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Feb. 3rd, 2004 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaSome notes on a couple of withheld heroes. This doesn't really pinpoint *how* the withholding works, which I have yet to figure out. What, specifically, is withheld? The interior monologues that explain certain decisions and actions? The motives? What the hero feels about the events? What changes and revelations the hero undergoes that may parallel the experience of the reader? Something like that.
Hamlet as Withheld Hero
I salute both![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sistermagpie and black_dog: you have given me a couple of spectacular insights into Hamlet. I marvel at how easily you tossed them off, too.
Black Dog: "On your list of withheld heroes [...] Odysseus, because of the significance of his cunning and deception in contrast to the main themes of both the epics -- as a costly antidote to passion and a challenge to fate in the Iliad; as a tool of power and paradoxical defense of one's true nature in the Odyssey. Hamlet, who, it just occurs to me, evolves precisely from Telemachus to Odysseus but fails against the suitors."
I think we should just pause and absorb that for a while. Because, Yes.
"In both of these cases, solving the mystery of the hero is by no means the key to complete erotic possession of the text; by contrast, grasping the hero's mystery seems to open up a sense of even greater mystery, of intractable moral and existential knots in the world depicted by the work as a whole -- figuring out what makes these characters tick is part of figuring out why the work as a whole resists erotic closure and leaves us with a sense of awe and anxiety."
This is a beautiful description of Hamlet as Withheld Hero--both why we may consider him as Withheld and how his Withheldness functions to entangle us in the moral issues of the play. Let's add to it this comment of the Magpie's:
"I wonder if part of the struggle of writing one or the other is just as basic as knowing why they withold or don't. Or perhaps a better way of thinking of it is asking whether or not they have things to tell people. An open character, it seems to me, is very much driven by the need for personal understanding. The withheld hero may have a horror of being understood on some level. Hamlet, for instance, longs for understanding of the world himself, and may think that the audience's understanding of him almost interferes with that."
Both comments focus on Hamlet's relationship to the world--not his relationship to us or to other characters in the play. I think this pinpoints a key idea: that the purpose of withholding the hero from us is not (or not only) to seduce us--draw us ever further into an entanglement in the web of the play--but also to frame him in the largest possible setting: the world. Because we cannot fully grasp Hamlet, because his mystery is never fully exposed or resolved for us, he remains accessible only in the immense context of the realm of absolutes: the World Itself.
I think this is very fruitful. Hamlet is mysterious and withheld, despite offering us six--seven?--soliloquies or interior speeches that invite us inside the depths of his mind, heart, and soul. Even with so much direct first-person exposition of surpassing eloquence, articulateness, and insight, we cannot penetrate his obscurity or puzzle out his enigma. (Man in Black! Man in Black!) In the end, we are back at the beginning, seeing Hamlet as he sees himself: a black quintessence of dust in the black night, set against a backdrop of burning, sterile stars.
Batman as Withheld Hero
I love Batman, despite the fact that--poor fellow--he is a mere creature of genre, a debased, crude paper cutout of a hero. (It helps a little to work with the version of Batman reinvented by Frank Miller in the "Dark Knight" graphic novels, which are at least well-written and drawn.) But I think it's useful to examine the Withheld Hero in this very simplified form.
Black Dog says, "In genre stories, mystery is created by ‘mere withholding,' " and I cannot deny it. The quality of the withholding is poorer, along with all the other elements of the book, from story to themes to characterizations to underlying ethics. But is it true that "in the main literary tradition the puzzles and obstacles are more profound"? Surely there is no more profound issue than the fate of the free world, the life and death of innocent people, the battle of good versus evil, and vengeance. Batman, like all the best heroes, is engaged in that epic battle. And like some other really brilliant heroes (Achilles, for example) he is himself morally and ethically problematic, deeply conflicted--and we with him. Long before Anne Rice had her One Good Idea, Batman was crossing over between the world of the vampire and the world of the action hero. Long before Rowling imagined Sirius as a dark and brooding Animagus, we had the dark and brooding night-flying Batman. Where Superman's cape is merely silly, Batman's cape is a bat's wings, part of his animal metamorphosis (Bird in Black! Bird in Black!) His mask (ah, how I love masks) hides his human identity but reveals his animal nature (it has little bat-ears, no?). Batman is a another of those heroes who descends easily and readily into the Cave of the Underworld--world of night, of the dead, of criminal secrets.
He has access to the underworld via his own traumatic past. It's no small thing that his parents were murdered before his eyes. He has dedicated himself to revenge--an immoral choice--and disguised his goal even from himself by pretending that his purpose is to fight for justice and prevent crimes.
I think *that's* his dirty secret, rather than his secret identity as Boring Bruce Wayne, or his secret homosexual yearnings for the young Boy Wonder. His dark secret is that he is *not* moral, not a good guy, not on the side of "truth, justice, and the American way." Unless the American way is to carry out sordid acts of vigilantism performed in the shadows, in shame and secrecy, and with the basest of underlying personal motives.
So Black Dog, I can't agree that if "Batman['s] grubby little secret [...] ever were revealed [...] we wouldn't be left with any particular feeling of awe at the revelation of character or fate." Batman, like Orestes, has the Erinyes on his tail. He hopes he is Nemesis; he fears he is Nemesis's cold meat.
