Showing posts with label motive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label motive. Show all posts

Thursday, April 2, 2020

The Dramatistic Pentad Plotting Method

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


 According to Kenneth Burke, human communication consists of answering six questions, to which, I suggest, a seventh should be added.
 
Burke's questions: Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?

The question I would add: How many? or How much?

Specifically, these questions seem to relate to

Who? = agent, agency
What? = act, force, object, incident
When? = duration, time
Where? = location
How? = method, process, technique
Why? = cause, motive, reason, purpose
How many? or How much? = quantity (in number or quantity, respectively)


To fully describe the basic plot of a short story, a novel, or a movie, each of these questions, as appropriate, should be answered:

Who? Norman Bates
What? murders Marion Crane and Detective Abogast
When?
Where? in the motel he manages and in the house in which he lives
How? by stabbing Marion and pushing Abogast down the stairs
Why? because the personality of his deceased mother orders him to do so
How man? two (murders)


By putting these answers together in a single sentence, an effective synopsis of Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho is obtained:

In response to the command of his deceased mother's internalized personality, Norman Bates, a motel manager, commits two murders, stabbing Marion Crane to death in her room's shower and pushing Detective Abogast down the stairs of the Victorian house in which Norman lives.


This method is not only useful in generating story synopses, but it can also be used to generate plot twists. A writer can introduce an innovation at any point (that is, for any question). For example, let's take an item from USA Today's “News from around the 50 states” column. The original item, concerning Montana, reads:

A federal judge has ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps. The Missoulian reports the lawsuit by WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity claimed the federal agency is failing to follow a treaty protecting endangered species and not doing enough to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal. Lynx are classified as a threatened species under the U. S. Endangered Species Act.

First, let's separate the information into our interrogative scheme:

Who? A federal judge
What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps
When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)
Where? in Montana
How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal
Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species


Now, to introduce a plot twist, we can simply replace one phrase in the answer to a question with another phrase that mentions a bizarre or an unexpected substitution:

Who? A secret court
What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps
When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)
Where? in Montana
How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal
Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or

Who? A federal judge
What? ruled that . . . U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel should shoot people who injure Yetis with bobcat traps.
When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)
Where? in Montana
How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal
Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or


Who? A federal judge
What? will rule that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps
When? during a future meeting
Where? in Montana
How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal
Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or


Who? A federal judge
What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps
When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)
Where? on Space Station Zebra
How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal
Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or

Who? A federal judge
What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps
When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)
Where? in Montana
How? follow an intergalactic treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal
Why? because Lynx are classified as a threatened species

or

Who? A federal judge
What? ruled that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to protect Canada lynx from bobcat traps
When? recently (implied by the fact that the item is a news report)
Where? in Montana
How? follow a treaty protecting endangered species and . . . [do more] to stop trappers from capturing the wrong animal
Why? because Lynx are classified as a human predators

Personally, I like the “Yetis” substitution the best, which implies not only that the creatures actually exist, but also that they are protected by the federal government because they represent an “endangered species,” a plot that could be developed humorously, perhaps as a satire.

Of course, another possibility also exists: change not just one, but several, of the answers to our questions. (Probably, this is the most effective approach.) Here's an example:


Who? Cryptozoologists
What? recommend that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service protect Yetis from hunters and trappers
When? recently
Where? throughout the United States and its territories
How? by allowing the creatures to roam free, rather than confining them to particular areas, or “reservations,”
Why? because, free to roam, Yetis, a threatened species, will be better able to defend themselves against human intruders

If, initially, the results of this process seem lame, choose a different news item and start fresh. Ultimately, the process can be rewarding!

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Using Typical Genre Elements to Generate Horror Story Plots

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman



By isolating the types of characters, actions, settings, processes, and motives or causes upon which horror movies are typically based, we can devise a plot generator.


Although this is a basic list, a starter, as it were, which can be extended by further considerations of horror, both on the sound stage and on the page, it suggests the method.

Who? What types of characters generally appear again and again in the horror genre?

Protagonist, antagonist, victim, authority figure, expert, parents, siblings, tormentor, extraterrestrial, supernatural being


What? What types of actions do many horror stories represent? In other words, what type of activity occupies the characters? What do they do, on a sustained basis, throughout the film or most of the film?

Filming, capturing, escaping, experimenting, rescuing, conceiving, avenging, exploring, invading


When? Where? What settings (times and places) are typical of horror fiction?

