I think the genres and stock character reflect the unconscious and conscious fears our culture causes while providing a coping mechanism for these same anxieties. Collectively, technology scares and inspires us, as it changes our world in ever faster and potentially dangerous ways. In response, we see the development of science fiction, where stories revolve around technological advances and allow us to confront our fears of change.
Or take fantasy. Most fantasy works borrow heavily from Tolkien. I think there are two basic reasons for this: quest/manhood narratives and belief/world mythologies. Frodo and Bilbo are classic, Joseph Campbell, 'Hero of One Thousand Faces," young men on quests. And as Campbell points out, the quest narrative is a dramatization of the passage from youth to adulthood. Ultimately, the quest endpoint drives the narrative, but the personal growth of the main character arrives through the meeting and overcoming of the challenges that happen on the journey (with help from an older wisdom figure like Gandalf or Albus Dumbledore).
Or take fantasy. Most fantasy works borrow heavily from Tolkien. I think there are two basic reasons for this: quest/manhood narratives and belief/world mythologies. Frodo and Bilbo are classic, Joseph Campbell, 'Hero of One Thousand Faces," young men on quests. And as Campbell points out, the quest narrative is a dramatization of the passage from youth to adulthood. Ultimately, the quest endpoint drives the narrative, but the personal growth of the main character arrives through the meeting and overcoming of the challenges that happen on the journey (with help from an older wisdom figure like Gandalf or Albus Dumbledore).
Similarly, Tolkien presents a world where the mythology and beliefs of the characters is fully defined. Much of the fantasy written in the last 60 years mirrors this, grounding the action in a world where good and bad are defined, the gods and demons present are certain and the actions of the characters take on cosmic or moral importance through how they align with the good and bad of the world (as opposed to the hero deciding they are moral or important through some existential determination).
I think these characteristics account for the explosion of fantasy's popularity in the last 60 years. Our culture generally doesn't have a clearly defined transition from youth to adulthood, especially for men and it has, on some level, moved towards a secular outlook, rejecting any particular belief system or mythology as true. So a reason fantasies, especially among young men, as so popular is that they provide a space where young men have a purpose (complete the quest!), have a defined way to transition to manhood and have moral clarity or spiritual certainty about their actions..
Where I think this gets really interesting is when we look at stock characters or monsters. Because of Harry Potter, Twilight, and the proliferation of zombie stories, wizards, witches, vampires, werewolves and zombies have entered the popular conscious in a way I think unique in our history. And I think the popularity of these types of stories and stories concerning these stock characters reveals a lot of the broader cultural fears and issues with currency for people today.
Wizards and witches, especially in the Harry Potter world, are two sides of the same coin. I think traditionally, wizards are more about age and knowledge, with the potential for being either good or bad. Witches have an almost exclusively negative connotation because I think they exemplify fear of female sexuality (love potions, becoming "bewitched" by a beautiful woman, etc). For the modern versions, I think magic is our image for rapidly evolving technology. The things we do every day would seem magical to anyone from from 1900 (with the possible exception of Nikola Tesla) and Harry Potter shows us a story of youth mastering power to fight for good. I think this resonates with audiences, expressing hope that the youth of today will use technology more responsibly that previous generations.
Vampires are all about sex. Fear of sex but also fascination with its power. All the way back to Dracula, male vampires have been seducing female targets. Twilight is slightly different because Edward holds off for a bit, but at heart, vampires are sex symbols. They live eternally, as will your DNA if you have children. They are "supposed" to be resisted and wrong, though you chances of actually resisting them involve heavy reliance on the church (crosses) or smelling bad (garlic). Otherwise, there is something seductive about their power.
Werewolves are about fear of masculinity/puberty/aggression. Any man who's been through puberty knows what it's like to be a werewolf. One day, you're just hanging out with your friends, playing, the next thing you know, you're hairy and angry and attacking people for no reason. What makes a werewolf scary is their seemingly uncontrollable transition from reasonable man to physically powerful, enraged, violent attacker. Now, I think that mirrors fears about male aggression, about the uncontrollable violence men have unleashed throughout history. It's what makes Twilight werewolves so annoying, especially the casting of Taylor Lautner. Taylor is a good looking dude, but he has no body hair. Seriously, a hairless werewolf? He's a feminized version of the werewolf. The Twilight werewolves take away the things that make werewolves interesting and powerful stock characters.
Finally, zombies. We've seen an explosion of zombies in the popular culture recently. It used to be a couple of monster movies from the 30's and Night of the Living Dead. Know you've got World War Z, Zombie Survival Guide, 28 Day, 28 Days later, the Walking Dead and many more. I think it reflects our fear of the other, especially the political other. Zombies are unthinking hordes of being, unable to be reasoned with, wanting to eat (destroy) your brains (your beliefs, thought process, etc). It's basically the expressed fear that the other side politically is unreasonable, always wrong and out to destroy your reasoning or beliefs. And as our political climate gets more dysfunctional and antagonistic and less able to function (basically the last 30 years), we see an explosion of zombies in popular culture.
These are the fears or anxieties I see our culture dealing with through these stock characters and genres. Let me know if you have other examples or ideas in the comments.
