Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A sudden shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Commentary

This poem recounts Zeus’ rape of Leda, the wife of Sparta’s King Tyndareus. From this union, the twin Castor and Polydeuces were born, as was their sister, Helen of Troy. When Helen was abducted and carried off from Sparta to Troy, her brothers rescued her.

The poem begins with violence. Zeus, having taken the form of a swan, ravishes Leda, and there is neither tenderness nor love in the act; it is a “brutal” violation, not an act of love, in which a god seizes that which he desires by brute force. The first words suggest only a physical assault. There is “a sudden blow,” the “beating” of wings, and a “staggering girl.” However, the next images of the opening lines quickly add a sexual context. The assault is not merely physical; it is sexual-it is rape: the girl’s’ “thighs [are] caressed/By the dark webs,” and “her nape [is] caught in his bill”:

 

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

If we are familiar with the myth in which Zeus takes the form of a swan to ravish Leda, these lines make sense at once. If we are not familiar with the myth, the sudden references to “wings” and “webs” and “bill” are not only unexpected but fantastic, even bizarre. The rapist, we realize, is not a man but a bird-the bird, apparently, alluded to in the title of the poem. In either case, the depiction of bestiality-and an adulterous bestiality at that-arrests our attention. The rape becomes both immediate and concrete. It is not merely a past event described; it is one that is taking place, as it were, before our eyes and, as witnesses to this “brutal” act, we must feel much the same as its victim feels.

Leda is not a willing participant in the act. Terrified, she tries to resist, struggling to push her attacker’s “feathered glory from her loosening thighs”:

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

She is unable to prevent the assault. She is, after all, a mortal woman, whereas her attacker is none other than Zeus himself. It is the chief of the gods who holds her “helpless breast upon his breast.”

The next lines reinforce the attacker’s bestial character. The rapist is not human. In fact, Zeus, in his present guise, is of another species entirely, and Leda, “laid in that white rush,” cannot help but feel “the strange heart beating where it lies.”

With his emission, Zeus engenders not only Leda’s future children, but creates the catalyst for the Trojan War as well, for it will occur due to the abduction of Leda’s daughter, Helen:

A sudden shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

The concluding lines of the poem ask whether Leda envisioned the future war, which Zeus, it seems, even in the act of ravishing her, knew would occur. In addition, these lines tell the reader explicitly that Zeus had no feeling whatever for the object of his lust, dropping Leda with indifference as soon as he had satisfied his passion:

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

The poet leaves no room for debate as to whether Zeus felt any love or affection for the woman he ravished. The god felt nothing for her; she was only a means of satisfying his lust and, perhaps, a vehicle by which to set up the future war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Whether he allowed her to glimpse that future war is unclear, as is the question of his motive if he did allow her a prophetic glimpse of the catastrophe to come. If he did permit Leda to foresee the war, was it to dignify or justify his rape of her or was it to torment her by letting her see what would come of the act? 

Nowhere in the poem do we get any hint that Zeus is at all concerned with Leda as a human being. In fact, the opposite is true. The rape is sudden and violent; Leda is “terrified”; she attempts to resist, but is “helpless,” “mastered by the brute blood of the air.” When Zeus finishes with her, his “indifferent beak” lets her “drop.” It would seem, therefore, that his motive, if he did grant her a glimpse of the war to come, must have been to torment her with the knowledge that her rape would be followed by a future war, resulting from her daughter’s abduction, in which thousands will be killed. Zeus is not human on any level. As a god, he is not only above human beings but he has neither human feelings nor any feeling for them.

Eros by Ralph Waldo Emerson: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

The sense of the world is short,

Long and various the report,—

To love and be beloved;

Men and gods have not outlearned it,

And how oft soe'er they've turned it,

'Tis not to be improved.

“Eros” is a love poem of sorts or, one might say, a meditation on love itself, since Eros is the Greek god of sexual, or erotic, love. The first two lines of the poem present a problem, as it were; the remaining lines provide the solution to that problem.

