Gratuitous Hero Torture

[malsperanza]

Pulled upthread from a conversation with the Black Dog that is buried somewhere back in May or June or something. (Hope you don't mind, Black Dog... it's more manageable this way, no?)

Ack! I meant to put this behind a cut tag! Sorry folks!
I said: "I define genre fiction (to the extent that I think the category exists at all) as fiction that fulfils a very precise desire of the reader."

From BD:

Why precise? I was thinking about this on one of our old threads -- would it be reasonable to say that "genre" fiction is fundamentally about wish-fulfillment, while "serious" fiction is about deepening one's sense of awe at the world as it actually is, however resistant to our fantasies?

I like your distinctions, and will think about them some more. I remember your idea about deepening one's awe--it is very resonant, very moving.

Meanwhile, I said "precise" because I think *all* fiction is about wish-fulfillment, so the question is, what wish is being fulfilled? In serious fiction (as good a name as any for that Other Stuff) one may not even know what wish one desires to have fulfilled. One may enter the book in hopes of having one's inchoate desires identified.

But genre fiction is marked by the clarity and concreteness of its promises. It will fulfil Wish A, not Wish B. It is "precise" in that it is defined by some extremely rigid formulas--starting with their sharply gender-specific nature. A bodice-ripper is written for a precisely defined audience of women, and fulfils a specific and precisely delineated wish or fantasy. Some examples drawn from the bodice ripper genre include:

-If there is a pregnancy, there must be a child, not an abortion.
-If there is a child, there will be a marriage.
-If there is a child, the child will belong to the heroine, and will be loved by the hero, whether they are blood relations or not.
-If the hero is of the wicked and masterful sort, he will learn moral rectitude and love simultaneously, through his experience of the heroine.
-If there is a rival, he will turn out to be corrupt, a wolf in sheep's clothing.
-The ending is happy.
-The ending consists of the hero and heroine together.
-At the end, mysteries are solved, loose ends are tied (the ending is complete).
-The ending is clear.
-There are no empty tombs in the ending.

Etc. So precise are these rules and formulas that they exist in documents in publishers' offices. The reader's expectations are precise, and their fulfilment is obligatory. Author and reader are equally bound by them and the author's creative license is strictly circumscribed.

At best that's probably only a first approximation -- it makes the Iliad serious literature and the Odyssey genre, for instance.

Because the Odyssey has magic in it? I dunno... I think maybe awe at the world as it is isn't so opposed to wish fulfillment (fantasy) as you propose. Maybe this is not a binary opposition, but a pair of experiences that fluctuate within any book, or any reading, depending perhaps on the humor and expectations of the reader.

Still, the element of escapism seems fundamental.

Fundamental, I would argue, to all fiction. We enter the world of the book and leave behind our reality. Even in the most harshly realist novel (oh, say, Kozinski or--ugh--Saul Bellow or Updike) we escape. One could say that reading fiction is a kind of temporary schizophrenia, in which we are in a fugue state.


But I wonder about "precision," -- surely there can be a process of self-discovery in genre fiction

Perhaps, but if so, it happens in spite of the book and through the peculiarities of the reader--an instability in her expectations, maybe, or some idiosyncracy in her reading. There is always room for that, but I picture the book being very surprised when it happens.

Genre fiction is ... I think the word I want is "prescriptive." OTOH, I am fairly skeptical of these categories, at best. War and Peace is by most definitions a genre romance for the first 2/3, interrupted by chunks of a genre shoot-'em-up war novel. Only in the last section does it take a wierd left turn away from its own genres, mainly because Tolstoy kills off the romantic hero (for which I shall never forgive him).

GHT seems to push this definition to interesting places.[ snip examples ].

GHT may stimulate all the responses you name. And there's another one, a doozy, our old Aristotelian friend Pity-and-Fear: pity for his suffering, fear for him because we identify with him and fear for ourselves. In short, Aristotle was being a lot more Freudian than he realized (and vice versa of course): the catharsis, the provocation of pity and fear in the viewer/reader, is a quintessentially voyeuristic event.