Wizards and witches, especially in the Harry Potter world, are two sides of the same coin. I think traditionally, wizards are more about age and knowledge, with the potential for being either good or bad. Witches have an almost exclusively negative connotation because I think they exemplify fear of female sexuality (love potions, becoming "bewitched" by a beautiful woman, etc). For the modern versions, I think magic is our image for rapidly evolving technology. The things we do every day would seem magical to anyone from from 1900 (with the possible exception of Nikola Tesla) and Harry Potter shows us a story of youth mastering power to fight for good. I think this resonates with audiences, expressing hope that the youth of today will use technology more responsibly that previous generations.
Vampires are all about sex. Fear of sex but also fascination with its power. All the way back to Dracula, male vampires have been seducing female targets. Twilight is slightly different because Edward holds off for a bit, but at heart, vampires are sex symbols. They live eternally, as will your DNA if you have children. They are "supposed" to be resisted and wrong, though you chances of actually resisting them involve heavy reliance on the church (crosses) or smelling bad (garlic). Otherwise, there is something seductive about their power.
Werewolves are about fear of masculinity/puberty/aggression. Any man who's been through puberty knows what it's like to be a werewolf. One day, you're just hanging out with your friends, playing, the next thing you know, you're hairy and angry and attacking people for no reason. What makes a werewolf scary is their seemingly uncontrollable transition from reasonable man to physically powerful, enraged, violent attacker. Now, I think that mirrors fears about male aggression, about the uncontrollable violence men have unleashed throughout history. It's what makes Twilight werewolves so annoying, especially the casting of Taylor Lautner. Taylor is a good looking dude, but he has no body hair. Seriously, a hairless werewolf? He's a feminized version of the werewolf. The Twilight werewolves take away the things that make werewolves interesting and powerful stock characters.
Finally, zombies. We've seen an explosion of zombies in the popular culture recently. It used to be a couple of monster movies from the 30's and Night of the Living Dead. Know you've got World War Z, Zombie Survival Guide, 28 Day, 28 Days later, the Walking Dead and many more. I think it reflects our fear of the other, especially the political other. Zombies are unthinking hordes of being, unable to be reasoned with, wanting to eat (destroy) your brains (your beliefs, thought process, etc). It's basically the expressed fear that the other side politically is unreasonable, always wrong and out to destroy your reasoning or beliefs. And as our political climate gets more dysfunctional and antagonistic and less able to function (basically the last 30 years), we see an explosion of zombies in popular culture.
These are the fears or anxieties I see our culture dealing with through these stock characters and genres. Let me know if you have other examples or ideas in the comments.
Interesting to consider that our current conception of zombies may have come from a vampire story. I would venture to say that the progenitor of modern zombie fiction is Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which (Wikipedia tells me) drew inspiration from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend.
ReplyDeleteSays Romero, "I thought I Am Legend was about revolution. I said if you're going to do something about revolution, you should start at the beginning. I mean, Richard starts his book with one man left; everybody in the world has become a vampire. I said we got to start at the beginning and tweak it up a little bit. I couldn't use vampires because he did, so I wanted something that would be an earth-shaking change. Something that was forever, something that was really at the heart of it. I said, so what if the dead stop staying dead? ... And the stories are about how people respond or fail to respond to this. That's really all [the zombies] ever represented to me. In Richard's book, in the original I Am Legend, that's what I thought that book was about. There's this global change and there's one guy holding out saying, wait a minute, I'm still a human. He's wrong. Go ahead. Join them. You'll live forever! In a certain sense he's wrong but on the other hand, you've got to respect him for taking that position."
Also makes me wonder what happened to allow us to so easily demonize "the other" without implicating ourselves. Turning into a vampire, as Romero indicates, is alluring. Turning into a zombie is not. When did it become so easy to say no to evil?
The Twilight phenomenon may well be the other side of this coin. Pretty is good. Ugly is bad. Or: everybody is a good guy, but some good guys are just misunderstood. Maybe that's the link: "the other" is only truly bad when we can't understand it.
This may be a property of the emasculation of monsters in our zeitgeist: they are weak because they are too easily understood, too easily empathized with, too pretty to go unforgiven.
My favorite example of this in popular culture was the depiction of Loki in the recent Thor movie (incidentally, I think superheroes and comic books are experiencing similarly unprecedented popular approval that merits some mention in this discussion). Loki is given all kinds of emotional troubles and daddy issues to motivate his evildoings, neglecting the fact that he is a GOD OF MISCHIEF. What more motiviation does he need? I level at modern-day monsters the same criticism that Phil Coulson lays on Loki in The Avengers: you lack conviction.
If we want to talk scary, show me somebody who has done a costs-to-benefits analysis, and decided to be a dick. And do it well. That guy scares the shit out of me.
Sorry for the ramble!
I wonder if there isn't more of a 'choice' happening here than you allude to Nathan. Is it possible that we are eagerly embracing these fantastical notions not out of some need for the comforting embrace of a spiritual mythology, but out of a willing rebuttal of the world of our fathers?
ReplyDeleteI, for one, would like to think that in celebrating the ideals of some of the better fantasies of the time we are making a statement on the kind of world we would like to build.
That, or we are just a bunch of fucking nerds.