The problem is that life is short, and it’s meaning is uncertain. “The sense of the world”—its perception, the smell and the taste and the feeling and the sound and the sight of the world”—is short,” the speaker laments, lasting, in most cases, far less than a century. In addition to the brevity of life, the meaning of existence is unclear, although the interpretation of its possible significance is as “long and various” as art, philosophy, and religion can make it.

To the problem of the shortness and uncertainty of life, the speaker offers a solution: “To love and be beloved,” he declares, is an adventure that has defied the learning of both 'men and gods,'” and represents something that, no matter how much it is studied, analyzed, or considered, is “not to be improved.”

The love of which the speaker speaks, as the title of the poem indicates, is physical, or sexual, love—erotic love. It is fitting that the remedy that the speaker suggests—sensual love—is physical, just as the organs by which life itself is perceived are physical. Human beings know the world through their eyes, noses, skin, ears, and tongues. Likewise, through their bodies—or, more specifically, through their sexual organs—they may experience something—love—that is not only meaningful in itself but that has both physical and spiritual dimensions, thereby transcending the merely material world that is, in itself, all too short and uncertain. The same body that perceives a short and uncertain life in the material world within which it exists can, in becoming the vehicle for sex and love, give life a meaning that, derived from physical organs, is, nevertheless, spiritual in its essence, thereby providing a means of transcending the merely material, or animal, basis of existence and experience.

Monsters and the Monster Makers Who Make Them

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Transformation is the changing of a person, place, or thing from one state into another. (In this post, we're limiting our consideration of transformation and its effects to concrete entities, although, of course, abstractions, such as ideas, moral principles, emotions, attitudes, values, and beliefs can and are often also transformed.) Such transformations, as might be expected, often, in turn, produce sometimes dramatic effects.

Some transformations, such as that of a caterpillar into a butterfly or a fetus into an infant) are natural. Others are induced. In times past, magic was the means by which transformations were evoked; today, science is likely to be the means of effecting such changes.

 For example, according to Ovid's account of the myth concerning Hermaphroditus, the god Hermes, in answer to the prayer of the nymph Salmacis, transformed the fifteen-year-old youth Hermaphroditus and his admirer, Salmacis herself, into a single person who possessed the adolescent's male sex and the nymph's female sex.

Today, such a “metamorphosis” would, of course, result from hormone therapy and surgery, and its cause wouldn't be a nymph's desire to be united forever with the object of her love (or passion), but gender dysphoria (at least as the cause of the condition is presently understood).

In some instances, sexual transformations are central to horror films. In such movies, a transvestite or a transgender person is frequently the villain, and he or she (usually she) is not typically portrayed with compassion or sensitivity. Psycho, Sleepaway Camp, and Insidious: Chapter 2 are some of the better-known horror movies that feature transvestite or transgender “monsters.”

But transformations need not be sexual. They can involve genetic mutation (a male scientist becomes a fly in The Fly), age and physical appearance (the succubus in The Shining changes from a beautiful young woman into an old crone), animality (men and women transform into werewolves in The Howling), insectoid (Debbie changes into a cockroach in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4), multiple personalities (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and many other types of change.

Ovid himself suggests various types of transformations in his Metamorphoses. Such changes include changes of inanimate objects into human beings; men and women into divinities or other supernatural beings; a youth into a hermaphrodite; a woman into a man; men and women into animals, birds, stones, flowers, and a cloud; and a supernatural being into a plant.

 

Some of the metamorphoses of which Ovid writes were likely intended as rewards: Galatea's transformation from a statue into a woman; a fisherman's transformation into a sea god; Chiron's transformation into a celestial constellation. Other metamorphoses, however, were probably meant to be punishments of hubris or some other offense, as were those in which human beings were turned into stone. In some cases, as that of Syrinx, the metamorphosis was for protection. Regardless of the reason for such extreme changes, however, it seems such transformations would not be entirely devoid of horror.

