combat with the Hydra, or Scorpius, the scorpion which killed Orion?), is a lack of closure that has placed problematic, and even dangerous, beings in the heavens where they exercise a direct influence on Earth. Many of the mythic aitia, far from weaving seamlessly into a divinely logical pattern, seem to taunt the organising intellect that seeks to make them do so. The heavens seem most divine, naturally, when contrasted with the Earth. Manilius often discusses the stars themselves (not the problematic forms they represent) in terms that suggest the common conception of the sky as the fire and air above the terrestrial earth and water.8 The dominant - even all-pervasive - element is fire, in nature as a whole but particularly in the heavens (1.852-71).9 These celestial fires are, to Manilius, potent and destructive (the malign influence of comets is mirrored by funeral pyres on earth, 1.874-913), but necessarily restricted. If the shapes of the constellations were more fully shown, he rationalises, the number of stars required would ignite the firmament (1.356-73).10 A striking, overtly political version of this idea occurs as the conclusion of the Astronomica as we have it (5.734-45): if the republic (res publica, 738) of the heavens, which has founded a sky-city (urbem caelo, 739), did not have a class-system that prevented the population (populus 742) from having power proportional to its numbers (vires pro numero, 743), the whole universe would be set ablaze. The natural order of the celestial population provides a sacred template, which the terrestrial one happens to imitate. However, just as finding monsters in the heavens is a mere matter of looking at them properly, the Earth is revealed throughout the Astronomica still to be a fertile breeding-ground for disruptive or problematic beings, unrestricted by the natural limit applying to the sterile stars.

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___________________________________________________________ The Earth is of course the source of the problematic or threatening creatures among the ranks of constellations, and, with the single exception of the analogy between the stellar and the human status quo, is always associated in the Astronomica with disorder. The paradigm for this is the story of the earth-born, misshapen (discordis vultum permixtaque corpora partus, 1.429) giants, whose attempt to tear down the heavens (or rather, push up the Earth)11 is commemorated in the sky by the Altar but who were themselves cast back down to Earth. One of their number, the snake-footed, winged Typhon (4.580) owns two of the twelve temples (2.871-80), despite this reassimilation (as aborted catasterism). The continent of Libya, an experimental conceptual space for Roman poets, is described as a source of plagues and monsters (4.662-70).12 The elements of Earth itself, savage mother of the giants who bore them against heaven (1.421-2), was assembled by Nature with only the brute kind of logic that governs the shape of a living creature (diversamembracorpus in unum, 3.50-1). It is almost as if Manilius considers the Earth to be the dark side of a universal dichotomy, an essential function of its existence being to produce dangerous creatures and bear the influence of those with which it corrupts the static harmony of the heavens. The Earths changeable and unfamiliar characteristics are most clearly manifested in its liquid element.13 As one of several examples of the unpredictability of existence on Earth, the seas are subject to the living movement of Ocean, which spews them forth and gulps them back (4.830-1); as is the land, which floats about upon it (4.595, 829) and was once almost entirely submerged in it (4.831-3). As shown by the ejection and reabsorption of the giants, the Earth (in stark contrast to the unchanging scheme of the heavens) is constantly liable to throw up challenges to the accepted parameters of Natura, and in Manilius identification of it as such, the continuous metamorphosis of the liquid sea is a key focus. The principal symbol for terrestrial disturbance in the Astronomica is Cetos, the Sea-Monster, or Whale (hence cetacean). It is in many ways an archetypal monster, owning all the features that represent a threat to accepted bounds - excessive size, hybridity,14 and aggression against the innocent - but its essential characteristic is its close association with the sea itself. Manilius associative descriptions of the characteristics shown by people born under the anatellonta (ascendancies) of various signs probably have no authority beyond his own imagination, but the way he describes those born under Cetos (5.656-92) is revealing. They are fishermen; but their activities are described in terms of slaughter, imprisonment, bloodshed and dismemberment (5.658-69). The production of fish condiments is then described in some detail, as juices and fluids are

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___________________________________________________________ extracted and the three kinds of sauce created (670-81) through processes of decay, pouring and melting. The last industry to be versified is the production of salt - or rather, of the venom, poison, and cut-off white hairs of the sea (virus, 683, venenum, 690, canities detonsa maris, 689). These unsettling themes - violence, butchery, fluids, decay, poison and anthropomorphism - combine to associate these Cetans with corporeality and flux. In combat with Perseus, Cetos is so closely associated with the sea that the two elemental entities take on one anothers characteristics. The dangerous (infestus, 549) sea is an active force, having slumped over its usual limits (totis cum finibus omnis/ incubuit, 541-2) and, reversing the relationship of stability and instability, shipwrecked the land (fluitavit naufraga tellus, 512), which shakes at its approach (586). The bulk of Cetos itself is heralded by the mass of water which it pushes forth (57981). The beast spews out water as it rises, while the surface of the sea continues behind its teeth (581-3). The idea that, like the giants, Cetos threatens the orderly heavens in its combat with Perseus by throwing terrestrial matter upwards (in this case seawater, mixed with its own blood), is only strengthened if we accept Jones emendation of 604 from exstillat (sprays) to extollit (sweeps aloft).15 The beast and the ocean are conflated even to the point where its death is a form of redissolution; seawater fills its body through its many stab-wounds as it sinks back to the surface and lies there (608-10), returning to it as the giants returned to the Earth. Even though all five of its participants (six, including Medusas head) are catasterised, the amount of space given to the story of Perseus and Andromeda (5.538-630) is as disproportionate as that given to Aristaeus in Georgics 4; but the reason is the same, in that this single mythic excursus epitomises some of the poems most essential underlying tensions. Ovids version of the tale in Metamorphoses 4.604-5.251, and evidence from contemporary art,16 suggest that by Augustan times the focus of the story had shifted onto its human characters, making Manilius interest in the monster a significant anomaly. I have discussed Cetos connection to the nature of the Earth through its ocean;17 this is emphasised by an entirely opposite definition of Andromeda, while Perseus becomes an intermediary. Andromedas whiteness and stillness (553-5) are conventional idealisations of a victim heroine, but her serenity and non-corporeality are taken by Manilius to an extreme; the idea of a funeral (578) suggests that she is no longer alive,18 while fear makes her breathless and bloodless (598-9). She is even able to influence the very element to which she is a sacrifice (quantula praeda maris, such pitiful prey of the sea, 592), when on seeing her the sea stops its waves and ceases breaking on the rocks (565-6). She is mainly the subject of passive

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___________________________________________________________ verbs, or of non-dynamic actions.19 Andromedas dignity is static, like that of the constellations she will ultimately join; the monsters crisis-point, where its blood mingles with seawater and it sinks back into its formless element, is not for her eyes (nec virginis ore videnda, 611). Perseus, however, as an engager with monsters (Medusa and Cetos), is an interface between the orderly and the chaotic, forming a hierarchy which Manilius neatly frames in lines 570-2: Deriguit, facie quem non stupefecerat hostis, /Vixque manu spolium tenuit, victorque Medusae /Victus in Andromeda est. He froze, he whom even his enemy [Medusa]s face had not paralysed. He almost let his prize fall from his grasp. The conqueror of Medusa was conquered in the presence of Andromeda. As in the Ovidian version, he does not turn Cetos to stone with Medusas head, but instead uses the sword stained with her blood (593-4). This apparently strange decision is easily explained by the aforementioned hierarchy: the monster cannot be solidified since it is in essential contrast to Andromeda, and it is she who is statuesque. The choreography of the battle illustrates Persus intermediary position: the beast strives to rise skywards, but he remains in the air above it, striking down, becoming soaked with gory brine (603-4). After the battle he bathes his body in the liquid sea (perfundit liquido Perseus in marmore corpus, 612), both purifying himself of the monster and acknowledging his intimacy with its element. Manilius Astronomica, far from providing a manual to the universe that allows the astrologer to recognise the influences governing human life and fate, instead exposes the problematic relationship between heavens and Earth, of which the phenomenon of catasterism is the most concrete and unsettling model. As Katharina Volk demonstrates, Manilius poetic allusions occasionally blur his distinction between the pious form of poetic enquiry, intellectual elevation of the mind to the heavens, and impiously drawing them down to Earth (through discussion of terrestrial myth).20 In fact myth is an important aspect of the poem, and this blurring reflects the essential nature of Manilius project: examining the heavens and examining the monstrous Earth cannot be kept separate, and he is himself guilty of Volks intellectual gigantomachy, approaching the cosmos carrying, and by examining the aetiologies behind the unchanging

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___________________________________________________________ screen of the night sky, actually composing problematic terrestrial matter. Like Perseus, he must play the intermediary part, acknowledging his affinity with shape-shifting and potentially challenging poetic material in order to protect and attain an unmoving, chained-down truth.

Notes
All textual references in this article are to the Loeb Classical Library edition of George P. Goold: Manilius, Astronomica, ed. & tr. George P. Goold (Cambridge, Mass.; London 1977). All translations original. The precise dating of the Astronomica is a vexed question, but is generally regarded as bridging the two reigns: Alfred E. Housman, Manilius, Augustus, Tiberius, Capricornius and Libra. Classical Quarterly 7 (1913): 109-114; B. Baldwin, Dating Manilius Astronomica. Maia 39 (1987): 101-3; A.M. Wilson, The prologue to Manilius I. Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar Vol. 5 (1986): 283-4. 2 Previous examples had included a translation of Aratus astronomical and meteorological Phainomena (and numerous philosophical works) by Cicero; Lucretius De Rerum Natura, promoting the philosophy of Epicurus; and Vergils Georgics, ostensibly an agricultural manual in the manner of Hesiods Works and Days. 3 The interest of the Stoa in a harmonic order is supposed to be satisfied with the thought that even evil actions and their consequences can be understood to fit intelligibly into a context determined by divine natureHence Senecas sense, voiced at several points in the Naturales Quaestiones, that a contemplation of the cosmic order helps a man to rise above what is base and to be at peace with himself: Rosenmeyer, Thomas G., Senecan Drama and Stoic Cosmology (California; London 1989): 1367. 4 The analogy between the emperor and the sun surfaces in the reign of Nero, for example when he was popularly equated with Apollo for his music and the Sun for his charioteering, according to Suetonius (Life of Nero 53). 5 [3.43-159] It seems that here, as at the beginning of his fourth and fifth books, our instructor has turned to a new source, for certainly his initial chapter, in which he describes the circle of the twelve athla (or lots), conflicts in principle as well as in detail with the doctrine of the dodecatropos or twelve temples so recently propounded (at the end of Book 2); [3.510-559] The poet abruptly introduces us to Chronocrators,
1

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___________________________________________________________ those celestial influences that govern the various divisions of a mans life. He expounds two systems, which, since they are different, cannot both be true: Manilius, Astronomica, ed. & tr. George P. Goold (Cambridge, Mass.; London 1977): lxii, lxxvii. 6 Astronomica 4.101-3, 105 7 Roberta Caldini Montanari (Le constellazione in Manilio, ovvero limperfezione perfetta. in Dora Liuzzi (ed.): 77) reads this as a key example of the imperfezione perfetta of Manilian cosmology. 8 Discussing several schools of natural philosophy, then rejecting the possibility of deciding between them, Manilius states what can be known about the formation of the universe, that it separated into fire, air, water and earth according to their relative densities (1.149-70). 9 Those who adhere to the Jungian principle of fire as masculine and water as feminine might see in this an extension of the prehistoric allegory of Ouranos, the male sky, fathering children upon Gaia, the female earth. 10 A theory original to Manilius: Montanari (1994): 75. 11 1.424-7: [Iuppiter] cum surgere terram /cerneret, ut verti naturam crederet omnem, /montibus atque altis aggestos crescere montes, /et iam vicinos fugientia sidera colles (when [Jupiter] saw the earth rise up, so that he believed all nature was overturned; mountains stacked with tall mountains rising, and the constellations shunning the hills that were their new neighbours). 12 Roman poets adopted the aetiology for the snakes of Libya in Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 4.1513-7, that they sprang up from the blood dripping from Medusas head as Perseus flew home with it (cf. Lucan Bellum Civile 9.696-703; Silius Italicus Punica 3.314-6). Medusas primal connection to the sea is suggested by her location in the genealogy of monsters in Hesiod as the daughter of Keto: Jenny Strauss Clay, The Generation of Monsters in Hesiod. Classical Philology 88 (1993): 105116. 13 The Latin word novitas (novelty, innovation) and its cognates carried inherently negative connotations. 14 Its descriptions (1.443-6, 5.15, and in the Andromeda episode of 5.538630) seem to suggest features both of sea-serpents and of whales: see K.M. Coleman, Manilius monster. Hermes 111 (1983): 226-32. Coleman suggests that Manilius had a particular genus of whale in mind, with additions (notably the influence of Vergils serpent-descriptions), as opposed to Ovids more nebulously-conceived creature (Met. 4.688-734),

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___________________________________________________________ but this does not remove Manilius Cetos from the depths of the poets imagination. 15 F. Jones, A note on Manilius 5.604. Acta Classica 27 (1984): 139. The image of bloody seawater is in Manilius a sylleptic image of disruption, combining liquids and violence, which occurs also in the description of Pisceans as inclined towards naval battles at 4.288-9. 16 Perseus and Andromeda in Roman frescoes: Peter H. von Blackenhangen, Easy Monsters. in Anne E. Farkas, Prudence O. Harper & Evelyn B. Harrison (eds.): 85-6. 17 As a binding motif, liquid flows through the whole digression: the sea, its waves etc. occur 29 times, and words denoting other liquids and their actions and qualities appear 14 times: Paul Murgatroyd, Narrative techniques in Manilius, Astronomica 5.538-618. Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History VII (Brussels 1994): 420. 18 The idea of maiden-sacrifice as a macabre combination of wedding and funeral (with happy ending) reappears in Apuleius (Cupid & Psyche 5.345), where again the heroine is a paradigm of beauty and helplessness. 19 Murgatroyd (1994): 428 20 Katharina Volk, Pious and impious approaches to cosmology in Manilius. Materiali e Discussioni 47 (2001): 85-117

Bibliography
Apuleius, Cupid & Psyche, ed. & tr. Edward J. Kenney (Cambridge 1990) Manilius, Astronomica, ed. & tr. George P. Goold (Cambridge, Mass.; London 1977) Baldwin, B., Dating Manilius Astronomica. Maia 39 (1987): 101-3 Barton, Tamsyn S., Ancient Astrology (London; New York 1994) von Blanckenhagen, Peter H., Easy Monsters. in Anne E. Farkas, Prudence O. Harper & Evelyn B. Harrison (eds.): 85-94 Boardman, John, Very like a whale - Classical sea monsters. in Anne E. Farkas, Prudence O. Harper & Evelyn B. Harrison (eds.): 73-84 Coleman, K.M., Manilius monster. Hermes 111 (1983): 226-32

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___________________________________________________________ Evans, James, The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy (Oxford 1998) Farkas, Anne E., Prudence O. Harper & Evelyn B. Harrison (eds.), Monsters and Demons in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Mainz on Rhine 1987) Fletcher, G.B.A., Maniliana. Latomus 32 (1973): 832-7 Fletcher, G.B.A., Manilius. Durham University Journal 34 (1973): 12950 Gain, D.B., Notes and conjectures on the Astronomica of Manilius. Antichthon 2 (1968): 63-7 Gain, D.B., Manilius 4 681-95: A reply. Antichthon 4 (1970): 50-1 Griffin, Jasper, Regalis inter mensas laticemque Lyaeum: Wine in Virgil and others. in Oswyn Murray & Manuela Tecuan (eds.): 283-296 Housman, Alfred E., Manilius, Augustus, Tiberius, Capricornius and Libra. Classical Quarterly 7 (1913): 109-114 Jones, F., A note on Manilius 5.604. Acta Classica 27 (1984): 139 Liuzzi, Dora (ed.), Manilio fra Poesia e Scienza (Galatina 1993) Maranini, Anna, Filologia Fantastica: Manilio e suoi Astronomica (Bologna 1994) Montanari, Roberta Caldini, Le constellazione in Manilio, ovvero limperfezione perfetta. in Dora Liuzzi (ed.): 55-78 Murgatroyd, Paul, Narrative techniques in Manilius, Astronomica 5.538618. Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History VII (Brussels 1994): 416-29 Murray, Oswyn & Manuela Tecuan (eds.), In Vino Veritas (London: British School at Rome 1995)

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___________________________________________________________ Ovid, Metamorphoses I-IV, ed. & tr. D.E. Hill (Warminster 1985) Papadopoulos, John K. & Deborah Ruscillo, A Ketos in early Athens: an archaeology of whales and sea monsters in the Greek world. American Journal of Archaeology 106 (2002): 187-227 Rosenmeyer, Thomas G., Senecan Drama and Stoic Cosmology (California; London 1989) Santini, Carlo, Connotazioni sociologische in margine ai paranatellonta Maniliani. in Dora Liuzzi (ed.): 109-128 Shackleton Bailey, David R., Manilius 4, 681-95. Antichthon 3 (1969): 52-3 Shackleton Bailey, David R., Manilius 4, 681-95: Further Comments. Antichthon 4 (1970): 52 Shephard, Katharine T., The Fish-Tailed Monster in Greek and Etruscan Art (New York 1940) Strauss Clay, Jenny, The Generation of Monsters in Hesiod. Classical Philology 88 (1993): 105-116 Volk, Katharina, Pious and impious approaches to cosmology in Manilius. Materiali e Discussioni 47 (2001): 85-117 Volk, Katharina, Manilius Solitary Chariot-ride (Astronomica 2.13840). ClassicalQuarterly 53 (2003): 628-33 Voss, B.R., die Andromeda-Episode des Manilius. Hermes 100 (1972): 413-34 Watt, W.S., Maniliana. Classical Quarterly 44 (1994): 451-7 Wilson, A.M., The prologue to Manilius I. Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar Vol. 5 (1986): 283-98

Session 7 Monsters Attack

From Bluebeard and The Robber Bridegroom to Buffalo Bill and Hannibal the Cannibal: A Look at Two Recurring Characters in Art Verena-Susanna Nungesser
Abstract The success of the serial killer film and the omnipresence of real-life murderers in the media have led to the repeatedly stated opinion that the serial killer is a phenomenon of modern society. But the fact that centuries ago fairy tales already told stories about young women being kidnapped or killed seems to be literary evidence that the serial killer is not a purely modern phenomenon at all. The central hypothesis of this paper is that the various versions of the Bluebeard fairy tale being influenced by real incidents mediate an elementary typology of the serial killer. Their patterns of behaviour were transferred into art and kept alive over centuries: first in the oral tradition and later in literature and in the medium of film. It is the aim of this study to show that these archetypical models are relevant up to now. Even though real criminals served as patterns for popular monsters a look at films about serial killers such as The Silence of the Lambs or Kiss the Girls will demonstrate that those notorious murderers have a lot in common with archetypical serial killers described in Bluebeard, Robber Bridegroom and related fairy tales. Keywords Serial killer; fairy tales; archetype; patterns of behaviour; transformation; intertextuality; elementary typology of serial killers Recent trials of murderers in the media, such as the cases of Marc Dutroux (Belgium) or of the Cannibal of Rotenburg (Germany), and the shocking details of their deeds have once again supported the widespread opinion that serial killing is a phenomenon of modern society. Though names like Gilles de Rais or Jack the Ripper are mentioned again and again when dealt with this topic, people seem to forget that serial killing is not an invention of contemporary society. Those recent cases mentioned above rather remind us of the fact that there are compulsive elements within the human being, dominating our behaviour no matter how civilized our society might be. Circumstances of modern life (like an increasing urbanity and anonymity) just make it easier for serial killers to live out their destructive passion. In the following Id like to demonstrate the long history of serial murderers by looking at some literary texts and films which refer to this

158 From Bluebeard and The Bobber Bridegroom to Buffalo Bill ___________________________________________________________ phenomenon. They present two different - though not mutually exclusive types of killers that have a tradition in society and art: the one motivated by pleasure, the other by fear. Using art as a mirror of society, representing civilisation by referring continually to extra textual structures, Id like to start with a number of tales based on oral tradition which were originally inspired by incidents of real life and which have strong parallels to post-modern films about serial killers that were inspired by notorious murderers such as Ed Gein or Ted Bundy.1 Ballads of a lust murderer who kills young maidens are well-known throughout Europe - in Germany as the Ulinger, in Sweden as the Rymer, and in England as the Elf-Knight to mention just a few examples. Medieval legends like Holy Gildas (6th century) and the above mentioned ballads seem to be the first literary sources reporting the same cruel incidents we find in the press today. Numerous fairy tales with essentially the same plot can be found world-wide - people in Jamaica, India and Africa also know the story of the mysterious man kidnapping and killing children and women. According to this universal existence of the basic story, one can hardly be surprised about C.G. Jungs theory of the collective unconscious and his concept of archetypes presenting universal and timeless patterns of behaviour that are mediated through dreams, myths and fairy tales.2 A plot representing a worldwide phenomenon that apparently can be understood in every culture and at all times supports his theory that there exist basic structures within the human being common to all of us. Without going into this in further detail and without stressing psychology, Id like to modify Jungs concept for an analysis of the development of the plot of Bluebeard as well as The Robber Bridegroom by combining it with ideas by Wolfgang Iser and Umberto Eco. When Charles Perrault wrote the tale of Bluebeard (Barbe Bleue) in 1697 he transferred a story from the oral tradition into the domestic sphere. The kidnapper and killer of children and women was turned into a murderous husband. The lurid deeds of criminals were became stylised rituals of an aristocrat. Consequently, tales that were released later such as the various versions of The Robber Bridegroom or related tales like Fitschers Bird (Fowlers Fowl) as well as the English variant Mr. Fox seem to be closer to the original tales. Only in Perraults tale culprit and victim are married. In the other variants the girl is kidnapped or the man courts the girl, who is clever enough to find out before marriage what her future husband is like. As long as she is unmarried the heroine is brave, clever, and independent, like the girls in the ballads. The male protagonist develops from someone who kills out of pleasure to someone who leads a

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___________________________________________________________ double-life. Bluebeard is famous for his riches and his castle. He marries one woman after the other but seems incapable of living a close relationship, kills every wife as soon as she has found out who he really is. It is not the disobedience of the women that is punished but their knowledge that scares the husband and makes him start the vicious circle anew. Though being aware of his dark side he presents a positive faade in Jungian terms we could say that the nobleman arriving in his carriage to ask for the daughters hand is the Persona while the locked room hides the dark repressed part of him, the so-called Shadow. The Robber Bridegroom and the other shady characters from the fairy tales that seem to represent earlier phases of the plot are exactly the opposite: the more the events are alike the medieval legends the less the protagonists hide their Shadow. They even cultivate it by committing their crimes collectively. They not only punish and kill together, they emphasise their common experience through communally consuming their victims. Since early European literature these two types of murderers have become recurring characters. Originally inspired by real life they have developed a literary life in a modified form. Using its indexical value3 art collects and combines events of the real world and reproduces similar images in works of art through the centuries - those two archetypical serial murderers were turned into intertextual archetypes4 in Umberto Ecos terms: these pre-established and frequently re-appearing narrative situation[s] [are] recycled by innumerable other texts5 and therefore function as catalyzers of collective memories6. In the case of Bluebeard the plot was passed on from oral tradition to literature and finally into the medium of film, becoming repetitively quoted but also remodelled and more complex the closer we get to the modern and post-modern age. Today, notorious serial killers as well as their fictional counterparts influence literature and films and mediate a more multifaceted pattern of behaviour. At the same time their omnipresence in the media is shocking evidence that serial killing has reached a new peak. Starting from these observations, Id like to take a closer look at two films of the 1990s which demonstrate the presence of serial killers in todays art - Hannibal the Cannibal and Buffalo Bill from Jonathan Demmes The Silence of the Lambs (1991), as well as the two killers Casanova and The Gentleman Caller from Gary Fleders Kiss the Girls (1997). Those killers may have been shaped after well-known criminals such as Gein, Bundy, Gacy and Heidnick but they still seem to have a lot in common with the monstrous fairy tale characters. The reasons for the choice of these two movies are the following: both share the basic components of the fairy tales introduced before - a young and courageous heroine who fights on her own and escapes from being

160 From Bluebeard and The Bobber Bridegroom to Buffalo Bill ___________________________________________________________ murdered - and both films deal not only with one but with two serial killers: one of them kills in the tradition of the Robber Bridegroom while the other acts more like Bluebeard. In both cases the two murderers are not only acquainted with each other they even support each other to a certain extent proving that - as Klaus Theweleit states - serial killers are linked with each other by similar psychic correspondence, affinities and repulsion.7 When The Silence of the Lambs, based on Thomas Harris 1988 novel, was released it was unexpectedly successful. There are numerous reasons for its triumph at the box-office as well as with the critics: the multifaceted mixture of genres and myths appealing to a wide range of recipients, the depiction of extreme, yet subtle violence, the complex female heroine Clarice Starling, but even more the unusual male protagonist: Hannibal Lector turned out to be possibly the most fascinating killer of film-history - extremely intelligent, witty, and charismatic. He makes the impossible possible. The viewers like him although or even because he is a beast. The fact that he does not shy away from or hide his dark passion but celebrates his appetite for human flesh exerts a strange fascination. This fascination with Hannibal Lector seems to be related to the fact that he embodies the pleasure principle. Dr. Chillton, head of the Baltimore asylum, being aware of this does everything to make Lectors imprisonment as unpleasant as possible. Thus Lector takes his only chance to change his existence in the dark, to have a view again and to have the possibility to pursue his gruesome passion. When he kills his victims he has a relationship to them. He chooses them or feels as if they have chosen him - mostly through their kind of impolite behaviour: e.g. the census taker who is turned into a fine dinner with Chianti, or the slightly too ambitious Doctor Chillton, whom he has for dinner at the end of the movie, or the other inmate, Multiple Miggs, who dares to treat Clarice Starling in a disrespectful manner.8 He makes unpleasant things pleasant, he celebrates everything he does and - as strange as this may sound - we can relate to this. Remember the scene where he breaks out of his new provisory cell in Memphis: we can watch every detail, hear the classic music, and see Lector in bright light freeing himself in a cunning act that not only brings him back freedom but even allows him to return to his old customs. Not so with Buffalo Bill, the second killer in The Silence of the Lambs: what he does, he does in secret, in the dark. He calls his victims it, he lures Clarice into the gloomy cellar, he is a coward and this is the main reason why we dislike him and not the fact that he is presented as being transsexual and unattractive. While Hannibal knows and likes his Shadow, Buffalo Bill represents the opposite - an insecure man, fleeing his identity by taking

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___________________________________________________________ refuge in the illusion that he desires to be a woman. Lector indicates that Billy, as he calls him, knew and desired his first female victim, Fredericka Bimmel who was most likely the one to teach him how to sew and make dresses but rejected him as a man. From then on he has lived in his deserted and labyrinthine mansion with the moths he breeds, collecting one woman after another - all alike Fredericka, apart from Clarice Starling, the eighth bride who turns out to become his doom. Jame Gumb - as Buffalo Bill is called in real life - tries to transform himself into a woman. When he is safe inside his house he puts on makeup and jewellery, a wig made of one of his victims hair and dances around in front of a mirror and a video-camera that records his metamorphosis that gets closer to perfection with every kidnapped and skinned woman. But when he searches for his victims he pretends to be someone else - a helpless average man who needs support - using a fake plaster (like Ted Bundy). In contrast to this Lector does not lead a doublelife: he talks about his deeds - even in front of other people but they do not understand. They are dining with a cannibal who talks about the man they are consuming during the conversation.9 Interestingly, Lector once behaves atypically because he assimilates the characteristic behaviour of someone else: when discovering the dead body of Benjamin Raspeil - possibly the very first victim of his former patient Jame Gumb10 - he rents a room in a Baltimore storage facility. The arrangement of the dark and hidden place is the key to Buffalo Bills mind: headless display dummies and the American flag covering a car which keeps a preserved head. Raspeils head possesses the future trademark and the symbol for the killers longing for transformation: the deaths head moth. So, all these things are already allusions for Buffalo Bills pattern of behaviour and offer Clarice Starling clues to solve the case. In her study of the debates and reception of The Silence of the Lambs Janet Staiger lists the different characteristics that viewers connect with Lector and Buffalo Bill, establishing a binary opposition between them: Lector is regarded as rich, wise, clever, helpful, and funny as well as straight, while Jame Gumb is seen as working-class, stupid, dense, and dull as well as gay.11 Even the choice of their victims and their rituals follow entirely different patterns: Gumb kills and skins women to make himself a dress, to transform himself on the outside. Lector eats his victims, consumes them, and takes them inside of himself. Although I do not agree completely with all these opinions, the basic idea that there is a crucial difference between the two characters Lector and Gumb is obvious: Hannibal the Cannibal is a Robber Bridegroom while Buffalo Bill is a Bluebeard.