Isolated property, closed public property, private property, laboratory, spaceship, suburbs, school, town, forest


How? What processes are typical of the horror genre? In other words, what type of series of actions forms the basis, or vehicle, of the story's plot, as opposed to the actions of the characters themselves? What propels the story as a whole?

Traveling, visiting, creating, reproducing, disturbing, working, persecuting, vacationing, possessing, exorcising, trespassing


Why? What are the motives of the protagonist and the antagonist? If one or both of these characters is (are) otherworldly (e. g., extraterrestrial or supernatural) or a physical force (e. g., energy or disease), what causes them to “act”?

Revenge, financial profit, escape, conquest, insanity, invasion, survival, destruction

Now, it is possible to generate plots by mixing and matching these typical foundational elements. Here are a few examples.

This example uses the first words from each category:

Protagonist films on isolated property while traveling during a vendetta.

To make the plot more concrete, substitute more specific terms for the generic ones; in doing so, it is all right to eliminate an element that no longer seems to fit; in the following revision, “traveling” has been omitted.

The camera operator is hired as a member of a film crew shooting a documentary concerning life inside a prison so he can avenge his father's death by killing the inmate who murdered him.

Here is another example, based on the third term in each of the categories. In this example, it was necessary to add a noun after “by creating”:

A victim escapes from private property by creating a ruse in order to be free.

Again, to make the plot more concrete, substitute more specific terms for the generic ones; in doing so, it is all right to add or alter an element if doing so is desirable and appropriate.

An enslaved woman escapes from an island resort by disguising herself as a guest so she can leave with other departing visitors.


Friday, September 20, 2019

Ray Bradbury's "The Island"

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman
 

Although The Cat's Pajamas, published in 2004, may not be one of Ray Bradbury's finest collections of short stories, it does contain some good ones.

“The Island,” in which a family of four (Mrs. Benton, her daughters Alice and Madeline, and her 15-year-old son Robert) live in a large house, isolated from the larger world and imprisoned by their paranoia, may not be an altogether successful story. It does, however, show Bradbury's talent for indirection.


It seems that Mrs. Benton's fears have infected her children. Bedridden, the matriarch fears that her home may be invaded, either by robbers seeking to steal the $40,000 she's hidden beneath her bed, to rape her and her daughters, or to do both before killing them all. The children share her fears. Their defenses are to arm themselves and to ensure that “the house was locked and bolted” (15).

They have also discontinued their telephone service, except for a battery-powered “intercommunication phone circuit” (18) that lets them talk to one another in their separate rooms. Preferring not to rely upon the world beyond their own house, they've also discontinued the electric service, opting for “oil lamps” and the light and heat of logs blazing in the house's fireplaces (20). To protect themselves, each of the family members, except Mrs. Benson, keeps a pistol at hand in his or her bedroom. These decisions add to their jeopardy after they hear one of the downstairs windows break and fear that a stranger has invaded the sanctuary of their isolated home.

 
Their maid does not live in the family home, and she does not share the family's fears: “She lived but a few hours each day in this outrageous home, untouched by the mother's wild panics and fears. [She had been] made practical with years of living in the town beyond the wide moat of lawn, hedge, and wall” (20).

According to the omniscient narrator, everyone hears the breaking of the window. The family responds as the reader might predict, based upon Bradbury's characterization of them: “Rushing en masse, each [to a] room, a duplicate of the one above or below, four people flung themselves to their doors, to scrabble locks, throw bolts, and attach chains, twist keys” (20). (Bradbury makes a mistake in having his omniscient narrator declare that “ four people flung themselves to their doors,” etc., since Mrs. Benton is bedridden. Confined to her bed, she would not be able to rush back to her room or lock her door; indeed, she would never have gotten out of bed to begin with.)


By contrast, the maid does the sensible thing, as she performs “what should have been a saving, but became a despairing gesture”: she rushes from the kitchen, where she'd been cleaning and putting away “the supper wineglasses,” and “into the lower hallway,” where she calls the family members' names (20). After the family hears her “one small dismayed and accusing cry,” the mother and her children wait “for some new sound” (21).

They seem to want to confirm their worst fear (the invasion of their home) the same way that they earlier confirmed, to their own satisfaction, that their house had been invaded, by taking the sound of “metal rattling” as proof that the earlier sound of a breaking windowpane was not due to “a falling tree limb” or to a snowball (19). In other words, the residents interpret a succession of incidents as confirming one another (or as failing to do so), whether the incidents have anything to do with one another or not.

