Sexploitation Horror Films: Sexing It Up

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Perhaps after watching one too many horror movies while experimenting with LSD, Jim Morrison, late of The Doors, chanted, “Love is sex, and sex is death, and therein lies the ultimate high.”

 

It’s a perfect mantra for horror films in which a bit of hanky panky precedes the deaths of the participants, who usually expire in a particularly gruesome and ghastly way to show the mostly teen and young adult audiences of such motion pictures that, well, “love is sex, and sex is death, and therein lies the ultimate high.”

 

For those who aren’t happy unless a movie is more than just a story and for whom horror has to have some sort of justification for its mayhem, L. Vincent Poupard offers a Freudian take on horror films’ inclusion of bodies getting physical.

 

In his article, "The Symbolism of Sex in Horror Movies,” he argues that sex participants are rebels against parental authority and that they “are most vulnerable when they are having sex” because “hormones take complete control.” As a result, the sexual partners become “oblivious to the world around them,” making themselves perfect victims of a stealthy, possibly voyeuristic, and most likely envious, monster. That’s not why sex is “symbolic,” though. According to Poupard, it’s symbolic because it represents “not paying attention” to the dictates of one’s parents. It’s dangerous, too, he says, because it’s a minefield of “sexual diseases.” 

 

Another reason that moviemakers put sex in their scenes is because sex sells. Especially in Europe, it seems, where the horror films of such directors as Jean Rollin (Zombie Lake [1980] and Oasis of Zombies [1981]); Jesus (“Jess”) Franco (Mansion of the Living Dead [1985], Nightmares Come At Night [1970], 99 Women [1969], Golden Temple Amazons [1986], Sadomania [1981]); and Joe D’Amato (Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals [1977]) are just opportunities to exploit their audiences with sleaze-disguised-as-horror. (Yes, of course, that may be all the more reason to have seen, or to see, them; that’s the whole point of sexploitation films.) 

 

As difficult as it may seem to believe, there was sex before slasher films. Even as far back as the 1940’s and 1950’s, horror movies exploited youngsters’ urge to merge. The difference between earlier and more recent films is the manner in which sex is incorporated in the plot and shown (or not shown) on the screen. In the older films, sex was mostly suggested. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is a good example. Instead of showing, close up and in person, so to speak, detailed sequences of Marion Crane making love to her paramour, the scene starts, not in media res, but after the fact, as Crane, wearing only her undies, dresses.

 

In a more recent film, Chuck Parello’s Ed Gein (2001), the opening sex scene is mild by today’s standards, with a pair of teenage lovebirds making out on a bench in the Plainfield (Wisconsin) cemetery. The action between them is restricted to some passionate kissing and to the youth’s unbuttoning of a button on his date’s blouse. 

 

They’re scared away by the sounds of Gein’s spade as he opens the grave of a recently deceased female citizen, and they hurry off, the young man zipping his fly as they vacate the premises. Most other contemporary horror films are far less circumspect, preferring to let it all hang out, as it were. 

 

Sexploitation horror films are about the sins of the flesh and the wages of this particular sin, but, even so, they require at least some narrative pretense, which is to say, a plot. Here are those of the ones we’ve mentioned in this post, just so no one can say we aren’t being fair in trashing this trash:

• Zombie Lake: Skinny dipping girls, some bikini-clad and others bare, entice a lake full of Nazi zombies. Huh? Nazi zombies?
• Oasis of Zombies: “An expedition searching for treasure supposedly buried by the German army in the African desert during WW II comes up against an army of Nazi zombies guarding the fortune” (The Internet Movie Database [IMDb]). Huh? Nazi zombies?
• Mansion of the Living Dead: Maximum nudity with minimum gore and a touch of anticlericalism thrown in for good (or bad) measure. No Nazi zombies, though.
• Sadomania: Newlyweds Olga and Michael stumble upon a desert training camp in which the trainees are enslaved women who work at a variety of odd jobs, including prostitution. Olga becomes their latest recruit. Uh oh!
• 99 Women: The movie’s tagline pretty much sums up its plot: “99 women behind bars. . . without men!”
• Nightmares Come At Night: Two topless dancers become friends; then, one of them begins to have nightmares. In her dreams, she kills people. Voyeurs--or, rather, viewers--learn the reason for the murderous dreams: the dancer is influenced by a hypnotic jewel thief who's intent upon eliminating her partners, one by one.
• Golden Temple Amazons: A woman avenges the murder of her parents by helping an expedition sack the tribe’s golden temple.
• Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals: Emmanuelle goes undercover. In a mental asylum. Where she finds a crazy girl. Who may or may not have been reared by cannibals. A visit to the Amazon will verify whether the patient is truly insane or just homesick.