162 From Bluebeard and The Bobber Bridegroom to Buffalo Bill ___________________________________________________________ We can observe a similar constellation in Gary Fleders film Kiss the Girls, but this time the Bluebeard-killer is presented in more detail than the Robber Bridegroom-killer and it is the former one who once protected the latter from being discovered. The film follows the pattern of a whodunit-picture - which is quite unusual for a movie about serial killing. But this stresses even more the secret and hideous existence of the Bluebeard-killer, who calls himself Casanova and states that he is a collector of young, talented and strong women such as his latest victim Kate. In an underground hide-out he keeps eight girls, each in a different cell, and each on her own and forbidden to speak to the others - except at nights when Casanova assembles his beloved ones. Each of the imprisoned girls has a strong personality and a certain gift - like Kate, who is a talented medic, or Naomi, the niece of Agent Alex Cross who is a virtuous violin-player. All those girls have to entertain their kidnapper; all of them have to tell Casanova how much they love him. In case of violation of the set up rules or breach of trust - especially when trying to flee - the disobedient girl is punished by mutilation, rape, and murder. What makes the conflict between the Persona and the Shadow in his case particularly severe is the fact that Casanova is the responsible police-officer Nick Ruskin: on the one hand he protects and serves, on the other he collects and punishes. Wearing a mask in his dungeon emphasizes his hidden and repressed side. His weakness and insecurity become even more obvious when he is confronted with a victim who refuses to be one: the fact that Kate frees herself, helps Agent Cross to catch the second killer Rudolph and frees the other kidnapped girls from their prison causes Casanova to reveal him to Kate. He tries to force himself upon her to feel powerful and superior again, now that he has lost his collection because of her. But his unusual pattern of behaviour turns out to be deadly for Casanova, who is finally stopped by Agent Cross. The second killer in Fleders film is William Rudolph, The Gentleman Caller: he loves to saw his victims into pieces, keeps certain body-parts and turns his deeds into art by photographing his works. Via internet Casanova, who knows Rudolph from the past, stays in contact with the man who operates hundreds of miles away in California. Both seem to work hand in hand, sharing their anaesthetics and a weakness for the same kind of women - they cooperate and compete with each other at the same time. But Casanova observes the women he chooses for a long time before breaking into their flats at night and taking them into his prison, while Rudolph meets them in clubs, via flirts, plays pool and takes them home - as if they have a one-night stand. His need to operate in public makes it possible for the FBI to observe him. Nevertheless, he is

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___________________________________________________________ able to escape the first attempt of the FBI to arrest him. Rudolph flees and takes refuge in Casanovas dungeon, where he provokes his host who considers himself to be his mentor. As police-officer Nick Ruskin he once covered up one of Rudolphs committed murders, but now Rudolph considers himself to be Casanovas one and only confident, he can impress with his collection of beautiful women: Without me youre nothing. In a time when women are no longer forced to marry a man chosen for them but are free to choose their husband, a man, who has to kidnap and control women to get them and hear them say I love you, embodies a modern version of Bluebeard. Like their literary ancestor modern Bluebeards typically live in a gothic-style mansion and kill in a repetitive mode, lulling themselves into a (false) sense of security. Their rituals may differ from the one of Perraults protagonist but there are still dark secrets hidden behind locked doors. Their murders are symptomatic for weakness and fear, while the Robber Bridegrooms committed crimes are like lart pour lart representing a hedonistic philosophy of life and the wish to discover new and multifaceted experiences of a different kind. Further examples for Bluebeard-like characters in film would be Hitchcocks Norman Bates (Psycho; 1960), Powells Peeping Tom (1960) and Wylers The Collector (1965) based on John Fowles novel, as well as modern Robber Bridegrooms such as the American Psycho Patrick Bateman (Mary Harron; 2000) or Hofmanns Der Sandmann (The Sandman; 1995). These two types of murders as well as further examples - like the killer being motivated by revenge or jealousy - are archetypes because they represent artistic versions of real crimes that have been reproduced in art over centuries by the means of intertextuality. A frightening and at the same time fascinating familiarity is mediated - a vague feeling of a dj vu that everybody yearns to see again12 as Umberto Eco describes it.

Notes
Wolfgang Iser, Towards a Literary Anthropology in The Future of Literary Theory, edited by Ralph Cohen (New York, London: Routledge 1989), 209. 2 C.G. Jung, Grundwerk C.G. Jung: Archetyp und Unbewusstes (Olten, Freiburg: Walter Verlag, 1989). 3 Iser, 210. 4 Umberto Eco, Casablanca: Cult-Movies and Intertextual Collage, SubStance 14 (2) (1985): 3-12.
1

164 From Bluebeard and The Bobber Bridegroom to Buffalo Bill ___________________________________________________________ Ibid., 5. Ibid., 3. 7 Klaus Theweleit, Sirenenschweigen, Polizistengesnge: Zu Jonathan Demmes Das Schweigen der Lmmer in Bilder der Gewalt, edited by Robert Fischer, Peter Sloterdijk and Klaus Theweleit (Frankfurt a. Main: Verlag der Autoren, 1994), 37. 8 This pattern of behaviour of Hannibal Lector is presented in a similar way in the other two novels / films of the trilogy. Further victims of him seem to provoke their treatment: Mason Verger is presented as a man with a paedophilic inclination, agent Paul Krendler repeatedly pesters Clarice Starling sexually and is the force behind her being relieved of her duties at the FBI. 9 Here I refer to a scene from the remake Red Dragon, the first novel / film of the trilogy, but the third movie done with Anthony Hopkins playing Lector. 10 While Red Dragon as well as Hannibal indicate that Benjamin Raspeil is a victim of Lector, Lector himself presents Raspeil (he calls Miss Hester Mofet which is a pun for miss the rest of me pointing towards the rest of Raspeil: his head) as a victim of his former patient Jame Gumb aka Buffalo Bill. Nevertheless, killing Raspeil himself fits into Lector's usual behaviour pattern because he considers himself to be in the position to free the audience of the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra from an untalented musician. 11 Janet Staiger, Taboos and Totems: Cultural Meanings of The Silence of the Lambs in Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception, Janet Staiger (New York, London: New York University Press 2000), 164. 12 Eco, 5.
6 5

Bibliography
Bolte, Johannes and Georg Polvka,. Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmrchen der Gebrder Grimm. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1963. Demme, Jonathan. The Silence of the Lambs. Strong Heart Production / Demme / Orion, 1990.

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___________________________________________________________ Fleder, Gary. Kissing the Girls. Paramount Pictures / Rysher Entertainment / Browne / Wizan, 1997. Eco, Umberto. Casablanca: Cult-Movies and Intertextual Collage, SubStance 14 (2) (1985): 3-12. Grimm, Wilhelm und Jakob. Kinder- und Hausmrchen. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1980. Iser, Wolfgang. Towards a Literary Anthropology in The Future of Literary Theory, edited by Ralph Cohen, 208-228. New York, London: Routledge 1989. Jacobs, Joseph. Mr. Fox in The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts and Criticism, edited by Maria Tatar, New York, 154-156. London: W.W. Norton and Company 1999. Jancovich, Mark. Genre and the Audience: Genre Classifications and Cultural Distinctions in the Mediation of The Silence of the Lambs in Hollywood Spectatorship: Changing Perceptions of Cinema Audiences, edited by Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby, 33-45. London: British Film Institute Publishing, 2001. Kilgour, Maggie. Dr. Frankenstein meets Dr. Freud in American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative, edited by Robert K. Martin and Eric Savoy, 40-53. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998. Staiger, Janet. Taboos and Totems: Cultural Meanings of the Silence of the Lambs in Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception, by Janet Staiger, 161-178. New York / London: New York University Press, 2000. Tasker, Yvonne. The Silence of the Lambs. London: bfi Publishing 2002. Taubin, Amy. Grabbing the Knife: The Silence of the Lambs and the History of the Serial Killer Movie in Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader, edited by Pam Cook and Philip Dodd, 123-131. London: Scarlet Press 1993.

166 From Bluebeard and The Bobber Bridegroom to Buffalo Bill ___________________________________________________________ Theweleit, Klaus. Sirenenschweigen, Polizistengesnge: Zu Jonathan Demmes Das Schweigen der Lmmer in Bilder der Gewalt, edited by Robert Fischer, Peter Sloterdijk and Klaus Theweleit, 35-68. Frankfurt a. Main: Verlag der Autoren, 1994. Warner, Marina. Bluebeards Brides: The Dream of the Blue Chamber Grand Street 9 (1989): 121-130. Wertheimer, Jrgen. Don Juan und Blaubart: Erotische Serientter in der Literatur. Mnchen: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1999. Wrathall, John. Kiss the Girls Sight & Sound 3 (1998): 51-52.

Creature Conflict: Man, Monster and the Metaphor of Intractable Social Conflict Cary Morrison
Abstract The study of monsters is a terrifically interdisciplinary dialogue. The analysis of the monstrous, whether we mean the otherness formed by Freudian-esque projections of our own social identities, or the cryptozoological catalogue, invites contribution from any field that, like monsters themselves, has sprung forth from schools of thought endeavouring to understand the nature of mankind. This paper joins the academic discussion on the subject of monsters, addressing contemporaneous topics undergoing impassioned debate among Conflict Analysis and Resolution theorists: narrative discourse, identity theory, social change, free agency, the nature of evil, metaphor, and structural/physical violence. Popular postulations in the current body of literature regarding the genesis of new and the revival of old monsters within collective awareness offer theories of ordered social patterns and epiphenomenal constructs of corresponding moral signifiers. Examination of these patterns evokes hermeneutical methodologies that mirror scholarly discourse concerning conflict analysis. Intellectual assumptions about which social systems have been engaged to produce the universal phenomenon of the monster engage the same processes through which we understand conflicted societies. The relationship between man and monster, then, is the ultimate metaphor of intractable social conflict. Indeed, the beauty of the monster is that it is a product of free will. Key Words Monsters, social conflict, metaphor, ingroup, outgroup, identity, cryptozoology, other, unheimlich,

The study of monsters is a terrifically interdisciplinary dialogue. Psychoanalysis sociology, politics, history, literature, theology, law, philosophy, medicine, and a multitude of other fields have contributed generously to the study and even to the creation of monsters. The analysis of the monstrous, whether we mean the otherness formed by a Freudianesque projection of our own social identities, or the cryptozoological catalogue, invites contribution from any field that, like monsters themselves, has sprung forth from schools of thought endeavouring to

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___________________________________________________________ understand the nature of mankind. As a highly interdisciplinary field, Conflict Analysis and Resolution merits a place at the table. This discipline joins the ongoing academic discussion on the subject of monsters from the periphery, addressing contemporaneous topics undergoing impassioned debate among conflict resolution practitioners: narrative discourse, identity theory, social change, free agency, the nature of evil, metaphor, structural and physical violence. Popular postulations in the current body of literature regarding the genesis of new and the revival of old monsters within collective awareness offer theories of ordered social patterns and epiphenomenally occurring constructs of corresponding moral signifiers. Examination of these patterns evokes hermeneutical methodologies that mirror scholarly discourse concerning conflict analysis. Those processes by which we make intellectual assumptions about which social systems have been engaged to produce the universal phenomenon of the monster are the same processes through which we understand conflicted societies. The relationship between man and monster, then, is the ultimate metaphor of intractable social conflict. It is not coincidental that the archaeological record shows evidence of simultaneously burgeoning beliefs in monsters and the earliest development of weapons of war. Be it ancient myth, mystical creature, or ordinary human gone criminally insane, the emergence into the social repertoire of that which we call monstrous is brilliantly teleological. The monster serves a distinct and necessary social purpose. While nationality is a relatively recent historical phenomenon, emotionally bonded groups, specifically tribes and clans, are primordial. Borrowing from psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, Vamik Volkan describes the inclination of ethnic groups toward assigning themselves positive value, while attributing subhuman characteristics to others. Primitive humanity, in making use of natural resources to meet the basic human needs of warmth and protection, eventually began meeting higher category needs in terms of identity. With the design of clothing and tools, also came the symbolic markings of group identity.1 Symbolic markers serve to perpetuate group differences, providing inclusion and safety for those who have gained membership. Conscious and unconscious needs evolved in complexity over time, hence markers such as feathers and beads developed into flags, emblems and rituals. Human Needs Theory describes the progressive levels of needs from the lowest physical requirements to the more sophisticated issues of identity.2 The psychological need to define we and they identities are the basis for what makes societies function, though some in healthier ways than others. Social Identity theory of ingroup-outgroup formation provides fascinating debate over the

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___________________________________________________________ inevitable nature of negative reciprocity.3 Positive ingroup bias is academically undisputed, and is the basis by which group identification is formed, as is identification of otherness. That other is the bearer of marginalized behaviours and attitudes, providing sense of boundaries. Paradoxically, the other is that which we define ourselves against. We are moral; they are sinful. We are innocent; they are guilty. We are pure; they are defiled. We are the defenders of God; they are the minions of the devil. The emergence of monsters proffers an enthralling twist to otherness. Where the projection of negative traits allows ingroups to dehumanise outgroups, so much more so is the monster a receptacle of all that is abhorred. Whatever depravities are deplored by social standards, the monster glories in. As societies experience change, particularly as once taboo behaviours and attitudes are integrated into acceptable norms, those attributes that were once monstrous must be re-categorized accordingly. The adaptability of monsters is as descriptive of the culture from whence they emerge as the creatures themselves. Shifts in cultural norms are likely to bring about the elements of group-think behaviour. Where communities are engaged in dialogue over any significant issue, from politics to declining morality, the same mechanisms that promote leaps of abstraction concerning social issues can also be utilized to fulfil the unconscious needs of a community facing insecurities. Because the conscious mind is rarely prepared to deal with the myriad concrete details of impending social change, the rational mind will fill in the particulars, drawing on the imagination, substituting simple concepts for complex particulars.4 As change of any kind looms over the horizon, uncertainty has a way of rippling through collective troubled minds. Leaps of abstractions become facts, and monsters become realities. They wear the emblems and symbols of an outgroup created in the cooperative imagination of a culture, and this is why we need them. We need them because the belief in a tangible threat makes it possible to explain and justify ones sense of discomfort.5 To quote a popular animated film from the U.S., Monsters Inc., they scare because they care.6 The sense of unease that comes from our fear of the unknown is the birthplace of myth. Individuals who challenge the status quo with confrontational ideologies, especially from the liminal spaces reserved for those marginalized for their deviant nature, are viewed with suspicion, even ridicule, as long as they are not taken seriously. However, when those ideologies threaten social power structures to the point of eminent acceptance into the mainstream, they can no longer be ignored or pacified. Individuals expressing deviant behaviour are elevated to the realm of the monstrous, and myths as well as cultural imaginings will reflect exactly

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___________________________________________________________ those current taboos. Historically, homosexuality, atheism, physical deformity and feminist attitudes have all been markers for some form of outgroup indicators, invoking the demonisation of those who are thusly labelled, and are therefore ostracized, feared, and often tragically harmed. The homoerotic nature of Dracula, the conceptionless Frankensteins monster, and the very tragically real Joseph Merrick, commonly known as the Elephant Man, each represented morally unacceptable characteristics that eventually found their way into tolerant popular cultures. Witch trials also are a prime example. The same civilizations that once loathed and despised these attributes now protect them by law. The old monsters, having lost their power, are relegated to the equally powerless side of legend: the caricature. The cartoon is the mockery of myth, and the Happy Meal is its destiny. Social structures have pervasive political moorings. It is the nature of political realism to assume that potential changes to the asymmetric power balance status quo are a threat; and threat equals conflict. From the dominant voice point of view, conflict management within a society mandates that the parties must resolve their issues for the good of the state. Individuals or groups departing from presumed norms are in violation of this expectation; this is the very definition of deviancy.7 Yet, it has been argued that it is the very institutions of power themselves who create deviance.8 Deviancy is an inevitable, and to some extent functional, outcome of power hierarchies. Where any group holds another in subjugation, that less powerful group will bear the phenotypic expressions of deviant behaviour. Who, then, is the deviants deviant? If one cannot be found in our headlines, one can surely be created in our cultural mythology. Having been successfully employed as the evil other, monsters are functionally engaged in stories that fill two types of needs. First is the defence against in-group sedition. Timothy Beal, in his remarkable work Religion and its Monsters adopts Freuds views on otherness within sameness. The unheimlich, or that which threatens from within, is the most insidious menace of all. That which can lure an insider into traitorous acts is the worst to be feared, for this is utter chaos. Chaos is the total lack of order, and therefore, the complete absence of God. By demonising monsters, we keep God on our side.9 Chaos results if a trusted in-group member rebels against social restrictions and joins with the outsider. Vampirism, for example, wields a tremendous amount of power. Death is to be feared, but undeath is even worse. A one-time lethal assault on a group member can actually empower that group, providing a chosen trauma, that calamity which becomes an indelible mental representation of an event, serving to further strengthen resolve and justify retaliation.10

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___________________________________________________________ A willing victim, however, who then becomes the enemy, is an affront; they rob the group of both the opportunity to grieve, and the righteous badge of indignation. Further, there then exists an ever-present reminder that it can happen to anyone. No one is safe, nor can anyone be trusted. This warning is necessary, as the turncoat is even more to be feared than the monster itself. The worst kind of monster is the monster within. Second, where social changes threaten the moral fabric of society, cautionary tales are a means of indoctrinating our innocent youth against the dangers of deviant behaviour. The benefit of having a monstrous scapegoat around is how handy it comes in as a control-mechanism for the behaviour of others. Once a society begins to realize that the fear of God is an ineffective governor of its daughters virtue, for example, the fear of the devil will have to do. The curious rise in the U.S. in reports of monstrous creatures, ghosts and the criminally insane rose concurrently with the increasing popularity of car dates. In serving as an unholy minion of Gods jurisprudence, monsters then become a tool of the social power hierarchy, whose interests are best served by controlling female sexuality. At their pleasure, parents and politicians can trade on the unearned currency of fear, evoking horror stories of the other to terrorize children or lure voters. During the U.S. 1988 presidential election George H. Bushs campaign ran a series of television commercials depicting the ripped-from-the-headlines story of Willie Horton, an African American man who, among other crimes, committed the rape of a white woman while on furlough from prison. Presumably, white America was being asked to vote republican or expect their women to be violated. The ubiquitous and statistically unfounded fear of the unidentified black male, known in police jargon as unblee,11 has spawned one of North American cultures most popular demonised groups. The nation whose powerful once used the African American male as a tool for its development now uses him, or rather the myth of him, as a tool to control its women and children. When a scare tactic is required to keep less powerful groups in check the mythic Unidentified Black Man is always available to be cast in that role. Given enough insight into what an individual fears, it may well be possible to determine that persons politics. Relying on the monstrous to sway political opinion is not always an act of coercion. Politicians who are perceived to be keenly in tune with the fears and concerns of their constituents will gain their favour. This can be accomplished without the less favourable threat tactic, but with positive persuasion. From the Americas comes the Chupacabra, for example, having first been reported in the U.S. around the 1950s, which then began to appear in Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Puerto Rico. El Chupacabra has

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___________________________________________________________ been described as an alien-like, kangarooish, grey-green-brown creature with fangs, claws and spines, and is given to sucking the blood and certain organs out of goats. After a rash of mutilated herds in 1995, Puerto Rico saw at least one mayor re-elected due to his weekly El Chupacabra hunting trips.12 The perpetuation of the social construct that deviant behaviour, especially sexuality, invites victimization serves a very specific purpose. Power hierarchical societies depend on class constraints to survive, and terror, especially if self-generating, is particularly effective. Less powerful classes also depend on sempiternal horror. The monster provides egress for the frustration aggression provoked by perceived injustice. Historical accounts of monster persecution provide insight into what a society fears. For instance, where feminine power is feared, there are suddenly witches everywhere. Even childrens fairy tales reflect deeply held dread. Snow White presents a witch bearing poisoned fruit in an age where food poisoning from badly preserved provisions was of tremendous concern. Little Red Riding Hood reflects the very legitimate fear of dangerous animals and the deep, dark woods, but is also an allegory of rape, or sexual indiscretion depending on the version. The filling of the wolfs stomach with stones found in some accounts parallels a standardized punishment for breaking sexual taboo.13 Reports of aliens and bizarre creatures ravaging livestock are indicators of what concerns the witnessing population the most: their livelihood. Societies heavily influenced by the technological revolution have an especially novel burgeoning plethora of malignant machinery at their disposal, or rather, to be disposed by. Monsters require a community because their very existence is a collective effort. They reflect the deepest fears of a culture, mirroring those issues that confront us on primal levels. The transmutative nature of the monster enables us to ornament them at our convenience with dreams from our universal id, remaking even their very origin-story for our purposes. If it no longer serves us to summon them forth from swamps and forests, as weve paved over our natural resources, we may transplant their birthplaces to a more industrial setting, or better yet, other worlds entirely. Recent feminist research into Palaeolithic and Neolithic cave art and artefacts poses an interesting challenge to currently held male-centred archaeological assumptions. Images that appear to be monstrous creatures may in fact be superimposed images, placing the first universally accepted distinguishable monsters at a much later date. It has also been suggested that the earliest of civilizations maintained an equitable gender balance with regard to power. These findings discount certain assumptions that claim specific tools were used for weaponry, suggesting instead that they were used for agriculture.14 It would appear that as power hierarchies,

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___________________________________________________________ particularly male-centred social structures, began to emerge, so did both weaponry and the first images depicting legitimately terrifying creatures. The idea that war and monsters may have evolved simultaneously is a valid question for future research. While an epistemological approach would argue that the derivations of monsters are so pervasively cultural that their existence may be arguably one of the few phenomena that are truly deterministic, it can also be said that the fluidity of monsters may transcend metaphysical explanations. That we seem so deterministic in our creation of monsters, yet so libertarian in our paradoxical love/hate relationship with them, bears witness to the power we are willing to give up for the return of the delineated, safe boundaries we use monsters to define. Even in the face of full knowledge that we have created them, we submit ourselves to their force; their wielding of fear over us. Indeed, the beauty of the monster is that it is a product of free will.

Notes
1. Vamik Volkan, Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 24-27. 2. John Burton, Conflict Resolution : The Human Dimension. International Journal of Peace Studies vol. 3 no. 1 (1998). 3. Marilynn B. Brewer, The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love or Outgroup Hate? Journal of Social Science vol. 55, no. 3 (1999): 429444. 4. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Currency Doubleday, 1990), 192193. 5. Alan Kerckhoff and Kurt Back, The June Bug (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1968), 160-161. 6. John Lasseter and Pete Docter, Monsters Inc.(Emeryville, Calif.: Disney/Pixar, 2001), Motion Picture. 7. John Burton, Ch 3: Institutional Values and Human Needs, in Deviance, Terrorism and War, (New York: St. Martins Press, 1979), 5657.

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___________________________________________________________ 8. Nancy Morrison, Working Paper, Realpolitik Be Not Proud, March, 2004, 7. 9. Timothy Beal, Religion and its Monsters (New York: Routledge, 2002), 4-8. 10. Volkan, p. 48. 11. Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 112. 12. Chupacabra, Cryptozoo. <http://cryptozoo.monstrous.com/el_chupacabra.html>. (17 March 2004) 13. Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Random House, 1984) p11. 14. Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (New York: HarperCollins, 1987), 42-53.

Bibliography
Beal, Timothy. Religion and Its Monsters. New York: Routledge, 2002. Brewer, Marilynn B. The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love or Outgroup Hate? Journal of Social Science vol. 55, no. 3 (1999): 429-444. John Burton, Ch 3: Institutional Values and Human Needs. In Deviance, Terrorism and War, 56-57. New York: St. Martins Press, 1979. John Burton, Conflict Resolution : International Journal of Peace Studies vol. 3 no. 1 (1998). The Human Dimension.

Back, Kurt and Alan Kerckhoff. The June Bug. New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1968. Chupacabra, Cryptozoo. 17 March <http://cryptozoo.monstrous.com/el_chupacabra.htm>. 2004,

Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Random House, 1984.

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___________________________________________________________ Doctor, Pete and John Lasseter. Monsters Inc. Emeryville, Calif.: Disney/Pixar, 2001. Motion Picture. Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. New York: HarperCollins, 1987. Glassner, Barry. The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Morrison, Nancy. Realpolitik Be Not Proud. Working paper. (March, 2004) 7. Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Currency Doubleday, 1990. Volkan, Vamik. Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997.

Session 8 Monsters Medieval Revisited

There is no Hero Without a Dragon: A Revisionist Interpretation of the Myth of St. George and the Dragon Estelle Alma Mar
Abstract It is the purpose of this paper to interpret the legend of St. George and the Dragon in terms of alchemical symbolism While the victory of the Christian hero over the Dragon is traditionally interpreted as symbolic of the triumph of good over evil, it is argued that both combatants represent the four alchemical elements: air, water, earth and fire. Instead of a duel of opposites their combat transmutes the coiled-up energy of the dragon into solar light, which manifests as the beautiful princess of the myth. The conclusion is drawn that there is a dialectical movement of force in the battle between St George and the dragon. The hero releases the antithetical power of the dense, dark matter symbolised by the dragon so that the elements of a polarity do not remain contrasted but are resolved creatively. Key Words Dragon lore, dragon slayers, St. George and the Dragon, alchemy. It could be that, in some pre-literate community, the skeletal remains of dinosaurs gave rise to the concept of dragons. In literate societies the dragons lineage is ancient and varied. In Oriental cultures, most notably those of the Japanese and Chinese, dragons were imagined as benevolent creatures and depicted as atmospheric or celestial manifestations. Western dragon lore, by contrast, has its origins in the Babylonian myth in which Tiamat was the mother of all dragons and the daughter of primordial chaos. Later, in the Western mind the dragon was associated with the serpent, who in the Genesis myth was blamed it for all the evil that befell the human race. In the Apocalypse, the red dragon is a seven-headed beast with ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads, who threatens the Virgin who is in the throes of giving birth, but who is slain by the archangel Michael. In popular Western depictions and descriptions, the dragon assumes monstrous proportions and is most often described as an enormous, winged serpentlike beast, half reptile, half mammal. It has a scaly body and a powerful tail, and is four-legged like a crocodile, with protruding teeth and eyes, sharp claws and the capacity to exhale fire or noxious gases.

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____________________________________________________________ Primordial dragons were associated with springs which flow day and night and as such, they never slept, their eyes always open. Because of this, dragons were associated with springs, which are called eyes in Italian and Arabic. Also in Hebrew ayin means both eye and spring. In this way the eye of the fountain represents the dragons head and the serpentine movement of its hindquarters correspond with the waters flow. A volcanic crater was also considered to be a fiery spring, so a dragon could be a fire-dragon spewing forth lava torrents, or exhaling poisonous 1 fumes. However, there are other interpretations of the dragons illusive nature. The earth dragon may become a cloud-dragon and cause ruinous thunderstorms. Hence the dragon can be considered as able to live either 2 in water, air, or on the earth, and as a salamander, even in fire. Clearly, these four manifestations of dragon-life were derived from the ancient belief that the universe comprises four elements: air, water, earth and fire. Because the dragon is, in the Western mind the personification of life within the earth - of that life which, being unknown and incontrollable, is 3 eo ipso hostile to man, it follows that dragons have been feared. It therefore comes as no surprise that there are many Western legends of heroes who single-handedly engaged and vanquished ferocious dragons who were threatening communities. Some famous dragon slayers are Perseus, Beowulf, Utter Pendragon, Deodatus de Gozon, Siegfried and Jason. There are even some medieval depictions of the Christ child as a dragon slayer. Because of the obvious symbolism of evil in the form of a dragon being vanquished by a noble hero, many Christian dragon slayers were dignified with sainthood and bore the emblem of a dragon. These include St. Martha of Tarascon, St. Philip the Apostle, St. Radeguix of Provence, St. Clement of Metz, St Armentaire of Drahuignan, St. Michael the Archangel, St. Margaret, St. Magnus, St. Marcel and, most notably, St. George. Depictions of these saints show them slaying a dragon with a sword or lance and trampling it under foot, thus symbolising the triumph of Christianity over evil and the banishment of paganism from the earth.4 However, the dragon-slaying myth has a pagan origin in the prototypical dragon-slaying myth of Perseus and Andromeda. Passing through the land of Aithiopia, Perseus found it suffering from the ravages of a great monster sent by Poseidon to punish Queen Kassiepeia for boasting that she was more beautiful than the sea-nymphs. Following the council of an oracle, Kepheus, the king, bound his daughter Andromeda to a rock beside the sea in an endeavour to appease the monster. Perseus arrived to find the monster about to devour her. Moved to pity and love at the sight of the girl cowering before the great creature, Perseus immediately extracted a promise from her father that she would become

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___________________________________________________________ his bride if he could succeed in releasing her. Then, approaching the monster, Perseus drew the Gorgons head from his pouch and turned the dragon into stone. Even though the dragon slaying motif returns in the legend of St. George, the motive of the Christian hero in slaying the dragon is quite different from that of Perseus. The St. George who has always been venerated in the Greek Orthodox Church was said to have been born in Cappadocia in Asia Minor, of Christian parents. After his father was martyred for his faith, his mother fled to Palestine. When George grew up, he joined the Roman army and served with distinction. On his mothers death he used his inheritance to establish a position at the court of the Roman Emperor, Diocletian, who ruled from 248-305 CE. George, however, remained a Christian and when Diocletian turned against them, George openly proclaimed his faith. For this he was sentenced to die. It is told that despite dying several times from a series of gruesome tortures, he arose again and again until eventually his head was chopped off and his life was finally extinguished. His body was taken to Lydda in Palestine for burial. Georges fame in the West dates from the thirteenth century when the Legend aurea (Golden legend), by the Dominican Jacques de Voragine (c. 1230-1298), became popular. The legend, which clearly hearkens back to the myth of Perseus and Andromeda, recounts how George, a Christian warrior, slew a dragon in a heathen country. The dragon which threatened the community had to be appeased by offerings of two sheep a day, then children and young people. Eventually the turn of the kings daughter came, but before she could be devoured George arrived in the form of a knight errant. He asked the princess what was happening; she told him and beseeched him to save his life by fleeing. George, however, stood his ground and when the dragon emerged he smote it with his spear, wounding it so seriously that it could be leashed and meekly led back to the city by the princess. There George made a brief oration, baptised the king and 15 000 others. Before he departed he killed the dragon and it is told that, at that place, a magic well sprang up whose waters possessed the power to heal those poisoned by the dragon and restore the wasted land.5 The first interpretation of the legend relates to the world view that upholds a duality between the opposites of good and evil and attributes to the dragon no other purpose than to be conquered by a saviour. The vision of St. Georges triumph over evil is based on earlier prototypes, such as Mithras slaying of the bull in Roman ritual, or the archangel Michael slaying the dragon in Christian mythology. In this regard Helmut Appel tells us that, in the old (i.e., pre-Reformation) comfort literature [...] man is the fighter. The devil and other hellish powers, as long as they appear at