You're entirely right that our relationship to the hero is an ambivalent mixture of envy, admiration, aspiration, love, resentment, and other anxieties. Hero torture stimulates all these responses in us. Gratuitous hero torture does something more: It sets the hero apart from us (we could never sustain so much suffering), and at the same time it tears away the veil that hides him from us. (Ah, look! he suffers a longing for love, just as we do!)

The debasement of the hero both repels us and fascinates us; we are repelled by its cruelty and by our awareness of our own voyeuristic fascination with it. And we are fascinated by the power of the cruelty and the power of the hero to resist and survive it.

I think, btw, that although the language I've been using is that of physical torture (Sadean or Christian extremities of physical debasement), the hero torture that is most potent, has most juju, is the emotional punishment. Odysseus can bear any physical pain, but to lose Penelope would destroy him, and the mere thought of losing her is anguish. My memory of Brideshead is not good, but isn't this a bit what Charles suffers? He loses too much--he loses everything: art, friendship, love, the house, the family. It is too cruel, too relentless, too complete. But without it he would not really be much of a hero, because he's too weak, too equivocal, too willing to compromise. (Am I remembering wrong? Will have to read the thing...)

Similarly, in Mark'sJesus hero story, Jesus suffers the physical tortures of crucifixion, but he can bear that. What really hurts him beyond bearing is the anguish of abandonment, being left alone. (More on this later.)

All of these could be dimensions of voyeurism, I guess, which seems somehow to be about an assertion of psychological power by those who refuse or are incapable of action.

Here's what Laura Mulvey says about fetishism, voyeurism, and fiction (which she calls story) in the essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (bearing in mind that it was written in 1973 and is dated):

"Fetishistic scopophilia [pleasure in looking] builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself. [...] Voyeurism, on the contrary, has associations with sadism: pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt [...], asserting control and subjugating the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness. This sadistic side fits in well with narrative. Sadism demands a story, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a beginning and an end. Fetishistic scopophilia, on the other hand, can exist outside linear time as the erotic instinct focused on the look alone. These contradictions and ambiguities can be illustrated more simply by using works of Hitchcock..." ( in Visual and Other Pleasures, Indiana U. Press, 1989. pp 21-22; she then does an analysis of voyeurism in "Rear Window").

You also raise the interesting possibility that GHT can be a sort of bastard form of "serious" literature, in that the wish-fulfillment is incomplete, because the hero is permanently marked or broken. "Bastard" because it doesn't really reject the premise of wish-fulfillment, it just sort of fetishizes one would-be hero's failure. What exactly, do you think, the reader is getting off on, here?

The $64k question. What does the reader get out of the story of the torture of Jesus? Catharsis? Voyeuristic glee? Relief? Redemption? Renewed faith? Repelled disgust?

One possible answer is that the reader is fetishizing his own anguish, or being a voyeur of his own suffering. That is, when the story ends without the triumph of the hero, the reader either experiences a pleasurable catharsis, and is relieved and purged and so on, or suffers a pang of frustration and unsatisfied longing, if the catharsis is not achieved. (Gah, no matter how I try to phrase this, catharsis sounds like a pseudonym for orgasm. I wonder if Aristotle intended any of that..., nope, it's probably just me.) If the latter, then the reader suffers along with the hero, though for slightly divergent reasons.

And so we suffer and watch ourselves suffering, and watch the hero suffering, and watch ourselves watching the hero. And so on. Watching, suffering, pleasure, and story-telling are all tangled up in the person of the hero. The more he gets hit, the more we believe in him.

I guess my own favorite type of literary encounter (that's an odd way to put it) is a work that starts with desire but that educates and corrects it in a serious way.

Yes, indeed. The trick, as you imply, is that education and correction must not be at the expense of desire or a negation of desire, but its fulfilment. Something the later Christian interpreters of the NT tended not to grasp very well. (With the notable exception of John Donne: http://search.able2know.com/About/3676.html : "Take me to you, imprison me, for I, / Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.")