Those who enjoy a bit of flesh (and necrophilia) with their blood and guts might also enjoy such sexploitation horror flicks as The Curse of Her Flesh, Vampiros Lesbos, The Kiss of Her Flesh, Tou Kui Wu Zui, Where the Truth Lies, Cannibal Ferox, Cannibal Terror, and--well, there are lots and lots of them.

Insider’s Tip: Check out your favorite scream queens on Chickipedia.

Subliminal Horror

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

“Subliminal” refers to text, images, auditory statements, or other objects or props that escape one’s conscious notice but (according to theory, at least) are recognized on a subconscious level. Supposedly, subliminal techniques are used to sell everything from movie theater popcorn to alcoholic beverages. Some even go so far as to say that governments, including that of the United States, use such messages to propagandize and brainwash their citizens.

Subliminal messages are also used in printed and filmed horror stories, albeit rarely, it would seem.

In fact, I’ve seen the use of a subliminal image in a horror movie. It occurred at the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho--not in the original film, but in a release of the movie on videotape or DVD (I don’t recall which now, as this experience occurred several years ago, but I believe it was a videotape.) As Norman Bates, at the end of his killing spree, sits in a jail cell, dressed as his mother, Norma, a human skull flashes over his face.

I remember feeling especially uneasy during this scene, although it hadn’t seemed as frightening or eerie when I’d first witnessed the scene, as a child. On an impulse, I played the sequence again, in slow motion, and the skull, which I hadn’t noticed before (consciously, at least) was visible as it appeared briefly, over Norman’s face, and then vanished again, just as abruptly, the superimposition of the skull image over Norman’s face occupying only the space of a few frames. I’d heard of subliminal images, but this was the first time I’d ever seen one myself.

Apparently, subliminal images are used much more widely than one might suppose, not only in advertising, but also in popular entertainment media, including Walt Disney’s art and big-name comic books’ illustrations.

In Who Killed Roger Rabbit, Roger’s wife, Jessica, is shown, sans panties, exiting a taxicab.

 


The cover for the DVD release of Disney’s The Little Mermaid shows an erect phallus among the spires of a castle; a constellation of stars in The Lion King spells out S-E-X; and a nude painting is shown in a background setting in The Rescuers. It seems that, posthumously, Uncle Walt’s not nearly as family friendly as he was when he’d been among the living.




The “S” word also makes its appearance in New X-Men #118--at least 18 times, by one count.

In horror fiction, it’s more likely to be the gruesome and the ghastly or the bloody and the gory that sells, rather than sex, and it’s just such subliminal texts and images that are occasionally found, as in Psycho.

Another example of the use of such images occurs in the original Hitchcock version of the film itself. In three frames (equating to approximately 1/8 of a second) of the shower scene, in which Norman-as-Norma, attacks Marion Crane as she is showering, the knife thrust is reversed, so that it appears to penetrate her lower abdomen.

Although it’s questionable as to whether Hitchcock had any transcendent reason for including the subliminal images of penetration, he apparently did have a thematic purpose in mind for the shower scene itself besides mere titillation. According to Janet Leigh herself, who played Crane in the original film:

Marion had decided to go back to Phoenix, come clean, and take the consequence, so when she stepped into the bathtub it was as if she were stepping into the baptismal waters. The spray beating down on her was purifying the corruption from her mind, purging the evil from her soul. She was like a virgin again, tranquil, at peace.

(Well, as long as Leigh bought the line. . . .)

In The Exorcist, a demon’s face is flashed on the screen on two occasions, once when Father Damien Karras recalls seeing his mother as she is about to enter a subway station and, later, when Regan's mother walks down a hallway, but not so few times per foot of film that it can’t be seen, so this use of imagery doesn’t, strictly speaking, constitute the employment of a subliminal technique.