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____________________________________________________________ all are powerless adversaries against the brave warrior of faith.6 Besides the allegorical meaning of Georges triumph over evil, the legend also signified the triumph of the true faith over paganism. At times when schism threatened the Roman Catholic Church the dragon motif could also be adapted to signify heresy. Representations of St. George and the dragon in Christian art sustained the dualism between good and evil In devotional images St. George is most often shown in armour, either on horseback or on foot, slaying a dragon either with a sword or a lance and trampling it under foot. A first level of meaning of this act is religious because George is willing to kill the dragon to release the princess whom the monster held captive, provided the kings subjects convert to Christianity. George triumphs over the dragon and becomes a Christian hero who forever after represents the triumph of Christianity over paganism. This interpretation dignifies George as the symbol of good and condemns the dragon as the personification of evil. This dualism is basically the theme of all the emblematic and artistic representations of their combat, of which those by Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) and Paolo Uccello (1396-1475) are most notable. The second interpretation relates the theme of St. George slaying the dragon as the play of opposites beyond the dualism of good and evil. To my knowledge, no art historian has ever put forward an alchemical interpretation to the representation of the subject, and indeed it may be postulated that the artists themselves were unaware of the alchemical symbolism inherent in the theme. In the case of Raphaels representation of the theme, art historians have found references to contemporary social ideas and ideals.7 No doubt, artists elaborated on existing representations and, ultimately, the myth of the hero survived without attributing to the dragon the meaning it originally had as a manifestation of the four elements. With regard to alchemy, Titus Burckhardt explains the meaning of the four elements: As applied to the soul, earth is that aspect or tendency which causes it to sink into the body and which attaches it to the latter. Fire has the same purifying and transmuting character as outward fire. Water is capable of assuming all forms. [...] For the soul, air, free and mobile envelops all forms of consciousness.8

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___________________________________________________________ Allusions to the dragon in medieval alchemy, considered to be a pseudo science whose practitioners were often persecuted, was part of the practice to develop misleading terminologies to dissuade the curious and keep necessary but uninitiated helpers in the dark. Simply stated, the dragon symbolised matter in its imperfect unregenerate state. The slaying of the dragon would reduce metals to a non-metallic state. [...] Accompanying the treatises describing alchemical processes were illustrations in which the dragons for the most part conform to the European winged type [...].9 However, the alchemical symbol of the dragon, is derived from complex sources. According to Burckhardt it closely resembles that of the Far-Eastern world-dragon, which first lives as a fish in water, and then as a winged creature, soars into the heavens. It also recalls the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, which successively moves under the earth, on the earth, and in the heavens.10 Most importantly, it is symbolically included in the alchemical macrocosm which shows the hermaphroditic creator and his/her creation within the elliptical outline of a cosmic egg and the creation which consists of four elements: the dragon as water, flames from its mouth as fire, the winged globe on which he lies as earth and air.11 Having established the alchemical attributes of the dragon, let us now return to focussing on the multiple tortures that St. George the martyr underwent. During the first round his body was hacked into ten parts and thrown into a lake. Then he was plunged into a cauldron of boiling metal and what remained of his bones were buried in the earth. Finally he was tortured with fire and left on a mountain where the birds devoured his flesh. From this we may deduce that the corpse of St. George was successively metamorphosed into water/earth, air and water/fire. Hence Pol-Pierre Gossiaux concludes that his body Ralise ainsi lalchemie de lunivers tout entier: il transcende les composants matriels du monde cosmique en lments spirituels. Il est la fois terre (comme le suggre letymologie mme de son nom: geos quod est terra et orge quod est colere Voragine, lvi), eau (il rend vie aux arbres et, [...] il simpose comme saint pluviator), air (corps offert aux oiseau) et enfin feu solaire et stellaire.12

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____________________________________________________________ Given this analysis, in their battle St. George and the dragon seem to be constituted by the same elements. They both seem to strive towards the wholeness of their one and eternal prototype, as Burckhardt explains: Sulphur, the original masculine power, and Quicksilver, the original feminine power, both strive towards the wholeness of their one and eternal prototype. The latter is at the same time the reason for their opposition and of their mutual attraction - just as the masculine and feminine natures long for the integrality of the human state, and as a result of this seek both to separate from one another, and to unite with one another. By means of their physical union both try to re-establish the image of their common eternal prototype. This is the marriage of man and woman, sulphur and quicksilver, Spirit and soul.13 Similarly, the dragon-fight implies the participants striving towards wholeness, achieved by the releasing of radiant energy from dense matter. Understood in this way the primary meaning of the conflict between good and evil conceals an alternative interpretation, namely that of an alchemical transubstantiation. Judy Allan and Jeanne Griffiths explain in this regard: The dragon, or serpent symbol in alchemy, was a symbol of matter in its imperfect state which had to be slain; that is the base metals had to be rendered down as a necessary stage of transmutation.14 The legend of St. George and the dragon is in fact symbolic of the force of radiant energy which releases the power of dark and dense matter. At birth the human soul is like a coiled-up dragon which has the potential to be transformed into a being in whom the darkness of matter may be transformed into light. The spear of the saint represents the spiritual ray of light piercing the dragon of matter - the sleeping, coiled-up vortex of the corporeal. The penetrating light awakens the dragon who keeps himself secluded in a dark cave. As he unwinds from the earth his energy spirals upwards through his spine to the crown of his head where it is transmuted into solar light, which manifests as the beautiful princess of the myth.15 The conclusion can be drawn that there is a dialectical movement of force in the battle between St. George and the dragon. The hero releases the antithetical power of the dense, dark matter symbolised by the dragon so that the elements of a polarity do not remain contrasted but are resolved creatively.

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Notes
1. For a survey of Dragon history, see <http://www.angelfire.com/sd/shedevil/DragonHistory.html> (15 March 2004) and Janet Hoult, Dragons: Their History & Symbolism (Glastonbury, Somerset: Gothic Image Publications, 1987). Titus Burckhardt, Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul. Translated from the German by V. Stuart and J.M. Watkins (Longmead: Element Books, 1967), 138. Norman Douglas, Dragons, Old Calabria (October 1928), 132. See <http//dragons.monstrous.com/dragons_killers.htm> (15 March 2004). See Harold L. Weatherby, The True Saint George, English Literary Renaissance 17,2 (1987): 119-141. Helmut Appel, Anfechtung und Trost im Sptmittelalter und bei Luther (Leipzig: Heinsius Nachfolger, 1938), 134. See James B. Lynch, The History of Raphaels Saint George in the Louvre, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, LIX (1962): 203-212. Burckhardt, 74. Burckhardt, 74-75, continues: The signs of the four elements derived from the Seal of Solomon are particularly lucid when it comes to their application to the soul. From them can be seen that the plurality of the elements derives from the opposition of fire and water , that is, from the pair activity-passivity (which of course corresponds to the pair forma-materia). It is the same opposition we shall [...] encounter in the form of sulphur and quicksilver. Through the union of opposites the soul becomes fluid fire and fiery water, and at the same time also acquires the positive qualities of the other elements, so that its water becomes stable and its fire non-burning; for the fire of the soul is that which confers stability on its water, while the water of the soul confers on fire the mildness and ubiquity of air. [...] The highest meaning of alchemy is that the knowledge that all is contained in all, and its

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

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There Is No Hero Without a Dragon magesterium is none other than the realisation of this truth on the plane of the soul. This realisation is effected by means of the creation of the elixir, which unites in itself all the powers of the soul, and thus acts as a transmuting ferment on the psychic world and, in an indirect fashion, on the outward world also. Burckhardt, 125, furthermore explains: Sulphur, the original masculine power, and Quicksilver, the original feminine power, both strive towards the wholeness of their one and eternal prototype. The latter is at the same time the reason for their opposition and of their mutual attraction - just as the masculine and feminine natures long for the integrality of the human state, and as a result of this seek both to separate from one another, and to unite with one another. By means of their physical union both try to re-establish the image of their common eternal prototype. This is the marriage of man and woman, sulphur and quicksilver, Spirit and soul.

____________________________________________________________

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

Canby, Sheila R. Canby Dragons, in Mythical Beasts, edited by J Cherry (London: British Museum Press, 1995), 40-41. Burckhardt, 138. The dragon as a great work of alchemy is depicted in the Viridarium Chymicum, Stolcius, 1624. See Hoult, 50, and figure 6 in S. Mahdihassan, Alchemy, with the Egg as its Symbol, Janus, XLII (1976), 147. Pol-Pierre Gossiaux, Quels dragons pour nos saints Georges? Cahiers Internationaux de Symbolisme (2000), 312. Burckhardt, 125. Judy Allan and Jeanne Griffiths, The Book of the Dragon (London: Obis, 1979), 72. According to Peter Dawkins, Zinc - the Science of Life: Discovering the Sacred Spaces of Your Life (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weider, 1998, 8:

Estelle Mar In the Indian Vedic tradition the radiant energy is associated with the three primary gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, and the spiral energy with their shaktis or consorts [...]. The goddesses are also known under the name Kundalini, the dragon energy. Western tradition has a similar symbology, with the Triple Goddess, under the name of the three Marys, being the three consorts and dragon energy of the male trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The mythological story of St. George and the Dragon contains all this in allegorical form.

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Bibliography
Allen, Judy and Griffiths, Jeanne. The Book of the Dragon. London: Obis, 1979. Appel, Helmut. Anfechtung und Trost im Sptmittelalter und bei Luther. Leipzig: Heinsius Nachfolger, 1938. Burckhardt, Titus. Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul. Translated from the German by V. Stuart and J.M. Watkins. Longmead: Element Books, 1967. Canby, Sheila R. Dragons, in Mythical Beasts, edited by J Cherry. London: British Museum Press, 1995. Dawkins, Peter. Zinc - the Science of Life: Discovering the Sacred Spaces of Your Life. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weider, 1998. Douglas, Norman. Dragons. Old Calabria October (1928): 132-138. Gossiaux, Pol-Pierre. Quels dragons pour nos saints Georges? Cahiers Internationaux de Symbolisme (2000): 307-319. Hoult, Janet. Dragons: Their History & Symbolism. Glastonbury, Somerset: Gothic Image Publications, 1987. Lynch, James B. The History of Raphaels Saint George in the Louvre. Gazette des Beaux-Arts, LIX (1962): 203-212.

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____________________________________________________________ Mahdihassan, S. Alchemy, with the Egg as its Symbol. Janus XLII (1976): 133- 153. Voragine, Jacques de. Legenda aurea. Lyon: J Huguetan, 1508. Weatherby, Harold L. The True Saint George. English Literary Renaissance 17,2 (1987): 119-141.

Session 9 Monster s Undead and Giant

Vamp-Irony: the Bestiality of the Socratic Irony va Antal

Abstract In my doctoral thesis titled On the Concept of Irony With (Continual) Reference to Kierkegaard, I study several 'ironological' (irony-theoretical) texts of primary importance. As the title itself (ironically) indicates, the longest chapter of my thesis is concerned with Kierkegaard's doctoral treatise, The Concept of Irony, With Continual Reference to Socrates, which is the most thorough theoretical work ever written on the concept. In Kierkegaard's reading, Socrates is the first real individual owing to his irony as its infinite, absolute negativity made his negative freedom impossible. While analysing the Kierkegaardian criticism of the Socratic ironical method, I found its rhetoric 'monstrous': pictures of suffocating seduction, torture-chambers, crypts and bestial creatures (eg. gadfly, snake, sting ray) are embedded in the philosophical discussion. All of these rhetorical tropes are associated with the 'demoniac' figure of Socrates, and it is not by chance that he appears in a 'bestiary' as Derrida says in Plato's Pharmacy (In Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago UP, 1981. 119). This remark gave me the idea of collecting and interpreting these metaphors, and to my great (ironic) pleasure - I found the most elaborate parts related to the vampire. Socrates, the ironist, is said to behave and act like an intellectual vampire, who has sucked the blood of the lover [cf. the student] and while doing so lulled him to sleep, and tormented him with troubled dreams (Kierkegaard Works, XIII 144. Trans. Hong and Hong. Princeton UP). That is, in the course of the master's philosophical (ironic) inquiry the listener was bereft of his everyday beliefs, but not given clear answers and finally left 'hollow' in aporetic despair. The working of irony is compared to the vampire's blood-sucking, while its philosophical implications - similarly to Nosferatu - have been eternally haunting in the living-dead Socratic irony ever since. Keywords Rhetorical reading, figures, Kierkegaard, Socratic irony, vampire, irony My field of research is rhetoric and rhetorical reading. Although according to the classical theoreticians (Aristotle, Quintilian, Cicero) rhetoric is the practise and art of - mainly oral - persuasion, today it means studying the effects of such rhetorical or figurative devices as metaphor, hyperbole,

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____________________________________________________________ chiasmus, allegory, irony and paradox. In the case of rhetorical figures, that is, in figural language - as Paul de Man, the Yale professor remarks the sign points to something that differs from its literal meaning and has for its function the thematization of this difference.1 While studying the classical rhetorical tropes, I got interested in a peculiar figure of speech, irony, which as we know is also a figure saying one thing and meaning another. But if we try to define irony offering its theory, we should accept the difficulty of the task. With its permanent interruptions and disruptions irony is precisely what makes it impossible ever to achieve a theory of narrative that would be consistent.2 In my doctoral thesis titled On the Concept of Irony - With (Continual) Reference to Kierkegaard, I study several ironological (irony-theoretical) texts of primary importance. As the title itself (ironically) indicates, the longest chapter of my thesis is concerned with Kierkegaards doctoral treatise, The Concept of Irony, With Continual Reference to Socrates, which is the most thorough theoretical work ever written on the concept. In Kierkegaards reading, Socrates with his questioning of true beliefs and claiming his ignorance becomes the first real individual, as his ironic method due to its infinite, absolute negativity made his (negative) freedom impossible. In the first part of the dissertation, which is about the Socratic irony, the author gives the geneology of the concept. Regarding that the term, irony, is a negative concept, if one tries to interpret the ironic philosophical position, he takes a great risk. To undertake the role of helping its coming into light/existence - either as its midwife or father one is risking to assist with a miscarriage or a stillbirth. In this case it is not really consoling that the infant could have been a child of love, and its conception was conceived/conceptualized by an amorous observer. As Kierkegaard says, the observer ought to be an amorist and the observed phenomena are always of the feminine gender.3 After the quite painful metaphors of delivery, the reader is asked to imagine other images offered to visualize the complex problem of irony. To make it visible the author refers to an imaginary figure of Scandinavian fairy tales: If we now say that irony constituted the substance of his [viz. Socratess] existence , and if we further postulate that irony is a negative concept, it is easy to see how difficult it becomes to fix the picture of him indeed, it seems impossible or at least as difficult as to picture a nisse with the cap that makes him invisible.4

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___________________________________________________________ In the next chapters the reader is given other more (or less) playful and puzzling figures/tropes embedded in the philosophical discussion, which are supposed to stand for the work of irony. Displaying the peculiar rhetoric of the text these figures result in a way of cutting [into], perforating the philosophical argumentation unveiling the true topic.5 While Kierkegaard examines the famous Socrates-interpretations (in Xenophons, Platos, Aristophanes and Hegels works), he is presenting his own understanding of the Socratic irony emphasising its deconstructive negativity. Analysing the Kierkegaardian criticism of the Socratic irony we can find its rhetoric monstrous and all of the rhetorical figures are associated with the demoniac figure of Socrates. Therefore, it is not by chance that he appears in a bestiary as Derrida says in a footnote in Platos Pharmacy.6 But in the Kierkegaardian dissertation, the ironic-demoniac displays more than its animalistic features; as if the figure similarly to the Greek god, Proteus, were given the ability of infinite changing. Therefore, instead of the word, bestiary, I suggest using bestiality, because this one would rather cover and show the torturing and brutal forms of the Socratic irony. Nevertheless, Derrida also refers to other appearances of Socrates; namely, his figure can also be understood as a pharmakeus a magician or sorcerer. These remarks gave me the idea of collecting and interpreting the brutal and bestial images in Kierkegaards pseudophilosophical text relying on the ironic agility of the Socratic negative position. Now, right at the beginning, I can assert that the shocking and sometimes shockingly plastic figures are used to express the lack of positivity and the agonizing an-nihil-ation. During my analysis we should keep in mind that these rhetorical figures are embedded in the philosophical treatise - as if cutting into its body they were brutalizing it. The bestial figures are gathered around the relations of Socrates ironic non-position to death and desire. Kierkegaard analyses two of the early Platonic dialogues, that is the so-called Socratic dialogues, Symposium and Phaedo, claiming that the figure of irony connects the two works dealing with such strikingly different topics. Though the former is characterised by the desire for life and the latter for death, Socrates with his irony can present and view both of them negatively: [] it is the irony that in Symposium made love the substance of life but then took it back again with the other hand by interpreting love negatively as longing, the irony that here [in the Phaedo] views life as retrospective, always wanting to go back into nebulosity

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However, the main topic of the two dialogues is desire: in Symposium it is the desire to possess (carnal desire), in Phaedo the desire to lose (death-wish). The two kinds of longings are strongly related as both of them are aimed at getting something missing, non-existent and unknown. But their connection is shown in an ironic totality, for both qualifications are equally negative, since both longings are ignorant of the what into which the one wishes to hurl itself and into which the other wishes to be volatilized by dying into.8 As this ironic totality is given by Socrates non-position in his life (and death), it is the right time to pay attention to his negative longings. We should accept that he definitely has a death-wish of course, in the intellectual sense. To the philosopher, death means contemplation and complete detachment from everyday reality, that is, it presents the desire to die and to be dead: the philosopher wishes to forsake actuality, yet, as far as possible to be dead already while still alive. [t]his, then, is the tragic self-contradiction of the subjective position.9 Although in his cataleptic and omphalopsychic staring (cf. omphalo-centrism, A) the philosopher seems to exist in-and-for-himself thinking about nothingness and even enjoying it, he still needs actuality. Kierkegaard offers two analogies to express Socrates unique position hovering between the actual world and the world of abstract ideas. One of the figures is borrowed from Aristophanes, as in his comedy, The Clouds, the philosopher is placed in a basket suspended in the air. The other for us now a telling one - is a reference to Mohammeds coffin, which, according to legend, floats between two magnets the one attracting and the other repelling.10 Socrates ironic non-position made him a livingdead free individual, who was and could be - only negatively free in his negative subjectivity. Practically, in his everyday questioning (in his dialogues) Socrates posits himself negating the others opinions and true beliefs. Besides claiming that he does not know anything, he accepts and knows about his non-knowledge, his ignorance, which gave him a superposition floating above the others. On the one hand, he undertakes his annihilation as a mission, on the other hand, he enjoys transmitting his ironic knowledge. What is more, his dialogue-partners find him aristocratic and his freedom seducing: In this way he admittedly freed the single individual from every presupposition, freed him as he himself was

va Antal free; but the freedom he personally enjoyed in ironic satisfaction the others could not enjoy, and thus it developed in them a longing and a yearning.11

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In Kierkegaards thesis Socrates is shown as a consummate eroticist or an amorist of the highest order with all the seductive gifts of rhetoric and intellect. He is a seducer who with his puzzling questions awakens longings in the youths but does not and cannot satisfy them. Although the philosopher seems to be indifferent to the young mens unfolding intellect, from the mask of this indifference they can feel the piercing sidelong glance that instantly pierced their souls like a dagger.12 The ironist suffers and makes the others suffer by torturing them with his questions without giving answers. In his discourses, Socrates seduces and imprisons his pupils using his irony as a mysterious aphrodisiac or poison (see Derridas pharmakon). One of his lovers, Alcibiades, complains that Socrates seems to be the lover, and later becomes the beloved. This remark reveals not only the ironists ability to change his masks while hiding his irony, but also shows that he likes extremes and sudden upside down turns. Speaking about Socrates seducing personality, Alcibiades says that his master resembles a carved image of Silenus, the aged satyr. Just like in the case of the openable small figure Socrates ugly outlook hides his inner divinity, but very seldom does he open up. In Kierkegaards text this hidden divinity is expressed with the Greek , which is usually used to refer to Christs divinity in Lutheran theology; here the divine fullness is concealed by a satyr-mask.13 Later the word appears again in the phrase, cryptic nothing referring to the emptiness of Socrates ignorant-ironic awareness, which his best pupil, Plato trie[s] to fill up by giving him the idea his ideas.14 In the word, cryptic, not only its hidden, but also its sepulchral meanings are embedded, since the word embodies the hidden lifeless quality of the Socratic irony. The crypt as an underground tomb with its own secrecy marks the stillness of silence. In a passage Socrates is said to be like a dash in world history For the observer, Socrates life is like a magnificent pause in the course of history: we do not hear him at all; a profound stillness prevails until it is broken by the noisy attempts of the many and very different schools of followers to trace their origin in this hidden and cryptic source.15

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____________________________________________________________ To cover the above mentioned complexity of the Socratic irony together with its brutal, erotic and mysterious images, Kierkegaard offers a brilliant figure: the living-dead, aristocratic and seducing vampire. The first bloodsucking remark is given in the description of the ironic method. The Socratic questioning tries to annihilate and hollow the ideas of the given answers. As Kierkegaard explains, in the ironic way one can ask without any interest in the answer except to suck out the apparent content by means of the question and thereby to leave an emptiness behind.16 While in his living-dead existence the vampire feeds himself by sucking the blood of his victims, the ironist being another parasite in his unsubstantial hovering non-position asks devastating questions. His questions, such as, for example, what good is or what justice is, cannot be answered, because he claims that he is ignorant. That is, in the course of the masters philosophical (ironic) inquiry the listener is bereft of his everyday beliefs, but not given clear answers and left hollow, sucked out, in aporetic livingdead despair. What is more, this blood-sucking in the master-pupil dialogues means/gives pervertic pleasure to the participants, and in the dissertation we can read about the suffering of Socrates amorous victims. Kierkegaard with pleasure analyses the most detailed and most figurative part of Symposium showing Alcibiades feelings in his love for his master. This part luxuriates in brutal pictures; for instance, the (negative) love-relation starts as if the young man were bitten by a snake, while its development is compared to a mortal disease. In Kierkegaards reading, the ironist does not only torture the lover while deluding him with his fascinating speech, but he also imprisons the lover in the inextricable bonds of this ironic passion. That is, Socrates, the ironist, is said to behave and act like an intellectual vampire, who has sucked the blood of the lover [cf. the student] and while doing so has fanned him cool, lulled him to sleep, and tormented him with troubled dreams.17 Torture, pain and agony this seems to be the most infamous and warped section of the treatise, where the authors figurative fantasy twists out of the frames of the doctoral dissertation. I think, it is worth quoting the closing paragraph of this warping: The question could now be raised: Why this whole exposition? My reply: The intention is twofold. In the first place, to show that even in Alcibiades view of Socrates irony is his essential aspect; in the second place, to suggest that the love-relation that has developed between Socrates and Alcibiades and what we can learn from it about the nature of love are negative.18

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___________________________________________________________ Seemingly, the usage of philosophical argumentation makes it possible to suppress the seductive images, but it is momentary. Being a figure of speech and a trope, irony likes turning ups(ide-downs) and (inside-)outs, and the images of the Socratic torture-chamber frequently flash in the philosophical text to shade the love of the negative. Irony traps the victims or the readers again and again playing its jokes on them (or us). Discussing Aristophanes Socrates-interpretation in The Clouds, Kierkegaard refers to an episode when the student is bereft of not only his everyday beliefs, but also of his mantle, which can be understood as an attempt at the victims skinning.19 In another paragraph the Socratic method is said to work like a dialectical vacuum pump under which he placed the individuals [], pumped away the atmospheric air they were accustomed to breathing, and left them standing there. For them, everything was now lost, except to the extent that they were able to breathe ethereal air.20 Besides presenting the suffocating effect of irony, this analogy expresses its mechanism: the ironist is believed to be able to show something above reality, above our atmosphere, but we can easily asphyxiate till the promise of the ether with the perfect ideas is fulfilled. There are less drastic demonstrations of the ironical method in which the individual feels dizzy as if he got in an abyss/whirlwind and was continuously falling. The loss of the ground refers to the puzzling activity of Socrates questioning: And then, when all the bonds of their prejudices were loosened, when all their intellectual sclerosis was softened, when his questions had straightened everything out and made the transformation possible, then the relation culminated in the meaningful moment, in the brief silvery gleam that instantly illuminated the word of their consciousness, when he turned everything upside down for them at once, as quickly as a glance of the eye and for as long as a blink of the eye, when everything is changed for them.21 The reader could think that some positivity has crept into the description of the living-dead ironic method, for it is worth considering what happens after this gleaming moment. After the flash, darkness is more visible; that is, the evoking of the abstract ideas is followed by valueloss of the known world. But that is all, Socrates can give, and - ironically - with this divine glance he enchains the student, who willingly takes the role of his devoted victim, more exactly gets victimized by (his) irony.

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____________________________________________________________ With his irony, Socrates does not want to posit anything, instead like a gadfly (see Apology 31 a) he tries to stir up others, while the ironist himself cannot escape his whirlwind that finally carries him away. In Meno, he claims that one of the bestial figures used to present his activity is the poisonous sea fish, the sting ray (cf. the Greek narke) which makes other numb in the process of numbing.22 In this remark he accepts that he has a fatal illness, because irony as Kierkegaard says is an endemic disease that only a few individuals catch and from which fewer recover.23 What is more, his illness is infectious and he regards its transmittence as a divine mission (cf. trans-mission), and the figures referring to this mission again emphasise its ironic content. Socrates mission is a divine madness and he is shown as a vengeful angel raising his sword (his irony) over the Athenians (XIII 291). In these metaphors he is shown as a godlike figure: the judge and the punisher in one, something like an ironic-nemesis (XIII 256). Then in the chapter discussing Socrates trial, the ironic-nemesis is again presented as a vampire, that time the vampire of the state. The philosopher claims that he does not know the state as so far he has only met individuals. But according to his accusers, in his conversations Socrates steals the young citizens one by one from the actuality of the state weakening the respect towards the laws and the parents: it is obvious that [] from the viewpoint of the state his offensive had to be considered most dangerous, as an attempt to suck its blood and reduce it to a shadow.24 This figure of speech displays that being a parasite the vampire lives on sucking the blood of the living and he also reproduces other vampires with his poisonous bite. However, the shadow of the state haunts in two other pictures. In Protagoras discussing the definition of virtue, Socrates asserts the existence of one virtue, not of different ones. Kierkegaard compares the Socratic idea on the unity of virtue to a tyrant who does not have the courage to rule over the actual world but first murders all his subjects in order to be able to rule proudly and with perfect security over the silent kingdom of pale shadows.25 This series of monstrous figures is ended by Charon, Hades ferryman, since similarly to him Socrates transmits the individuals from the world of actual empiria to the other world of the abstract nothing: Just as Charon took people across from the fullness of life to the shadowy land of the underworld, just as he, lest his frail boat be overloaded, had the travelers divest themselves of all the manifold qualifications of concrete life, of titles, honors, purple robes, pompous words, sorrows, anxieties, etc., until only the sheer human being

va Antal remained, so Socrates also shipped individuals from reality to ideality; and the ideal infinity as the infinite negativity was the nothing into which he had the entire multiplicity of reality disappear.26

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On the whole, irony is a show-off: at once a picture faker and an image-worship. The common features of these (ironic) figures are emptiness, hollowness and annihilation, as Socrates/Kierkegaard cannot show anything else in his philosophising. But in the philosophical treatise the figures dis-member the text as if they tried to demon-strate something hidden. Irony as a prodigious daemon (XIII 211) hovers over the thesis and the shaded sections together with the argumentative parts give the true theory of irony. Kierkegaard with his telling name meaning churchyard - displays the ground on which the Socratic irony can manifest itself: the ironic nothing is the dead silence in which irony walks again and haunts.27 The vampire becomes the figure of irony, the ironic figure par excellence, while blood sucking stands for the ironic/vampironic method. In my paper I vamp-ironize the Kierkegaardian text, just like he with pleasure took the blood of other authors, Platos or Hegels textual bodies - and now all of them are the ghosts of (my) irony. The reader who is susceptible to irony is also invited to the banquet of vampires and descending through the secret trapdoor28 he can freely join the phantoms of the text. Irony as the trope of the rhetorical tropes - similarly to Nosferatu, the master of the living-dead - together with its philosophical or theoretical implications has been eternally haunting ever since. Paul de Man regards irony - together with allegory - as the key rhetorical tropes in our (textual) understanding claiming that irony is no longer a trope but the systematic undoing of understanding. As such, far from closing off the tropological system, irony enforces the repetition of its aberration.29 In another essay de Man asserts that rhetoric radically suspends logic and opens up vertiginous possibilities of referential abberations30 thus, it can clearly be seen that irony is the figure of rhetoric. Irony displays not only the impossibility of understanding the world around us, but also all of our fears caused by the unknown with its strangeness. (And strangely, what is more, I claim this strangeness or foreignism in English, not in my mother tongue.) I can say that the rhetorical figures stand between the truth of life experience and the human mind; on the one hand, they seem to give the feeling of our control over language, on the other hand, they become its fearful phantoms. There is something threatening and terrible in our rhetoric; using the title of this present conference we should admit that rhetoric is a literally linguistic monster.