I guess that was obvious in my rambling about Brideshead. I love genre as much as anybody as a recreation; it's like diner food, and it's often exhilarating to just give in and fully inhabit the stereotypical emotions and situations. But I get queasy spending too much time in an atmosphere where fantasy cushions the healthy, abrasive blows of actual living. (Although intellecualizing genre works is an extremely fun thing to do, as is intellectualizing anything!)

Yep.

More after a break for these important messages.

From BD part 2:

[snipping Houseman, because I agree and have nothing to add] Which brings us to Jesus! Don't worry, I'm a good agnostic, not handing out any fliers today, but I'm as fascinated by the NT as I am by a lot of other literature. Because of course the NT from one perspective is the ultimate wish fulfillment -- "you picked a fight with the wrong motherfucker, boy . . ." But not all of it.

Much though I dislike Christian faith and all the guff that goes with it, the Jesus story is a textbook example of Gratuitous Hero Torture, and is therefore very handy. And though the NT has a fair amount of genre fiction in it (cf. definition above, especially re precise expectations on the part of the reader), it is also a prime demonstration of why the voyeuristic, sadean hero narrative is so very powerful. Whatever it's mechanism may turn out to be, it resonates with unmatchable power for readers. There is nothing more potent. As we see, indeed, in the gratuitous, relentless torture of Harry Potter--especially in vol. 5, where he loses everything he has gained and is punished physically and emotionally over and over. He loses Sirius, he loses his respect for Dumbledore, he loses his innocence once and for all. Brutal stuff; too brutal, not at all cathartic.

Some day, if you're very bad, I will ramble on about Mark

1. I paid my taxes 3 months late.
2. I have been late to work every day for a month.
3. I pushed the cat off the bed really hard this morning.
4. I haven't been to the gym all summer.
5. I've racked up my credit card horribly, buying stupid stuff.
6. I have not only been watching "La Femme Nikita" reruns beyond all reason lately, but I've persuaded three friends to do so as well. (Dante puts people like me into the 10th bolgia: false counsellors; veryverybad)
7. Ate Ben & Jerry coffee buzz buzz ice cream for dinner last night.
8. Took the name of the lord in vain, worshipped false idols, and coveted my neighbor's Miata all in one sentence last Sunday (<--sabbath).

Will that do?

who I think is a Master of the Void, worthy of Beckett, while the other gospellers are plump, cheerful sectarians. A typical Markan touch: in the "why have you forsaken me" scene, J is of course quoting a psalm but the onlookers think he's calling on Elijah. The spectators don't even recognize their own classic literature, don't understand the moment or the mission at all -- the sense of futility and incomprehension go all the way down. And of course in the original version of Mark there's no resurrection, just an ambiguous empty tomb. He really asks, in a way the others don't, "If the messiah came [and the messiah here stands for all sorts of narcissistic closure, wish fulfillment, perfect redemption of the burdens of the world, yadayada] how would you know? What would it mean? What would change?" And his answer is to leave everything radically in doubt, to throw the spiritual seeker back on themselves. Although I admit, I may be alone in this reading. :)

It sounds rather Gnostic, from what little I recall of the Gnostic Gospels: no certainty, no bodily resurrection, only the possibility, the pure idea, the voice crying in the wilderness: beware, be ready; the word made not flesh, but spirit.

But it's a brilliant example of the refusal of wish-fulfillment right in the canonical heart of the biggest wish-fulfillment story of all time.

I can't bear to snip any of this. All I can say is: Please sir, I want some more.

ETA: The conversation begins in an LJ entry on May 5.

Comments

timely or what

[conversant.livejournal.com]

I have to bookmark this because it looks wonderful, though I've only read the first several paragraphs and now must go to work, but I'm in the middle of writing an 'exploring the rules of the genre' fic called 'Wishfulfilment' so how could this be any more perfectly timed. And then, in any case, I'm dying to know what conclusions the two of you end up with on this topic.

Thank you for posting this.

Re: timely or what

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Well by all means jump in anytime!

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Aha! You're taking me almost seriously, which means I actually have to think about my reply, rather than just free associating it and winging it. Very well, (strokes chin), let's see what we can do:

A reasonably adequate response to this would maybe start by looking at the proposed definition of genre fiction, here, especially in relation to the distinction between "genre" and "serious" fiction and the precise role of wish-fulfillment in each.