The Maid as Killer

Has the maid been killed by an intruder, someone who'd entered the house, perhaps to steal the money hidden under Mrs. Benton's bed, to rape her and her daughters, or to kill the family?

Or is the maid really dead? Has she only faked her own murder? Is she herself the killer?

The maid might have a motive: the $40,000. As the person who cleans the house, she might have found the cache, although, since Mrs. Benton is bedridden, it seems unlikely. The maid could have heard of the money, perhaps when, “in the years before,” Alice and her mother debated the wisdom of locking the house and of keeping the large sum of money on hand:

“But all a robber has to do,” said Alice, “is smash a window, undo the still locks, and—”
 
“Break a window! And warn us? Nonsense!”
 
“It would all be so simple if we only kept our money in the bank.”
 
“Again, nonsense! I learned in 1929 to keep hard cash from soft hands! There's a gun under my pillow and our money under my bed! I'm the First National Bank of Oak Green Island!”
 
“A bank worth forty thousand dollars?!”
 
“Hush! Why don't you stand at the landing and tell all the fishermen? Besides, it's not just cash that the fiends would come for. Yourself, Madeline—me!” (17)

All the maid would have to do is to break a window. Then, as panic ensues among the members of the family, she could visit the room of each, individually, and murder them, one by one. Neither Mrs. Benton nor Robert is said to fire a weapon at their killer. Madeline does and miss her aim. Alice also fires at her attacker—three times, in fact—but with her eyes closed, so it is easy to imagine that Alice misses her target, as the omniscient narrator verifies for the reader, stating that one bullet penetrates “the wall, another . . . the bottom of the door, [and the] third . . . the top” of the door (26).

The failure to fire a gun or poor aim protects the maid. As a result, the money is hers, and she can retire from the “outrageous home.” In 1952, the year in which Bradbury wrote this story, $40,000 was a lot of money, after all. As a suspect, the maid has the same three requisites for murder that a stranger would have: means, motive, and opportunity.

Alice as the Killer


Three of the family members are attacked and killed (or otherwise dies) in their respective bedrooms. Alice, who is in the library, alone survives. Shooting three times at the stranger who seeks to enter the library—and missing each time—Alice falls from the window she's opened, the sill of which she straddles, and makes good her escape through the snow. Was the maid also murdered? Is Alice, the sole survivor, the killer?

Because of the indirect style that Bradbury employs, which often describes actions, frequently in fragments without much context, and offers only snippets of conversation, while flitting from one character to another, either possibility seems to exist: either the maid or Alice, it appears, could be the killer.

Either could have broken a downstairs window, thereby precipitating the family's panic, and picked the victims off, one by one.

If Alice is the murderer, she certainly has the means (her gun) and the opportunity (she lives in the same house as the victims, her family), but what about the motive? What reason would she have to kill her mother, her sister, and her brother? After all, as a member of the family, she already enjoys the benefits such status confers upon her: food, clothing, shelter, even luxury.


However, she also must suffer the isolation, the deprivation (there is neither telephone service beyond the house nor electricity; nor is there much companionship, and there is no normalcy) in the “outrageous house,” which is occupied by eccentric and paranoid family members. With $40,000, she might start life anew. She alone is in the library, which suggests she has an interest in the wider world and in art and culture, articles which are in short supply in the madhouse in which she lives.

At the end of the story, objectivity appears in the figure of “the sheriff and his men” (26). Finally, there are individuals from the wider world, authorities trained to respond to emergencies and to solve crimes. Alice has been away; she has escaped; now, “hours later,” she has returned “with the police” (26).

The sheriff, observing the open front door, is surprised by the audacity of the intruder: “He must have just opened up the front door and strolled out, damn, not caring who saw!” (27)


The sheriff and his men also confirm the second set of footprints leading “down the front porch stairs into the white soft velvet snow.” The footprints are “evenly spaced,” suggesting “a certain serenity” and confidence (27).

Alice is amazed at the size of the footprints and the implication of their dimensions: “Oh, God, what a little man” (27).

But are the footprints those of a man?

Could they be the maid's footprints? Alice thinks they are the footprints of a man, but Alice never saw the person at the door to the library who'd sought to get to her; she'd fired at the library door with her “eyes shut” when she'd observed the doorknob turning, and all three of “her shots had gone wide” (26).

