Showing posts with label alpha male. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alpha male. Show all posts

Thursday, July 8, 2021

Evolution, Psychology, and Horror, Part III

Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Note: This post assumes that you have seen the movie Backcountry. If you have not, Wikipedia offers a fairly detailed, accurate summary of the film's plot.

'BackCountry' and 'The Harvest' Debut on Blu-ray This Fall!!! - Boomstick Comics 

 Source: boomstickcomics.com

As we saw in Part I, Alex is a foil to Jen; his traits, which are opposite to those of hers, highlight Jen's traits, or “evolved adaptations,” as they are known in evolutionary psychology. But, just as Alex is Jen's foil, Brad is a foil to Alex; Brad's traits are different from those of Alex and, therefore, highlight Alex's evolved adaptations, just as Alex's traits highlight those of Jen.

Backcountry | Netflix

Source: netflix.com

Brad appears at Alex's and Jen's campsite while Alex is away, chopping firewood. After leaving his hatched stuck in a tree trunk, Alex returns to their campsite, where he is both surprised and annoyed to see Brad. Jen tells her boyfriend that she has invited Brad, a tour guide, to have dinner with them. Brad has offered to contribute a hefty string of fish he has caught.


Backcountry (2014) by Adam MacDonald

Source: cinemamontreal.com

From the beginning of their encounter, Brad seeks to assert his dominance over Alex. Clearly, Brad is an alpha male, and he expects to lead, not follow, even if only during the meal he shares with his hosts. A skilled woodsman, Brad is confident, competent, knowledgeable, experienced, decisive, and aggressive.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.NbeX5OQQd_tvGZW4hao05gHaEK%26pid%3DApi&f=1

Source: dailymotion.com

During their conversation, Brad suggests that, both as a woodsman and as a man, Alex is insecure, incompetent, ignorant, inexperienced, indecisive, and passive—the opposite of Brad himself. Brad's contribution to their meal are the fish that he himself has caught. Significantly, Jen provides her and Brad's contribution, which they bought in a store. Brad's contribution was caught, live, in the wild. Theirs was purchased in a package, already prepared. Brad's fish are animals; Jen's and Alex's contribution is bloodless vegetables harvested and packaged by strangers. When Jen offers to prepare a vegetable as a side dish, Alex chooses one kind, while Brad selects another. Jen sides with Alex, but Brad orders her to prepare the vegetable he wants, not the one Alex has chosen. Diplomatically, she says she will prepare both. Alex does not challenge Brad; he lets Jen answer their guest, despite Brad's usurpation of Alex's own authority as host.

Backcountry - Gnadenlose Wildnis - Fischpott

 Source: fischpott.com

Brad also implicitly insults Brad. When Brad tells him that he plans to start a landscaping business, Brad replies, in a racist statement, that he that thought “Mexicans” did that type of work. On the other hand, Brad admires Jen's profession, law, which is, in Brad's view, superior to the manual labor that Alex names as his intended vocation. Brad has a “manly” profession: he is a tour guide with expert knowledge about the park, its trails, and its flora and fauna, a man at home in the wilderness, who can fend for himself while directing others in his charge.

Brad boldly violates propriety when he stands, his back to Jen and Alex, unzips his fly, and urinates. Most men would not only object to such conduct, but be willing to come to blows with any man who presumed to do such a thing in their girlfriends' presence. Alex neither says nothing to Brad nor reacts violently. He merely looks at Jen in disgust and says something to her: “Really?”


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Canada_Southern_Ontario_location_map_2.png

 Powassan, Ontario, Canada. Source: Wikipedia

Brad also impugns Alex's knowledge of the park that Alex claims to know well, asking him which side of the park's waterfall someone should climb down. When Alex correctly answers, “The right side,” Brad smirks. “Good guess,” he says.

Finally, as he is about to depart, Brad asks Alex what he'd meant when Alex had said Jen's inviting him to have dinner with them might have been dangerous. When Alex demurs from answering, Brad insists. Finally, Alex tells him that Jen did not know Brad; Brad had been a stranger. As far as Jen had known, Brad might have been “a nut.” By the time Brad takes his leave, he has dominated, insulted, humiliated, defied both Alex and Jen, but especially Alex. He has also make it clear that, in a hostile or dangerous encounter with nature, he is likely to triumph or, at least, survive; audiences cannot be as certain about Alex's fate under the same circumstances.