In horror fiction, such changes are always extreme and, well, horrifying. They are horrifying for several reasons. They are

• beyond control, making those who are transformed helpless;
• usually for the worse—something more valuable—or, at least, more valued—is lost than that which is gained: humanity, youth and beauty, oneself;
• either irreversible or recurrent (that which is lost, in other words, is irretrievably lost or can be regained only for a time and is constantly under threat);
• sudden, often without warning, and do not, therefore, allow their victims time to reflect upon their fate or to “adjust” to a change that will have monumental and lasting effects on them throughout their lives as well as those who love—or even simply know—them;
• likely to alter the victim's self-image, self-confidence, and self-esteem;
• apt to endanger the victim, subjecting him or her to scorn, ostracism, incarceration, physical or sexual assault, or even murder.

Imagine that you are an adolescent boy who is suddenly neither a boy nor a girl and, paradoxically, both; that you are a beautiful young woman transformed into an old crone; that you are a man become a fly, a wolf, or a cockroach; or that you now have two personalities. Imagine that this astonishing change occurred instantly, only a moment ago, without warning or anticipation. You are yourself, but you are also, most assuredly, not yourself. You are a freak, a monster, who will be treated as such by others, feared and shunned, hunted and stalked.

That is the true nature of the monster who becomes monstrous through metamorphosis, whether the change is effected through magic or technology. A successful horror story that derives its horror from the existential transformation of a character succeeds when it shows that the true horror of this situation is not in the change itself but in the effects of the metamorphosis—and then portrays those effects so well that the audience or the reader, vicariously experiencing them, feels the “monster's” pain, suffers with the monster, and, in effect, becomes the monster, helpless, overwhelmed, the worse for wear, irretrievably altered, suffering losses of confidence and self-esteem; scorned, ostracized, incarcerated, physically or sexually assaulted, or even murdered.

The monster is redeemed, if redeemed at all, by the knowledge that those who make monsters are more monstrous than the monsters they make.

NOTE: The author does not mean to imply that transgender individuals are "monsters." He is alluding to Hermaphroditus, as this mythical figure's metamorphosis is described in Ovid's poem, and to the concepts of the ancients regarding conditions that are now explained and understood scientifically. Transgender individuals are certainly not monsters or in any sense monstrous.

Supernatural Means of Inducing Impotence: A Study in the Human Imagination Inspired by Fear

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Assisted by demons and by magic, witches could perform wonders. They often produced such marvelous feats as changing women into men, although, it was said, they were unable to do the opposite, transforming men into women, because, as R. E. L. Masters observes in Eros and Evil: The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft, “it is the method of nature to add rather than to take away” (128). Apparently, although demons are, by nature, supernatural, their powers are, nevertheless, constrained by the “methods” of nature.

According to Masters, witches frequently practiced “ligature or the production of impotence by magical means” (128-129). They used various means. They might make a woman appear so repulsive that her looks would quench her man's desire (129). (Think of the bathtub scene in The Shining.) More often, witches and demons left men's libido unchanged, so that their victims could the more greatly suffer, being unable to satisfy their lusts (130).

Demons could also prevent intercourse by placing themselves between a couple, thereby preventing any physical contact between the man and the woman; could “freeze” lust; and could either cause the penis to remain flaccid or to be unable to “perform” in its erect state, “closing . . . the seminary ducts” (131).

Another tactic available to demons and their witches was said to be the theft of the male genitals themselves, either actually or by means of inducing an illusion to this effect, although this method was hotly debated (131-132). Masters declares that he has tried, with some success, to reproduce the illusion through hypnosis: “I have so managed that the subject could neither see nor feel his sex organ” (132).

As an alternative to blocking the seminal ducts, demons and witches could desensitize the penile nerves, making the organ incapable of assuming its erect state; could cause the semen “to congeal and become hard as rock, so that it could not flow out of his urethra”; shrink the organ “to a mere shriveled shred of flesh”; close the vagina to prevent the introduction of the penis; or cause the penis to retract into the man's abdomen (134).