In a previous post, I showed how Bram Stoker’s deft use of description and innuendo creates what amounts to a sort of literary subliminal coding of the narrative’s text, heightening the story’s fear factor by suggesting that there is some astonishingly powerful force operating behind the scenes, so to speak. Subliminal text and images are today’s equivalents, in extremis, of yesterday’s rhetorical, literary, and cinematographic techniques and, yes, they can be effective. In fact, they can frighten the hell out of you!

Source

Leigh, Janet. Psycho : Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller. Harmony Press, 1995.

Everyday Horrors: Masks

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Hillary: A Mask the Democratic Party Rejected as Presidential Candidate

The mask that she wore,
My fingers would explore;
The costume of control--
Excitement soon unfolds. . . .

-- The Doors

In the factory, we make cosmetics; in the drugstore, we sell hope.

-- Charles Revlon

Masks. At the same time, they both conceal and reveal or, sometimes, protect. They link those who wear them to ancient superstitions and to their cultural heritage. They symbolize enterprises and aid in performances. They may even impart the powers and characteristics of those whom they represent to those who wear them.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, words the origins of which are associated with mask include mascara (meaning stain, or mask); larva (meaning ghost or mask, “applied in the biological sense. . . because immature forms of insects ‘mask’ the adult forms”); mummer (in part from momer, meaning mask oneself); mascot; person (“originally ‘character in a drama, mask”); masque; boycott (based upon the “Irish Land League ostracism of Capt. Charles C.
Boycott. . . land agent of Lough-Mask in County Mayo, who refused to lower rents for his tenant farmers”); masquerade (for masked party or dance); oscillation (“supposed to be from oscillum ‘little face,’ lit. ‘little mouth,’ a mask of open-mouthed Bacchus hung up in vineyards to swing in the breeze”); muskellunge (“long mask”); and mesh.

Comedy and tragedy, the two chief divisions of the drama by which human behavior and its significance are enacted upon a public stage before a live audience, are represented by masks--a smiling and a frowning mask, respectively. The faceless faces of everyman, they suggest that the proper response to human conduct is either humor or sorrow; drama--or, rather, the spectacle of human behavior that it represents--makes us laugh or cry.

Masks have been worn to protect fencers, athletes, and soldiers, but their chief use is to disguise those who wear them, the role that they serve in Alexander Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask, Johnston McCulley’s Zorro, George W. Trendle and Fran Striker’s Lone Ranger, and countless costumed superheroes and movie villains, including Darth Vader. A cursory examination of the masks of DC Comics and Marvel Comics characters discloses the almost infinite variety that is possible with regard to such coverings of one’s countenance. They range from the simple Zorro or Lone Ranger type mask that is little more than a strip of cloth with eyeholes cut into it to the helmet-style masks of Dr. Doom and Galactus. Occasionally, comic book characters’ masks are also equipped with weapons effects and, indeed, the mask that the X-Men’s Cyclops wears is a protective one, blocking the optical energy beam that, unleashed, can demolish a mountain.

Masks are associated with one’s traditions. In ancient Rome, the death masks of one’s ancestors, stored in the family’s shrine, or lararium, were evidence, albeit not living proof, of a citizen’s lineage. During funerals, surviving relatives would wear such masks as they enacted the feats of the deceased (Kak).

Halloween masks and costumes were donned, originally, to ward off evil spirits, who, it was believed, would be frightened by the masks’ and costumes’ hideous appearances.

Leopold Sedar Senghor’s poem, “Prayer to the Masks,” conveys something of the communal ties that were believed to exist between family masks and tribe:

Masks! O Masks!
Black mask, red mask, you white-and-black masks
Masks of the four cardinal points where the Spirit blows
I greet you in silence!
And you, not the least of all, Ancestor with the lion head.
You keep this place safe from women’s laughter
And any wry, profane smiles
You exude the immortal air where I inhale
The breath of my Fathers. . . .

Before the advent of the camera, death masks (plaster casts of the deceased’s face) were made to preserve the appearance of famous people, including such luminaries as Blaise Pascal, King Henry VIII, Dante Alighieri, Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte, Frederic Chopin, Czar Peter the Great, and Abraham Lincoln. For photographs of famous death masks, visit the online Lauren Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks.