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Notes
Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight (London: Routledge, 1993), 209. Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 179. But it does not mean that we should give up working on its theory, because thats all we can do - as de Man himself remarks here. 3 Sren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony With Continual Reference to Socrates, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992), XIII, 105. Further references are to the English edition of Kierkegaards Writings and instead of the page numbers the marginal references are given. 4 Ibid., XIII, 108. According to the explanatory note in the English edition: In Scandinavia, an elflike household creature, benevolent if treated properly, vexatious otherwise, and, according to some traditions, invisible when wearing his pointed red stocking cap (468). I always wonder whether somebody is made invisible wearing such a magical piece of clothes (in some other tales, it is a mantle), then the piece itself can be seen or it has the magical power over itself as well. That is, if someone uses irony, the ironical cap, can it be seen revealing/dis-playing the hidden (meaning or intention)? 5 Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (London: Basil Blackwell, 1995), 8-10. 6 Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 119. 7 Kierkegaard, XIII, 158. 8 Ibid., XIII, 165. footnote. I should call the readers attention to the expression to be volatilized clearly referring to annihilating work of irony. 9 Ibid., XIII, 168. 10 Ibid., XIII, 143. footnote. Later the coffin is again referred to: The ironist, to be sure, is lighter than the world, but on the other hand he still belongs to the world; like Mohammeds coffin, he is suspended between two magnets (XIII, 237). 11 Ibid., XIII, 258. 12 Ibid., XIII, 271. 13 Ibid., XIII, 145. 14 Ibid., XIII, 238. 15 Ibid., XIII, 279. 16 Ibid., XIII, 132. Italics are mine.
2 1

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17 18

Ibid., XIII, 144. Ibid., XIII, 145. And it is stated in the next paragraph: the love described here is that of irony, but irony is the negative in love; it is loves incitement (XIII, 146). 19 XIII, 225, footnote 20 Ibid., XIII, 260. Italics are mine. 21 Ibid., XIII, 272. 22 Plato, Meno 79e-80d 23 Kierkegaard XIII, 170. 24 Ibid., XIII, 261. Italics are mine. 25 Ibid., XIII, 153. 26 Ibid., XIII, 312. 27 Ibid., XIII, 332. 28 and they lack the ironic infinite elasticity, the secret trap-door through which one suddenly plunges down - into ironys infinite nothing (XIII, 122). 29 de Man, 1979, 301. 30 de Man, 1993, 10.

Bibliography
Aristophanes. The Clouds. In Aristophanes, I-III. Translated by Benjamin Bickley Rogers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979-1982. Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller. London: Basil Blackwell, 1995. de Man, Paul. The Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. de Man, Paul. Aesthetic Ideology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. de Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight. London: Routledge, 1993. Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Translated by Barbara Johnson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

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____________________________________________________________ Kierkegaard, Sren. The Concept of Irony With Continual Reference to Socrates. Edited and trans. By Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Plato. The Collected Dialogues. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963.

Tracking the Zombie Diaspora: From Subhuman Haiti to Posthuman Tuscon John Cussans
Abstract In this context the The zombie is a particularly resilient and chimerical figure in the history of popular monsters. An exemplary boundary figure originating in the folklore of Colonial Haitian culture, the legendary zombie is a human being whose soul has been stolen after death by a sorcerer who has then brought them back to life. From the early Hollywood representations of zombies as soul-less somnambulists governed by the will of an evil magician, through the plagues of insatiable, cannibal zombies of the 1970's, to the contemporary zombies that populate the debates of cognitive science, the zombie figure has exercised a peculiar hold of the Western popular and scientific imagination for two hundred years. At stake in each variety of zombie is a complex of issues involving the cultural demonization of the African cultural diaspora in the Americas, debates about the nature of human consciousness, the existence of the soul, the distinction between the living and the dead and fears about the exercise of behavioral influence at a distance. This paper will track the migration of the zombie as it passes from one cultural and discursive context to the next, tracing the behavioral and functional mutations which accompany its passage. Key Words Zombie diaspora, contagion, mimesis, supernatural/natural, consciousness soul 1. identity, representation,

Diaspora as Contagion and the Work of Zombies Man is death living a human life Alexander Kojve

The diaspora of my title is a reference to Barbara Brownings book Infectious Rhythm: Metaphors of Contagion and the Spread of African Culture which has strongly influenced my approach to the Zombie figure. Brownings book analyses representations of the African cultural diaspora in the New World in terms of metaphors of disease, contagion and epidemiology. This epidemiological model is strongly associated, in turn, with the musical aspects of African culture which have been imagined as particularly effective vectors of its virulent diffusion. Although the epidemiological metaphor often expresses implicitly racist

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___________________________________________________________ and xenophobic configurations of the African diaspora there are significant anti-reactionary versions it, most famously Ishmael Reeds 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo which traces the history of the Jes Grew virus from Africa to the United States. Brownings book, written in a post AIDS era, explores the discursive representations of HIV as being of African origin, remobilising deep historical prejudices regarding the morality and nature of African culture in the West. Haiti is particularly important in this context as it is often imagined as an Africa within the Americas, and as such has been the object of the most reactionary and hysterical misrepresentations. The use of the term diaspora also points to notions of borders and border crossings. One of the common theoretical formulations of the monstrous is that which upsets categorical boundaries and binary distinctions. Noel Carroll has described this quality of the monstrous as categorical interstitiality1, a notion indebted to Mary Douglas general formulation of chaos bringing cultural impurity (or dirt) as matter out of place2. The zombie, as cadaverous upsetter of the boundary between the living and the dead, is an exemplary figure of this kind. Wherever the zombie is found, from traditional Haitian folklore to the contemporary philosophy of consciousness, it is never in its proper place. The introduction to Brownings book, entitled Haiti is Here/Haiti is not Here evokes the a Haiti existing in concrete geographical fact (an historically marginalised and brutally impoverished island republic in the Caribbean) but is also intended to suggest that the extreme inequality gradient that exists between Haiti and its wealthy neighbours is increasingly experienced by communities living inside the first world. Browning reclaims the image-idea of the epidemic African diaspora to critique the socio-economic inequalities which underlie its migrations. Like the zombie itself, Haiti is not only there, it is also literally and metaphorically here too. The title - Haiti is Here/Haiti is not Here - also suggests the peculiar blending of popular fantasy and social fact which characterises many representations of Haiti in Western culture. The Haiti of which Browning writes is simultaneously a real Haiti as it exists in actuality and an imaginary or mythical Haiti which exists in the narratives and discourses that have represented it. These two Haitis are inseparable for Brownings argument, asserting as she does that Haiti has been, and continues to be, shaped in dramatic and very real ways by the (mis)representations that are made of it, particularly those which circulate in the powerful nations which have the greatest ideological investment in Haitis past, present and future.

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___________________________________________________________ Even in the most seemingly sober minded of academic contexts the references to the real Haiti flow seamlessly into its most parodic, sinister and exotic misrepresentations. A brilliant example of this tendency, and one which has great pertinence for todays presentation, is given in the first chapter of Infectious Rhythm. In 1986 an article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by a Dr. William R. Greenfield entitled Night of the Living Dead II: Slow Virus Encephalopathies and AIDS: Do Necromantic Zombiists Transmit HTLV/LAV During Voodooistic Rituals 3(The title is a reference to George A Romeros The Night of the Living Dead, the film which began a new phase of cannibal-zombie movies in the 1970s). The Zombie here is simultaneously assumed to be an actual person living and dying (and living again) in a real Haiti and a mythical and fantastic figure familiar from popular horror cinema in the West. In short the Traditional Haitian zombie is woven seamlessly into its Postmodern Cinematic misrepresentation. I am particularly drawn the to conceptual ambiguity of the Zombie as a monstrous entity which cannot be reduced to either a purely phantasmatic or a purely physical existence. Noel Carroll defines the monster as any being not believed to exist now according to contemporary science.4 The zombie is extremely ambiguous in this regard too. In contemporary Haitian society there are living human beings who are considered to be authentic zombies by the rural populations in whose milieu they live. There are be debates about how these people became zombies, whether they are victims of sorcery and have in fact been raised from the dead, or alternatively, whether they are in fact people with severe mental disabilities who have lost their home communities and family identities. Scientific, medical and ethnographic opinion has still not arrived at a consensus as to the real causes of zombiedom in Haiti. The zombie also raises important practical and theoretical questions about the nature of identity and representation, questions very relevant for the cultural politics of Haiti in general. A zombie cannot know and say that it is a zombie. As such it is destined to only ever be represented by others from the outside. This quality makes the zombie an exemplary figure for raising questions about the self-conscious, rationalautonomous individual that is the cornerstone of Enlightenment ideals of social democracy. The zombie is also fundamentally associated with the terrible legacy of slavery, which still haunts the cultural memory of Haiti, a revenant of the subhuman state to which inhuman social practices can reduce a living human being. Such qualities make the zombie work particularly well for the horror genre in its various forms, for cultural theory, consciousness studies and other varieties of philosophical-

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___________________________________________________________ conceptual speculation but far less so for a progressive representation of Haitis potential for socio-political independence and autonomy. So taking my example from Browning I will risk playing with the metaphor of diasporic contagion despite its explicitly (but not exclusively) racist history in order to trace the disease vector of the zombie plague as it passes through different cultural, historical and discursive contexts. In the process I will comment on the changing behavioural and phenomenological characteristics of the zombie as it migrates from one discursive context to the next. Perhaps the most exemplary instance of the complex of issues surrounding the distinction between actual-physical Haitian and imaginary-cinematic zombies is Wade Davis book The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985), a fairly sober, literary-ethnobotanical account of zombie making practices in Haiti which was made into a sensationalist Hollywood horror film by Wes Craven two years later. Davis was employed by a US drug corporation to discover if there was any material truth to accounts of the legendary voodoo powder that could create temporary death-like symptoms in its victims. Accounts of such a powder date back to the turn of the last century. Hesketh Pritchard, in his exemplary racist account of Haitian society reported that papaloi (sorcerer-poisoners) were capable of taking away ones reason at will and, with the use of special potions, capable of producing a sleep which is deaths twin-brother5. Davis concluded convincingly that such a powder does in fact exist and that it contains a powerful neurotoxin derived from pufferfish venom. And this powder is used in zombifying rituals by sorcerers in Haiti who claim to be able to bring people back from the dead. Wes Craven's movie is a particularly pertinent example of the complex representation of zombies I am discussing today. It is a return to the Classical zombie movies of the 1930s and 40s which represented the zombie as an explicitly Caribbean cultural phenomenon. In so doing it plays out a similar game of xenophobi/xenonphilic misrepresentations of Haiti and its culture that the earlier films played out Martinique and St.Vincent. As in Val Lewtons I Walked with a Zombie (1942) a central theme of The Serpent and the Rainbow concerns the causal explanation of zombiedom: does it have supernatural/magical causes or natural/rational ones? The black, male African zombie of I walked finds its uncanny reflection in the white, female European somnambulist-hysteric around whose illness the narrative is structured. Both appear to be mysteriously controlled by an outside agency which governs their behaviour and both are utterly unresponsive to normal everyday forms of communication. Early in the narrative the husband of the catatonic somnambulist insists that the new nurse thinks of his wife as a mental case and does not

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___________________________________________________________ succumb to the contagious superstition of the natives. According to the doctor who is employed to treat her, the condition was caused by a 'tropical fever' that burned out part of her spinal column. A central trope of the plot hinges on the contested explanations for the white zombies condition. Ultimately the film rejects the western medical explanation of hysterical somnambulistic trance and sides with the 'hocus pocus' voodoo option. The Serpent and the Rainbow manages to reach a compromise solution regarding the cause of zombiedom: it is caused on the physiological level by a chemical agent (which keeps Biocorp happy) and this effect is supplemented on the psychological-cultural level by a belief in the voodoo religion, "a net of magic beyond anything we know" as Dr. Allen's narration describes it. In short, only people who believe in voodoo can become zombies. But what does it mean for a Western audience to believe in voodoo? If the film has convinced its audience of voodoos genuine effects then they too might be prone to them. What is interesting is that the zombie is now doubly spectralized: accounts of the real zombie (and by inference, the real Haiti) elide with its phantasmatic and legendary manifestations in Haitian folklore and Western popular culture. In this complex context zombiedom is assumed to be at once a spectral, imaginary and physical mode of existence. Haiti and its zombie have now passed materially beyond their temporal and territorial limits to haunt the dreams of those living in distant, safer and more reasonable lands. Mass media constitute a global and a-temporal sphere in which the spirit of the zombie now wanders endlessly. 2. The Three Varieties of Zombie In this paper I will be addressing three varieties of zombie that appear in three broadly distinct but overlapping discourses: the Traditional Haitian Zombie, the Cinematic Zombie and the Philosophical Zombie. The Traditional Haitian Zombie (or zombi) is a legendary figure derived from the cultural and folkloric traditions of the Dahomian people of West Africa who were taken to Haiti as slaves over several centuries. In this tradition the zombi is a deceased person who has been brought back to life by the work of an evil sorcerer (a bokor). The word zombi, derived from the Fon language of West Africa, has two related but distinct meanings: i) the spirit of a dead person that travels at night to visit the living and ii) the living corpse of a dead person that has been reanimated by sorcery. The traditional Haitian zombi is therefore a highly dualistic figure which has both a phantasmatic and a physical form. In terms of the fascination of the western scientific imagination it has been the zombis

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___________________________________________________________ physical and material manifestation that has provoked the greatest speculation. If the zombi were reducible to collective superstition, like phantoms in general, it would be far easier to lay to rest. But it is the zombies persistent corporeality that keeps it coming back, as it were. It is therefore the second meaning of zombi which has come to dominate the Western meaning of the word. But I believe that what makes the zombie such an exemplary boundary figure is this ability to manifest as a both physical-material entity (and as such a proper object of scientific and medical observation) and imaginary-phantasmatic entity (more properly the object of philosophical speculation and psychological-cultural interpretation). It is perhaps because of this peculiarly dualistic and boundary blurring nature of zombie that it can be made to work for in a variety of discursive contexts and in support of quite contradictory ideological positions. But to whatever ends the zombie is put, it only ever works for something other than itself. The Traditional Haitian Zombie begins its literary debut in accounts of Haiti made by travel writers in the years after its independence from colonial rule in 1791. In this context it can be read as exemplary post-colonial figure. Here the zombie is a monstrous being used to illustrate the evil, superstitious and barbaric practices and beliefs of the uncivilized Haitian peasants and their leaders6. By the 1920s more rigorous and detailed accounts of the zombi, in myth and in fact, derived from the Haitian peasants themselves, enter into the ethnographic literature of Haiti and Vodou. These accounts are an explicit attempt to set the facts straight about the nature of the Haitian zombie to counter the negative purposes to which it was being made to work. The second variety is the Cinematic Zombie, familiar from popular Horror film, which makes its big screen debut in the 1930s. The first Classical version of the Cinematic zombie is modelled on sensationalist literary accounts of the Traditional Haitian zombi written during the US occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934 (such as William Seabrooks The Magic Island (1929)). During their occupation the US forces and the Catholic Church carried out a number of anti-superstition campaigns in an attempt to eradicate the practice of vodou from the island (such campaigns had been waged by the catholic church from the 1860s onwards) The figure of Classical Cinematic Zombie, like the literature from which it derives, can be seen as the extension of this ideological campaign to the US home-front. In this sense the zombie is a deeply paradoxical figure as it is simultaneously assumed to be the real product of effective magic and the immaterial fantasy of primitive superstition, pointing to deep-seated anxieties on the part of Haitis would-be colonial rulers about the actual effectivity of vodou-magic.

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___________________________________________________________ Zombie figure is closely associated with the somnambulist and shares many of its characteristics. Thus the evil bokor becomes associated with the sinister mesmerist. Significantly discourses on the social effects of cinema have been explicitly associated with the phenomena of mesmerism. In this context the notion of mimetic behaviours on the part of mass audiences was derived from the apparent suggestibility of somnambulistic hysterics. That humans can be made to act en masse according to mediated suggestion has shaped the historical and political development of cinema since its beginnings in the late 19th century, coinciding precisely with the advent of scientific psychopathology 7. That it is in horrific cinematic form that the zombie emerges reinstates the spectral nature of this imaginary-contagious threat. Cinema as a medium causes a fundamental reconsideration of the relationship between consciousness and the soul and between life, animation, death and after-life8. Cinema gives a new intermediate form of spectral materiality to the figure of the zombie - a second form of living-death and therefore introduces new levels of ontological and ideological complexity to this already highly contested figure. Despite being based on stereotypical and xenophobic accounts of Haitian society and culture the Classical Cinematic Zombie shares many of the characteristics of its Traditional Haitian, flesh and blood predecessor. During the late 60s and early 70s however the Cinematic Zombie undergoes a shocking and rapid mutation, acquiring newfound virulent and cannibalistic characteristics. The films of this period introduce the theme of a zombie plague and as an apocalyptic and hypervisceral epidemic. The Postmodern Cinematic Zombie (as Steven Shaviro calls it in The Cinematic Body) is a distinctly new and remarkably resilient variety of zombie which is perhaps most representative of its popular public image. The Postmodern Cinematic Zombie shares fundamental characteristics with its predecessors. It is a living-dead being that has been brought back to life by uncertain causes and/or means. Since the Postmodern Cinematic Zombie is newly cannibalistic, zombiedom in this context is usually be caused by the incurable contaminating bite of the zombie. But the principle cause of the zombie plague is generally left open. In some instances such as Lucio Fulcis Zombi (1979) the plague does derive from somewhere in the Caribbean, a product of the mixing between western medical experiments and voodoo practices. But in the examples of Romero (and more recently Jack Snyder) the voodoo origins of the zombie are hardly present. In this sense the Postmodern Cinematic Zombie is less explicitly implicated in the cultural vilification of Haiti. Of course, the cultural history of the figure of the cannibal is deeply

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___________________________________________________________ implicated in the ideological production of the Caribbean as a land of savages. Themes of cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice constitute the main thrust of Spencer St Johns Eurocentric condemnation of the Haitian society and culture in Hayti or the Black Republic (1884) for instance. But ubiquitous jungle drums dont accompany the arrival of the new cinematic zombie. This is a plague of Old Testament origins: When there is no more room in Hell, the Dead will walk the Earth. According to Shaviro the cannibalistic mutation of the zombie functions as an explicit critique of life in late capitalist societies rather than an implicit critique of non-western cultural practices (Haitian or otherwise). The cannibal-zombie is a figure for a hyper-consumerist society conceived from a globally integrated economic perspective. The excessively consumptive and unthinking character of the postmodern cannibal-zombie is thus both mimetic and allegorical of life in postmodern consumer societies, marking the rebellion of death against capitalist appropriation.9 As such it can be read as a base-materialist attack on ideals of collective and individual identity/difference upon which the contemporary liberal-democratic politics of representation is based. Shaviro points to the ways in which the postmodern zombie movie ultimately questions the possibility of effective democratic politics in the face of a ubiquitous global threat to all human life. In this sense - and also to the extent that it raises metaphysical and ethical questions about what is truly human and what distinguishes between living human life and dead human life - the postmodern cannibal-zombie works temporarily like its authentic Haitian relatives. But it does so in an excessively violent, virulent and collective manner. And ultimately these zombies arent working for any one or any thing, except perhaps for the end of all things and of every one. Some job! And so to the Philosophical Zombie, an imaginary figure used in thought experiments to test arguments about the essential nature of human consciousness. The Tuscon of the title is a reference to the Center for Consciousness Studies at University of Arizona whose annual conferences regularly address the so-called Zombie Problem. These debates have particular pertinence for the development of artificial intelligence and artificial life. In this context the Philosophical zombie is most strongly associated with David Chalmers, whose book The Conscious Mind (1996) popularized the figure for consciousness studies. Chalmers takes his cue however from Robert Kirk who introduced the Zombie to consciousness studies in an article in Mind magazine in 1974. It is more than likely that Kirk chose this title due to the popular influence of the Postmodern Cinematic Zombie which was marauding cinema audiences at the time. It

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___________________________________________________________ is an unusual choice of word considering its function. In philosophical terms the figure of the mechanical man was already serving a similar hypothetical purposes for consciousness studies as the newly named zombie. However in colloquial terms the word zombie had come to signify a person who seemed to be a living human being but for whom there was nothing going on inside, a person with zero personality and one who had become robotized by the monotony of life contemporary capitalist societies. (This might be called The Stepford Wives scenario). In this sense the precursor of the philosophical zombie is the obedient android, an imaginary human copy which corresponds more closely to the replicants and simulants which populate futurological science-fiction narratives than to its Traditional and Cinematic Zombie relatives. So the Philosophical Zombie shares few of the cultural and behavioural characteristics of its predecessors. In fact it has precisely no features that would distinguish it from a normal, living human being other than its hypothetical lack of sentient consciousness. In this regard it is closest to the Traditional Haitian Zombie except it can say it is not a zombie. The work of the Philosophical Zombie is to test if we can prove with any degree of certainty that a perfect physical copy of a human being - which acts and behaves exactly like one - could be proven to either have or lack consciousness. The figures of the actual traditional zombie and the virtual replicant zombie constitute two poles of the theoretical-conceptual territory that the monstrous figure of the zombie helps us to explore. Although I have not been able to argue the case here I believe that the zombie figure can also help us explore the historical evolution of the ideas of soul, psyche and consciousness, and their implication for contemporary metaphysics and human ethics. What is at stake in the various discourses in which the Zombie figures are questions of differentiation: differentiation between the living and the dead, between objects of popular superstition and beings which actually exist, between the real person and his/her soulless double, between person whose abnormality is the consequence of pathological causes and the person who is the victim of sorcery, and between the authentic, conscious human being and its perfect, artificial simulation. As such the Zombie is an incredibly useful figure for epistemological, philosophical and metaphysical speculation. But as we know, the zombie also raises important historical, political and global questions about who works for who and under what conditions?

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Notes
Noel Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror (London/New York: Routledge, 1990), 27. 2 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966). 3 Barbara Browning, Infectious Rhythm: Metaphors of Contagion and the Spread of African Culture (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 27. 4 Carroll, 27. 5 Spencer St. John, Hayti or the Black Republic (London: Smith, Elder & Co.), 1884. 6 Hesketh Pritchard, Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across and about Hayti (Westminster: Westminster Press, 1900). 7 Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). 8 Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) and Jalal Toufic, (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film, New York: Station Hill, 1993. 9 Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 84.
1

Bibliography
Browning, Barbara, Infectious Rhythm: Metaphors of Contagion and the Spread of African Culture, London/New York: Routledge, 1998. Carroll, Noel, The Philosophy of Horror, London/New York: Routledge, 1990. Chalmers, David, The Conscious Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Davis, Wade, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie, London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Davis, Wade, The Serpent and the Rainbow, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Deren, Maya, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, New York:

John Cussans

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___________________________________________________________ McPherson, 1970. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. Farmer, Paul, The Uses of Haiti, Monroe: Common Courage Press, 1994. Farmer, Paul, Aids and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, California: University of California Press, 1992. Hurston, Zora Neal, Tell My Horse: Voodoo Life in Haiti and Jamaica, New York: Perennial Books, 1990. Kittler, Friedrich, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Metraux, Alfred, Voodoo in Haiti, New York: Schocken Books, 1972. Pritchard, Hesketh, Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across and about Hayti, Westminster: Westminster Press, 1900. Reed, Ishmael, Mumbo Jumbo, New York: Doubleday, 1972. Seabrook, William, The Magic Island, New York: The Literary Guild of America, 1929. Shaviro, Steven, The Cinematic Body, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. St. John, Spencer, Hayti or the Black Republic, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1884. Toufic, Jalal, (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film, New York: Station Hill, 1993.
Filmography

Victor Halperin, White Zombie, 1932.

214

Tracking the Zombie Diaspora

___________________________________________________________ Jacques Tourneur, I Walked with a Zombie, 1943. Wes Craven, The Serpent and the Rainbow, 1987. Lucio Fulci , Zombi, 1979. George A Romero, Night of the Living Dead, 1968. George A Romero, Dawn of the Dead, 1978. George A Romero, Day of the Dead, 1985. Zack Snyder, Dawn of the Dead, 2004.

The Ethical Ambiguity of the Monster: Good and Evil as Human Possibilities in Michel Tourniers Le Roi des Aulnes Hanna Meretoja
Abstract As Mikhail Bakhtin states in his famous Rabelais-study, giants are typically ambivalent figures in folk legends and literature: they are not clear-cut good or evil, and their grotesque corporality manifests metamorphosis, an ambiguous state of becoming. Michel Tournier, one of the most prominent contemporary French novelists, has built his novel Le Roi des Aulnes (The Erl-King, 1970) intertextually on the basis of age-old giant and monster imagery, thereby opening up a new, interesting perspective into the ambiguity of monstrosity. Through its monster imagery the novel demonstrates that evil is not an essential property of some men, those designated as monsters, but rather a possibility that resides in every human being. The protagonist of Le Roi des Aulnes, Abel Tiffauges, is a car mechanic living in pre-World War II Paris, who endeavours to construct his identity on the basis of various monster and giant myths. He believes that he is an ogre, a fabulous monster emerging from the mists of time, and more specifically, a child-bearer, that is, a giant whose vocation is to carry children, like Saint Christopher carried the Christ Child across the river. The mythical figure of the ErlKing, best know from Goethes ballad Der Erlknig, functions in the novel as a kind of negative inversion of Saint Christopher. Tiffauges wavers between being a Saint Christopher and an Erl-King figure, a gentle giant carrying children safe and a monster wrenching children from their parents arms. I would like to suggest that it is of utmost importance that Tiffauges is an ambiguous figure whose identity is not determined by a pre-given essence but is, on the contrary, constituted in the hermeneutic process in which he applies various mythical models into the concrete, singular situations that he encounters. The reader has to participate in this interpretative process by constantly re-evaluating whether Tiffauges is a good or a bad child-bearer. Gradually it becomes evident that he is an ethically ambiguous figure who has the potential for both good and evil, like all of us. This ambiguity calls attention to the ethical responsibility that accompanies the interpretation and application of culturally transmitted mythical models. In the novel this central theme gains its urgency in relation to the historical context of Nazi Germany.

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The Ethical Ambiguity of the Monster

____________________________________________________________ Keywords Ethics, ambiguity, Michel Tournier, myths, hermeneutics, monstrosity, Second World War Monstrosity and human evil are central themes of Le Roi des Aulnes (The Erl-King, 1970), a celebrated novel by one of the most prominent contemporary French novelists, Michel Tournier (b. 1924).1 At the very beginning of the novel, the protagonist Abel Tiffauges reflects on the meaning of being a monster, as his girlfriend has claimed him to be one: To begin with, what is a monster? Etymology has a bit of a shock up its sleeve there: monster comes from monstrare, to show. A monster is something which is shown, pointed at, exhibited at fairs, and so on. [---] If you dont want to be a monster, youve got to be like your fellow creatures, in conformity with the species[.]2 In other words, monstrosity refers to something inhuman, unnatural, abnormal, and freakish. The reader also knows that those who do terrifying, evil deeds are designated as monsters. The question concerning the relation between monstrosity and evil becomes acute as the novel proceeds to deal with the historical events of the Second World War. Implicit in the above cited reflection on the meaning of monstrosity is a critical question that accompanies the reader throughout the novel: On what grounds do we divide people into us, that is, the so-called normal, good people, and the monsters, that is, our evil others? What are the ethical implications of the role that monsters play in our mythological imagination? In the following, I will examine how the novel deals with these questions by making use of the ambiguity of the monster and giant imagery of mythology and world literature. 1. Tiffauges as a descendant of mythical Child-Bearers The novel tells the story of a car mechanic who believes to be an ogre, a fabulous monster emerging from the mists of time.3 His story is narrated from a double perspective, that is, both from an external third person perspective and from an internal first person perspective - through excerpts from his diary Sinister writings of Abel Tiffauges. At the beginning of the novel, Tiffauges runs a garage in the pre-World War II Paris, and tries to figure out who he is in relation to his childhood experiences at Saint Christophers boarding school. Then the war breaks out, and after working with carrier pigeons at the communications branch of the army, he is captured by the Germans and taken to a prisoner of war

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____________________________________________________________ camp. As time goes by, the Nazis assign him more demanding duties, and eventually he assumes a leading role in Kaltenborn, a Prussian fortress that has been converted into a napola, a Nazi elite military training school for young boys. Tiffauges has always felt like an outsider, someone with difficulty finding his place in society. He interprets his abnormality in terms of being an ogre, a descendant of mythical monster and giant figures. This is part of building up his own culture, a process that he has started already as a schoolboy: But here and there, leafing through dictionaries, picking up what I could in textbooks, watching out for fleeting allusions to what really interested me in French or history lessons, I started to build up a culture of my own, a personal Pantheon which included Alcibiades and Pontius Pilate, Caligula and Hadrian, Frederick William I and Barras, Talleyrand and Rasputin.4 Later he attempts to construct his identity by assuming various mythical, historical and literary giant figures as his predecessors and models. These include, for example, Atlas, the Greek titan who carried the whole sky on his shoulders: But the more I think of it, the more it seems to me that Atlas uranophorus, Atlas astrophorus is the mythological hero towards whom my life must tend, and in whom it must at last find its fulfilment and apotheosis.5 But as his ultimate model he venerates the mythical carrier figure of Saint Christopher. According to a medieval legend, preserved in Jakobus de Voragines Golden Legend, Saint Christopher was a giant who wanted to serve the greatest man on earth. He worked as a ferryman, and one day he carried across the river a child who weighed like a lump of lead on his shoulders and turned out to be the Christ Child. Accordingly, Tiffauges undertakes child-carrying as his ultimate mission and vocation. He unravels the etymology of the word euphoria, and finds that it means literally carrying with happiness as the Greek word eu refers to happiness and phoria has its origin in the verb meaning carrying. Following this insight he re-interprets his whole life in a new light: At this, a shaft of light suddenly falls on my past, my present, and, who knows, perhaps my future too. For this fundamental idea of portage, of phoria, is also found in the name of Christopher, the giant Christ-bearer [---] and yet again it is embodied in the cars to which I reluctantly

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The Ethical Ambiguity of the Monster give the best of myself, but which even in their triviality are nonetheless instruments for the bearing of men, anthropophoric and therefore phoric par excellence.6