If the maid faked her own death, prior to killing the other family members, maybe the footprints are the maid's and not those of a male intruder. Maybe Alice has merely supposed the footprints are those of a man. After all, her mother often warned that rapists could assault them: “Besides, it's not just cash that the fiends would come for. Yourself, Madeline—me!” she'd told Alice (17). In this case, the maid left the footprints descending the front porch stairs and parading from the house “neatly” and “evenly spaced, with a certain serenity,” and Alice left the other set of footprints, those that begin outside the library window and run “away from silence” (26-27).

The first set of footprints could also be those of Alice herself. But what about the other set of footprints that Alice sees when she returns with the police, those “in the snow, running away from the silence” of the house? They are not the same set of footprints that she sees and calls to the attention of the sheriff and his men, those which lead down the front porch's stairs and across the lawn, “vanishing away into the cold night and snowing town” (27). Does this second set of footprints constitute an insurmountable problem for the idea that Alice is the killer?

After opening the front door, she could have left it open and run down the porch stairs and across the lawn to notify the police of the alleged intruder's dastardly deeds. This would be the reason that the footprints are small for a man; they were not left by a male intruder at all, but by Alice herself. The footprints that Alice sees fleeing from the library's open window could be imaginary footprints, which only she alone sees, possibly as a means of supporting her fantasy that an intruder, rather than she herself, murdered her family.

If this is the case, it makes sense that, suffering guilt, she would try to obliterate the only set of footprints at the scene, those of the “little man” (Alice herself): “Alice bent and put out her hand. She measured then tried to cover them with a thrust of her numb fingers.” And it makes sense that she stops crying only after “the wind and the winter and the night did her a gentle kindness. . . [by] filling and erasing” the incriminating evidence “until at last, with no trace, with no memory of their smallness, they were gone” (27).

Interestingly, the omniscient narrator states only that Alice saw the set of footprints leading from the open library window, but acknowledges that both she and the police see the footprints descending the front porch stairs and heading across the lawn, toward the distant, “snowing town.” Is one sight a hallucination, the other a reality?


Thanks to Bradbury's indirect communication, maybe not. The omniscient narrator does not tell the reader that the police see this second set of footprints. The omniscient narrator states only that “she [Alice] saw her footprints in the snow, running away from silence.” If Alice is the killer, after dispatching the maid, her mother, her brother, and her sister, she could have “fallen” out the library window and run to the front porch, covering her footprints as she went, the same way the wind eliminates the “small” footprints of the presumed intruder, by “smoothing and erasing them until at last . . . they were gone” (27).

An Intruder as a Killer

Alternatively, the killer could be a stranger, an intruder, come to rob or rape the women of the house, as Mrs. Benton has long imagined and feared might happen. This is the story's straightforward interpretation, and, despite a few incredulities, such as the intruder's remaining alive despite being the target of several shots fired by different individuals, the small footprints said to be his, the unlikelihood of his knowing about the cache of cash, and his breaking and entering without knowing what he risks he might face from the family inside the house, is a plausible—and perhaps the most plausible—interpretation of the plot.

Thee Family Are the Killers

Finally, another interpretation is possible concerning the killer's identity—or identities.


Maybe neither an intruder, the maid, nor Alice is the murderer. Perhaps the family members each killed him- or herself or died of fright. They are paranoid. Each has a loaded gun at hand. Although panicked by the breaking of a window, they allow (at first) that the broken window could have resulted from nothing more sinister than “a falling tree limb” or a thrown snowball. It's only after they hear a second sound, that of “metal rattling,” that they irrationally conclude that a window has been raised and that an intruder has entered their home (19). Their frantic telephone calls to one another fan the flames of their panic, as do the sounds of each successive gunshot, as the family members suppose one of their own seeks to defend him- or herself against the intruder.

While such defenses are possible, it's also possible that the disturbed, terrified mother and children, afraid of being robbed or raped and murdered, dispatch themselves, preferring a bullet to the savagery that the intruder might unleash upon them. Certainly, Bradbury's omniscient narrator impresses their terror upon the story's readers. Each is shut up alone, behind a locked door, separated from each other and from society at large.


Mrs. Benton sees (or imagines) her door opening, and she does not respond thereafter to Alice's frantic pleas over the telephone (24). Did she somehow take her own life?

Robert expires with a groan, perhaps dying of fright: “His heart stopped” (24).