In Gaston Leroux’s play, The Phantom of the Opera, Erik wears a mask to hide a physical deformity. Other characters’ reactions to his deformed appearance, once he is unmasked, reveal their own spiritual deformity or the beauty.

The example of the man in the iron mask, who became the subject of Dumas’ novel, shows how a mask often creates mystery. Many books have been written in the attempt, as it were, to unmask the mysterious prisoner who was supposed to have worn the iron mask at all times to conceal his identity and to fathom the motives of the one who ordered this extreme measure, with such candidates as the illegitimate son of Mazarin and Anne of Austria (and, therefore, a half-brother to King Louis XIV) being named by Voltaire and Alexander Dumas; Luis XIV’s father being named by Hugh Ross Williamson; General Vivien de Bulonde; a composite of a valet and Ercole Antonio Mattioli, named by Roux Fazaillac (a variation of which theory was also advanced by Andrew Lange); the bastard son James de la Cloche of England’s King Charles II, named by Arthur Barnes; and others (“The Man in the Iron Mask”).

Masks, not surprisingly, have appeared in a number of horror stories, novels, and films. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” involves a masquerade party at Prince Prospero’s castellated abbey, during which the Red Death makes his appearance. The masks and costumes seem to suggest the outwardly merry demeanor that people effect in the face of tragedy and death in their attempts to deny the reality and the inevitability of their own imminent demise, whether as a result of disease or some other means.

In “Dead Man’s Party,” an episode of the televisions series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers’ mother, Joyce, the owner of a local art gallery, hangs a ceremonial mask on her bedroom wall, causing the resurrection of the dead. First a cat, and then quite a few human zombies, appear, the latter attacking Buffy, her mother, and friends during a coming-home party in Buffy’s honor.

In another Buffy episode, “Halloween,“ the masks (and costumes) that teenagers and younger children buy at an occult Halloween costume shop cause them to become the characters that their masks and costumes represent. Buffy becomes an aristocratic lady, and her friends Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris become a ghost and a pirate, respectively, while children become demons and various other monsters.

Masks in horror films are used both to conceal identities and simply to frighten moviegoers. Thanks to the magic of special effects, masks can be both gruesome and realistic--at least on the silver screen. Movies in which characters (often the human monster) wear masks include Halloween, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Scream.

In Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the villain, Leatherface, wears a mask fashioned of human flesh, a takeoff on the masks that Ed Gein, the so-called “Butcher of Plainfield” (Wisconsin) wore, which were the faces he removed from corpses he’d dug up in the town’s cemetery or the graveyard, known as Spirit Land, a few miles north of Plainfield. Also the basis of Norma Bates (Psycho) and Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs), Gein’s wearing of literal facemasks (and leggings, labia, and a “mammary vest”) were attempts by him to resurrect his mother, with whom, despite her death, he maintained a love-hate relationship.

Horror stories’ use of masks plays upon the notions that masks both conceal and reveal, disclosing the horrors of custom, tradition, family history, individual trauma, and a host of other influences that make up who (and what) we are, whether we happen to be heroes or horrors. What really lies behind the social mask, or persona, that each of us wears? The face of Norman Bates? Michael Myers? Leatherface? Ed Gein? In “Halloween,” Buffy tells Willow, “Halloween is come-as-you-aren’t night.” Let’s hope she’s right!

Sources

Ritual, Masks, and Sacrifice; Subhash Kak, Studies in Humanities and Social Services, vol.11, Indian Institute of Advance Study, Shimla 2004.
“The Man in the Iron Mask.” Wikipedia. 2008.

Verizon’s Version of Horror: The Dead Zone Advertisements

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Advertisers are a creative bunch. They use all sorts of persons, places, and things to sell us everything from aardvarks to zoo trips. Well, maybe not aardvarks. Not yet, anyway. More-or-less captured audiences hate most “commercial breaks,” although they are somewhat fond of a select few “messages from our sponsors.” One commercial that is apt to be tolerable, if not actually fun, for horror fans is Verizon’s latest series of advertisements that feature areas of poor or non-existent cellular telephone transmission and reception, known, in the commercials, as “dead zones.”