One of the chief means of inducing impotence in human males was the “tying [of ] a knot in a cord . . . . and there were at least half a hundred different knots, each inflicting a different degree or form of impotence or frigidity,” permanent or temporary in its duration(135).

The same ingenuity of imagination that devised this array of magical means for inducing impotence also suggested a variety of cures. God Himself might intervene on behalf of the impotent man or the frigid woman; magic spells might be reversed through “confession,” remorse, making “the sign of the cross, humility, meditation, and a pilgrimage to a holy and venerable shrine; or, by urinating through her wedding ring, a wife might “undo the ligature” (136).

Witches might also provide methods of preventing such curses. Using “pagan amulets and charms” might do (that is, undo) the trick, and there were several from which to choose, including “phallic symbols” (an “upright knife and broomstick”); “bisexual symbols” (“a horse's skull, a goblin's foot and a pentagram”); or “vulva symbols” (“horseshoes and hag stones, or rocks with holes bored through them” (136). “A love potion or philtre” might overcome impotence or frigidity, or a witch might “restore” an impotent man's manhood after he agreed to “copulate with her.”

There was a limit to the powers of demons and witches to impose impotence and frigidity, however, set by God Himself, according to Johann Klein, and a reason for this limitation. As Masters summarizes the divine motive: “God in all his divine love and mercy would never allow such universal impotence or permit his beloved children to perish by so odious a means” (137).

This chapter, “Sexual magic,” of Masters's intriguing book shows, once again, how inventive the human imagination can become when a woman is threatened with or (monstrously, to be sure) subjected to torture until she “confesses” what her tormentors want to hear and the sexual repression of both the victims and the victimizers seek release through any means possible.

Certainly, no writer would or should subject him- or herself to such extremes, but imagining that the same fate could await one as thousands of women (and a relatively few men) suffered at the hands of the Inquisition during the Middle Ages could produce similarly imaginative and horrific “accounts” of supernatural activity, whether related to human sexuality, psychopathology, or some other sphere of human experience as it is represented in fantastic fiction, including the horror genre, which, unfortunately, is too often rife with “torture porn” misogyny, and sadomasochism.

The threat and fear of imminent death seems to have been a strong muse, indeed, for both women accused of witchcraft and for Scheherazade, the author of The One Thousand and One Nights.

"Eros and Evil": A Review of Medieval Beliefs about the Sex Lives of Witches and Demons

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 In Eros and Evil: The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft, R. E. L. Masters supplies a focused historical account of what he describes as "the sex lore of witchcraft" (146). Such lore, he declares, contains "all the elements usually found in the pornographic and obscene work of literature" (147). The topics that Masters covers in his intriguing, frequently shocking, book testify to the accuracy of his assertion.

Detail of a drawing by Mark Blanton

Without going into detail, the first part of the 322-page volume reviews, among other topics, "the origins of incubi and succubi," demons who have sex with women and men, respectively; "the anatomy of the devil" and "the semen of the demon," which indicate that both demon penises and semen have decidedly strange, sometimes contradictory, properties; "offspring of demonality," among whom, Masters, naming names, reports, are included Plato, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne's daughter, and Martin Luther. Other topics are just as interesting--and bizarre.

The second part of the book seeks explanations for the strange beliefs about and the alleged practices of medieval witches and demons. Masters suggests that alcohol and drugs, blind faith, delusion, hallucinations, mass hysteria, mental illness, sexual repression, and superstition—and the torture inflicted upon suspected witches by members of the Inquisition—can account for these phenomena. Witches and demons need not apply. (Possibly, he should have included politics as well.)

Published in 1962, the psychological sources the author taps may be outdated, as are some of the concepts associated with that field of human endeavor; however, in general, his explanations as to the possible causes of the "witch craze" are, for the most part, credible and convincing, and Eros and Evil makes very interesting reading.