I think *all* fiction is about wish-fulfillment, so the question is, what wish is being fulfilled? . . .

[Escapism is . . . ] Fundamental, I would argue, to all fiction. We enter the world of the book and leave behind our reality. Even in the most harshly realist novel (oh, say, Kozinski or--ugh--Saul Bellow or Updike) we escape.

The trick, as you imply, is that education and correction must not be at the expense of desire or a negation of desire, but its fulfilment.

All right then, these are three statements that I find problematic, and that perhaps are at the crux of . . . I won't say our possible disagreement, but rather of the things I need to clarify to be more satisfied with my own position in this debate.

I'm uncomfortable with the general levelling tendency of the statement that all fiction is about wish-fulfillment. I think that may be true in a very abstract sense -- that we turn to fiction to push at the boundaries of our own limited knowledge of the world or at the over-familiar landscape of our own emotional terrain, and that the imaginiative process of inhabiting another character's head has an element of wishfulness to it. But how does that differ from the degree of "wish" or desire in any purposive act, in any adventure? And I think by overgeneralizing the applicability of wish-fulfillment to all reading, we lose sight of some more salient distinctions about the nature of the wishes involved -- the most important of which, I would suggest, have to do with whether we are seeking safety, reassurance, confirmation of our sentiments on the one hand, or disorientation, fundamental challenge, alteration of ourselves, on the other. And I count the most extravagant romantic or sensational adventure in the former category, so long as it is contained by the conventions of certain familiar genres and a fundamentally nonthreatening sense of closure is promised in the end.

And making that distinction forces me to be somewhat wary of the third quote above -- that any "correction or education" that results from the experience of reading must not be "at the expense of desire, but rather its fulfillment." I would agree with this if it allowed for the transformation or substitution of a different, "better" desire for the one the reader started out with. But that amendment again makes the rule overly general -- the interesting distinction, I would contend, is between experiences that never take you out of the round of familiar or conventionally-imagined desires, and those that do. Finally, I suppose you could say that wishes are precise in that the reader precisely is looking for an action-adventure story, or a romance, or a good scare, or a satisfying detective puzzle, but I think that’s at a different level from the kind of wish-fulfillment that is going to happen, or is going to be transcended, within the story.

We could apply this again to the Iliad/Odyssey case, because I think you initially rejected my argument there, and I'd like to take another stab at it. The reason I said the Odyssey would be "genre" by my "wish-fulfillment" definition is that we ultimately get a feeling of safety and closure from the work -- all of the wishes evoked by the situation, for escape, triumph over adversity, homecoming and resolution -- are put through their paces methodically, and satisfied in the end. Odysseus has a goal, and he never loses sight of it (what's ten years with a minx like Circe?), he overcomes obstacles to achieve it, and in the end he gets pretty much what he wants and what we're conditioned to want for him.

[continued . . . ]

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

[. . . continued]

In the Iliad, by contrast, Achilles is radically transformed by his experiences, so that his desires at the end are not commensurate with his desires at the beginning. He starts out a creature of "wrath," and this perhaps reaches its peak in the terrible nihilism of his speech about death to Lycaon, and in his sadistic treatment of Hector's body. But at the very end, he seems oddly humbled, is willing to recognize a common humanity with Priam and to treat him with courtesy and empathy. He's experienced perfect fulfillment of his desire to overcome Hector, and perfect loss in the death of Patroclus, and it is as though the initial categories of his "desire" have just been emptied out, transcended, are no longer relevant to him.

I'm not saying that genre fiction is never about transformation -- but the transformation usually takes place within approved forms, such as coming-of-age, or marriage. I guess I am saying, though, that genre tends to refuse to surprise the reader, refuses the idea of a transformation that is radical or unexpected to the reader. And in this sense I think it is bounded by wish-fulfillment in a way that "serious" literature tries to get beyond.