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There are numerous variants of carrier-figures in Le Roi des Aulnes, and one of the most important ones is the Erl-King who represents a kind of negative inversion of Saint Christopher. The Erl-King is a death-figure best known by Goethes Der Erlknig which, according to Tournier, has always been the German poem par excellence for every French school-child embarking upon the study of German literature, a symbol of Germany itself.7 As its title suggests, Le Roi des Aulnes can be read as a re-interpretation of this ballad, which Tournier has attached to the end of his novel in his own translation. In the novel, a Nazi Professor names a man, whose embalmed body is found in a peat-bog, the ErlKing, and Tiffauges identifies strongly with this mythical figure; for him Goethes ballad appears as the very charter of phoria, which is lifted to a paroxysm of incandescence by hyperborean magic.8 And when Tiffauges rides about Prussia on a horse named Bluebeard recruiting children for the napola, it becomes evident that he is not so much a Saint Christopher carrying children to safety but more like an Erl-King wrenching children from their parents arms. At the end of the novel, Tiffauges takes care of a Jewish boy called Ephraim, who has escaped from a concentration camp. From him, Tiffauges learns to see the terrifying affinities between his personal mythological worldview and that of the Nazis. As the Red Army attacks Kaltenborn, he takes Ephraim on his shoulders and tries to carry him safe from the burning fortress, but he ends up sinking into the peat-bog. Thus the novel preserves a fundamental ambivalence in its phoric imagery until the last scene, which entwines the images of Saint Christopher and The Erl-King. 2. The ethical ambiguity of the monster imagery In his intellectual autobiography Le Vent Paraclet (The Wind Spirit, 1977) Tournier maintains that different variations of phoria, that is, the theme of carrying, form the architecture of Le Roi des Aulnes,9 and what interests him most is its essential ambiguity: Thus, the good giant who becomes a beast in order to save a small child is not so far from the predatory hunter who devours children. He who carries the child carries him away. [---] In other words, the ghost of Saint Christopher, bearer and saviour of children, is the

Hanna Meretoja erlking, abductor and murderer of children. All the mystery and profundity of phoria lies in this ambiguity.10

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The ambivalent character of Tiffauges is emphasised already by his name: Abel refers to the biblical nomad who was murdered by his brother, whereas Tiffauges is the name of the castle where Gilles de Rais, a childmurderer who is regarded as one of the historical models of Charles Perraults Bluebeard, committed his hideous crimes.11 In order to highlight Tiffauges ambiguous nature, Tournier makes use of the long tradition of ogre imagery that has played a central role especially in the history of French literature. As Mikhail Bakhtin states in his famous Rabelais-study, giants are typically ambivalent figures in folk legends and medieval literature: they are neither clearly good nor evil, and their grotesque corporeality manifests metamorphosis, an ambiguous state of becoming.12 Tournier sees Tiffauges as an offspring of this Rabelaisian tradition of ogres: [Tiffauges] is an ogre type. He is big and fat. All signs are that the digestive function is dominant. His enormous hands serve as intermediaries between the external world and his mouth; they are predatory, murderous hands, but at the same time obliging, supportive, and caressing. They combine all the characteristic features of what I call phoria. Like many mythological giants, his vision is poor. [---] The ogre has a keen nose [---] Jovial, the ogre is much given to telling scatological jokes but relatively reluctant to tell erotic ones. His personality is of the anal rather than phallic type, as can be seen from his two greatest literary exemplars, Gargantua and Pantagruel. [---] The ogre is a magus and a predator.13 In Le Roi des Aulnes the images of phoria are images that Bakhtin would call grotesque. They intertwine two bodies, and their ambivalence consists of their dual allusion to both life and death, as Bakhtin explains: Contrary to modern canons, the grotesque body is not separated from the rest of the world. It is not closed, completed unit; it is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits. [---] One of the fundamental tendencies of the grotesque image of the body is to show

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The Ethical Ambiguity of the Monster two bodies in one: the one giving birth and dying, the other conceived, generated, and born. [---] The body stands on the threshold of the grave and the crib.14

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According to Bakhtin, ambivalence and the relation to time are two determining traits of the grotesque image, that is, an image that reflects a phenomenon in transformation.15 These traits characterize pertinently the way Tiffauges is presented to the reader in an ambivalent process of becoming. By making use of the tradition of grotesque ogre imagery, Tourniers novel also opens up a new perspective onto the ambiguity of monstrosity. This has to do with the way Tiffauges identity is constituted in a temporal process of interpretation. Tiffauges ethical ambiguity pertains to the fact that he lacks a pre-given, substantial, and unchangeable essence that would determine his identity. On the contrary, his identity is continuously constituted anew in a temporal process in which he interprets the situations he faces and acts in them. The reader has to participate in this interpretative process by constantly re-evaluating whether Tiffauges is a good or a bad carrier, a Saint Christopher or an Erl-King figure. Different aspects of Tiffauges manifest themselves in different situations, and there is no privileged point of reference available for the reader from which he or she could categorize him. For example, the third person narrator refrains from commenting or evaluating Tiffauges views. As a consequence, the reader has difficulties in knowing whether to believe Tiffauges as he utters, Im a gentle, harmless giant, who thirsts for affection and stretches out his great hands joined in the shape of a cradle,16 or to take his word for it when Tiffauges speaks of the dark power of which I am the bearer.17 But as the novel proceeds, it becomes increasingly evident that this tension cannot be resolved by deciding whether he is truly a good or a bad character. In the end, the reader must accept Tiffauges ethical ambiguity, which means that he is inherently neither good nor bad, but, instead, he has the potential for both good and evil, like all of us. 3. The ethics of interpretation and application of myths In fact, what makes Tiffauges into an Erl-king or a Saint Christopher figure is the way he follows and applies these myths. Accordingly, a central theme of Tourniers novel is the problem of interpretation and application of myths passed down by the cultural tradition. For Tournier, man is a mythological animal: He becomes man - he acquires a human beings sexuality and heart and imagination - only by virtue of the murmur of stories and kaleidoscope of images that surround him in the cradle and accompany him all the way to the grave.18 Tournier sees myths as

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____________________________________________________________ fundamental stories that provide us models through which we give shape, form and feature to our experiences and aspirations.19 In other words, we are in the world through a reflective interpretive process in which we make sense of our lives on the basis of and in dialogue with culturally transmitted sense-making models.20 However, Le Roi des Aulnes emphasises that myths do not provide ready-made identities but only material for their construction.21 Tiffauges is constituted in the dialogical, hermeneutic process in which he applies mythical models to the concrete, particular situations that he encounters in the present. As a result, he is dependent on cultural meaning systems but is not a mere product of them. The novel shows that since meaning systems cannot themselves determine how they will be applied, all meaning-constitution depends on the active and creative interpretation by the individual: therefore, the repetition of the past is never mechanical, and what is repeated cannot remain exactly the same. As Gadamer writes, we understand in a different way, if we understand at all.22 A central theme of Le Roi des Aulnes is the idea that there are potential dangers in the application of myths and that people have to bear responsibility for their mythical constructions. This idea is delineated against the historical background of Nazi Germany. The way Tiffauges builds his own mythological universe is paralleled by the way the Nazis build their ideological universe on the basis of myths and rituals that resemble religious ceremonies.23 Just like Tiffauges assumes himself mythical predecessors, the Nazis teach their young boys to identify with ancient war heroes, such as Alexander the Great.24 However, what crucially unites Tiffauges and the Nazis and what is troubling in Tiffauges is not the fact that he uses myths as sense-making models, but rather the fact that he does not see them as cultural constructions. Both Tiffauges and the Nazis reify their mythological systems by believing that they reflect some pre-given divine order or inevitable destiny for which they are not responsible. Reification is a Marxist term which, as Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann explain, refers to the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly suprahuman terms.25 This is precisely the case with the Nazis and Tiffauges: they do not see their mythological systems as products of their own interpretative work but as part of the objective order of things.26 Berger and Luckmann maintain that when an identity becomes reified, it is apprehended as an inevitable fate, for which the individual may disclaim responsibility.27 Accordingly, both Tiffauges and the Nazis try to evade responsibility by believing that they simply repeat the deeds of their mythical predecessors and thereby carry out their special destinies.28

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____________________________________________________________ This belief leads them to constant self-deception and a tendency to see in the world only what they want to see.29 In Tourniers terms, what Tiffauges lacks is the experience of the ultimate relativity of all human orders which Tournier describes in Le Vent Paraclet with the concept of white laughter. It stems from the insight that everything human is transient, relative, and doomed to disappear: The man who laughs white has glimpsed the abyss between the gaps in realitys fabric.30 In Le Roi des Aulnes Tourniers white laughter manifests itself as an ironic lighting surrounding Tiffauges most poignantly when he speaks of his divine destiny. Such declarations frequently produce a comical impression that escapes his notice but not that of the reader, for example in the following: Only I, Abel Tiffauges, otherwise known as Child-Bearer, microgenitomorph and last scion of the race of phoric giants, only I know, and with good reason31 Tiffauges is a sad and pathetic but also a dangerous figure precisely because he presents such self-characterizations as if they were absolute: he fails to see his own status and role as an active constructor of his own identity and world-view. Tournier thinks, like the French hermeneutist Paul Ricur, that we cannot live without myths, but our relation to them should be as conscious and critical as possible.32 By reminding us of our active role in the interpretation and application of myths, Tourniers novel can help us avoid dangerous reification of symbolic systems, as well as enhance our sense of responsibility in our interpretative activities. The novel also calls for recognizing that this problematic concerns us all. Tiffauges is a monster comparable to the Nazis, but he is also a next-door garage mechanic. As Tournier puts it in an interview, the ogre is a character that exists in our neighbourhood and perhaps in every one of us.33 Accordingly, Tourniers novel questions our tendency to stigmatise certain people as monsters, thereby identifying them as Others, who represent unknown threats from the outside. The novel challenges the reader to understand that Nazism is not something that we could deal with by thinking that the Germans were monsters - unlike the civilized rest of us.34

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____________________________________________________________ Since the Second World War, the monster myth has occupied a central place in Western political mythology and has been frequently used to represent people like Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, or Osama bin Laden as incarnations of pure evil.35 Tourniers novel renders problematic this tendency by demonstrating that evil is not an intrinsic property of some men, those designated as monsters, but rather a possibility that resides in every human being. People are not divided into monsters and saints on the basis of their inherent essence, but, on the contrary, their evilness or goodness is largely social in its origin.36 As Hannah Arendt shows in her classical study Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, there was nothing mystical in the evilness of the Nazis: in the end, it was quite banal, and inextricably wedded to the instrumental logic of modern, Western society. As a consequence, society as a whole is responsible for engaging in critical reflection concerning its myth-making practices. All in all, Tourniers Le Roi des Aulnes challenges us to work on our mythological imagination so that our ways of reinterpreting old myths and creating new ones would promote the goodness in us and help us deal with human evil in all its complexity.

Notes
Le Roi des Aulnes won the Prix Goncourt and many scholars consider it to be Tourniers major novel. See e.g. Kibedi Varga, 1988, 38; Davis, 1995, 103; Cloonan, 1985, 101; and Gratton (1997, 249) who regards it as worthy of inclusion in any history of postmodern fiction. 2 EK 11. (Et dabord quest-ce quun monstre? Ltymologie rserve dj une surprise un peu effrayante: monstre vient de montrer. Le monstre est ce que lon montre - du doigt, dans les ftes foraines, etc. [---] Pour ntre pas un monstre, il faut tre semblable ses semblables, tre conforme lespce, ou encore tre limage de ses parents. RA 11-12.) 3 EK 11. (mergeant de la nuit des temps, RA 11.) 4 EK 17. (Par bribes, en feuilletant les dictionnaires, en glanant ce que je pouvais dans des ouvrages de compilation scolaire, je commenai me constituer une culture en marge, un panthon personnel o voisinaient Alcibiade et Ponce Pilate, Caligula et Hadrien, Frdric-Guillaume Ier et Barras, Talleyrand et Raspoutine. RA 18-9.) 5 EK 76. (Mais plus jy pense, plus il me semble quAtlas uranophore, Atlas astrophore est le hros mythologique vers lequel devrait tendre ma vie pour trouver en lui finalement son aboutissement et son apothose. RA 92.)
1

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____________________________________________________________ EK 74. (Et l, un trait de lumire illumine soudain mon pass, mon prsent et, qui sait, mon avenir peut-tre aussi. Car cette ide fondamentale de portage, de phorie, elle se trouve aussi dans le nom mme de Christophe, le gant Porte-Christ, de mme quelle tait illustre par la lgende dAlbuquerque, de mme encore quelle sincarne nouveau dans ces automobiles auxquelles je consacre en renclant le meilleur de moimme, mais qui nen sont pas moins dans leur trivilialit linstrument porteur dhomme, anthropophore, phorique par excellence. RA 90.) 7 WS 97. (Ce pome de Goethe [---] a toujours t pour lcolier franais abordant la langue et la littrature allemandes le pome allemand par excellence, le symbole mme de lAllemagne. VP 115.) 8 EK 258. ([C]est la charte mme de la phorie quelle lve la troisime puissance. Cest le mythe latin de Christophe-Albuquerque port un paroxysme dincandescence par la magie hyperborenne. RA 318.) 9 WS 106/VP 126. 10 WS 102. (Ainsi le bon gant qui se fait bte de somme pour sauver un petit enfant est-il tout proche de lhomme-de-proie qui dvore les enfants. Qui porte lenfant, lemporte. [---] Bref lombre de saint Christophe, porteur et sauveur denfant, cest le Roi des aulnes, emporteur et assasin denfant. Tout le mystre et la profondeur de la phorie se trouvent dans cette ambigut. VP 122.) 11 See Cloonan, 1985, 47-48. 12 Bakhtin, 1984, 24-27. On the ambivalence of the ogre myth see also Bouloumi, 1988b, 1099-1105. 13 WS 95-96. (Il est vrai que le type auquel il appartient pourrait tre dcrit par la caractrologie sous le symbole de lOgre. Il est grand et gros. Tout indique chez lui la prdominance de la fonction digestive. Ses mains normes servent de relais entre le monde extrieur et sa bouche, mains prdatrices, assassines, mais aussi serviables, porteuses, caressantes. En elles se rassemblent dj tous le attributs ambigus de la phorie. Comme beaucoup de gants mythologiques, il voit mal. [---] Logre est un olfactif [---] Jovial, logre se rpand volontiers en plaisanteries scatologiques, mais dautant plus rarement en histoires rotiques. Il relve du type anal, et non pas du type phallique, comme le montrent ses deux grands avatars littraires Gargantua et Pantagruel. [---] Logre est mage et prdateur. VP 114-115.) 14 Bakhtin, 1984, 26. 15 Ibid, 24. 16 EK 114. (Je suis un gant doux, inoffensif, assoiff de tendresse, qui tend ses grandes mains, jointes en forme de berceau. RA 140.) 17 EK 71. (la force tnbreuse dont je suis le porteur, RA 86.)

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____________________________________________________________ WS 158-159. (Lhomme ne devient homme, nacquiert un sexe, un cur et une imagination dhomme que grce au bruissement dhistoires, au kalidoscope dimages qui entourent le petit enfant ds le berceau et laccompagnent jusquau tombeau. VP 186.) 19 WS 156, 158/VP 184-185. The way Tiffauges chooses his models from the cultural tradition resembles Heideggers (1988 [1927], 437) view of the authentic repetition of a possibility of existence that has been - the possibility that Dasein may choose its hero. Heidegger and his hermeneutic followers think it is characteristic of our temporal being that we are always oriented towards the future in relation to the past and to the possibilities handed down to us by the cultural tradition. See e.g. Gadamer, 1997 (1960), 257-264, 282; Ricur, 1988 (1985), 60-96. 20 In the novel the individual subject is not a self-sufficient source of meaning, but neither is it reduced into those meaning systems that form the basis of its constitution. By contrast, the relationship between the individual and the cultural system appears as dialogical. Such a dialogical conception of subjectivity has been developed by hermeneutically oriented thinkers, such as Charles Taylor, who has written about the dialogical nature of the self with reference to the way we are constituted in a conversation with significant others. See Taylor, 1996 (1989), 35; Taylor, 1991, 311-314. Tiffauges significant others are mythical characters that he has chosen as his interlocutors (see e.g. EK 60). 21 In this sense, Tiffauges is a (post)modern - that is, a post-traditional individual for whom self-identity is a continuous task or, to use Giddens (1991, 32) expression, a reflexive project. 22 Gadamer, 1997 (1960), 297. 23 This religious dimension is expressed clearly, for example, in the following scene: Finally, when the Fhrer steps on the monumental altar, a hundred and fifty search-lights suddenly spring alight, raising over the Zeppelinwiese a cathedral of pillars a thousand feet high to attest the sidereal significance of the mystery being celebrated. (EK 262.) (Enfin lorsque le Fhrer savance sur lautel monumental pour officier, cent cinquante projecteurs de D.C.A. flambent dun seul coup, et difient audessus de la Zeppelinwiese une cathdrale de lumire dont les piliers de huit mille mtres de haut attestent la porte sidrale du mystre clbr. RA 324.) Nazism is described in the novel as a mythological system that endeavours to establish the special destiny of the German people and the inferior status of the so-called Jewish race. E.g. the sociologist Norbert Elias (1996 [1989], 316) has analysed Nazism from a similar perspective, that is, as a religious movement whose leader believed from early on in his messianic mission, his mission for Germany, and whose members

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____________________________________________________________ certainty that their beliefs were true, their methods justified and the success of their mission preordained became absolute and unshakeable. 24 See e.g. EK 228-9, 266/RA 280-281, 329. 25 Berger and Luckmann, 1966, 106. 26 As Habermas (1984, 47-48) has noted, a mythological conception of reality is typically characterised by a peculiar confusion between nature and culture: From this reciprocal assimilation of nature to culture and conversely culture to nature, there results, on the one hand, a nature that is outfitted with anthropomorphic features [---] and on the other hand, a culture that is to a certain extent naturalized and reified and absorbed into the objective nexus of operations of anonymous powers. Le Roi des Aulnes depicts this process of mythologization that took place in Nazism, which involved, as Count Hermann von Kaltenborn explains to Tiffauges, the reification of its underlying symbols: For there is a terrifying moment when the sign no longer accepts being carried by a creature as a standard is carried by a soldier. It acquires autonomy, it escapes from the thing symbolized, and - this is what is frightening - it takes over that thing. [---] The truth is that ever since it began the Third Reich has been the product of symbols, which have taken over control. [---] As far as Germany was concerned, man was irrelevant from then on. (EK 259-261.) (Car il y a un moment effrayant o le signe naccepte plus dtre port par une crature, comme un tendard est port par un soldat. Il acquiert son autonomie, il chappe la chose symbolise, et, ce qui est redoutable, il la prend lui-mme en charge. [---] La vrit, cest que ds son origine, le IIIe Reich est le produit des symbols eux-mmes qui mnent souverainement le jeu. [---] Dans tout ce qui touche dsormais Allemagne, lhomme est accessoire. RA 321-323.) 27 Berger and Luckmann, 1966, 108. 28 For example: Fate was on the march and had taken in charge my poor little personal destiny. (EK 111.) (Le Destin tait en marche, et il avait pris en charge ma pauvre petite destine personnelle. RA 136.) As Davis (1988, 36-37) points out, Tiffauges frequent use of the word certitude reflects his deluded understanding of the world and his inability to engage in a liberating reflection upon his own pre-understanding. 29 For example: Hed forgiven Ernest for his share in the sacrifice of the pigeons; in this, as in almost all the events in his life, he had come to recognize a kind of fatality which made it both innocent and understandable. (EK 142.) Similarly, the Nazi professor Keil totally ignores the yellow star on the forehead of the man buried in the swamp in order to be able to declare that he is an ancient German forefather, the ErlKing. Thereby Tournier shows how arbitrarily the Nazis used the German cultural heritage for their own purposes.

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____________________________________________________________ WS 165. (Lhomme qui rit blanc vient dentrevoir labme entre les mailles desserres des choses. VP 193.) 31 EK 114. (Moi seul, Abel Tiffauges, dit Portenfant, micrognitomorphe et dernier rejeton de la ligne des gants phoriques, moi seul le sais, et pour cause RA 140.) It seems to me that some scholars have not recognized clearly enough the critical distance between Tiffauges and Tourniers worldviews. For example, Arlette Bouloumi (1988a, 242) argues that the phrase by Paul Claudel that is cited in Le Roi des Aulnes (All that passes is raised to the dignity of expression; all that happens is raised to the dignity of meaning. Everything is either symbol or parable. EK 140 Tout ce qui passe est promu dignit dexpression, tout ce qui se passe est promu la dignit de signification. Tout est symbole ou parabole. RA 170) shows that Tourniers uvre est oriente vers une rvlation, although Tournier explicitly denies this in the interview published in the end of her book: No, this citation of Claudel applies only to Tiffauges and his mania to see everywhere signs. (Non, cette citation de Claudel ne sapplique qu Tiffauges et sa manie de voir partout des signes.) (Bouloumi 1988a, 253.) 32 Ricur, 1991, 484-486. 33 Braudeau, 1978, 149-150. (Je montre que logre est un personnage qui existe dans notre voisinage et peut-tre en nous.) 34 As Platten (1999, 89-90) puts it, Tournier suggests that the Ogre, far from being an alien force, menacing societies from the exterior, is a creature of immanence. 35 Cf. ibid., 91. 36 Cf. Bauman, 1989, 166.

Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. York: Viking Press, 1964. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hlne Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Bauman, Zygmunt. Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989.

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____________________________________________________________ Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966. Bouloumi, Arlette. Michel Tournier. Le Roman Mythologique. Suivi de questions Michel Tournier. Paris: Librairie Jos Corti, 1988a. Bouloumi, Arlette. Logre. In Dictionnaire des mythes littraires, edited by Pierre Brunel, 1096-1111. Paris: ditions du Rocher, 1988b. Braudeau, Michel. LOgre Tournier [interview]. LExpress 1403, 29 mai - 4 juin 1978, 138-163. Cloonan, William. Michel Tournier. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985. Davis, Colin. Michel Tournier. Philosophy and Fiction. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Davis, Colin. Review on Liesbeth Korthals Altes Le Salut par la fiction? Sens, valeurs et narrativit dans Le Roi des Aulnes de Michel Tournier. French Studies 49/1 (1995): 103-104. Elias, Norbert. The Germans. Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Orig. Studien ber die Deutschen. Machtkmpfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, 1989). Trans. Eric Dunning & Stephen Mennell. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method (Orig. Wahrheit und Methode, 1960). Second, revised edition. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer & Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1997. Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Gratton, Johnnie. Postmodern French fiction: practice and theory. In The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel. From 1800 to the present, edited by Timothy Unwin, 242-260. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Guichard, Nicole. Michel Tournier. Autrui et la qute du double. Paris: Didier Erudition, 1989.

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____________________________________________________________ Habermas, Jrgen. The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Orig. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Band I: Handlungsrationalitt und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung, 1981). Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time (Orig. Sein und Zeit, 1927). Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Kibedi Varga, A. Narrative and Postmodernity in France. In Postmodern Fiction in Europe and the Americas, edited by Theo Dhaen and Hans Bertens, 27-43. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988. Platten, David. Michel Tournier and the Metaphor of Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999. Ricur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Vol 3 (Orig. Temps et rcit. 3. Le temps racont, 1985). Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. Ricur, Paul. Myth as the Bearer of Possible Worlds. In A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, edited by Mario Valds, 482-490. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989. Taylor, Charles. The Dialogical Self. In Interpretive Turn. Philosophy, Science, Culture, edited by David R. Hiley, James F. Bohman and Richard Shusterman, 304-314. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991. Tournier, Michel. Le Roi des Aulnes. Paris: Gallimard, 1970. = RA. Tournier, Michel. Le vent Paraclet. Paris: Gallimard, 1977. = VP. Tournier, Michel. Le vol du vampire: notes de lecture. Paris: Gallimard, 1981. Tournier, Michel. The Erl-King (Orig. Le Roi des Aulnes, 1970). Translated by Barbara Bray. London: Methuen, 1983. = EK. Tournier, Michel. The Wind Spirit (Orig. Le vent Paraclet, 1977). Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. = WS.

Session 10 Monsters Psychological

The Sick and the Dead: Some Vampires, Sren Kierkegaard, and the American Psychiatric Association Pete Remington
Abstract My paper suggests that the vampire figure represents an attempt within popular culture to resolve questions addressed by Kierkegaard but ignored by the rhetoric of contemporary psychiatry. It further comments on the current treatment of depression by rereading Anne Rices Vampire Chronicles in the light of Kierkegaards delineation of despair as the sickness unto death, utilising Kierkegaards major categories of despair, and his concepts of the aesthetic and the ethical, not as a definitive system, but in a way that recalls the employment of psychoanalytic categories as a bridge between different levels of signification. The material undeath of the despairing immortal vampire is examined in terms both of Kierkegaards Christian assertion of eternal life and psychiatrys emphasis on the materiality of brain chemistry. Kierkegaards recourse to the eternal, and to an absolute relation with God therefore parallels psychiatrys appeal to the neurobiological absolute. I further argue that the rhetoric of medical psychiatry, in assuming Kierkegaards deliberations to be outside the proper province of normal psychiatric treatment, loses much, whilst the treatment itself stands in need of a practice which performs the former role within it of psychoanalysis, in its sensitivity towards the entire range of cultural expressions of depression. Key Words Ethical despair depression DSM Kierkegaard psychiatry religious vampire soul My paper at last years conference Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, suggested that the parameters of Anne Rices vampire community resembled the diagnostic criteria for depression of DSM-IV.1 The paper did not aim at individual diagnosis, but assigned the major traits and behaviours of her main characters to the categories of chronic or major depression. The exception was the Vampire Lestat, who seems to fit neatly into the category of bipolar disorder. However, the religious or

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___________________________________________________________ spiritual dimension which permeates Rices novels was only briefly touched on. For this I turn to Kierkegaard. Nevertheless, the present paper again treats specifically religious issues somewhat tangentially, discussing depression in detail from neither theological nor philosophical standpoints. Instead, I further develop the reservations of my previous paper towards the contemporary psychiatric practice of taxonomic classification combined with drug therapy. These two elements need not necessarily march hand in hand; but this paper seeks to add to criticism of the extent to which they do. I do not, however, suggest that either element is in itself bad. Rather I interrogate the dangers inherent in a too mechanistic application of this psychiatric model, by contrasting DSM-IVs loose and ill-defined taxonomy with Kierkegaards exhaustive taxonomy of despair. Both discourses rely on rationalist exposition; but Kierkegaard allots a much greater role to imagination and subjective identification. Proceeding, then, from an assumption that popular culture forms a locus for the embodiment and organisation of social representations, I employ Rices vampire characters as a bridge between the imaginative and the societal contexts in which individual depression is experienced. Although the terms depression and melancholy also occur in his works, Kierkegaard treats chiefly of a state commonly rendered as despair. Nevertheless, the use of the former terms indicates them to be subsets of the latter.2 My attention to despair derives from its being predicated on an absolute relation with God which parallels psychiatrys appeal to the neurobiological absolute. The translation of words relating to psychological, emotional, and spiritual states of course poses its own problems. Furthermore, in Kierkegaard terminology alters its precise signification according to which persona is applying it to which frame of reference (a factor shared with the novel.) Hence it should also be stated that my paper does not present Kierkegaards ideas as a closed and definitive system, but employs them as a field of interrelated meanings with which to illuminate aspects of the vampire character, popular culture, and the rhetoric of contemporary psychiatry. This method is somewhat analogous to the practice of psychoanalysis, to which point I will later return. Despair writes Kierkegaard in the persona of Anti-Climacus, is the sickness unto death, a sickness in the spirit, in the Self.3 This immediately problematises its application to the vampire, since in everyday terms vampires are already dead. However, Christianly understood death is only a little event within that which is all, an eternal life.4 The monstrousness of vampire nature, then, resides in its being an animate incarnation of undeath, out of synch with humankind.

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___________________________________________________________ But perhaps not: the torment of despair is precisely this, not to be able to die, for if one might die of despair as one dies of a sickness, then the eternal in him, the self, must be capable of dying in the same sense that the body dies of sickness.5 This neither vampire nor mortal is able to achieve, since the self is not a discrete entity but a relation that relates itself to its own self. This relation is, however, constituted from without, and hence despair is: a disrelationship in a relation which relates itself to its own self and is constituted by another, so that the disrelationship in that self-relation reflects itself infinitely in the relation to the Power which constituted it.6 In other words, despair occurs within the dynamics of the self, but cannot be separated from the relationship between that self and God. Moreover, since despair subsists in the self-relationship, every actual instant of despair is to be referred back to possibility, every instant the man in despair is contracting it, it is constantly in the present tense 7 There could be no more graphic depiction of the vampire relation to time, which also has its parallels in the literature of depression.8 Consequently, inasmuch as it relates to the eternal in its condition of the present continuous tense, despair is irreducible to a checklist of symptoms in the manner of DSM-IV. Each instant, despair is capable of rearticulating its form, since despair is much more dialectical than what is commonly called sickness, and [if] the condition comes about which brings [a person] into despair, it is at that same moment manifest that he has been in despair throughout the whole of his previous life.9 This description accords with Lestats continual recollection throughout his entire vampire existence of the mortal sense of meaninglessness that emerged from the collapse of his golden moment.10 Kierkegaard also relates to the eternal this continual coming-intobeing of despair, with the observation that despair is a phenomenon of the spirit.11 The vampire, however, faces the possibility of an embodied eternity, a precise rendition of the despair of ever being able to die. In Rices novels, the vampire curse comes about through a bizarre fusion of spirit and matter, which results in the unique properties of vampire blood and the vampire body.11 Admittedly, spirit in this instance signifies something rather more daemonic than it does in Kierkegaards usage. However the end result for the new vampire is a spiritual crisis in all senses of the word, intimately allied to an accompanying physical crisis. Similarly, an individuals experience of depression can be seen in terms of

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___________________________________________________________ both biology and belief. In this view pharmacology has at least as much to offer as Kierkegaards antidote to despair, which is faith. Kierkegaards delineation of the various forms of despair is too complex to enter into fully here, and what follows is of necessity highly selective. In one sense all of Rices vampires intermittently demonstrate one characteristic of the despair of willing despairingly to be oneself12; the aspect of holding themselves as proof against the goodness of existence. However, Louis and Armand in most respects belong outside this category. Louiss introverted solitary life and obsession with his own lost mortality may be identified as despair about the eternal or over oneself.13 Armand despair[s] over the earthly in that his vacillating responses to the question of the eternal suggest the immediate man, whose self is merely soulishly determined and coheres immediately with the other, wishing, desiring, enjoying, etc., but passively.14 Both Marius and Lestat demonstrate different aspects of the despair of willing despairingly to be oneself14, since both begin by willing an abstract, hypothetical version of themselves15, detaching the self from every relation to the Power which posited it, or detaching it from the conception that there is such a Power in existence.16 Marius clings stoically to the task of preserving Those Who Must Be Kept, the primal vampire parents, who he treats not as gods, but whom he nevertheless attempts to placate through elaborate, almost meaningless ritual. His despair resembles that which is not willing to hope that an earthly distress, a temporal cross, might be removed. Such a despair ends by being offended at the whole of existence, in spite of [which] he would be himself.17 Lestats self-willing despair is productive of more active defiance, which is related to itself only as experimenting with whatsoever it be that it undertakes, however great it may be, however astonishing, however persistently carried out.18 It is nevertheless this experimentation that brings Lestat from the aesthetic to the ethical sphere of existence, and even to the borders of the religious. Lestat consciously embraces an aesthetic stance in his vision of the Savage Garden, in which the only discernible laws are those which relate to beauty.19 But this begins to weary him: Despair was so familiar to me; it could be banished by the sight of a beautiful mannequin in the window. It could be dispelled by the spectacle of light surrounding a tower. It could be lifted by the great ghostly shape of St. Patricks [Cathedral] coming into view. And then despair would come again.

