From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #90 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Tuesday, April 25 2000 Volume 02 : Number 090 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Marvel [GHighPine@aol.com] HANNIBAL [Kathleen Woodbury ] horror, etc [Kathleen Woodbury ] Re: horror, etc [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: horror, etc ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: horror, etc [Todd Huff ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 11:20:36 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: Marvel I don't have time to write much or comment on everything that's been posted lately ... just wanted (esp since you depend on my Marvel comments as your main source re the Marvel influence) to clarify... I don't think "reality-based" is the most appropriate way to describe teh Marvel influence. It =is= comic book fantasy, after all. It doesn't try to be grittily realistic like, say, some cop shows. The influence can be capsulized (though I can't think of a single adjective in a hurry) as being about making these heroes ordinary people and introducing their problems =outside= of fighting supervillains -- family, school, making a living, other mundane concerns -- into the story. Prior to that -- in DC comics, for example -- the only problems the heroes dealth with were the world-saving problems; they didn't share the same mundane problems that the rest of us have. In recent posts you have been trying to puzzle over the fact that Buffy's origins are so ordinary -- nothing of virgin birth, miracles, siring by gods, etc., is hinted around Buffy. And I really think that saying "since we don't know Kendra's or Faith's parentage, it =could= have been miraculous" is stretching way too far. The ordinariness of the Slayers' origins could precisely be considered to be traceable to Marvel's influence -- as can the fact that Buffy has to deal with mundane concerns and the fact that her hero role sometimes interferes with her mundane life. So when you are writing essays about the roots of BUFFY, these are the aspects that can be directly traceable to the Marvel influence. Sorry no time to write more or think more about this post, but I figured you might be writing stuff right now and just wanted to clarify. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 02:52:45 -0600 From: Kathleen Woodbury Subject: HANNIBAL At 04:45 AM 4/23/00 -0400, meredith wrote: >I haven't read _Hannibal_ yet, though - a friend told me she'd had her >first nightmare by page 52. That was enough warning for me. I wouldn't recommend HANNIBAL if you have any doubts at all. Basically, what HANNIBAL is about, IMHO, is getting even with the Establishment. Hannibal Lecter's life is threatened by one of the few of his victims who survived an encounter with him, and the Establishment is willing to look the other way. Clarice finds out, and having been victimized by the Establishment herself, decides to help Lecter (as any true and honorable law enforcer would because no victim may take the law into his own hands) escape from his captor. Because she helps him, she becomes a fugitive as well and Lecter takes full advantage of this, drugging her and making her his puppet/consort/companion in cannibalism and so on. I got the impression that she was so confused by being betrayed by the Establishment (who she had always believed should be Good Guys) that she didn't know what was right or wrong any more, and she just gave up and went along--the drugs may have had something to do with this in the beginning, but I doubt that he managed to keep her drugged forever. The ghastly parts involve the victim who survived his encounter with Lecter (and what that encounter involved) along with how the victim intended to take his revenge. (I suspect that the author was taking revenge on everyone who made such an "icon" out of Lecter after SILENCE OF THE LAMBS became such a hit. Not to mention any revenge he may have been taking on everyone who pressured him to get a sequel written....) It's quite an ugly mess any way you look at it. So, as I said, I wouldn't recommend HANNIBAL to anyone who has the least little doubt about it. Phaedre workshop@burgoyne.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 03:27:51 -0600 From: Kathleen Woodbury Subject: horror, etc At 04:45 AM 4/24/00 -0400, Donald G. Keller wrote: >Phaedre and Meredith: Interesting stuff about =The Silence of the >Lambs=. I founder once again upon the fact that I don't seem (at least >sometimes) to make =as much= genre distinction as other people do. I'm >really stumped by this idea that something isn't "horror" if it's not >"supernatural." When did =that= creep in? > >So I'll ask (again) the two questions I always ask about =The Silence of >the Lambs=: > >1) Is it horror? >2) Would it change the way you think about it if Hannibal Lecter were a >vampire? I don't think it's horror (but that's my definition--horror is, along with science fiction and fantasy, "not in this world." I guess the term is "mimetic" and horror, to me, just isn't mimetic). By "change the way you think about it" mean change my designation to horror? Possibly. I think Lecter =is= a kind of vampire (a psychological vampire, if not a blood sucker, though there is that aspect to him as well). All making him a "real vampire" would do is give him immortality, and a kind of vulnerability he doesn't have as a human. (Clarice could take him out with a well-placed stake, after all.) And maybe that vulnerability is something we could discuss.... The book is horrific, but it is just too "real world" or mimetic for me to accept it as