I admit I’m not totally satisfied with this definition, I just think you haven't exploded it by saying that everything is "wish fulfillment." It may be that the distinction I'm making is better expressed, say in Aristotelian terms, by the comedy-tragedy distinction. Hold that thought for later.

Now, your alternative formulation is that genre is distinguished by the "precision" of the wish fulfillment involved. And you cite some compelling evidence for that, in the Rules for Romance that you itemize. Those rules certainly embody a hypothetical reader's precise "wishes" for the outcome of the story. But I wonder if this isn't an artifact of the nature of romance, rather than of genre literature in general. You could probably come up with an analogous list for action-adventure literature, where wishes are also fairly explicit and precise. But my own favorite genre reading is mystery/detective fiction. And I would contrast, for example, the Detection Club's rules for Murder Mysteries, as an example of an equally strict set of genre regulations – with the interesting difference that they are more about method and less about outcomes, so that they are less directly related to anyone’s "precise" wishes. Instead, I think that what both the Rules of Romance and Rules of Detection have in common is that they lay out a fairly structured game, whatever the specific content of the game, and the genre reader then has very precise expectations about how the game is going to be played – which may or may not precisely determine the outcome and therefore may or may not be described as “precise wishes.” I would say, though, that these expectations are bounded by a less precise, more general wish for the familiar, the reassuring, and all those other things I suggested above were characteristic of genre fiction, and which are embodied, in a sense, in the comforting familiarity of the rules of the game.

So, at this point I guess I feel that "wish-fulfillment" in the general sense -- in the sense of an overall attitude that seeks predictable gratifications, rather than in the sense of focused inquiries into specific types of desire -- plus a certain expectation of regularity, predictability, rule-boundedness -- are what define "genre" literature in the most general terms.

[continued . . . ]

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

[. . . continued]

And I'm also starting to think about Venn Diagrams now :) which makes me worry that my argument is becoming a definitional exercise. So I guess I would say again, just to clarify where I'm coming from, that I'm resisting a definition that levels the distinction between reassurance and disturbance, between remaining in the circle of familiar expectations and trying to break outside them between -- in the most radical terms -- psychological stasis and growth. Because that kind of distinction is what I find most important in maintaining a separation between “genre” and “serious” literature.

it is also a prime demonstration of why the voyeuristic, sadean hero narrative is so very powerful. Whatever it's mechanism may turn out to be, it resonates with unmatchable power for readers.

All right, this brings us refreshingly back to the main point, and I apologize for my definitional digressions. Maybe the proper function of distinguishing "genre" and "serious" literature here is to explore the ways that GHT can be "bent" in either a "genre" or "serious" direction -- or maybe whether the ultimate treatment of the GHT theme in a particular case is comic, tragic, or some melodramatic bastardization of the two. It's the difference, again, between Mel Gibson's Jesus and Mark's. Are we to be tourists in a strange, extreme place, or are we to be actually tranformed by the story?

You suggest at one point that GHT may work on the reader much like Aristotelian tragedy -- by evoking pity and terror it works a catharsis in the reader. But I think a major characteristic of the kind of tragedy Aristotle was commenting on was that it was a story that offered no reassurance, no consolation. In Greek tragedy (maybe mostly so in Euripides, but didn’t A call him “the most tragic”?) the sense of suffering and loss “goes all the way down," there was no satisfying closure to it, and that is what made it such an extraordinary thing for the viewer to try and assimilate emotionally. GHT as genre-fiction seems, to me, to tease the reader with this dark vision but then retreat to something more reassuring, which is a very different game to play with the reader.

Hmmmm. It's 4 am and I think I've hit some decent points but I also think I've started to ramble. So, accept this as a down payment on a proper reply, and I may try some more, tomorrow. Or we could bring it down to cases when we get around to Brideshead, which to me bends a mild form of GHT in a "serious" rather than "genre" direction, in part by playing seductively with "genre" expectations and then undermining them. In any case, it's mad fun discussing this stuff with you, and thank you for encouraging me to babble on, though you do so at the risk of your patience! :)

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

The problem with Response Second Version is that I am not sure I am responding to your arguments so much as using them as jumping-off points for another layer of my own thesis. As such, they become straw men; I quote you and then focus on one bit of what you say in order to chase after other rabbits of my own. It's bugging me. Have written another 6 yards on the tortured hero, desire, catharsis, genre, and points east; will not delete it, but will read it tomorrow and see if it still has a, er, hectoring tone.