Pete Remington Meaningless, I almost said aloud [italics in original.]20

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Kierkegaards Judge William comments that: If you cannot reach the point of seeing the aesthetical, the ethical, and the religious as three great allies then life is devoid of meaning.21 The volume Memnoch the Devil describes Lestats opportunity to make the leap from the ethical, illustrated in his concern to look after Dora, the daughter of his victim Roger, to the religious. He finds himself, however, called upon not directly by God Himself, but by the Devil, who assures him of Gods ultimate sanction for the plan to enlist his services.22 In order to make possible the leap, Lestat must first choose soul death. In Kierkegaard the religious may not be attained without a preliminary choice on the level of ethics: the absolute choice of oneself. Upon this depends the repentance which potentiates faith: For repentance is the expression for the fact that evil belongs to me necessarily, and at the same time the expression for the fact that it does not necessarily belong to me. If evil did not belong to me essentially, I could not choose it, but if there were something in me which I could not choose absolutely, I would not be able to choose myself absolutely at all 23 The biological dimension of vampire existence here presents us with a dilemma; for how can one choose absolutely something which is literally in ones blood? Interpreting choice as acceptance may provide this possibility for those, such as Lestats mother Gabrielle, who become vampires by conscious decision but Lestat was notoriously made against his will.24 From this perspective Lestats refusal to participate in the devils scheme providing one can trust Memnochs word that is divinely sanctioned appears inevitable, since absolute choice is for him an impossibility. In addition, the faith which acceptance of the devils offer would entail is tied to a trial as extreme as that of Abraham, anatomised by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling; namely the violation of the ethical in the service of the religious. This is embodied in the task of torturing human souls in order to win the attention of a God whose role passes all understanding in its ostensible indifference to human suffering. Lestats refusal, (I cannot teach in this school! [Italics in original.]25), and the religious revival marked by his returning the veil of Veronica to humanity, thus emerges on a par with one of Kierkegaards imagined alternatives for Abraham, in which he seeks to represent himself

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___________________________________________________________ to Isaac as an idolater motivated solely by his own desire, for After all it is better for him to believe that I am a monster, rather than that he should lose faith in Thee.26 Lestats rejection is nevertheless qualitatively different in that, retaining his defiance, he refuses to either confirm or deny the absolute truth of his experiences. It thus appears that faith is not an option for him. It may of course be argued that no being whose existence depends to some extent on taking human life can be brought into the realm of the ethico-religious. However, killing is no more a necessity for the vampire than for the individual member of human society. Only the continuation and enlargement of the vampire community entails necessary human death. Rices novels, through the practices of the little drink and feeding only on the evildoer introduce parallels to the ethical compromises employed by human societies whose internal regulation and external security also entail the taking of life. Indeed ethico-religious concerns are inherent in the vampire figure. Even Bram Stokers Dracula, which at first view suggests a simple moral universe has Van Helsing assert of the socially-legitimated warrior history of the Draculas that it is not the least of its terrors that this evil thing is rooted deep in all good, in soil barren of holy memories, it cannot rest.27 Negotiating the conflicting demands of the aesthetic, the ethical, the rational, the religious and the spiritual may be adduced as a key factor accounting for the continuing popularity of the vampire figure. Rice is certainly conscious of this aspect of her own work, and abundant evidence for these themes is also to be found on the numerous vampire websites.28 Van Helsing is for us here an important figure. Though he is initially presented as the embodiment of rationalist philosophy, his use of garlic and the communion wafer rather suggests folk wisdom and superstition than science and accepted religion. These methods, taken together with Minas injunction that the Count should not be destroyed in hate, but in pity and with a concern for his immortal soul, suggest the insufficiency of an analysis which takes no account of the multifarious articulations of the numinous in human life.29 It has been asserted that DSM-IV also fails to deliver the promised scientific goods. Kutchins and Kirk demonstrate that its diagnostic categories have been arrived at as much through social-political bargaining as scientific observation. They further point to its weakness as a tool promoting diagnostic reliability, and even to the absence of precise definition of many of its key terms.30 They quote one of the developers of DSM-IV as saying that:

Pete Remington ... in our assessment the rhetoric of science that surrounds the publication of each new version of DSM inflates how much is known, exaggerates the certainty and precision with which it is known, and tries to persuade by authority and process rather than by argument and evidence. [The precise significance of our is not clear in the original.]31

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Whilst this is in itself disturbing, it becomes doubly so in the linkage between this rhetoric of science and the increased reliance on neuropharmacology, which has comprehensively dislodged psychoanalysis from its dominant position in American psychiatry; what has been termed the paradigm shift.32 What is interesting here is that the appeal to a greater scientificity from proponents of this shift is matched by the dismay from within the liberalhumanist tradition of psychoanalysis itself at the extent to which its American incarnation was already operating within a pseudo-scientific, medicalised, depersonalised model. For example, Bruno Bettelheim: In the United States, of course, the cure of mental illness has been seen as the main task of psychoanalysis, just as the curing of bodily illness is that of medicine. It is expected that anyone undergoing psychoanalysis will achieve tangible results the kind of results the physician achieves for the body rather than a deeper understanding of himself and a greater control of his life.33 Indeed it is possible to argue that a scientific-medicalising trend in the American approach to mental health stretches back as far as the midnineteenth century. For example, the social-reformist rhetoric of both Phineas Parkhurst Quimby and the New Thought Movement steered a course between physical, mental and spiritual well-being, science, and religion.34 Freud, of course, eschews explicit religious doctrine. Bettelheim renders a passage from a 1928 letter to Oskar Pfister as asserting that Freud wanted to entrust psychoanalysis to a profession that doesnt yet exist, a profession of secular ministers of souls, who dont have to be physicians and must not be priests.35 In Bettelheims view the Standard Edition translation as mind of Freuds term Seele severely limits its field of signification, since the German word refers not to a religious phenomenon but a psychological concept which is the seat both of the

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___________________________________________________________ mind and the passions, and we remain largely unconscious of the soul.36 Most importantly Bettelheim asserts that the terms mental illness and soul function as metaphors, which enable us to comprehend how certain disturbances influence the psyche, what causes them, and how they may be dealt with.37 We can thus discern certain similarities between the Freudian project and that of Kierkegaard. Although the latters use of religious terminology retains its literal application, he, too, frequently resorts to metaphors of physical sickness, and places little reliance on his contemporary churchmen. Both Freud and Kierkegaard attempt a rational dissection and categorisation of the experience of self which applies dynamic techniques of narrative structuration. One even finds in Kierkegaard a symbolic representation of repression in that both Either/Or and Stages on Lifes Way are presented as accidentally-discovered texts which had been either forgotten or deliberately hidden by their authors.38 Viewed from the perspective opened to us by Bettelheim, psychoanalysis can be taken as a dynamic field of inter-related meanings to be employed, as I have tried in this paper to employ Kierkegaards works, more for its utility in elucidating other signifying relationships than for any verity that may be claimed for it in terms of relation to a quantifiable reality. Moreover, inasmuch as Freud relied heavily on literary, mythical, and other cultural sources, psychoanalysis represents an attempt to substitute for Kierkegaards reference to an absolute relation to God, a flexible evocation of the extent to which expectations of the numinous permeate the entire cultural milieu. It is this that a too rigid application of statistical methodology and vulgar-scientific rhetoric risks losing. My direction in this paper has been neither to denigrate the use of pharmacology, nor to extol the virtues of psychoanalysis. Direct experience of therapy deriving from both approaches leads me to appreciate both the benefits of the former and the limitations of the latter. My target here is inflated rhetoric based on a concept of science that has itself not been exempt from criticism. I considered at one point re-titling this paper Both/ And, again borrowing from Kierkegaard. The point is simply that to reduce the patient to a mere list of symptoms which may be treated by the application of drugs is to create a conceptual monster. Although a link between brain chemistry and depressed mood has been well-established, it remains that all depression is experienced culturally. Treatment of depression and other conditions now frequently employs a cocktail of therapeutic interventions, including psychodynamic, cognitivebehavioural, and pharmacological strategies. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of science remains the dominant one in American psychiatry and has gained

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___________________________________________________________ increasing influence elsewhere. The category of despair in Kierkegaard that seems most accurately to sum up many years of my own chronic, mild to moderate depression is that of not being in despair, that is, of not being aware of it.39 The fact that there is evidence indicating a high incidence of repeat episodes for depression sufferers would seem to suggest that this a valid category for many40. Attention to the wider cultural dimensions of depression and a more comprehensive definition of self than that provided by the rhetoric of medical psychiatry may each have something to offer.

Notes
American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th. Ed. (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994.) Pete Remington, Youre Whining Again Louis: Anne Rices Vampires as Indices of the Depressive Self in Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, ed. Meg Barker and Peter Day (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004 forthcoming.) 2 Depression: see the multiple references to it by Quidam in Sren Kierkegaard, Stages on Lifes Way, (ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.) Melancholy: e.g. Sren Kierkegaard, Either/ Or Volume II (trans. Walter Lowrie with revisions & foreword Howard A. Johnson), (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), 189-194. 3 Sren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death (trans. Walter Lowrie) (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954), 146. 4 Ibid., 144. 5 Ibid., 150, 151. 6 Ibid., 147. 7 Ibid., 150. 8 For examples from both vampire fiction and the depression narrative, see Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (London: Warner Books, 1998), 76; and William Styron, Darkness Visible (London: Vintage Books, 2001), 61/62. 9 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, 157. 10 Anne Rice Memnoch The Devil (London: Arrow Books, 1996), 346; William Styron also records an experience reminiscent of Kierkegaards words: Styron, 79. 11 Anne Rice, The Queen of the Damned (London: Warner Books, 1996), 357-407. 12 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, 200.
1

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___________________________________________________________ Ibid, 194-200 Ibid, 184-187. For Armands character see Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998.) 15 Both the mortal and vampire selves of Lestat are abstract constructions. For example compare pages .9 and 31 of Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat (London: Warner Books, 1998.). For Marius, see Anne Rice, Blood and Gold (London: Arrow Books, 2002) 83-86. 16 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, 201. 17 Ibid, 204. 18 Ibid, 202. 19 Rice, The Vampire Lestat, 146. 20 Rice, Memnoch The Devil, 118. 21 Kierkegaard, Either/ Or Volume II, 150. 22 Rice, Memnoch The Devil, 151. 23 Kierkegaard, Either/ Or Volume II, 229. 24 Rice, The Vampire Lestat, 92. 25 Rice, Memnoch The Devil, 358. 26 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death , 27. 27 Bram Stoker, Dracula (London: Everyman Library, 1993), 238. 28 See Michael Riley, Conversations With Anne Rice (New York: Ballantyne Books, 1996 ), 143-167. For websites a search beginning with the keywords vampire masquerade will bring up numerous sites related to the role play game, many of which include relevant material. Other searches based on the word vampire plus other keywords from this paper such as religion brought up thousands of hits a few interesting examples from no more than an hours follow-up (all accessed 30/ 4/ 04, and selected pretty much at random, as long as they exhibited some concern with the issues in my paper.) include: Avia (Australia): <http://www.avia.darkrealm.net/about.html>; Lizabets Vault: < http://lizabets-vault.com/vampires.html>; Darkness Embraced: < http://www.darkness-embraced.com/php/index.php >; Vampire Realm of Darkness (a real vampire site featuring a forum discussion on depression): <http://www.vampires.nu/pages/Forums.cfm/action/viewmessages/PageID /10/Forum/5/Topic/2815>: Drink Deeply and Dream (main site): <http://www.drinkdeeplyanddream.com/main.html>; The Coven Organisation: <http://www.thecovenorganization.com >
14 13

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___________________________________________________________ Stoker, Dracula, 110, 305. Admittedly the term metaphysician introduces a note of ambiguity to the description of Van Helsing, but I would suggest that its principle meaning here that of a healer who employs metaphysics, the primary sense of which is listed by OED as That branch of speculative inquiry which treats of the first principles of things, including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause, identity, etc.; theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of Being and Knowing, all of which enterprises may be subsumed within rationalist discourse. Indeed one might even describe a psychoanalyst in the above terms. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Version 3.0 CDROM. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, s.v. metaphysician, metaphysics. 30 Herb Kutchins & Stuart A. Kirk, Making Us Crazy: DSM The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders (London: Constable, 1999.) 31 Ibid, 260. 32 For a brief outline see Jonathan Michel Metzl, Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2003), 3. 33 Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Mans Soul, (London: Chatto & Windus, The Hogarth Press, 1983), 40. 34 Eva S. Moskowitz, In Therapy We Trust: Americas Obsession with Self Fulfillment (Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 11-29. See also Phineas Parkhust Quimby Website: < http://www.ppquimby.com/> and New Thought Movement Home Page: < http://websyte.com/alan/> 35 Bettelheim, 35. 36 Ibid, 77. Bettelheims argument about the determining significance of inaccurate translation for the conduct of psychoanalysis in the Englishspeaking world is a bit shaky. Not only does he miss the full resonance of some of the English terms he lambastes (for example, he castigates the word anatomy as being too medical, as if there had never been a Burton), he also makes light of the pre-Freudian competition between religious and scientific expositions of mental/ spiritual wellbeing. 37 Ibid, 39. 38 Sren Kierkegaard, Either/ Or Volume I (trans. Walter Lowrie with revisions & foreword Howard A. Johnson), (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), 4-7; and Kierkegaard, Stages on Lifes Way, 3-4. Indeed Stages goes even further. As well as the whole volume comprising
29

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___________________________________________________________ a packet of papers left by accident at the bookbinders, the Guilty/ Not Guilty? section purports to consist of documents retrieved from a lake. Ibid., 187-191. 39 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, 156 40 Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1994), 16; Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression (London: Vintage Books, 2002), 56.

Bibliography
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1994. Bettelheim, Bruno. Freud and Mans Soul. London: Chatto & Windus, The Hogarth Press, 1983. Farr, R.M. & Muscovici, S. (eds.) Social Representations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Jamison, Kay Redfield. Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1994. Kierkegaard, Sren. Either/ Or Volume I (trans. Walter Lowrie with revisions & foreword Howard A. Johnson.) New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959. __________. Either/ Or Volume II (trans. Walter Lowrie with revisions & foreword Howard A. Johnson.) New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959. __________. Fear and Trembling/ Repetition. (ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983 (ebook.) __________. Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death (trans. Walter Lowrie.) New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954.

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___________________________________________________________ __________. Stages on Lifes Way (ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.) Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Kutchins, Herb & Kirk, Stuart A. Making Us Crazy: DSM The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders. London: Constable, 1999. Metzl, Jonathan Michel. Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2003. Moskowitz, Eva S. In Therapy We Trust: Americas Obsession with Self Fulfillment [sic.] Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Ramsland, Katherine. Piercing the Darkness: Undercover with Vampires in America Today. Basingstoke and Oxford: Boxtree/ Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1999. Remington, Pete. Youre Whining Again Louis: Anne Rices Vampires as Indices of the Depressive Self. In Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, edited by Meg Barker and Peter Day. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004 forthcoming. Rice, Anne. Blood and Gold. London: Arrow Books, 2002. __________. Interview with the Vampire. London: Warner Books, 1998. __________. Memnoch The Devil. London: Arrow Books, 1996. __________. The Queen of the Damned. London: Warner Books, 1996. __________. The Vampire Armand. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998. __________. The Vampire Lestat. London: Warner Books, 1998. Riley, Michael. Conversations With Anne Rice. New York: Ballantyne Books, 1996. Solomon, Andrew. The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression. London: Vintage Books, 2002.

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___________________________________________________________ Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London: Everyman Library, 1993. Styron, William. Darkness Visible. London: Vintage Books, 2001.

Websites
Avia. <http://www.avia.darkrealm.net/about.html> (30 April, 2004.) The Coven Organisation. <http://www.thecovenorganization.com > (30 April, 2004.) Darkness Embraced. < http://www.darkness-embraced.com/php/index.php > (30 April, 2004.) Drink Deeply and Dream. <http://www.drinkdeeplyanddream.com/main.html> (30 April, 2004.) Lizabets Vault. < http://lizabets-vault.com/vampires.html> (30 April, 2004.) Vampire Realm of Darkness (forum discussion on depression.) <http://www.vampires.nu/pages/Forums.cfm/action/viewmessages/PageID /10/Forum/5/Topic/2815> (30 April, 2004.) New Thought Movement Home Page. < http://websyte.com/alan/> (30 April, 2004.) Phineas Parkhust Quimby Website. < http://www.ppquimby.com/> (30 April, 2004.)

Monsters in Isolation and Monsters At Large Emily McMehen

Violence and tolerance make strange bedfellows, but in a social context, where one of these precepts exists, the other will invariably be present as well. It would follow then, that where one person commits a violent act against another, there is a demand for the individual and for the societal whole to tolerate it. Without this principle, society would be torn apart by vengeance killings and crime would escalate beyond its already dizzying heights. Likewise, it is more likely that any would-be aggressor should design to commit a criminal act against the judgment of someone who would tolerate the transgression. Still, tolerance is essential to civilization. Religious doctrines and other forms of personally motivated moralistic governments, as well as ruling governments themselves, dictate such tolerance, as do the social and critical constraints of a liberal-minded society. As such, any progressive civilization must embrace this form of universality in order to achieve a more diverse cultural fabric. Multiculturalism is embraced for obvious reasons, but within this liberal structure, there is a systematic conflict of morals. Not between cultures, indeed most cultural moralities are based upon nearly identical precepts, but between individuals existing in a context that shies away from moralistic actions or interpretations that may interfere with other members of the larger representation. In an ever-expanding community where being informed serves as a valid substitute for acting morally, there are bound to be amoral acts and interests which, by their very existence, encourage a liberalistic moral response naturally devoid of subsequent action of equal measure. It is, after all, the responsibility of liberalism to neutralize extremism, not to vindicate it. In this circumstance, the monstrous act supplies a necessary function within this liberal context and can be included in a practical capacity within the social contract. If one member of a larger society can be suitably offended by the inappropriate behaviour of another, this is effectively a validation of his own behaviour: by establishing a very distinct and unacceptable other it becomes easier to identify ones own actions as demonstrative of a prevailing appropriateness. To identify a monster is more immediately satisfying than to identify with a monster. As such, the identification and necessary othering of monstrosity presents an easy out for the neighbour of the beast. Presumably, the most horrifying element of the moment of epiphany where the monster assumes its human form is its very humanity the manifestation of otherness and amorality easily, obviously, assumes a human form. By isolating the monster as something outside of

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___________________________________________________________ humanity, or what is perceived as normal, humanity is then excused from the course of events inevitably leading to the monstrous act. Strangely however, the media immediately completes the circle by first alienating the monster, he who commits the monstrous act, and then anthropomorphizing him, re-humanizing him as it were, as a disenfranchised member of the social schema. In this way, film and other forms of popular media are used to test and even extend the social and singular capacity to tolerate monstrosity. It is desirable that one should have an opportunity to empathize with another member of society who has been alienated or marginalized. Films such as the recent Monster starring Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos paint a moralized portrait of the killer, in this case posthumously, in such a way as to suggest that the killer may now be re-integrated into the liberal design. Despite a moderate sympathy for her victims, the viewer is meant to empathize with Wuornos as a victim of circumstance. The film is heavily indulgent in issues of humanity, and deriving a humanistic response to a horrific situation. Although effective in its aims as a cinematic bid for emotional clemency, the film demands closer inspection of the issues surrounding the aestheticization of violence. Patty Jenkins, the films director, refers to Aileen Wuornos in a discussion of the film and its basis in reality as a kicked dog, a wounded animal, and a strong creature, at once distancing Aileen from the human circle likening her more to another more desperate animal and instilling some form of heroism into the animalistic character. Using this pervasive liberalism as a template for the films moral directive, the exclusion of a strong human background in which the characters serve any function (other than their direct causal influence over the actions of the main characters) isolates the viewer and the two lead characters within the narrative frame. This encourages the viewer to be sympathetic on a purely personal level. Aileen Wuornos becomes the noble beast, the family pet gone mad. As her upbringing was one that classically plays on the liberal sense of charity, from the opening scene the stage was set for the reinvention of a serial killer as a human being. Her actions are not her own when this new argument, this re-humanization occurs. By assuming a compassionate role, the circumscribing social structure forgoes any responsibility for the creation of the monster in the first place. Where the mass excludes the monster, the individual concedes to forgive and invite the other back into the human condition. To accept his monstrosity and commit to its solution, or dissolution as the case may be. It is not the woman that is the beast, or the enactor of these crimes, but the beast that

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___________________________________________________________ has overcome her human nature, caused her to become unknowable, unrecognizable and finally unable to camouflage her monstrosity. This issue of camouflage is one that is central to the understanding of the solution of the monstrous persona. It is the camouflage that allows the predator to evade capture, and it is only after the capture of the beast that he may be moralized; demonized or exonerated, it is the man, not the monster that is the subject of the moral finding. The monster at large terrifies the social person, the peopled expanses of urban and suburban culture in which no one chooses to live next to one another, but have made choices as individuals that have lead to their residence in such close proximity. In any situation in which one has a public persona not one of celebrity but simply of public functionality there are a series of commitments one makes to that persona and to the people who perceive it. While sincerity is not necessarily a primary consideration in this construction of this public persona, there is an expectation of trust. One trusts that while another person may not be entirely forthcoming about details of their private life outside of a prescribed context, their private life nonetheless fits within the unspoken constraints of normal behaviour. The face that one wears in public is the face that must be at least somewhat innocuous in order for it to serve its purpose. Consequently, the possibility of such a face masking a person capable of atrocity is terrifying1. Chameleon-like, the serial killer copies and simulates others; the monochrome man, he melts into place; the minus man, predead, he plays dead and takes life.2 The summer of 1977 was remembered as being one of the hottest New York City had ever seen. Unable to find a clear motive for the shootings accredited to the Son of Sam, then known as the .44 Caliber Killer, the press latched onto any possible motivation for such deliriously horrific events. The heat wave became the source of the still invisible killers madness, and referential to the hellish origins of the biblical beast alluded to by the killer himself in one of his dyslexically eloquent notes to the press.3 The manner in which the .44 Caliber Killer struck was an implicit source of a sort of public hysteria; causing people to stay home from work or social engagements for months and to regard their fellow city dwellers as potential marauders. He chose his victims at random, most often targeting women, and assaulted them in public places. A fanatical bleaching of dark hair by women all over the state took place as it happened that many of his victims were brunettes. The hottest clubs stood

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___________________________________________________________ nearly empty on Saturday nights, the city that never sleeps subdued into reclusion by the invisible killer. In Spike Lees Summer of Sam, the serial murders that took place in New York City in 1977 provide a backdrop for a narrative situation that astutely describes the social condition that conspired both to provoke and conceal them. The random killings committed by David Berkowitz over a 12 month period spanning July 1976 to August 1977 inspired a particular panic in New York City. Summer of Sam addresses the impact of the heightened awareness of the human condition within the context of one small Italian community in New York. The killings served as a means of temporarily halting the liberal development, instead accelerating already intolerant ideologies. This changeover allowed for the deliverance of each character from his own antisocial proclivities into a much more complex problematic, reflective of the urban habitat and its interpersonal discrepancies. As with many of Jones films, each character is carefully constructed to mirror the conflicting traits of the scene, manifested in a multitude of different motivations. Each character is a lean descriptive of the alternate elements in the situation and of the situation itself. The protagonists are both unscrupulous by consensus standards, but are explicated in such a way as to identify opposing aspects of humanity within the urban habitat. If the film were to be interpreted as having social otherness and isolation as its central issues, each character within the narrative structure carefully deliberates upon the issues of monstrosity as they are presented, and indulges in a subtly individualized system of adjustment by which the abhorrent act becomes palatable at the cost of any social accord. The social setting does not provide the liberal infrastructure of multicultural tolerance gratified by films such as Patty Jenkins Monster in which the distinction between man and monster is made clear if only by the complete isolation of the characters within the narrative. The supporting cast of Summer of Sam, a group of well meaning neighbourhood-watchmen with a strong resistance to dissimilarity, supply the voice of the social conscience; validating suspicions, generating unease, legitimizing each other and the fears of other members of the community as a means of deflecting the acts which frighten them. The table is then set to feast on further issues of social othering. One of the films protagonists, Vinny, achieves a state of awareness in which the wrongdoings in his own life are reflected in the murder of two strangers. In the development of this particular character, the sanctity of marriage emulates the larger social order and consensus

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___________________________________________________________ morality, its violation the violation of humanity. Vinny sees its resolution in the restitution of the sanctity of his marriage to Dionna, yet continues to succumb to adulterous behaviour, prolonging the indecency and subjecting himself further to the guilt associated with what he feels is his connection to monstrosity. This particular representation is made available within the depiction of this and other relationships within the film and is indicative of the crisis of human relationship personified by the urban predator. The introduction of a variable into the equation invalidates all predetermined notions of normalcy and replaces them with precepts of paranoia, suspicion and guilt. The interloper, as yet unidentified, is afforded absolute control as a result of his invisibility, his anonymity. He may exist momentarily in the public eye as a monster. Not as a man but as an indoctrination of evil, a random predator whose discloses himself only inside the spontaneity of his acts of atrocity. This sentiment is reinforced as Lee uses the killers character to play on the notoriety of the unbalanced mind, using, as Berkowitz did in his preliminary defense, the classic symbols of lunacy. David Berkowitz, the man who had hushed New York City under a full year of panic claimed that his homicidal proceedings were carried out under the instruction of his neighbours Labrador retriever.4 Freuds essay on the Uncanny addresses particular aspects of the human response that are stimulated by a preternatural awareness of death or the threat of death encoded within elements of our surroundings. Among these psychological triggers, he lists the fragmented body and the fear of the re-animated dead as sources of this most basic response.5 Horror films of many genres identify innately with these principles, and audiences the world over respond with exacting efficiency. The fragmented body presents an interesting field of possibilities in terms of its applications and metaphoric descriptions within the framework of cinema and horrific ideas. In his book Serial Killers, Mark Seltzer explores a graphic interest in wound culture,6 obviously manifested in cinema and literature of a horrific nature, but describes the interest as being representative of a latent desire to see the inside of someone.7 In this context, the Freudian concept of the fragmented body merges with the Victorian ideology of the garden wall. The body can then be read as a manifestation of this kind of boundary; a transversable passage from public to private. The violation of this boundary is the saturation of publicity into privacy, the disruption of the allocated distance and as such the measure of safety derived by the person within. Likewise, the violation of the body is the viewing by another of the internal material, and the wound becomes the gateway into the body and into the private domain. In

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___________________________________________________________ this more vital circumstance, the wall is a transversable boundary; the internal and the external easily occupied by the being within the body, on the private side of the garden wall. Classically, the transgressor, being he who violates the social contract, is dehumanized by the media, or indeed by individual perception a divide is created by the moral crisis. The transgressor is expelled from the rational, from the human condition, and becomes a monster and as such, the object of human intrigue. All of the eccentricities befitting a serial killer of legendary proportions were bestowed healthily upon Eddie Gein, a rural Wisconsin dweller who has long marked history books and haunted childrens playground horrors with his staggering array of psychotic behaviours. Unlike David Berkowitz, Gein was a member of a small and insular rural community and, living nearly a quarter mile from his nearest neighbour, was afforded a profound sort of isolation in which to carry out his acts of hideous craftsmanship. Gein was suspected of as many as seven murders in total, but only ever convicted of two for lack of evidence.8 His home, formerly a family home for Eddie, his brother Henry and parents, was found upon his discovery to be garlanded with ornaments made from human tissue. Furniture constructed of body parts and an array of carefully preserved heads, organs and other feature highlighted his overrun farmhouse. Those rooms not filled with refuse and human remains had been preserved as shrines to Geins deceased mother. Ed Geins mother had been a religious zealot to whom Ed was devoted. Upon her death, he retreated into solitude, working as a handyman and babysitting local children to earn money, and indulging in grave-robbing and murderous practices on the periphery of the general social perception. Where David Berkowitz operated under the assumption and provision of anonymity, Ed Gein was within full view in the public eye inasmuch as there was a public environment - throughout the duration of his monstrous exploits. Members of his community would tease him about his collection of shrunken heads, and he would respond jovially, talking about their placement in his house, or the extent of his collection. If any of his neighbours pursued the issue, he would simply dismiss the subject by saying that they were mementoes from the South Pacific, as this was where he found his inspiration and technical instruction by way of adventure books and war stories. Such an obvious and delinquent affront to the pillars of morality and human interaction could not go unexposed by the media. Robert Bloch used Eddie Gein as the premise for his character Norman Bates, whose Oedipal appetites are derived from Geins peculiar relationship with his mother, whose fanatical warnings of the looseness of women had perhaps