Madeline says the intruder is at her door, “fumbling with the lock,” and the others hear “one shot and only one” (25). Has Madeline shot at the intruder—and missed? Or has she killed herself?

Only Alice now survives (unless the maid faked her own death and is, in fact, the killer). When Alice sees the knob to the library door turn, she also shoots, with her eyes closed—three times—and also misses the intruder (if there is an intruder).

How unlikely is it that two armed, terrified, paranoid people—Madeline, and Alice—would fail to kill their attacker or that Madeline would fire only once at someone she feared was trying to rob, rape, or kill her? Yet precisely this happens!

But what about the maid? In this scenario, how is her death explained? She is not like the family for whom she works. She does not share their paranoia. She is not isolated by choice, but lives in the town and works only a few hours each day in the family's home. She is “practical.” As far as we know, she is unarmed. Besides, even if she has a gun, why would she kill herself? The story is all but silent as to her demise (if she does die). All the omniscient narrator tells readers is that the maid has entered the “main lower hallway,” calling the names of the family members, apparently trying to get them to assemble.


Previously, however, readers have learned that Mrs. Benton objects to and discourages shouting, afraid that it could attract the attention of “fiends” (17). Alice thinks, as, in their panic, the others begin to scream, “I hear . . . . We all hear. And he'll hear . . . too” (22). Using their intercommunication phone service, Alice tells Mrs. Benton, “Quiet, he'll hear you” (23). Later, she is more direct: “Mother, shut up” (24). After her mother's death, Alice thinks, “If only she hadn't yelled. . . . If only she hadn't showed him the way” (24). Alice is downstairs, as is the maid. Could Alice have shot the maid to silence her and protect herself and her family?

As we've seen, there are at least four possibilities for interpreting Bradbury's story. So, what does happen in “The Island”?

Does an intruder actually enter the house and kill its occupants?


Does the maid fake her own death and then execute the members of the family, except Alice, who escapes?

Does Alice kill everyone else, the maid included, before she “escapes” an imaginary killer?

Do the family members kill themselves, while Alice kills the maid?

Thanks to Bradbury's indirect style, the possibilities multiply. While some may seem less likely than others, each is apt to have its own subscribers. 



 
Among the other stories in The Cat's Pajamas that I found particularly interesting are “Ole, Orozco! Siqueiros, Si!” and “The Completist,” each of which will be murdered and dissected in future Chillers and Thrillers posts.

Monday, March 25, 2019

Plotting Board, Part 5

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman



In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff.
 
Alternate Histories
 
 
Just as some movies, such a Hide and Seek and 1408, offer alternate endings, some novels get a lot of plot mileage by "overlaying [their] own version[s] of history over actual history," VanDerWerff observes (245).
 
Essentially, such plots offer two stories, the actual historical account of events and the fictional version. Ironically, the latter purports to show what actually happened, after the true events are challenged as spurious, perhaps as the result of a long-ongoing conspiracy by a power elite or another group with vested interests.
 
In The Taking, for example, Dean Koontz suggests that aliens are reverse-terraforming the Earth to prepare for their invasion when, in fact, Satan and his fallen angels are preparing to take over the planet. 
 
We Are (and Do) What We Believe
 
 
The more we believe in something, the easier it is to see how that belief impacts every aspect of our lives, Handlen says:
 
If you believe in God [as Dana Scully does], then everything you do and everything that happens to you is affected [sic] by God . . . . And if you're Fox Mulder--conspiracy enthusiast and fervent follower of little gray men--every calamity is just the latest iteration of a government dedicated to crushing its citizens and consolidating power in the face of a potential alien invasion . . . .
. . . While it may be comforting to believe that everything happens for a reason, and that you can understand what that reason is, it can also be unsettling. It means that nothing is without meaning, that any hiccup [sic] or snag has dark implications (251).

To avail oneself of this method of plotting, simply ask what your characters believe in and have them act accordingly. (Philosophy, theology, biography, autobiography, and history might come in handy as reference sources in investigating world views.)

Bottom Line Plotting

To plot a series of interconnecting story lines that occur over a fairly long time span, create a situation, VanDerWerff suggests, that can "run along in the background and resurface when needed," as in "the idea that the X-Files [department] is just too expensive and ineffectual or irresponsible" and should be shut down (270).

 Motives for Momentum


"At its most basic level," Handlen contends, "plot is just a pretext for momentum." Characters need a reason to keep moving, to keep acting. The X-Files episode "Drive" provides a simple, but effective, motive for Walter White's momentum: "Keep moving, or you die (271).