Ha. It's Thursday; I always end the day on Thursdays with an atrocious pun.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I quote you and then focus on one bit of what you say in order to chase after other rabbits of my own. It's bugging me.

I think that is one perfectly legitimate use of this kind of conversation, and I am not sure I am entirely innocent of doing that, either. I guess I don't feel that my own thesis is so fully formed, or so compellingly right, that the main issue would be winning or losing an argument. I was even thinking of doing a supplemental comment about how the process of articulating one's hunches and discomforts can lead to the evolution of one's own position even in advance of receiving a strong reply. For example, I think the very process of articulating my concern about reserving space for "serious" literature has created a psychological comfort zone that makes me feel more at ease with and receptive to your definition of genre. However, I decided to spare you the spectacle of me arguing with myself on your journal. :)

So by all means, whatever this particular grain of sand induces you to produce would be of interest, whether it is an argument, an elaboration/reaffirmation of your own views, or even just a list of assumptions we are making that are incompatable. It's all grist for thinking!

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Well, this is definitely true. I was asked once, in college, why I was always arguing with the professors. I remember being taken aback; the answer of course was a) I like the sound of my own voice; and b) it's how I figure things out.

Well, that's fine, and I will proceed, then. But the fact is that you raise really good questions that are interesting to me, and if I could stop wandering off into the Malsperanza Alternate Litcrit Universe, I would like to follow up on them with some sense of focus.

This kind of conversation is a challenge, because it falls halfway between a spoken conversation and a series of essays or set pieces (half-formulated, off-the-cuff, spontaneous essays, at that). Its hybrid nature is also what makes it such fun and so unique. But one tends to write long and read short onscreen, and there's a tendency also to splinter every conversation into a million secondary lines of thought. Last night I gave myself a mild case of Tourette's syndrome, trying to sort them all out. I kept losing track.

I have a bit of text (which maybe I will post separately) on one problem which arises in such conversations as these: the desire to resolve the core question by recourse to ever-finer distinctions and narrower definitions of the key terms ("hero," "desire," "genre," "gratuitous," "ending," etc.). I love wrestling with definitions and gnawing at them, and have no intention of stopping, but I think we sometimes fall into a defining mode as a means of concretizing ideas that are essentially not concrete, but malleable, fluid, impressionistic, dependent on context.

The mega-Response will arrive tonight or over the weekend. Must at least pretend to do some work now...

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

We are having a meta-conversation about conversing! Yay! That is something truly special. I could never have done it without the little people.

I agree with the thrust of what you say, and I think rather we are in the stage of discussion in which ideas are poured out of the basket and spread around with a large implement prior to any actual processing taking place. And I agree that the temptation to focus on an actual debate needs to be recognized and held in check, much as one resists the temptation to eat all of the salad bar. Because you are talking about A and that is cool but I think B is cool too so here's how they differ and wow, that makes me think of C as well. So riffing and free associating are entirely appropriate until we sort of have all the crayons out of the box and can pick and choose which to color with. Do I mix metaphors? Very well then. I contain multitudes!

I think in the end we are going to end up talking about something like why we love genre stuff, what it does for us, and what it doesn't do that is also worth doing. And I suspect this will involve a veritable Fox's martyrology of bloody, broken, bowed, and otherwise discomfited heroes, gratuitous and otherwise, arranged tastefully in lifelike poses to illuminate our manuscripts. And we will bounce with pleasure at particular books that either are genre works or pretend to be for a little while in order to lure the reader astray and bop him on the head. At which point I will probably mention Plato and pandering versus philosophy, at which point you will throw your head back and laugh like whatsisname. It will be great fun. Or we will do something else.

I am looking forward to reading the mega-Response. Or even a micro response if your wishes and desires lead you that way. Let it never be a chore.