In one such ad, as a man heads from his apartment to the laundry room in his building, basket in hand, walking along a dimly lit hallway, a pair of young boys, dressed in nineteenth-century-style suits, speak in an eerie monotone: “Hey, mister, are you going to the laundry room?"

Looking hesitant, he replies, "I was."

The boys then say, "It’s a dead zone. Reception is terrible."

The man replies, “I have the Verizon network,” whereupon a host of the company’s employees appears behind the man, one assuring their customer, “You’re good.”

The boys exchange an uneasy look before turning, they walk away, down the corridor.

The text, “Don’t Be Afraid of DEAD ZONES” appears over the backs of the retreating boys.

The scene is reminiscent of The Shining, and its use of the phrase “dead zone” recalls another of Stephen King’s novels, The Dead Zone.

The host of Verizon company’s employees plays on the idea of there being safety in numbers. Their service neutralizes the threat of “dead zones.” Who wouldn’t want such heroes around in such a threatening environment?

A number of similar ads, using horror themes or allusions to horror movies, appear as installments in the series. A family moves into a creepy neighborhood, only to be warned by their neighbor (a woman who looks as if she’s just stepped out of her coffin) that they’ve moved into a “dead zone.” The last occupants of their new house, she warns them, “went crazy trying to find a signal there.” The Verizon team appears, and she looks frightened. All she can warn them against, now, is the crabgrass growing in their yard.

The ads are designed, it seems, to resemble theatrical trailers, which certainly gets television viewers’ interest, especially if such audience members also happen to enjoy horror movies.

Sex, it has long been established, sells. So, apparently, does horror.

Kudos to a company for creating ads that are both eerie and enjoyable.

Guest Speaker: Robert Bloch

Poe & Lovecraft

Robert Bloch, author of Psycho

Comparisons between Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft are, I suppose, inevitable; seemingly, in recent years they are also interminable.

I shall not, therefore, repeat the usual recital of similarities to be found within their work--there will be no mention of black cats, revenants, or Antarctic settings per se.

But at the same time I have no intention of making a calculated bid for attention by deliberately asserting, as some have also declared, that no real resemblance exists aside from superficial employment of stock characters and themes common to virtually all stories in the genre.

To me, this is an untenable statement: Lovecraft, like every writer of fantasy and horror fiction subsequent to Poe, was necessarily influenced by the work of his predecessor--and to certain extent his work needs must be derivative in some slight sense. Actually, Lovecraft's homage to Poe in his essay "Supernatural Horror In Literature," indicates a degree of appreciation and admiration which leaves no doubt as to the profound impression made upon him by the earlier master.

But to me the most fruitful area of comparison lies within an examination of the backgrounds and personalities of the writers themselves.

Consider the facts. Both Poe and Lovecraft were New England born. Both were, to all intents and purposes, fatherless at an early age. Both developed a lifelong affinity for poetry and the elements of a classical education. Both utilized archaisms in their writing styles and affected personal eccentricities which in time became consciously cultivated.

Although Poe spent a part of his youth in England and traveled along the Atlantic seaboard in later life--and while Lovecraft ventured up into Canada and down into Florida on vacations a few years prior to his death--neither man ever ventured west of the Alleghenies. Lovecraft, on one occasion, did skirt them to visit E. Hoffman Price briefly in his New Orleans home, but essentially he and Poe were Easterners. Their outlook was, to a marked degree, provincial; even parochial.

Both men distrusted "foreigners" in the mass: both retained a profound admiration for the English. These attitudes are plainly evident in their work, which is many particulars removed and remote form the main current of American life.

A reader attempting to capture some glimpse of the United States in the 1830-1850 period would gain small enlightenment from the poetry and fiction of Poe.

At a time when the entire nation was engaged in a westward thrust, beginning with the peregrinations of the mountain men and ending with the Gold Rush in the year of Poe's death, one searches in vain for a wet which does not seemingly even exist in his literary compass.

Byronic heroes sequestered in British and continental locales scarcely reflect the American attitudes or aptitudes in the era of Old Hickory, Davy Crockett, the fall of the Alamo, the Mexican War and the growing turmoil over slavery.