The conflict between Alex and Brad further defines Alex, just as his relationship with Jen defines him. In both cases, Alex loses. His traits, or evolved adaptations, might serve him well in other environments, but they are unlikely to help him survive in the wild, no matter how well he thinks he knows the provincial park or the ways of the woods and its wildlife.


Next post: Evolution, Psychology, and Final Girl.

 

Friday, November 8, 2013

Monsters: A(lpha) to Z(eta)

copyright 2013 by Gary L. Pullman

Traditionally, monsters in horror movies have been coded as masculine; indeed, many are male. Once upon a time, among men, there were alpha males, on one hand, and, on the other, everyone else.

Sociologists are fond of pointing out that men tend to organize themselves into hierarchies with an alpha male as top dog, whereas women tend to organize themselves into a more communal, or familial, decentralized group wherein power is not passed down but is, rather, shared. Sometimes, situations are best handled by the top-dog, top-down approach; other times, situations are better handled by the partnership approach.

However, recently, types of masculinity have been re-conceived, with more categories allowing for greater and more meaningful representation of the several, varied types of masculinity. Now, in addition to the alpha male, there are not only beta males (the alpha male's lieutenants), but also
  • delta males (the everyman)
  • gamma males (no, the Incredible Hulk is not included; gammas are flattering sycophants)
  • lambda males (gay guys)
  • sigma males (lone wolves, who would be alphas had early trauma not caused them to channel their masculinity toward the survival of the fittest—themselves)
  • omega males (immature, irresponsible losers), and
  • zeta males (men who insist upon the right to determine their own identities as males, whatever such an identity may prove to be).
Such types are exemplified by such characters as pretty much any ever played by John Wayne, by Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk, and by Superman (alpha males); by superhero sidekicks, such as Batman's Robin theBoy Wonder, Flash's Kid Flash, Captain America's BuckyBarnes, or Green Arrow's Speedy (beta males); by Peter Parker and by Clark Kent (as opposed to Spider-man and Superman, respectively) (delta males); by Toad (of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) and by Othello's Iago (gamma males); by Lamar Latrell (lambda male); by Dirty Harry, by the Deathwish series' Paul Kersey, by the X-Men's Wolverine, and by Cool Hand Luke's Lucas Jackson (omega males); and by The Crying Game's Dil, by Porky's Tim Cavanaugh, and, to a large degree, by The Crying Game's Fergus (zeta males).

Since, as we have observed, monsters in horror movies have been coded as masculine and many, indeed, are male, these fantastic creatures can be classified in the same terms, as alpha, beta, delta, gamma, lambda, sigma, omega, and zeta:

Alpha monsters are the dominant (and, often, domineering) leaders of their kind. The Sayer of the Law (The Island of Dr. Moreau), Skull Island's King Kong, and Big Daddy, the zombie leader in Land of the Dead, qualify as examples of the alpha monster. The alpha monster's lieutenants, or sidekicks, are beta monsters, whose ranks include television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Spike, the former protege to Angel, and, indeed, Angel himself, when he was a lieutenant for the Master. Amilyn, the toady to the vampire lord Lothos in the original Buffy movie, and Igor, the sycophantic assistant to Victor Frankenstein, are delta monsters. Homosexual monsters are few and far between, but, according to some accounts, Psycho's Norman Bates may fill the bill, as may Count Dracula and, in a transgender sort of way, Sleepaway Camp's Angela Baker. (One might add most of the characters played by Vincent Price, too, perhaps.) There are many sigma monsters, because monsters, as outcasts, typically live and work alone; some examples are Beowulf's Grendel, The Creature of the Black Lagoon's Gill-man, the Predator (in The Predator), and the Yeti (in The Abominable Snowman). Monsters who insist upon defining their own manhood—or, rather, their own monstrosity—include, in a sense, the shape-shifting It of Stephen King's novel of the same name and Dr. Otto Octavius ("Doctor Octopus"), the sometime-villain in Spider-man 2.

Clearly, not all monsters are alike, any more than all men are alike. The significance of these differences in monstrosity can suggest a variety of possibilities, but addressing them must, alas, wait for another time which is yet to come. . . .

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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