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___________________________________________________________ forged a foundation upon which his house of horrors was built. Thomas Harris uses Geins effeminate tendencies and enthusiasm for collecting and tailoring the skin of his victims in his portrayal of Buffalo Bill, the serial killer stalked in Silence of the Lambs. Even the proliferous Leatherface, of Tobe Hoopers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was drawn from the Ed Gein story. This particular case, in which Gein was afforded the complete privacy required to commit the various violations of the physical human form is an excellent example of Seltzers wound culture fixation with the relationship between the internal and the external. As marginal figures, artist and serial killer share a kinship. 9 Geins bizarre applications of folk art tendencies to the mutilation of human bodies,10 as well as his careful collection of specific body parts for various purposes are demonstrative of a distinctly human curiosity. Seltzers projections regarding the fascination with the wound as a gateway or entrance into another person can be applied to precisely this sort of anatomical exploration.11 If one were to consider the human body as another material from a given situation, Geins explorations and experiments seem to identify with the body as that of a deer or a rabbit one which may be used creatively, pragmatically to achieve a material purpose. The careful exploration of the human body inside and out, living and dead, with particular attention to the distinctly female attributes indexes Ed Geins desire to understand and experience womanhood.12 That he was able to overcome any standard of human ethics, and to surpass the inhibitions that so thoroughly hindered his social behaviour among his peers suggests that his desecration of the human body is indicative of a distinct interest in the internal properties of his victims. That his final victim was found slaughtered as one would slaughter a deer,13 and that he used the material supplied both by his victims and by the corpses he exhumed to make handicrafts as one would use the skin and bones of any other animal, indicates a lack of distinction between the ethics applied to the human element and those applied to all other materials at hand. This type of examination functions on more than one level as the same principle applied to the actions of Gein with respect to his anatomical experiments can be applied to the psychology of the killer himself. The underlying sentiments motivating Geins actions and the social obsession that ensued are demonstrative of Freuds principles of the uncanny. Geins treatment of his victims as raw materials transforming his

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___________________________________________________________ home into an abattoir are clearly characterized by Freuds discussion of the fragmented body, and it is precisely the uncanny response, the response of a deep and implacable dread, that piques the interest and inspires the imitation and intrigue of the surrounding social body, drawing them to revisit the horrific details of his crimes again and again. More interesting still is the reverential preservation of the sites that Gein associated with his mother. After her death, these rooms in which she spent her time were boarded up and left exactly as she had left them. Surely this denotes another of Freuds projections of the uncanny response to the reanimated dead;14 that somehow, the preservation of the spaces she occupied would counteract the finality of her death. A sentiment so familial and yet so bizarre, the residual effects of the study of Geins behaviour are intriguing if only for the subtle and unnamed warnings supposed by Freud a dormant awareness of a predatory presence, an undisclosed alienation of consensus human morality. A congenial and well-described motive is usually stipulated in the discussion of the killing of another human being. In cases such as that of Ed Gein, or that of Son of Sam, where the insistence that the public so offended by the unsettling process of tolerating and inevitably absorbing a serial killer (or monster of another kind) be satiated with a humanizing moral is not met, and indeed no human motive may be found in the corresponding monsters testimony, the act is excused as unknowable. The unknowable motive precludes the understanding of the act by the panicked public, as they are then exonerated from portraying themselves in the descriptive terms of the excommunicated beast. Patty Jenkins Monster alludes to the disintegration of motive in the context of a morally motivated murder, the nature of which perhaps mirrors the decay of morality in the killers surroundings. What begins as the ordered and excusable killings of amoral people quickly becomes chaotic and motiveless killing of innocents as the marginalized woman becomes the monster. There is no identifiable humanity at the source of the violence, therefore there need be no effort made by the rest of humanity to try and retrieve one from the sociological remains of the incident. In the case of Ed Gein, the monster is the easier identity to allocate; as to justify the acts as human seems impossible.15 In those circumstances where the motive of a monstrous act is unattainable, no effort is made on behalf of the monster to relate to his circumstance that the humans surrounding the monster might somehow be granted a reprieve in their distance from him.16 David Berkowitz maniacal fascination with his neighbours dog was perhaps a preferable explanation to the one that he eventually surrendered: as a result of an unhappy childhood and

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___________________________________________________________ perceived exclusion from society, Berkowitz admitted to having a displaced aggression towards women, and that his acts against them were in fact a manifestation of his frustration. The integration of all types of character and forms of human conduct into the social order has been indoctrinated as a structural mainstay of the civic form throughout all identifiable means of cultural appraisal. When confronted with the question how can you accept this? - the solution is to search for some preliminary descriptive upon which to damn the monster who committed the act or invite him back into the fold; a repentant human shell, having exorcised the monster, or at least excavated his monstrous psyche to such an extent that the monstrosity becomes predictable and as such non threatening. The solution is not to attempt to know the unknowable or to derive sympathy for monstrosity, but to re-humanize the monster, and to tolerate his indecency. Though his efforts and effects upon the social psyche are very real, the serial killer may be seen as an allegorical reference to the compensatory nature of the tolerant liberal society, the dystopic fruits of a utopian movement towards universality.

Notes
Simpson pp 4 Seltzer pp 70 3 Full text of Berkowitz notes provided at http://www.crimelibrary.com/ serial_killers/ notorious/ berkowitz chapter 18 4 Klausner xiv, introduction to the mythos surrounding the psychology of the .44 Caliber Killer
2 5 6 1

Freud, pp 21, 30; description of the unheimlich and its signifiers

Seltzer, Mark Serial Killers: Death and Life in Americas Wound Culture text devoted to the description and exploration of wound culture.
7 8

Simpson, pp 20, addresses the work of Mark Seltzer in context.

Details of the Gein case available at www.crimelibrary.com/gein/geinmain.htm

9

Simpson pp 20

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10

Woods, pp 77-84; description of the types of objects crafted by Gein from the remains of his victims and body parts harvested from gravesites he desecrated. Among them, a chair made of human bone and tissue, several lamps fashioned of human skin and a belt decorated with female nipples. 11 Seltzer, pp 34
12 13 14 15

Woods, pp18 Woods, pp 70

Freud, pp 31 Simpson, pp 148 16 Simpson, pp 7

Bibliography
Bardsley, Marilyn, Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, famous serial killer. 18 April 2004. http://www.crimelibrary.com/ serial_killers/ notorious/ berkowitz (18 April 2004). Bell, Rachel, Eddie Gein:TheCharacter Psycho and Buffalo Bill Were Modelled After. April 18, 2004 www.crimelibrary.com/gein/geinmain.htm (18 April 2004). Bloch, Robert, Psycho. 1959 New York, NY: Tom Doherty Associates Inc. 1989. Freud, Sigmund et al. The Uncanny. USA: Penguin Classics 2003. Harris, Thomas, The Silence of the Lambs. New York, NY: St Martins Press 1989. Hooper, Tobe. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 1974 E.U.: Universal Studios Ltd 2003. Digital Video Disc. Jenkins, Patty. Monster. USA, Germany.: Media 8 Entertainment 2003.

Jenkins, Patty. Monster. Screening and Q&A. April 1, 2004: Curzon Soho Cinema, London. Kerkes, David & David Slater, Killing For Culture: An Illustrated History of Death Film from Mondo to Snuff. UK: Creation Books 1994. Klausner, Laurence D., Son of Sam. New York: McGraw Hill 1981. Lee, Spike. Summer of Sam. USA.: Downtown Pictures Ltd 2000. Digital Video Disc. Seltzer, Mark, Serial Killers: Death and Life in Americas Wound Culture. New York: Routledge 1998. Simpson, Philip L., Psycho Paths: Tracking the serial KillerThrough Contemporary Film and Fiction. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Woods, Paul Anthony, Ed Gein: Psycho!. New York NY: St Martins Press 1995.

Session 11 Monsters of Childhood

Where the Wild Things Are: Sendaks picture book and the monsters personified, sanctified and glorified. Philip Fitzsimmons, Pauline Harris, Barbra McKenzie and Lisa Kervin
Abstract This paper focuses on Maurice Sendaks picture book, Where the Wild Things Are, and discusses the dream creation of monsters in the text not by the words that are used, but through the subtext created by use of unconscious visual literacy elements. The authors of this paper take the view that as discussed by Harris, McKenzie, Fitzsimmons and Turbill, an author draws on their social capital, their cultural capital and their funds of knowledge in creating text but in this instance an example of sublimation or the redirection of energy arising from personal conflict or underlying anxiety into a more constructive outlet such as work11 is clearly evident. Sendak admits that he drew the monsters in this text based on his own relatives. By analysing the pictures through the precepts of visual literacy, that is the illustrators use of vectors, line, shape, gaze, and distance2 it becomes clearly evident that the monsters represent not a nightmare or fear but a healthy release of impulse3 (. Thus the authors argue that monsters in childrens picture books are elements that should be revered not feared. Keywords Visual literacy, monsters, sublimation 1. Introduction A A Beginning Point of Reflection Before reading on, for just a few brief reading seconds, we would ask you, the reader, to reflect on a central portion of text below, taken from the childrens picture book that is the focus of this chapter. We ask you to take on a suspended equivalence of repertoire4. That is to do naturally what most readers of narrative do and imagine what the following words mean drawing on your past experiences. And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.

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___________________________________________________________ Out of context, and without the pictures, this sounds like a rather fierce text, in fact too grotesque for young children5, one that could indeed be extremely frightening for children. Our own experiences suggest that our tertiary students when exposed to the text without the images also conjure up frightening images of the Wild Things. Yet when the text is accompanied by the pictures it is widely seen to be a more child-friendly text. Why is this? Why do numerous commentators and researchers take the view that the monsters in this text represent the archetypical all devouring Behemoth? B Finding design in dissonance This chapter had its origins in the academic maelstrom of writing to deadlines, editorial demands and the personal compromises that surround the co-authoring of a book. We recently revisited this experience as we pulled together the threads of our own thinking and disparate research foci that underpinned our book on writing for preservice teachers. We soon realised that because of the factors mentioned in the opening sentence we had to leave out some of the nuances or peripheral elements that we each held ideologically dear in regard to how authors actually make meaning, and began to identify afresh other aspects. However, through the closeness that further cooperative writing and co-planning tertiary teaching brings we soon realised that our deletions of compromise perhaps could conceivably have more merit and relevance to our understanding of writing than we had first realised. And so this paper focuses on the first of our realisations of peripheral vision 6, the relationship between text and illustrations in childrens books and the underlying psychology of experience that authors naturally bring to their writing. Indeed, the term peripheral visions is more than apt as in the ensuing discussion we detail how we applied our own understanding of visual literacy to our favourite childrens text, Maurice Sendaks Where the Wild Things Are, In the simple act of overlaying the elements of visual literacy onto this book, the template we used immediately challenged our view of what we had traditionally seen this book representing as well as challenging the long term view held of the central focus of this text, the nature of the monstrous wild things. 2. Monster in the Text: Is the norm nominal? Ever since its publication in 1963, Maurice Sendaks picture book has created intense discussion, division and dichotomy. Now recognised as one of the most famous dream journeys in picture book

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form7 this text was originally pilloried by parent and librarians and Sendak cast as one of Pecks bad boy of childrens books8. This initial debate centred on the monsters or Wild Things; vividly pictured but eventually tamed by the central character Max. The initial adult view was that these Wild Things were interpreted to be monsters. These were seen to symbolise fear and anxiety and would be frightening for children to view. Sendaks own comments contained these very words in regard to the monsters in this book and only served to add fuel to the critical fire. As Sendaks creation was gradually recognised to be both a dream journey and a journey within the psyche, to this day it contains a set of tensions and themes centring on the ideal of fear and childhood that have sufficient depth to provide scholars with a wealth of research material. The main tensions that provide a constant springboard for discussion include: The polemic between parent and child created between the text and pictures The apparent highly ambiguous manipulation of the reader by Sendak The relationship between Max dressed as a wild thing in the first few pages and the monsters themselves. Typically the view taken by commentators is that, as detailed by Bruner one of the primary links to understanding a narrative picture book is that they represent at least some form of autobiographical account of the authors life. Sendak confirms this view stating that the book contains early childhood memories and was a product of boredom and the subsequent desire to create fantasy. There werent sufficient things I could do as a child. You were stranded on a block, unless you were lucky enough to get your mothers permission to cross the street by yourself, which wasnt very often. For me that was a dull way to get through a day, so I had to fantasize. 9 In respect to the Wild Things, Sendak originally wanted them to be horses, but because he could not draw these he instead cast them as monsters. In discussing this point of Sendaks realisation, Hastings believes that once the initial draft was completed Sendak acknowledges that they reminded him instantly of his aunts.

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___________________________________________________________ While Sendak remembers these aunts as annoyances, it would appear that they represented an epitome of intertwined fear, disruptive emotions, and frustration10. Sheer boredom is another emotional element that repeats itself in Sendaks comments about his childhood. Even the most cursory review of Sendaks interviews and the brief quotes in this chapter indicate that Sendak may have had an inclination to arbitrary influence or the tendency of an individual to emphasise negative rather than positive aspect of a situation11. However, there could be another reason this text has been seen to be a purveyor of negative content, which lies at the very heart of the general view of psychology. Weiten believes that the overall negativity produced by any psychological analysis is attributed to the epistemological-methodological link within this field in that it tends to only focus on the abnormal and is reductionist in nature. Similarly, Geekie, Cambourne and Fitzsimmons view psychological reading theories as having a tendency to be asocial Whether this is the case or not, certainly most commentators take the typical psychological stance and view Sendaks portrayal of the Wild Things as the typical representation of the authors deepest repressed feelings, fears and failures12 . While to some degree we hold this to be true, in the case of Where the Wild Things Are we also believe that such a view is conceptually problematic. While many researchers quote Sendak extensively, and on the surface his enormous amount of comment on this text would support the view that the monsters represent the fears, anxiety and vulnerability of children and their struggle to make themselves King of All Wild Things13 we would argue that there is another dimension. Similar to the position advocated by Lanes, we want to argue that the view that monsters represent fears and anxiety is an adult perspective and risks alienation of the childs perspective. While recognising that this book resonates with childrens inner experiences and provides important insights for and about children, there is an alternative explanation that views wild things not as monsters per se, but rather as sublimation of the author/illustrators emotions, such as boredom, frustration, anger and need to be in control. As we have come to see it, this relates to Sendaks own comments but the pictures also reveal a subsequent release of pent up frustration into what Harris believes reveals a more positive mind set. This furthers illuminates a more positive aspect of the human condition of being able to deal with negative experiences. The following section delves into another aspect of this book and while focusing on emotions such as fear, shows another aspect of how

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Where the Wild Things Are chronicles, what Harris believes overall reveals an inner journey of self-actualisation, and ultimately realises the harmonious integration of an individuals inner experiences with their outer circumstances by journeys end. 3. Sailing Out But Looking In: Sendaks Journey While acknowledging the typical view taken by commentators such as Hastings that Where the Wild things Are explores intense emotions of children, a key facet that has not been fully explored is the information provided by the secondary visual messages provided by the monsters themselves.. Despite some ambiguities, on the surface there is some degree of congruence between text and pictures as Max is sent to his room for disobedience in which he falls into a dream and sails to the an island where he tames the monsters. The pictures in this book become larger and larger and larger as Max gains control of the situation through his fantasy dream.. The double pages where he tames these monsters are without text and form the chiasmus of text, after which Max subsequently sails back home to find his dinner waiting. We wish to argue that Sendak has either consciously or unconsciously embedded a series of clues that suggest that the meeting and confrontation of monsters was more than a dream but an example of this control over the uncontrolable The following table is a summary of the visual literacy tools we used as the means of further understanding this text as discussed by Harris, McKenzie, Fitzsimmons & Turbill; Callow; Giorgis, Johnson, Bonomo & Colbert and Anstey and Bull. Table 1-Visual Literacy Tools Visual Literacy Tools Characteristics Tool 1 Actions and Vectors Within each illustration the focus is what is happening within the image itself. Usually there is some type of ACTION going on. Within the image there are lines that lead the eye towards this action. These lines are known as VECTORS and can be thick or thin, light or dark and serve to lead the eye towards this action. Lines are used to suggest direction, show movement, create energy or establish a mood. Iconic in nature, images are created to indicate a holistic CONCEPT rather than an action.

Tool 2 - Concept

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___________________________________________________________ Tool 3 - Angles Tool 4 Framing or Cropping Also linked with height, angles enable the reader to gain a sense of power, position, vulnerability, movement, direction and emotion Framing limits the amount of information available to the viewer as well as signalling some type of social relationship with reader. Long Shots: Are those that show the subject in full figure and at a distance from the viewer, these type of shots give the perception of a more public type of distance. Medium Shots: These are shots that frame the upper half of the body. These type of shots show a more social type of distance. Close Up Shots: These type of shots are usually head and shoulders and suggest a much more intimate and personal relationship to the viewer. The composition of an image affects the viewer in several ways. Images that appear to be making eye contact with the viewer are said to be making a demand for your attention. When the eyes in the image look elsewhere, or when there are no creatures or people in the image this is termed an offer. Here the viewer feels free to look at a range of other elements first Used to convey emotional elements and induce notions and ideals of reality

Tool 5 Demands and Offers

Tool 6 - Colour

Time and space do not permit an in-depth frame by frame analysis of this book and so the following table reveals what we consider to be the developmental visual aspects and their meaning leading up the central double page frames of the monsters. We encourage you the reader to use our understanding as the entre for your own comparison while you view this text for yourself. Obviously, our connections are but one of many possibilities. Table 2-Visual Literacy Meanings Visual Elements Pages 17-18 All monsters here are in a seated. Our Understanding - Need to control - submissive position

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Lion, Goat, Bull are touching themselves. -All have a downward gaze (Gaze, Vector). Max however has that malevolent direct gaze Blue hues Pages 19-20 Deference by animals to Max (bowing, downward gaze, eyes closed) submissive posture (clasping of hands). Distance of the group of three from Max. All Monsters smiling. Max has haughty/lofty gaze, wearing of crown and sceptre Pages 21-22 All animals under 3/4 Max has his eyes closed.Max is now a wolf...links to old tales of werewolves linked to the full moon? - Apparent false smirks Pages 23-24 Again no eye contact by Monsters with Max (who has his eyes closed). Creatures look sheepish/foolish like they are taking part in tree climbing -Dancing under full moon Page 25-26 Max leads the procession waving his sceptre and riding on the back of the Bull (who doesn't look particularly happy (hand on hip gesture) Gaze of all the Monsters is again showing submission and the

- often seen as a sign of reassuring or comforting yourself - holding gaze in the animal kingdom is a form of dominant behaviour, seen as a form of aggression, focus on the hand, symbol of the whole being Charismatic figure earnest desire to rebuild or resuscitate self and relationships denote authority/kingship but with a closed heart hero worship but with a closed off mind, false freedom 3/4 moon representing false hood and impermanence. Dislocation of the self, with the moon representing the archetypical mother Movement outside of accustomed environment leads to need for stability of the true self, or the covering becomes the reality Difference from the powerful ones, play becomes the substitute for relationships and stability Full moon represents a full measure of life about to fall links to the legend of the Minotaur and conquest showing your palms, showing a more intimate self re the life lines to someone is an 'open' non verbal gesture...shows you have no weapons up your sleeve.

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___________________________________________________________ postures are all deferential But stength can be void of ethical entity and isolation Sense of true self calls Activation of loneliness within the appearance of control and becoming Red dawn, a warning despite serenity of the monsters

Pages 27-28 All monsters asleep (or at least relaxed) also shows submission/deference/trust to/for Max (who now has a Royal Pavilion to add to the crown and sceptre). Wild animals would not assume these positions if they felt endangered or threatened. Dawn colours Pages 29-30 Although all the roaring, gnashing and rolling is being verbalised, the gaze of the Monsters is not threatening to Max (not even seemingly directed at Max but more at the boat and beyond. Max is not worried (smiling). Some of the Monsters' gestures seem to be entreating (don't go!) type gestures. Shift back to blue colour

Anger of the Wild Tings but false appearance Return to what was lost

4. What Does This Mean? What we have demonstrated through the use of visual literacy tools is that in this text the monstrous confrontation with the Wild Things represents needs of the deep psyche. Rather than being the epitome of fear, the meeting and taming of these monsters represents Max confronting himself. Thus, for us this text represents: A A story of true empowerment and survival. While the story-illustrations nexus in this text initially suggests boyish confrontation and taming of monsters, the visual literacy components would appear to convey a message of finding that the basic need of self is finding a sense of relationships. It is journey away from home and safe return14 . He began the sojourn because he was scolded

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and threatened - to eat his mother up, but finds that when aggression would be the course he would be inclined to it only brings loneliness and alienation. In the seat of power he sees himself and realises that a vigorous selfish soul can lead to the closing off of both the heart and mind, leading to a form of psychic pain. B A story of confronting emotions. In their childlike portrayal, the wild things are both figures to be conquered, thus enabling Maxs assertion of control, and figures that are vulnerable they become frightened and called [Max] the most wild thing of all thus Max is validated and his anger with his mother at this point is released as he calls, Let the wild rumpus start and so they party beneath the full moon for three double-page spreads without words. It would appear that Max is both the medium and the message. While he appears to be in control, anger and frustration have only the appearance of satisfaction but in reality are masks for the more substantive elements of love and trust. Anger is a natural human element but needs to be accompanied by reconciliation. C A story of true resonance between childrens understanding of life While many adults have typically seen this text to be one containing images unsuitable for children, conversely the young have continued for several decades to resonate with the images and text. Perhaps it would be wise for the critics see this text as an appreciation of unarticulated experiences as opposed to a critical analysis based purely on adult failings. D A story revealing the transformation of unconscious and conscious experience into text. This text clearly demonstrates how Sendak drew on his own experiences and transposed these into highly symbolic elements. While there are the obvious deliberate metaphorical elements the tools of writing are not always premeditated, and life has a tendency to creep in unnoticed. While this exemplifies the unconscious nature of Kristevas ideal of intertextuality, a phenomenon which Harris & Trezise believe is common to adults and children alike, perhaps children are more attunded to this notion than they are given credit for. In regard to the latter point, perhaps children are able to recognise in narrative the ideal of individuation, the ability to recognise the becoming of all that one is capable of becoming.15

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Notes
David Barlow and Mark Durand, Abnormal psychology (New York: Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1998), 18. 2 Harris, Pauline et al., Writing in the primary school years (Tuggerah, NSW: Social Science Press, 2003), 92. 3 Peter Monte, Handbook for storytellers (Chicago: American Library Association, 1995), 200. 4 Wolfgang Iser, The act of reading (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1981), 82. 5 Huck, Charlotte, et al., Children literature in the elementary school (Orlando, Florida: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 4th edition, 1978), 35. 6 Mary Catherine Bateson, Peripheral visions (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 20. 7 Mary Nikoljeva and Carole Scott, How picture books work (New York: Garland Publishing, 2001),180. 8 Selma Lanes, The art of Maurice Sendak (London: Bodley Head, 1980), 151. 9 Maurice Sendak, Visitors from my boyhood, in Worlds of childhood the art and craft of writing for children, ed. William Zinser (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1990), 47-70, cited Justin Wintle and Emma Fisher, The Pied Pipers: Interviews with the influential creators of childrens literature (New York: Paddington Press LTD, 1974), 24. 10 Ibid,151 11 Barlow and Durand, p. 206. 12 Tom Chetwynd, Dictionary of symbols (London: Thorson, 1982), 265. 13 Sendak, p. 151. 14 Huck, et al., p. 667. 15 Carl Gustav Jung, On the psychology of the trickster figure (1954), in Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9i (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959 and 1969), 166.
1

Bibliography
Anstey, Michelle and Geoff Bull. Reading the visual written and illustrated childrens literature. Sydney: Harcourt, 1998. Barlow, David and Mark Durand. Abnormal psychology. New York: Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1998.

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Bateson, Mary Catherine. Peripheral visions. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. Bruner, Jerome. Childs talk: Learning to use language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Callow, Jon. Image matters: Visual texts in the classroom. Sydney: PETA, 1999. Certeau, Michelle de. The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Chetwynd, Tom. Dictionary of symbols. London: Thorson, 1982. Geekie, Peter, Brian Cambourne and Phil Fitzsimmons. Understanding literacy development. London: Trentham Books, 1999. Giorgis, Cyndi., Nancy Johnson, Annamarie Bonomo and Chrissie Colbert. Visual literacy. The reading teacher 53, 2 (1999): 146-153. Harris, Pauline and Jillian Trezise. Language arts 76, 5 (1999): 371-376. Duckville and other tales.

Harris, Pauline, Barbra McKenzie, Phil Fitzsimmons and Jan Turbill. Writing in the primary school years. Tuggerah, NSW: Social Science Press, 2003. Hastings, William. In the night kitchen. <www.northern.edu/hastings/kitchen.htm> (5 March 2004). 1998.

Huck, Charlotte, Susan Hepler and Janet Hickman. Children literature in the elementary school. Orlando, Florida: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 4th edition, 1978. Iser, Wolfgang. The act of reading. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1981. Jung, Carl Gustav. On the psychology of the trickster figure (1954). In Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9i, 166-179. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959 and 1969.

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___________________________________________________________ Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in poetic language. New York: Columbia U.P., 1984. Lanes, Selma. The art of Maurice Sendak. London: Bodley Head, 1980. Monte, Peter. Handbook for storytellers. Chicago: American Library Association, 1995. Nikoljeva, Marie and Carole Scott. How picture books work. New York: Garland Publishing, 2001. Sendak, Maurice. Visitors from my boyhood. In Worlds of childhood the art and craft of writing for children, edited by William Zinser, 4770. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1990. Weiten, Wayne. Themes and variations. New York: Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1995. Wintle, Justin and Emma Fisher. The Pied Pipers: Interviews with the influential creators of childrens literature. New York: Paddington Press LTD, 1974

The Dysmorphic Bodies of Alice in Wonderland Lois Drawmer

Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, wrote evocatively in later life of the little girl Alice Liddell, who inspired his story, Alice in Wonderland: Still she haunts me, phantomwise Alice moving under skies Never seen by waking eyes . 1 In Carrolls Alice in Wonderland (1865) the little girl Alice is the protagonist in a narrative of fantastic adventures, and it is these adventures which are the driving narrative device of the book. It is written from the point of view of the little girl: in effect Carroll transvestisises his voice into that of the young girl on the verge of adolescence. The coalescence between the adult male and the role of the little girl creates uneasy tensions about identity and sexuality primarily through systems of apparent non-logic. Indeed other theorists have noted the assimilation of girl/man in this book suggesting that: It is the child Alice who validates and preserves Dodgson-Carrolls being [] he not only loved little girls, he wanted to be a little girl, as the choice of his pen name goes to show.2 Although this book has spawned much debate and discussion about the fantastic nature of the imaginary creatures which inhabit it, it is my contention in the paper that the primary monster of the story is actually Alice herself. The story takes place in a dream or parallel world, framed by a contemporary setting, based, according to many accounts on a real life riverside picnic with Lewis Carroll and the three daughters of Dean Liddell. Alice begins and ends with a framing device the dream, but the first part of the real story begins with a birth metaphor; the embodiment of female function. Alice falls down a rabbit hole, a long, dark tunnel which parallels the journey of a baby from foetal symbiotic state of plenitude with the mothers body, to isolated individualism in the external world. It is interesting to note that amongst the huge body of academic research and debate into this book that this episode is almost always discussed in terms of death or resurrection jokes (Alice falls a long way, but is not hurt: rather she is re-born into a fragmented state). The passage

Dysmorphic Bodies of Alice in Wonderland 274 ___________________________________________________________ appears to assimilate elements of both birth and death, with the common link of sexuality circumscribing the configuration of life/death itself. The dream setting functions as an analogy of states of being, the ontology of conscious awareness of a self, and anticipates the narcissistic engagement of self discovery which follows, which is structured through the organization of language. Language is central to the structure and also to finding meanings in Alice where apparently childish and literal interpretations of words to produce seeming nonsense obscure a mathematical precision and playful disruption of the stability of words and meaning, which is actually sophisticated and complex. It has been argued that Carrolls word games are, in fact, grounded in mathematical logic, and are the ruthless pursuit of a single idea on purely logical grounds, to an absurd and horrific conclusion.3 Indeed, the violence underlying the social framework of Alice can be seen as a reproduction of 19th century anxieties engendered by Darwins evolutionary theories, where civilised behaviour is a thin veneer masking cruelty and self-indulgent aspirations, and the adventures become a macabre game of survival and adaptation. Alice goes through a series of size and shape metamorphoses, in which the self has no inherent or fixed meaning, and like language, exists only within a shifting set of relations which bear no reference to tangible absolutes or truths. In the long passage at the end of the tunnel, Alice finds: There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again4. The doors function as physical and symbolic barriers to advancement, and signify the threshold of altered states. Initially, Alice is denied access, as she either has no key or cannot fit through the doorway. The blocked access may be read as a metaphor of Carrolls real frustration when Alice Liddells mother became concerned with the nature of Dodgsons friendship for her daughter, and has imposed limits upon it.5 In an entry in his diary, 12th May 1864, Dodgson writes: During the last few days I have applied in vain for leave to take the children on the river [] but Mrs Liddell would not let any come in future rather superfluous caution.6

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___________________________________________________________ The closed doors are also symbolic of the cultural constraints and expectations encompassing females in the 19th century. The female form must literally fit into the space that patriarchy dictates for her, or else, as here in Alice, she is excluded from progress into the social order. The only way through a door for Alice is to use a tiny golden key, which Alice can see on a glass table. Alice finds that either the locks were too large, or the key too small.7 The lock and key imagery is of course a well-used literary motif for sexual compatibility. The key, in Alice therefore, is the point of slippage in the text between the identity of the male author, and his female creation, and the point of departure of the gender roles ordained for them by Victorian society. When Alice does find a lock which fits the key, she has become too large to get into the loveliest garden you ever saw8. The birth metaphor is still resonant here, as Alice: Could not even get her head through the doorway: and even if my head would go through thought poor Alice, it would be of very little use without my shoulders.9 In the process of giving birth, significantly referred to as confinement in the 19th century, the babys head can only descend through the cervix when it is dilated to approximately 10 centimetres: the stage at which the head and shoulders can safely pass through. The description of the labour process is strikingly similar to Alices concern with getting her head and shoulders through the doorway which leads enticingly to a beautiful garden, and its promise of pre-sin paradise. Carrolls relating of Alice to Eve in the state of innocence is interesting. The promise of a heavenly state symbolised in the unobtainable garden is subverted by Carroll, as it becomes instead a parody of power and tyranny, and bureaucratic institutions, dominated by the psychotic Queen of Hearts, whose sadistic desires are expressed in her repeated cry of off with his head. It is also significant that the only two adult women which feature in Alice in Wonderland , the Queen and the Duchess, are both violent, irrational and intimidating figures. It is my contention that these represent one of Carrolls most deep-seated anxieties mature, sexually demanding, or even menopausal women. The metamorphosis from his assumed innocent pre-pubescent stage of the female into the raging monsters of adult women is conspicuous in its extremity. The distorted form of mature womanhood in these two characters is hard to read as anything other than deeply entrenched misogyny. The Duchess is encountered by Alice in her kitchen the Victorian ideal of the domestic sphere offering respite for the family, and the focal point of the domain of the angel in the house.10 Here, as in earlier examples of the destabilising of the parallel dream

Dysmorphic Bodies of Alice in Wonderland 276 ___________________________________________________________ world, the ordinary expectations of middle class bourgeois society becomes extraordinary. The Duchess is holding a baby who sneezed occasionally; and the baby was sneezing and howling alternately.11 The cook throws a variety of pots and pans at the Duchess and baby, as Alice looks on in amazement. One of the first sentences she addresses to Alice is talking of axes chop off her head!12 Carrolls warped characterisation of motherhood is far removed from the Victorian chaste Madonna ideal: the Duchess sings a lullaby to the baby, but gives it a violent shake at the end of every line13 and eventually flings the baby at Alice, where it subsequently changes into a pig. It is clear that Carrolls view of adult females is very different to his idealisation of pre-adolescent girls. Once those girls whom he considered to be friends had reached puberty, they symbolically died to him. Carroll himself wrote that: About nine out of ten, I think, of my child-friendships get ship-wrecked at the critical point, where the stream and the river meet [i.e. the transition from child to sexually mature woman] and the child-friends, once so affectionate, become uninteresting acquaintances, whom I have no wish to set eyes on again.14 By focusing on a child, Carroll can discard the contemporary perceptions of female nature and use only the elements he was attracted to, or could impose (innocence, curiosity, non-threatening sexuality) onto his own vision of an ideal female. Carrolls exploration is an introspective process of confrontations about the unity of the self, where his own repressed sexual fears return as distorted fantasy animal figures, such as the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat. Reynolds and Humble suggest that underlying the ostensible playfulness of Alice is an atmosphere of amoral chaos, lurking beneath the familiar furniture of Victorian bourgeois life.