Nor would a reader find more typically American protagonists amongst the pendants, professors and regionally-oriented recluses of Lovecraft's tales, in which there's scarcely a hint of the manners and mores of the Roaring Twenties or the Great Depression which followed in the ensuing decade. Aside from a few remarks regarding the influx of immigrants and concomitant destruction of old folkways and landmarks, plus brief mentions of the (intellectually) "wild" college set, Lovecraft ignores the post WW1 Jazz Age in its entirety: Coolidge, Hoover, FDR, Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Al Capone, Valentino, Mencken and the prototypes of Babbit have no existence in HPL's realm. It is difficult to believe that Howard Phillips Lovecraft was a literary contemporary of Ernest Hemingway.

And yet a further comparison between Lovecraft and Poe remains; one of profound importance in any consideration of their work, because it softens any charge that two writers were totally unaware of the actual world and unrealistic in their treatment of their times.

I refer, of course, to their mutual interest in science. Both Poe and Lovecraft were acute observers of the scientific and pseudo-scientific developments of their respective days, and both men utilized thee latest theories and discoveries in their writing. It is only necessary to cite Poe's use of mesmerism, his employment of the balloon hoax, his detailing of data in the Arthur Gordon Pym novella, to prove the point.

Lovecraft, for his part, relies on scientific background material in his Pym-like At the Mountains of Madness, "The Shadow Out of Time" and other efforts; notable is his immediate adoption of the newly discovered "ninth planet" in "The Whisperer in Darkness."

Lovecraft's interest in astronomy undoubtedly led to his increasing interest in other fields of scientific endeavor, just as Poe's early experiences at West Point must have fostered his preoccupation with codes an ciphers. And both men, as professional writers, were well and widely-read in the contemporary work of their day: Poe as a working critic, demonstrates his knowledge in his nonfictional efforts and Lovecraft, in his correspondence, proves himself no stranger to Proust, Joyce, Spengler and Freud.

But the point is that Poe and Lovecraft deliberately chose to turn their backs on contemporary styles and subject-matter and created their own individual worlds of fantasy. In this above all else they were similar.

And in this, above all else, we readers of Poe and Lovecraft are fortunate indeed.

We shall never know, and never care, what Edgar Allan Poe thought of Andy Jackson's "kitchen cabinet" or how H. P. Lovecraft regarded the Teapot Dome scandal. Small loss, when both have given us glimpses of worlds peculiarly and provocatively their very own.

For the final similarity is this--Poe and Lovecraft are our two American geniuses of fantasy, comparable each to the other, but incomparably superior to all the rest who follow in their wake.

This article was first published in Ambrosia #2 (August, 1973), © 1973 Alan Gullette and Robert Bloch. It was subsequently revised slightly by the author and reprinted in H.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, ed. S. T. Joshi (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1980), pp. 158-160, © 1980 Ohio University Press.

The Fatal Flaw, Part the Second

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In the previous post, we saw how one character trait, the fatal flaw, brings about the tragic protagonist’s downfall, using, as an example, the irresponsibility of the teenage characters in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

In this post, continuing to use irresponsibility as our example, we’re going to see how to exploit this trait in developing character.

To do so, you’ll need a thesaurus. Fortunately, almost every word processor has one, and, if you are without a computer, they’re readily available at your local bookstore or public library. Although they’re classified as reference works, many libraries allow previous editions to be checked out.

Using the thesaurus feature in the Microsoft Works word processing program obtained this list of synonyms for irresponsible (always use the adjectival, rather than the nominal, form of the word--the adjective, in other words, not the noun):

Irresponsible
Reckless
Careless
Negligent
Foolish
Rash
Immature

That’s not a bad list, but it’s only the beginning.

Next, for each of the synonyms that resulted from the initial use of the thesaurus, we use the thesaurus again, ignoring redundancies, until it seems that we‘ve exhausted all useful additions to our list of synonyms:

Reckless
Wild
Thoughtless
Uncontrolled
Inattentive
Hasty

Careless
Slapdash
Happy-go-lucky
Casual
Slipshod
Sloppy
Lackadaisical

Negligent
Neglectful
Remiss
Lax
Slack
Forgetful

Foolish
Stupid
Silly
Idiotic
Unwise
Impudent
Irrational

Rash
Impulsive
Imprudent
Injudicious

Immature
Young
Undeveloped
Juvenile
Adolescent
Unripe
Childish

We’ve accumulated quite a list of traits (adjectives name traits, as we saw in our previous post). We could add still more by repeating this process for the synonyms that we just added to the roster, but, for our purposes, we have enough. Our total list, now, is (alphabetized):