Detail of a drawing by Javier Gil

The book also gives readers and writers of supernatural horror a glimpse into the mad, mad world of the medieval mindset. It was (and is), in many ways, an unfamiliar, fantastic world in which witches and demons not only copulate and otherwise engage in a variety of sexual acts, many of which would at the time have been considered unnatural, perverse, and sinful, but the volume also acquaints its readers with such particulars as the anatomical nature of the damned and the ingenious solutions they developed to such problems as how to obtain and deposit semen (since, according to some theologians, demons could not supply this substance themselves). Such details can fire the imagination of writers of supernatural fiction.

 
Whether Ira Levin read Eros and Evil before he wrote Rosemary's Baby is unknown, to me, at least, but Masters's book would definitely have been a great resource for Levin's novel. It would be an equally invaluable source for other writers who want to be accurate as well as lascivious in describing the sex lives of witches and demons. It would also be a good read for artists who depict such shenanigans in illustrations, paintings, sculptures, or other visual or plastic media. For those who are interested in such art, Mark Blanton and Javier Gil are highly recommended (but be forewarned: their art is both "demonic" and lascivious!)

The Not-So-Gentle Sex

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Horace Walpole

Although Horace Walpole's 1764 novel of mistaken identities, The Castle of Otranto, is the first work of Gothic horror, women writers popularized the new genre.

Ann Radcliffe

Uncanny rather than marvelous, Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1874) focuses on the attempt by her uncle to marry of the orphaned Emily St. Aubert to his friend, Count Morano, in a scheme to divest both his own wife and the count's bride of their property. Radcliffe (1764-1823) influenced several notable male authors, including Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).

Mary Shelley 

Not only did Mary Shelley (1797-1851) create a horror icon when she penned Frankenstein, or; The Modern Prometheus in 1818, but she may also have kept a part of the body of her late husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, as a memento. 

Charlotte Dacre

Charlotte Dacre (pen name of Charlotte Byrne) (c. 1771-1825) shocked the literary world of her day with the publication of her 1806 novel Zofloya; or, the Moor, a feminine version of Matthew Lewis's The Monk. Lewis's novel was regarded as salacious; it included a lusty monk and a cross dresser; Dacre's book, which was full of the adventures of harlots and courtesans, was even more scandalous.

Other volumes, as lascivious as Zofloya, followed, including The Libertine (1807) and The Passions (1811). The former was published under the pseudonym Rosa Matilda, a reference to a women who, seduced by Lewis's monk, became a seductress herself.

 
To read further about these authors of the not-so-gentle sex, check out the fascinating 2019 tome Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kroeger and Melanie R. Anderson.

Horror Fiction: The Appeal of the Need for Sex

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

As we saw in the last post (the first in this series), Jib Fowles identifies 15 basic appeals used in advertising. These same appeals, we argue, are frequently employed in horror fiction; indeed, their presence in horror novels and movies accounts for much of the appeal of these types of fiction.

In this post, we'll take a look at the appeal to readers' or viewers' need for sex. The fulfillment of the “needs for,” as opposed to the “needs to” on Fowles's list, require the presence or participation of another person or persons besides oneself. While it is possible to satisfy oneself sexually, by masturbation or other means, to find true sexual fulfillment, one requires a partner (or, some might contend, partners), whether of the male, the female, both, or another gender.

In horror, the need for sex characteristically involves perversion. Since all communication is reducible to seven basic questions, the forms of sexual perversion about which horror writers may write take seven possible types of forms. (A type, as we're using it, means a sexual behavioral set identifiable by shared characteristics.) These types of perversion (i. e., a deviation, corruption, or distortion of the original nature of purpose of a person, place, or thing) can be subsumed under these questions:

Who?

What?

When?

Where?

How?

Why?

How many? or How much?