15

The disturbing violence is, in psychoanalytic terms, the driving force of the id and sexual libido. The emphasis on constructing female traits may also be seen as displaced castration anxiety, or the repressed, or latent homosexuality of artist or writer.16 The female body in Victorian society stands for more than the inscription of female identity. It becomes the site of projected male desires and fears. The use of fantasy in this narrative is one of its most striking and debated aspects. As Rosemary Jackson points out: Fantasy re-combines and inverts the real but it does not escape it: it exists in a parasitical or symbiotic relation

Lois Drawmer to the real. The fantastic cannot exist independently of that real world, which it seems to find so frustratingly finite.17

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By appropriating fantasy as a genre in which the central figure is female, the author implicitly then acknowledges the privileged binary which is the male. The use of fantasy however, also suggests a desire to move beyond the consensus of gender divisions, producing a text in which the gap between reality and the possibilities of language to form new meanings open up. In a written text, a complex relationship is implied between the author, the text itself and the reader. In Alice in Wonderland female identity is inextricably related to the Dodgson/Carroll persona. Alice is a composite gender figure, with the properties of Eves curiosity before the Fall of Mankind, embodied in the often quoted lines Curiouser and curiouser18 and also the logic and reason attributed to males only, as many Victorian intellectuals considered that over-exposure to study for girls was brain and nerve-destroying work.19 This is exemplified in Alices determination to recite poems she has learned at school in order to prove to herself that she is an integrated and fixed self. Carroll avoids almost all emotional excess: Alice is always restrained and logical, continually trying to re-assert the social framework of reality onto these strange situations in order to make sense of them. Meanings are destabilised, the threat of chaos is always imminent. When Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which direction she ought to take to get somewhere, the cat suggests she visit the March hare and the Hatter: Visit either if you like: theyre both mad. But I dont want to go among mad people, Alice remarked. Oh you cant help that, said the Cat: Were all mad here. Im mad. Youre mad. How do you know Im mad? said Alice. You must be, said the Cat. Or you wouldnt have come here.20 The logic which the cat employs is an axiom which Alice is unable to contradict or refute, a reminder of the instability of fantasy which threatens to disrupt the real world of rational, scientific explanation. The Cat represents this chaos very strikingly: it appears as a head only, and disappears slowly, with its smile being the last thing to vanish. The very concept of a unified identity contained within an organic body is overturned by Carroll: Alices self is manifested only as an incoherent and intangible set of spiritual and physical dislocations and encounters, in which alienation from her dysmorphic body is one result:

Dysmorphic Bodies of Alice in Wonderland 278 ___________________________________________________________ All she could see, when she looked down, was an immense length of neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk out of the sea of green leaves that lay far below her. [] Where have my shoulders got to? And, oh, my poor hands, how is it that I cant see you? She was moving them about as she spoke, but no result seemed to follow.21 This disconcerting event is paralleled by Alices actual alienation from all the creatures inhabiting Wonderland where her changing size and shape makes her always the Other to those she meets, and culminates in her disavowal of them at the end of the story. These characteristics of irrationality, rapid change and fragmentation are precisely the traits which patriarchy has traditionally ascribed to females as negative qualities, yet in Alice in Wonderland they are used as disruptive and radical strategies to challenge the boundaries of the everyday. In Lacanian terms, there is: No authenticating point of origin in a real unitary self; it begins in a fantasy or mirage. Self is simply a continuous deferral of identity enacted by the displacement of desire from one social ideal to another. The Cartesian I think therefore I am has been replaced by Lacan with the notion I think I am where I am not (My italics)22 This concept of subjectivity defined by the dysmorphic body and the fractured consciousness of the self effectively describes the narrative of Alice in Wonderland and the notion I think I am where I am not could surely have been written by Carroll himself. Eating, drinking and looking are central to the narrative. Freud describes the oral fixation of the infant in the eroticised pleasure of feeding. Food and drink therefore become central in adult relationships, offering promises of mother child plenitude. The fetishisation of food and drinks are drawn from the metonymic potential of instant gratification and the (short term) filling of the void or lack created by the mother/child physical and mental separation enacted through Lacans mirror stage. Furthermore, for females in particular, food and physical size become part of the discourses regulating female life, and more importantly defining what it means to be (successfully) female, where according to feminist theorists patriarchy dictates an ideal size and space for the female form

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___________________________________________________________ to occupy.23 Eating disorders may be considered a recent concern, but it is interesting to compare Lorraine Gammans critique of the way females are confronted by patriarchal prescriptions of body imagery, with the imagery evoked by Carroll one hundred and fifty years earlier: During their lifetimes many Western women experience a variety of body sizes, and become accustomed to imagining themselves in the sort of transitions reflected in before and after diet pictures. This experience relates not only to pregnancy and ageing, but also to the long-term effects of dieting [] such unrealistic body perceptions result in many women feeling they never attain their true body size, but are always en route.24 As with her 21st century counterpart, the emphasis on food and drink for Alice has a direct correlation to her shape and size, and quite literally dictates her entry into social structures, such as the Eden-like garden. Her size also encodes her female identity as subject to external, patriarchal forces which dominate her very existence and problematise her selfperception. When Alice declares Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope!25 it is realised when she drinks from a bottle marked DRINK ME, and she shrinks to only 10 inches high, whereupon: Her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden.26 Later in the story, Alice eats a cake, deciding: If it makes me larger, I can reach the key: and if it makes me smaller, I can creep under the door, so either way Ill get into the garden, and I dont care which happens!27 So drinking here is equated with diminishing size, and eating, especially forbidden treats such as cakes, results in rapid growth. Either way, Alice must suppress or re-order her physical shape and size, or remain marginal, or worse still, excluded from entry into the social order and achieving recognisable status as a woman. This drive towards unattainable perfection facilitates a split between mind and body. As Lacan develops in his seminar notes on The Mirror Stage, the key moment of recognition in the mirror in the infant: Manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of the spatial identity, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body image to a form of its totality28 The mirror image, then, precipitates a split subjectivity, in which we both (mis)recognise the inverted/reflected organic unity to be ourselves, but

Dysmorphic Bodies of Alice in Wonderland 280 ___________________________________________________________ which comes at the price of the separation from the maternal body and loss of the Real and plenitude. Lacan uses the term meconnaisance to describe this moment, and, as Bennett point out, in Alan Sheridans translation of Lacans text, leaves the word untranslated. The French means both failure to recognise and misconstruction29 For Alice, like many women with body dysmorphia, the moment of meconnaisance and its concomitant feelings of lack, fragmentation and abandonment are reenacted through specularisation reflected bodies, and produces this very failure to recognise or to misconstruct their body shape and size. This can be seen in both cultural terms, with the bombardment of idealised body shape images and diets which pervade all our lives, and also in terms of the ways in which we are interpellated, hailed into being, into social spaces in which the structures around us literally reflect back to us the way in which we view ourselves. This sense of dislocation raises broader concerns of being altogether. After shrinking to a small size, Alice fears that she may be going out altogether, like a candle and asks herself I wonder what I should be like then?30 Carter, in his study of Lewis Carroll, suggests that: The state of Nothingness, or Not Being, which at the very least is death and at its worst something more frightening, lies just around the corner in both Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass; and it is this that gives the books a driving purpose, even a sense of desperate urgency.31 This fundamental question of ontology, and self-awareness, underpins the narrative. Alice asks both the creatures around her, and then herself: Who in the world am I? Ah, thats the great puzzle! [] I am sure Im not Ada [] her hair goes in such long ringlets [] and Im sure I cant be Mabel [] Besides shes she, and Im I, and Oh dear, how puzzling it all is.32 In her attempts to define herself, through the ongoing encounters with the creatures in the narrative, Alice becomes increasingly perplexed; she tries to apply the system of language as if it may yield fixed truths. Like language itself, can only see herself in terms of difference to others (Mabel, Ada), rather than perceiving herself as a fixed, organic whole. This then corresponds to Lacans assertion that identity is a series of displacements of desire to reunite with an imaginary narcissistic Ego-

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___________________________________________________________ ideal.33 Meanings of the self, as well as language, as Derrida shows, are never reached, but always deferred. Ultimately, Alice has no fixed, integrated identity, as nothing of her remains the same. Only the Cheshire Cat is in control of its existence; This time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest had gone34 As if inhabiting Lacans ideal state of the Real, the Cat is able to appear and disappear at will, to be both corporeal and immaterial simultaneously. Carrolls curious transposition into Alice echoes the narrative structure of a dream, in which sophisticated wordplay, and the metamorphosis of spectacular creatures and situations, all signal the shifting of meanings from perspective to perspective, from subjectivity to object, culminating in the very collapse of that society when Alice (grown to giant proportions here) finally disavows the fantasy world as she exclaims: Youre nothing but a pack of cards!35 Carroll structures Alice as the pivotal protagonist in a story about unstable identities, and shifting boundaries. The monstrous and spectacular metamorphoses of Alice/Carroll produce a profoundly disturbing dystopia. In mediating and indeed fetishising the point of view of pre-adolescent young girl, Carroll effectively ventriloquises Alices identity. But Carroll does more than this: the character of Alice serves as a repository for male anxieties about female sexuality and latent desire actually inscribed upon the transforming body. Carrolls fascination with young girls and abhorrence of sexually mature women epitomised by the Duchess and the Queen, reveal complex responses to contemporary gender constructions which converge in a narrative framework of pastoral nostalgia. The encounters which Alice has with the fabulous and grotesque creatures in the narrative serve only to heighten the sense of unease which cannot be resolved even through the literary device of a framing dream structure, as, I hope I have shown, it emanates from the shifting, threatening, destabilised entity of Alice herself.

Notes
Quoted in M. Stonyk, Nineteenth Century English Literature, p. 201 Polhemus, R. Comic Faith p.252. 3 H. Carter, Secret Gardens, p.56 4 L. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland , p.6 5 The debate about the content of the missing pages has continued since Carrolls death. An interesting overview of the research and assumptions
2 1

Dysmorphic Bodies of Alice in Wonderland 282 ___________________________________________________________ about the material can be found at: http://www.lookingforlewiscarroll.com/enigma.html 6 Dodgson, in T. Hinde, Looking Glass Letters, p.58. 7 L. Carroll, op.cit., p.6 8 Ibid., p.6 9 Ibid. p.7 10 See J. Marsh Doves and Mothers in Pre-Raphaelite Women, pp.61-77, and S. Rowbotham, Good Girls Make Good Wives. 11 L. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, p.51 12 Ibid., p.52 13 Ibid., p.53 14 National Theatres Guide Alices Adventures Underground., p.7 15 K. Reynolds & N. Humble, Victorian Heroines p. 129 16 T. Eagleton, Literary Theory, p.152 17 R. Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, p.20 18 L. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, p.9 19 S. De Morgan, From Matter to Spirit, pp.330-331 20 L. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, p.55 21 Ibid., p.45 22 P. Morris, Literature and Feminism, p.116 23 L. Gamman & M. Makinen, Female Fetishism: A New Look, see pp.145-167 24 Ibid., p.157 25 L. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, p.6 26 Ibid., p.7 27 Ibid., p.9 28 J. Lacan quoted in E. Grosz, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, p.52 29 B. Bennett Misrecognizing Film Studies, Film-Philosophy, vol. 4, no.5, February 2000 30 L. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, p.8 31 H. Carter, Secret Gardens, pp.60-61 32 L. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, p.11 33 P. Morris, ibid., p.103 34 L. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, p.56 35 Ibid., p.102

Bibliography

Lois Drawmer

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Bennett, B., Misrecognizing Film Studies, Film-Philosophy, vol. 4, no.5, February 2000, in http://www.film-philosophy.com Betterton, R., Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and Media, London & New York: Pandora Press, 1987 Bonner, F., & Goodman, L., (eds.) Imagining Women: Cultural Representations and Gender, London: Open University/Polity Press, 1992 Brennan, T., Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis, London & New York: Routledge, 1993 Carpenter, H., Secret Gardens: The Golden Age of Childrens Literature, Boston: Hougton Mifflin, 1985 Carroll, L., Alice in Wonderland (first published 1865), London: Wordsworth Classics, 1992 Cornwell, N., The Literary Fantastic: From Gothic to Postmodernism, New York & London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990 De la Mare, W., Lewis Carroll, London: Faber & Faber, 1932 De Morgan, S., Three Score Years and Ten: Reminiscences of the Late Sophia De Morgan, London: Richard Bentley, 1895 Eagleton, T., Literary Theory, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993 Eagleton, T., Literary Theory, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993 Gamman, L., & Makinen, M., Female Fetishism: A New Look, London: Lawerence & Wishart, 1994 Grosz, E., Jaques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction,, London & New York: Routledge, 1995 Hinde, T., Lewis Carroll: Looking Glass Letters, London: Collins & Brown, 1991

Dysmorphic Bodies of Alice in Wonderland 284 ___________________________________________________________ Humm, M., Contemporary Feminist Literary Criticism, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994 Jackson, R., Fantasty: The Literature of Subversion, London & New York: Methuen, 1981 Lancelyn Green, R., Lewis Carroll, London: Bodley Head, 1960 Lancelyn Green, R., (ed.) The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, Vol.1, Connecticut: Greenland Press, 1971 Marsh, J., Pre-Raphaelite Women, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1987 Morris, P., Literature and Feminism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993 National Theatre Guide to Alices Adventures Underground, 1994 Ovenden, G., Lewis Carroll, London: MacDonald, 1984 Phillips, R., Aspects of Alice: Lewis Carrolls Dreamchild as seen through the Critics Looking-Glasses 1865-1971, London: Victor Gollanz, 1972 Polehemus, R., Comic Faith, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1980 Prickett, S., Victorian Fantasy, London: Harvester Press, 1979 Reynolds, K., and Humble, N., Victorian Heroines; Representations of Femininity in 19th Century Literature and Art, London & New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992 Rowbotham, S., Good Girls Make Good Wives, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989 Stonyk, M., Nineteenth-Century English Literature, London: Macmillan, 1993

Depraved Paedos and Other Beasts: The Media Portrayal of Child Sexual Abusers in Ireland and the UK. Michael J. Breen
Abstract Child sexual abuse is a significant social problem is Ireland and the UK. Research shows that there are significant differences between the reporting of sexual offences in the process and the reality of such offences on the ground. This paper is part of a major study examines those differences and looks at the role that language plays in the media construction of perpetrators of child sexual abuse in Ireland and the UK. It is based on a content analysis of print media as well as a sample of typical perpetrator portrayals on various victim advocacy websites. Findings indicate differentiation of perpetrators based on age, profession, gender and ethnicity. This paper focuses on one aspect arising from the study, that of tabloid demonisation of offenders post-release. Far from serving the work of combating child sexual abuse, the 'monsterization' of offenders creates a major problem for society in terms of rehabilitation and child protection. This paper also looks at the effect of the News of the World 'name and shame' campaign and its social outcomes. Keywords Sexual abuse, sex offender, child, mass media, reporting, Megans Law, civil rights The sexual abuse of children is a heinous event, and one that is all too prevalent in society. In Ireland, a national prevalence study was undertaken by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 2002 and the results were startling. According to the SAVI (Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland) report1, 42% of women and 28% of men stated that they had been abuse at some stage in their lives. 20% of women reported contact sexual abuse in childhood with 5.6% of all reporting rape, and 16.2% of men reported contact sexual abuse in childhood with 2.7% of all reporting rape. This is a horrific reality that needs to be understood and tackled. The role of the media is critical.

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___________________________________________________________ By way of response to SAVI, I undertook a year-long research project examining how the mass media represent the issue of sexual abuse of adults and children over a ten year period, from 1993 to 2002. This was done initially by sampling newsprint content from a randomly selected five weeks in each year of The Irish Times, The Times (London) and the New York Times. Preliminary findings of that research indicate that there are twice as many stories about child sexual abuse as adult abuse, that they tend to be significantly longer than those about adult sexual abuse, and that female victims predominate in both categories. In addition, stories of abuse by authority figures predominate, with a clear predominance of stories of abuse by clergy. Familial incest underplayed and often unnamed. There is a major gap between national prevalence statistics and newspaper reporting: for example, 75% of all stories of child sexual abuse in The Irish Times sample referred to clergy whereas the SAVI report indicates that clergy & religious teachers are responsible for about 3.2% of all child sexual abuse. These data are reported elsewhere. This paper focuses on a specific sub-problem that arises in relation to the issue of child sexual abuse that of the social treatment of offenders post release from prison and one that is urgent in terms of social policy. The media role in the demonisation of child sex offenders is clear. Sample tabloid headlines include the following: DON'T SEND YOUR EVIL PERVERT OVER HERE; CHILD RAPIST FLEES TO BRITAIN BEASTS ON LOOSE CHILD RAPE MONSTER GETS LIFE; BEAST ABUSED YOUNG GIRLS FOR 16 YEARS CHILD RAPE BEAST IS CAGED FOR LIFE TELEVISIONS ARE NOT A HUMAN RIGHT FOR EVIL SEX FIEND INMATES SSPCA AXE CHILD PERV

The News of the World, in the summer of 2001, launched a name and shame campaign targeted against British paedophiles, with the stated aim of publishing details of all 100,000 of them In December 2001, the News of the World retreated from the campaign. The Independent had referred to the campaign as the more extreme folly that continued to engage in scare mongering, sensationalism and incitement to vigilante action. Typical of the News of the World campaign was the inflammatory language that we have come to expect fro the tabloid press: the monster had attacked before; monsters are

Michael Breen 287 ___________________________________________________________ walking time bombs ; hunt for the child sex monster; the clusters of child-sex beasts ; prisons that house sex beasts; a sex beast living in their midst; tough new laws on sex beasts; evil, predatory paedophiles; a dangerous, evil man; hundreds of evil menaces escaped future supervision; child-sex fiends all prowling the streets ; a dragnet to catch the fiends; give the fiends no hiding place; sex fiends in the Republic have vanished. The image painted is a nonsensical one, of the whole country overrun by paedophiles, fiendishly plotting to trap every child, to the degree that nowhere is safe. The banner headline on the campaign, with a picture of Sarah Payne, was Everyone in Britain has a child offender living within one mile of their home. This is more than sloppy journalism: it is irresponsible scare mongering. In the US, Megan's Law requires that parents must now be informed when offenders move into their local area after being freed from prison: it has been criticized, with some commentators arguing that it can force paedophiles underground rather than let them be monitored and treated, and has provoked vigilante attacks. Evidence of such attacks abound. In the wake of the News of the World campaign, some parents in Portsmouth had their children carrying banners saying, "Kill Them" and vigilantes gathered outside the homes of suspected paedophiles, shouted abuse and threw stones. An innocent man with a name similar to one of those listed by the newspaper had his windows broken and abuse hurled at him. Two vigilantes were jailed for life at the Old Bailey for murdering a retired sea captain whom they wrongly suspected of being a paedophile, by firebombing his flat in Grimsby. In another incident, a suspected paedophile was battered to death with a toaster, frying pan and iron bar by vigilantes in Glasgow. In Gwent, a group of protestors, who could not tell the difference between a paediatrician and a paedophile, hounded Dr Yvette Cloete, a respected paediatrician, from her home. These attacks are not unique to Britain. Media reports can readily be found about such vigilante actions, often targeted against innocent people by mistake, in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, and elsewhere. Nor has Ireland escaped. Recently a crowd marched on the apartment block where a man, convicted of child sex abuse and recently released having served his sentence as required by law, was living. He subsequently moved to a different location. Immediately after that move two tabloid newspapers published false information about him, alleging

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___________________________________________________________ that he had moved into a specific part of Dublin, and so causing unnecessary fear and alarm to be triggered in that local community. The question that these episodes raise is a critical one for society. How should society react to those men who are convicted of sex offences upon their release from prison? The fear of parents and communities is completely understandable. The desire for complete protection of children is beyond criticism. But if the protection of children is paramount, as it should be, it must be asked whether the kind of strategy seen in such street protests as witnessed in Dublin and elsewhere actually works, and whether the name and shame philosophy proposed by some newspapers is a real benefit to society. There are a number of issues here. In the first place, the safety and security of children must be a priority. To that end, the treatment, monitoring, and support of released offenders is critical. Anything that would push offenders underground is therefore a counter productive strategy. The experience of Megan's Law in the US has shown that this is precisely the outcome under certain conditions. Released offenders who are not monitored, or who are not provided with therapy, are much more likely to re-offend that those who participate in therapy and maintain social contact with family and friends. The campaign by some segments of the tabloid press actually serves to undermine the safety of children by attempting to effect the complete demonisation and marginalisation of sex offenders. The tabloid practice of tracking down those who have served their sentences and who are trying to create new lives for themselves is especially reprehensible. Usually done under a guise of 'informing the public', the lurid language, provocative banner headlines and nasty photo captions make it clear that increased sales is the primary interest of such coverage. One recent manifestation of this has been the publication of the home address of the family of a sex offender recently released from prison after serving a lengthy sentence for child abuse, even though the offender in question had not lived with his parents for more than 20 years. It would appear that self-serving rhetoric and greater profits are more important than either the protection of society or the generation of a genuine debate. Second, there is the issue of the civil rights of sex offenders. Despite the unpopularity of the position, it has to be said that these offenders also have rights. They are, in fact, free in the eyes of the civil law. In his article in The Daily Telegraph 27 December 2001, Joshua Rozenberg noted that

Michael Breen 289 ___________________________________________________________ Lord Woolf, the British lord chief justice, had suggested that a few dangerous but unconvicted paedophiles could be locked up for the public's protection. He was roundly criticised by civil liberties campaigners, penal reform groups and newspaper leader writers. Lord Woolf accepted that his proposal would involve "a huge infringement of the individual's rights. But we must think of the rights of those who would be offended against as well. They have rights and they deserve protection." It is staggering to think of a judge advocating the imprisonment of some on the basis of what they might do rather than what they have done. Why stop at potential child abuse in such a context? Why not imprison some mentally ill, some violent people, some potential rapists? This is, of course, the nub of the issue: an apparent conflict between the rights of children to protection and the rights of released offenders on completion of sentence. Such opposition only exists if the offender's intention is to abuse children. If his intention is to get on and live his life in a non-abusive way then we can all work to the same end. In practical terms, a risk assessment model needs to be developed which is accepted as a standard to enable professionals in child protection to determine the best courses of action. The protection of children need not become an infringement of rights of others, but rather the vindication and protection of the rights of all could become a collaborative affair. In practice there is only a conflict of rights to the degree that there is a danger of recidivism. But it is also clear that the recidivism rate rises with alienation, such as loss of contact with family, loss of access to therapy, and loss of support networks. Such losses occur when offenders are driven underground by tabloid campaigns. Anything that can be done to prevent recidivism is a further step in the protection of children. Third, there is a significant danger to children when society focuses only on offenders released from prison. We now know from the SAVI report that one in five women and one in six men reported experiencing contact sexual abuse as children. As regards perpetrators of such abuse, "24 % of perpetrators against girls were family members, 52 % were non-family but known to the abused girl and 24 % were strangers. Fewer family members were involved in child sexual abuse of boys. 14 % were family members with 66% non-family but known to the abused boy. Twenty per cent were strangers. Overall the perpetrator was another child or adolescent (17 years old or younger) in one out of every four cases." SAVI2 also highlights how unhelpful it is to work with a stereotypical view of sex offenders: "A relatively small percentage of perpetrators fitted

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___________________________________________________________ the current stereotype of abusers of children: strangers were in the minority - over 80% of children were abused by those known to them. Fathers constituted 2.5% of all abusers with clerical/religious ministers or clerical/religious teachers constituting 3.2% of abusers. The most common other relative or authority figure categories were uncles (6.2%), cousins (4.4%), babysitters (4.4%), brothers (3.7%) and non-religious/clerical teachers (1.2%)." The problem of child sexual abuse in Ireland is possibly far greater than most people wish to acknowledge or confront. It is quite evident that a reasoned debate on the issue, its origins, consequences and future strategies is badly needed. In is here that the media could make an enormous contribution, in the stimulation of such a debate. The lack of treatment spaces for offenders is particularly worrisome. Tabloid media reports reported in outraged tones about a specific offender who had not undergone treatment while in prison. They failed to indicate what his psychotherapist pointed out: he had already been through 500 hours of therapy prior to imprisonment, that his taking of a place on a treatment programme would have been of no benefit to him and would have denied another offender a place. Again, the media have a role to play here, in informing the public about the nature of paedophilia and sex offences in general, in promoting a campaign for the provision of adequate psychological services for those in prisons, and in examining the situation of sex offence prisoners on release. In particular it would be helpful to see a focus on the kind of material found in the Lundstrom Report for the Irish Prison Service3, dealing with the development of a new multi- disciplinary sex offender rehabilitation programme for the Irish Prison Service. Among its core recommendations together was the recommendation for juvenile community based sex offender programmes in each region of the country. Lundstrom looked at what is available here through the experiences of all involved in the delivery of the current programme, and made comparison with the best and most integrated systems in the UK, Canada and the US. She argued for an integrated approach from conviction/admission to release, community care therapy and supervision, and built -in sanctions backed up by the Courts. It would be a dangerous step if our society were to hold that the solution to child sexual abuse is to be found in the targeting of those who have served

Michael Breen 291 ___________________________________________________________ their sentences. While such a strategy may well appeal to some instinct in us, it is not particularly helpful and could well be dangerous. Child sexual abuse is a society-wide phenomenon. It demands a society-wide response. Driving the problem underground is as at least as bad as pretending it does not exist. Children deserve better.

Notes
1 2

McGee et al, 2002. McGee et al, 2002 3 Lundstrom, 2001

Bibliography
Lundstrom, Francesco. Dublin: Irish Prison Service, 2001. McGee, Hannah and Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. The SAVI Report: Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland. Dublin: Liffey Press in association with Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, 2002.

Notes on Contributors

293

Contributors
Eva Antal Eszterhazy College, Eger, Hungary Colette Balmain Department of Arts and Media, Buckinghamshire Chilterns UC, High Wycombe, UK Michael Breen Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland Inga Bryden School of Culture Studies, King Alfreds College, Winchester, UK Wladimir Chavez University of Bergen, Norway Eleanor Chiari University College, London, UK John Cussans Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK Lois Drawmer Department of Arts and Media, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, High Wycome, Bucks, UK Phil Fitzsimmons Centre of Language Education, University of Wollongong, North Wollongong, Australia Kate Hebblethwaite School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland Peter Mario Kreuter University of Bonn, Germany Dunstan Lowe St. Johns College, Cambridge, UK

294

Notes on Contributors

Estelle Alma Mar Department of Art History, University of South Africa, South Africa Emily McMehen London, UK Hanna Meretoja University of Turku, Finland Nancy (Cary) Morrison Manassas, United States Verena-Susanna Nungesser Gieen, Germany Nur zgenalp Istanbul Bilgi University, Faculty of Communication, Sisli Istanbul, Turkey Pete Remington Eastern Mediterranean University, N. Cyprus Chris L. Smith Centre for Tectonic Cultures, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK Richard Stamp Bath Spa University College, UK Kamila Vrnkov Pedagogical Faculty, University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic Paul L. Yoder Saint Louis University, United States