horror. (This is also why I would not call any of the other books I've read about serial killers "horror" either. There are monsters out there who we wish were not real, and supernatural monsters may be metaphors for them, but to me the metaphor is horror, not the reality. Yeah, I know, maybe I've got it all backwards....) >(Meredith: Absolute agreement on =Song of Kali=. One of the great horror >novels.) Hmm. I guess I'll have to read that. (I really don't like nightmares, either, though....) [snip] >But that's still not all. Jung discusses at length a 15th-century >poem, Ripley's "Cantilena," an allegorical description of the >alchemical process, the climactic image of which is a green lion >(=another= Mercurius symbol peculiar to alchemy) in the lap of the >Maid/Queen Mother/Bride, suckling her breast, while she drinks the >blood from his wounded side (in a cup borne by Mercurius). > >In Edinger's =Mysterium Lectures= (a very useful reader's guide to >=Mysterium Coniunctionis=) he describes it as "a kind of bizarre >image of the coniunctio as a dynamic double cibatio, a double >feeding process." This sounds a lot like the way a vampire creates a new vampire. >(A sidebar. One of the "overlapping images" from "a different >source" that occurs to me in this context is vampirism: the mutual >feeding which creates a =kind= of renewal, i.e. immortality. And I see that you noticed it, too. >"I have compared the tendency to fantastic distortion to a melting >down of images, but this gives the impression that it is an >essentially destructive process. In reality--and this is especially >so in alchemy--it is a process of assimilation between revealed >truth and knowledge of nature....These melting processes all express >a relativization of the dominants of consciousness [by which he >means, for example, "official" religious imagery--DGK] prevailing in >a given age. For those who identify with the the dominants or are >absolutely dependent on them the melting process appears as a >hostile, destructive attack which should be resisted with all one's >powers. Others, for whom the dominants no longer mean what they >purport to be, see the melting as a longed-for regeneration and >enrichment of a sysem of ideas that has lost its vitality and >freshness and is already obsolete. The melting process is therefore >either something very bad or something highly desirable, according >to the standpoint of the observer" [=Mysterium Coniunctionis=, pp. >324-25]. So is this melting analoguous to the dismemberment motif in BUFFY? Phaedre/Kathleen workshop@burgoyne.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 18:47:27 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: horror, etc In a message dated 4/24/00 2:27:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time, workshop@burgoyne.com writes: << All making him a "real vampire" would do is give him immortality, and a kind of vulnerability he doesn't have as a human. (Clarice could take him out with a well-placed stake, after all.) >> Doesn't have as a human? A stake in the heart would do in a human too. (But then there's sunlight...) Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 20:08:05 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: horror, etc > All making him a "real vampire" would do is give him immortality, and a > kind of vulnerability he doesn't have as a human. (Clarice could take him > out with a well-placed stake, after all.) >> > > Doesn't have as a human? A stake in the heart would do in a human too. > (But then there's sunlight...) Yes, Faith certainly proved that a stake in the heart would do in a human. Most fictional vampires are more vulnerable than humans in some respects (e.g. in the sunlight/garlic/holywater department), and less vulnerable in others (immortal unless killed, stronger, etc.). It's a wash. I'm with Donald on the definitions here. Horror, the genre, does not have to have supernatural elements. In fact I've seen a distinction drawn between supernatural horror, which does, and psychological horror, which usually doesn't. Or it's borderline: you can't be quite sure whether it's supernatural or not. Same with fantasy. A lot of good fantasy is borderline. And some -- Gormenghast, Swordspoint -- has nothing supernatural about it. And there's plenty of good science fiction that features no scientific advances or impossibilities. I define these genres, beyond the simple matter of publishing categories, by a combination of the writer's attitude towards the material and the intended effect on the reader. Supernatural critters, for instance, may be any of the above, depending on how they're treated. If they're treated as exotic fauna, it's science fiction. If they're intended to scare the reader, it's horror. (If that effect predominates in the book.) If they're treated as objects of wonder and magic, it's fantasy. (Yes, Donald, I have lots to say about Leavis and other matters you brought up before. But I'm still digesting that fascinating lump of stuff you sent out last week.) David B. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 17:40:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Todd Huff Subject: Re: horror, etc > > Doesn't have as a human? A stake in the heart > would do in a human too. > > (But then there's sunlight...) > > Yes, Faith certainly proved that a stake in the > heart would do in a human. > "You'd be surprised how many things that'll kill." Buffy, "The Wish" :) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send online invitations with Yahoo! Invites. http://invites.yahoo.com ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #90 ****************************