We can further refine these questions by associating each of them with specific referents:

Who?	What?	When?	Where?	How?	Why?	How many? or How much?
Agent (actor)	Object	Age, time or duration	Location	Method, process, or technique	Cause, motive, or purpose	Quantity (in volume or number)

Let's add a couple more rows, identifying an example of a horror novel or movie that perverts human sexuality by deviating from, corrupting, or distorting the original nature of purpose of a person, place, or thing involved in sexual behavior:

Who?	What?	When?	Where?	How?	Why?	How many? or How much?
Agent (actor)	Object	Age, time, occasion, or duration	Location	Method, process, or technique	Cause, motive, or purpose	Quantity (in volume or number)
Demon Seed (1973 novel; 1977 film)	The Exorcist (1973)	Maleus Maleficarum (1487)*	The Devils of Loudon (1952 novel; 1972 film [The Devils])	Alien (1979)	Rosemary's Baby (1967 novel; 1968 film)	The Devils of Loudon (1952 novel; 1972 film [The Devils])
A computer becomes a woman's sexual partner.	Regan MacNeil, the possessed girl, masturbates with a crucifix.	A demon, having assumed a female form, spends so long in intercourse with her victim that she absolutely drains him of semen and he thereafter dies.	Naked nuns conduct sexual orgies in a convent.	Parasitic pregnancy ends in the fetus's bursting through the human host's abdomen.	After being raped by a demon, Rosemary Wood-house conceives a demonic child.	Naked nuns conduct sexual orgies in a convent.

As the above table shows, the same movie may contain two (or more) of these types of sexual perversion: The Devils of Loudon (1952 novel; 1972 film [The Devils]) contains orgies involving many individuals participating simultaneously in various sex acts; it also takes place in a convent. Likewise, these types of perversions can vary in how they are represented.

For example, a perverse location need not be a geographical place or an architectural space (a convent); it could be an anatomical site, as in Teeth (2008), in which a young woman discovers that she has two sets of teeth, one in her mouth, the other in her vagina. Other possible variations? One's partner could be a poltergeist, as in The Entity (1982) (Who?); human corpses, as in the necrophilia scenes in the novel Under the Dome (2009) (What?); or a man transformed into metal kills his girlfriend after his penis becomes a power drill, as in Tetsuo:The Iron Man (1989) (How?).

Writers are limited pretty much only by their imaginations, their sense of morality, their personal taste, and the law of the land. Publishing houses will print and distribute just about anything that promises to make a buck. It seems unlikely, though, that the majority of readers or viewers are likely to have a need for extreme types of sex, even when it occurs in horror stories.

* Although the Malleus Maleficarum is a book—a manual for prosecuting witchcraft trials—rather than a novel or a movie, it contains supposed accounts of demonic sex, one of which suggests such a long-lasting (and fatal) encounter between a succubus and “her” victim, a hermit, that the hermit was completely drained of his semen:

When he [the hermit] was done and had arisen, the demon said to him, “behold what you have done, for I am not a girl or a woman but a demon,” and at once he disappeared from view, while the hermit remained absolutely astonished. And because the demon, with his great power, had withdrawn a very great quantity of semen, the hermit was permanently dried up, so that he died at the end of a month's time.

One can imagine the use of this description of demonic sexual activity as the basis for a terrifying sex scene in a horror novel or movie!

Note: For you may also want to read my post “Note: You may want to read “Bentley Little: Aberrant Sex as Symbolic of the nature of Sin.”

The 15 basic Appeals of Horror Fiction

Copyright 2018 by Gary L.Pullman

Jib Fowles helped thousands of people better understand how advertisements, print and otherwise, manipulate viewers using fifteen basic appeals to various desires, emotions, and needs. He characterized five of these needs as “needs to,” eight others are “needs for.” Generally speaking, people can satisfy “needs to” on their own, but they require the participation or, at least, the presence of others to fulfill “needs for.”

Fowles identifies these “needs to”:

The need to aggress.

The need to escape.

The need to feel safe.

The need to nurture.

The need to satisfy curiosity.

The “needs for” are:

The need for aesthetic sensations.

The need for affiliation.

The need for attention.

The need for autonomy.

The need to dominate.

The need for guidance.

The need for prominence.

The need for sex.

The fifteenth basic need is a group, the physiological needs, which include the needs for food, drink, sleep, and so forth.