Next up: Aragorn.
Hamlet as Withheld Hero
I salute both
sistermagpie and black_dog: you have given me a couple of spectacular insights into Hamlet. I marvel at how easily you tossed them off, too. Black Dog: "On your list of withheld heroes [...] Odysseus, because of the significance of his cunning and deception in contrast to the main themes of both the epics -- as a costly antidote to passion and a challenge to fate in the Iliad; as a tool of power and paradoxical defense of one's true nature in the Odyssey. Hamlet, who, it just occurs to me, evolves precisely from Telemachus to Odysseus but fails against the suitors."
I think we should just pause and absorb that for a while. Because, Yes.
"In both of these cases, solving the mystery of the hero is by no means the key to complete erotic possession of the text; by contrast, grasping the hero's mystery seems to open up a sense of even greater mystery, of intractable moral and existential knots in the world depicted by the work as a whole -- figuring out what makes these characters tick is part of figuring out why the work as a whole resists erotic closure and leaves us with a sense of awe and anxiety."
This is a beautiful description of Hamlet as Withheld Hero--both why we may consider him as Withheld and how his Withheldness functions to entangle us in the moral issues of the play. Let's add to it this comment of the Magpie's:
"I wonder if part of the struggle of writing one or the other is just as basic as knowing why they withold or don't. Or perhaps a better way of thinking of it is asking whether or not they have things to tell people. An open character, it seems to me, is very much driven by the need for personal understanding. The withheld hero may have a horror of being understood on some level. Hamlet, for instance, longs for understanding of the world himself, and may think that the audience's understanding of him almost interferes with that."
Both comments focus on Hamlet's relationship to the world--not his relationship to us or to other characters in the play. I think this pinpoints a key idea: that the purpose of withholding the hero from us is not (or not only) to seduce us--draw us ever further into an entanglement in the web of the play--but also to frame him in the largest possible setting: the world. Because we cannot fully grasp Hamlet, because his mystery is never fully exposed or resolved for us, he remains accessible only in the immense context of the realm of absolutes: the World Itself.
I think this is very fruitful. Hamlet is mysterious and withheld, despite offering us six--seven?--soliloquies or interior speeches that invite us inside the depths of his mind, heart, and soul. Even with so much direct first-person exposition of surpassing eloquence, articulateness, and insight, we cannot penetrate his obscurity or puzzle out his enigma. (Man in Black! Man in Black!) In the end, we are back at the beginning, seeing Hamlet as he sees himself: a black quintessence of dust in the black night, set against a backdrop of burning, sterile stars.
Batman as Withheld Hero
I love Batman, despite the fact that--poor fellow--he is a mere creature of genre, a debased, crude paper cutout of a hero. (It helps a little to work with the version of Batman reinvented by Frank Miller in the "Dark Knight" graphic novels, which are at least well-written and drawn.) But I think it's useful to examine the Withheld Hero in this very simplified form.
Black Dog says, "In genre stories, mystery is created by ‘mere withholding,' " and I cannot deny it. The quality of the withholding is poorer, along with all the other elements of the book, from story to themes to characterizations to underlying ethics. But is it true that "in the main literary tradition the puzzles and obstacles are more profound"? Surely there is no more profound issue than the fate of the free world, the life and death of innocent people, the battle of good versus evil, and vengeance. Batman, like all the best heroes, is engaged in that epic battle. And like some other really brilliant heroes (Achilles, for example) he is himself morally and ethically problematic, deeply conflicted--and we with him. Long before Anne Rice had her One Good Idea, Batman was crossing over between the world of the vampire and the world of the action hero. Long before Rowling imagined Sirius as a dark and brooding Animagus, we had the dark and brooding night-flying Batman. Where Superman's cape is merely silly, Batman's cape is a bat's wings, part of his animal metamorphosis (Bird in Black! Bird in Black!) His mask (ah, how I love masks) hides his human identity but reveals his animal nature (it has little bat-ears, no?). Batman is a another of those heroes who descends easily and readily into the Cave of the Underworld--world of night, of the dead, of criminal secrets.
He has access to the underworld via his own traumatic past. It's no small thing that his parents were murdered before his eyes. He has dedicated himself to revenge--an immoral choice--and disguised his goal even from himself by pretending that his purpose is to fight for justice and prevent crimes.
I think *that's* his dirty secret, rather than his secret identity as Boring Bruce Wayne, or his secret homosexual yearnings for the young Boy Wonder. His dark secret is that he is *not* moral, not a good guy, not on the side of "truth, justice, and the American way." Unless the American way is to carry out sordid acts of vigilantism performed in the shadows, in shame and secrecy, and with the basest of underlying personal motives.
So Black Dog, I can't agree that if "Batman['s] grubby little secret [...] ever were revealed [...] we wouldn't be left with any particular feeling of awe at the revelation of character or fate." Batman, like Orestes, has the Erinyes on his tail. He hopes he is Nemesis; he fears he is Nemesis's cold meat.
Next up: Aragorn.