Mulder, likewise, has a simple, but effective, motive for momentum: his 'compulsion to find the truth" forces him to act (272).

These characters' motives move the story forward. What compels your characters?

Be Your Own Critic

After writing a scene, critique it from the point of view of a critic. To do this, you need to know what critics typically criticize, but, until you've read a few hundred volumes of lit crit (the more, the merrier!), these principles could do as starters:
  • Does the scene contain all the elements of a story as a whole: protagonist; antagonist; secondary characters, if necessary; conflict; setting; action; dialogue, if necessary; motive; narrative purpose?
  • Does the scene drive the story forward?
  • Does the scene provide needed information?
  • Does the scene's protagonist act, rather than react?
  • Does the scene have its own beginning, middle, and end?
  • Does the scene end with a cliffhanger?
  • Does the scene evoke a strong, definite primary emotion? (It may or may not also evoke other, secondary emotions.)
  • Are the characters well-drawn and believable?
  • Is the pace appropriate?
  • Does the tone work?
  • Could the scene be revised to present its material in a more dramatic manner?
  • If the scene uses figures of speech, do they work? Are they subtle, rather than obvious?
  • Should the point of view be changed?
  • How might a famous author have written this scene?
  • How might a famous director shoot this scene?
  • How does this scene fit with those before and after it?
 NEXT: To be continued . . . .

 

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Horrific Body Modification Rationales

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


One source of horror results from supplying bizarre or unusual answers to the question why?


This question relates to such categories as cause, motive, purpose, or use.


Ordinarily, we identify and subscribe to ordinary, or at least understandable, reasons for doing something, even if the “something” we do is itself bizarre or unusual. For example, for body modification—a practice that many would regard as bizarre or unusual, at least in its more extreme forms—is explained by the anonymous author or authors of the Wikipedia article on this topic as “often [being] done for aesthetics, sexual enhancement, rites of passage, religious beliefs, [for the] display [of] group membership or affiliation, in remembrance of lived experience, [for the display of] traditional symbolism . . . for shock value, and as self-expression.” 
 

Body modification, the article explains, can be divided into the use of “explicit ornaments” (piercings, implants, tattooing, teeth blackening, and wearing neck rings); surgical augmentation (breast implants, male enhancement surgery, silicone injection, and subdermal implants); removal or splitting (cutting or removing hair, female genital mutilation, clitoral hood reduction, clitoridectomy, infibulation, labiaplasty, circumcision, foreskin restoration, emasculation, genital bisection or inversion, genital frenectomy, “headsplitting” [splitting the glans penis], meatotomy, orchiectomy, penectomy, subincision, nipple cutting or splitting, nullification, lingual frenectomy, and tongue-splitting); the application of long-term force (corseting, cranial binding, breast ironing, foot binding, anal stretching, jelqing, non-surgical organ elongation); and “others” (human branding, ear shaping or cropping, scarification, human tooth sharpening, and yaeba).


Whatever one's demons, when it comes to body modification, horror stories, whether on the page of on the stage (or the sound stage) aren't likely to settle for such (relatively) mundane motives as those identified in the Wikipedia article. When motive is to be the source of a horror story's horror, it stands to reason that the motive must be a horrific, not a generally socially acceptable, one, which begs the question, Why, in horror stories, do characters perform or undergo extreme body modifications?


The following table suggests the motives that some horror movies, at least, have provided.

Movie
Motive
Tattoo (2002)
Profit: A murderer kills victims for their unique tattoos, which he then sells to weirdo collectors.
American Mary (2012)
Profit: Medical student Mary Mason modifies clients' bodies to pay her way through school. Revenge: She later modifies the bodies of men who drugged and raped her.
What's Left of Us (2013)
Scorn: When Ana rejects his love for her, Axel tattoos himself so he will be repulsive to her.
The Human Centipede (2009)
Insanity: A mad doctor wants to create new creatures, so he plays God by sewing women together, mouth to anus, to form a “human centipede.” He also severs tendons in their legs to prevent them from walking, ensuring, thereby, that they must crawl, as befits their new identity.
Taxidermia (2006)
Art for Art's Sake: After removing his own internal organs, a young man named Lajoska, arranges for a machine to decapitate him so he can become a grotesque statue.
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Forced Feminization: Plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard performs a vaginoplasty on a captured man whom Ledgard plans to use as a replacement for his late wife.

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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