Adolescent
Careless
Casual
Childish
Foolish
Forgetful
Happy-go-lucky
Hasty
Idiotic
Immature
Imprudent
Impudent
Impulsive
Inattentive
Injudicious
Irrational
Irresponsible
Juvenile
Lackadaisical
Lax
Neglectful
Negligent
Rash
Reckless
Remiss
Silly
Slack
Slapdash
Sloppy
Stupid
Thoughtless
Uncontrolled
Undeveloped
Unripe
Unwise
Wild
Young

Okay. So what. We have a list of adjectives, or character traits.

Such a list can provide a lot of fodder for characterization--to the discerning eye.

Notice that these synonyms suggest some traits that we often think of as neutral or even positive, despite the fact that they were all derived from the same root, as it were, irresponsibility: casual, happy-go-lucky, impulsive. It is only when such traits as these are extreme that they could cause problems (which, transformed into conflict, are just what the writer of fiction lives for). Indeed, the idea that a harmless trait, when it is extreme, can cause problems could itself be the theme of a story. This list allows us to flesh out the flat, static character, making him or her round (or at least more nearly round) and possibly even dynamic. It also lets us to mix a few positive, or at least neutral, traits in with one or more negative ones associated with the root characteristic, irresponsibility.

But, wait! There’s more! as the sales folks are wont to say in infomercials.

Our list also shows how a neutral or even a positive trait can edge into something negative and potentially dangerous, even deadly.

Often, we praise impetuosity as a positive trait. We seek someone who is impulsive, rather than sedate, spontaneous instead of predictable, spur-of-the-moment rather than cautious, because, we imagine, such an individual is apt to be more fun. (He or she may turn out to be only more exciting, and not in a pleasurable way.) For example, the impulsive person may be only a few steps away from being an irresponsible person; the spontaneous individual perhaps but a stone’s throw from being reckless; and the spur-of-the-moment man or woman could verge upon being negligent. There’s a story in such proximities, in such deterioration, and a believable one at that. We’re closer to the abyss of negative behavior than we might think, even when such conduct stems from neutral or positive character traits rather than those that are largely or universally regarded as negative. There’s a fine line between miserliness and thriftiness. Were Ebenezer Scrooge to have been merely frugal, rather than stingy, there would have been no ghosts of Christmas past. Similarly, in horror fiction, were characters simply spontaneous, rather than irresponsible, there’d be no I Know What You Did Last Summer, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, and the host of other horror stories, in print and on film, in which the protagonist is one or more of the following: adolescent, careless, casual, childish, foolish, forgetful, happy-go-lucky, hasty, idiotic, immature, imprudent, impudent, impulsive, inattentive, injudicious, irrational, irresponsible, juvenile, lackadaisical, lax, neglectful, negligent, rash, reckless, remiss, silly, slack, slapdash, sloppy, stupid, thoughtless, uncontrolled, undeveloped, unripe, unwise, wild, young.

The Fatal Flaw, Part the First

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Four teens. Drinking and driving. A mountain road. Steep, winding curves. Night. A figure bolts across the road, illuminated for a horrifying moment in the headlights of the teens’ car. In an instant of irresponsible behavior, the lives of the four occupants of the automobile, Barry William Cox (Ryan Phillippe), Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), are changed forever, for they have killed a man.

Such is the beginning of the nightmare, I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Faced with the loss of a promising football career (Barry), law school (Julie), and a trip to New York City (Helen and Ray), the teens follow the counsel of the alpha male of their group, Barry The Sociopath, who recommends that they dispose of the evidence by dumping the corpse of the man they’ve killed into a nearby lake. Although the others, especially Julie, are reluctant to do so, preferring to report the accident to the police, they ultimately follow Barry’s lead, adding obstruction of justice (and leaving the scene of an accident) to the crime of manslaughter and (for Barry) driving while intoxicated. Because Julie shows more tenacity in her desire to do the right thing, she becomes the film’s stereotypical final girl, the female character who survives the carnage unleashed by the antagonist and who may (or may not) turn out to be the death of the monster. (In I Know What You Did Last Summer, whether she survives is unclear, as the last scene has the killer burst through her shower stall, and the movie ends without a resolution to this last-minute home invasion.)

In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman tells his son Biff, “Spite is the word of your undoing.” Willy is wrong about this, as he is wrong about so much of everything else, of course, but he is right about something, too. In fiction, the character often succeeds or fails because of one character trait, or flaw. Sometimes, this flaw is hubris, or overweening pride. Other times, it may be poor judgment or timidity. In fact, the fatal flaw can be any character trait that is grave enough to tempt fate, annoy the gods, or inspire vengeance on the part of a wronged third party. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, the fatal flaw is irresponsibility.

The teens drive drunk at night along a winding mountain road. That’s irresponsible! They opt to dispose of the victim’s body rather than to notify the authorities. That’s irresponsible! When Helen loses the tiara that she’s won in her county’s beauty contest, Barry dives into the lake to retrieve it so that it cannot be linked to the victim’s remains once they are discovered (as they will be, once the gases from the body’s decomposition cause it to float to the surface, where it will be beached or found by boaters, fishermen, or swimmers). When he does so, Barry sees the body’s eyes open, a clear indication that the man whom they’d presumed to be dead is still alive. Nevertheless, he leaves him to drown. That’s irresponsible! (It’s also a conscienceless act that makes Barry ripe for an especially brutal act of retribution.)

Without concern for whether the theory is true or not, writers base their characterization of the dramatic personae who people their stories upon the trait theory of personality, which, in one way or another, contends that human personality is made up of a collection of qualities that differs from one individual to another. These traits, in turn, more or less determine behavior. The idea is as ancient as the theory of the four humors, which suggests that people do what they do on the basis of whether one or another of four body fluids, or humors, happens to overwhelm the other three:

• Black bile = pessimism, sleeplessness, irritability
• Blood = courage, hope, passion
• Phlegm = calmness, unemotional demeanor
• Yellow bile =angry disposition

Personality traits, as the above list shows, can be represented by adjectives. Therefore, by making a list of adjectives that summarizes the nature of this, that, or the other character, a writer has a basic “personality” for his or her character. One of these traits (for example, arrogance, spite, poor judgment, timidity, irresponsibility) is the fatal flaw that brings the main character of the story (and possibly others as well) to ruin (or, if the narrative is a comedy, as some horror stories are, to victory).

Ancient and medieval philosophers and writers were masters at developing character sketches of stereotypical moral (and later, literary) stereotypes. An early practitioner of the process was Aristotle’s student Theophrastus, whose method was to use personification to describe the character trait. Here is his description, by way of personification, of the trait of stupidity:

You may define Stupidity as a slowness of mind in word or deed. But the Stupid Man is one who, sitting at his counters, and having made all his calculations and worked out his sum, asks one who sits by him how much it comes to. When any one has a suit against him, and he has come to the day when the cause must be decided, he forgets it and walks out into his field. Often also when he sits to see a play, the rest go out and he is left, fallen asleep in the theatre. The same man, having eaten too much, will go out in the night to relieve himself, and fall over the neighbor’s dog, who bites him. The same man, having hidden away what he has received, is always searching for it, and never finds it. And when it is announced to him that one of his intimate friends is dead, and he is asked to the funeral, then, with a face set to sadness and tears, he says, "Good luck to it!" When he receives money owing to him he calls in witnesses, and in midwinter he scolds his man for not having gathered cucumbers. To train his boys for wrestling he makes them race till they are tired. Cooking his own lentils in the field, he throws salt twice into the pot and makes them uneatable. When it rains he says, "How sweet I find this water of the stars." And when some one asks, "How many have passed the gates of death?" [proverbial phrase for a great number] answers, "As many, I hope, as will be enough for you and me" (Morley).

This method may be regarded as a bit laborious (and as unnecessary) today, but it shows the effectiveness of the use of the trait theory of personality to envision and develop fictional characters.

The next post will explain how to take this process a step further, exploiting it to its fullest extent, and the aspiring writer will see how he or she can make even flat, static characters seem as lifelike as one’s own Aunt Martha or the pesky neighbor next door, Gladys Kravitz.

Source cited
Morley, ed., Henry. Character Writings of the 17th Century. London: University College, 1891.