His essay explains in detail each of these needs and provides several examples of each type of appeal advertisements make in promoting their products.

The same fifteen basic needs make horror novels, short stories, and movies appealing to their readers and viewers. Let's take a look at these needs, in regard to horror novels and movies, in the same order in which Fowles himself discusses these needs in relation to the appeal of advertisements, as we cut back and forth between the two analyses.

* * *

1. The Need for Sex

Only a small percentage of ads appeal to sex, because such an appeal can overwhelm the product being advertised. As Fowles says, “it is too blaring and tends to obliterate product information. Nudity in advertising has the effect of reducing brand recall.” In other words, sex and nudity are distracting, and they are more memorable than the product they supposedly promote.

Whether or not an ad containing nudity or sexual imagery actually evokes the need for sex depends on the context of the nudity or sexual images. Such an ad in Playboy magazine, aimed at men, may be an appeal to the need for sex, but one featuring a scantily dressed young woman and aimed at other young women is more likely an appeal to the need for attention.

2. The Need for Affiliation

The need for affiliation is the need to belong, to be part of a group. In a positive approach, such ads often show a person surrounded by friends or family members whose affection and loyalty are valued. Ads may also appeal to the need for affiliation by taking a negative approach and showing it as absent or as threatened” “If we don't use Scope, we'll have the 'Ugh!' Morning Breath' that causes the male and female models [in the ad] to avert their faces [from one another].” Ads also show the solutions to such problems—the products featured in the ads.

There are “several types of affiliation”: romance, courtship (dating), family togetherness, and friendship. The AT&T telephone ad that encouraged people to “reach out and touch someone” appeals to the need for affiliation.

3. The Need to Nurture.

The need to nurture is the need “to take care of small, defenseless creatures,” such as children and pets. Taking care of children and pets can involve feeding, helping, supporting, consoling, protecting, comforting, nursing, healing, and guiding them. Both men and women have the need to nurture.

4. The Need for Guidance

The need for guidance is the opposite of the need to nurture. These pitches are made by celebrities; fantasy figures (the Green Giant, Betty Crocker, Mr. Goodwrench); authority figures, real and imagined (“When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen”); or icons of “tradition or custom” or of “American history.” Kool-Aid appeals to the need for guidance through tradition, stating, “You loved it [Kool-Aid] as a kid. You trust it as a mother.”

5. The Need to Aggress

Everyone has the need to behave aggressively, to aggress. Ads that appeal to this need must be careful, in doing so, not to alienate consumers so that they do not turn “public opinion . . . against what is being sold.” Jack-in-the-Box offended customers by destroying the company's mascot, the Jack-in-the-box, until the violence was “toned down.”

6. The Need to Achieve

Ads that appeal to this need evoke the need to excel, to “accomplish something difficult” by overcoming “obstacles . . . . surpass others,” and “attain a high standard.” Athletes are often featured in such ads. However, ads may create their own “role models,” as Dewar's Scotch ads do in their profiles of successful people.

Ads based on the need to achieve often use superlatives: “best,” first,” “finest,” to suggest the “need to succeed.” Ads for sales and bargains also belong in this category, because they suggest that one has seized “an opportunity” and come “out ahead of others.”

7. The Need to Dominate

Fowles sees the need to dominate as a “craving to be powerful—perhaps omnipotent.” This need, he suggests, can be associated with “the need to . . . control one's environment' and a desire for “clout.”

Like the other needs, this one is universal, as applicable to women as it is to men.

8. The Need for Prominence.

This need, says Fowles, is related to “the need to be admired and respected, to enjoy prestige and high social status.” Wealth does not have to symbolize prominence, as Fowles points out by referencing the American Express advertisement, in which 'we learn that the prominent person is not so prominent without his American Express card.”

9. The Need for Attention.

Distinguishing the need for attention form the need for prominence, Fowles points out that the former concerns the need to be “looked up to”; the latter, to “the need to be looked at.” he cites a Brooke Shields advertisement in which the actress wears Calvin Klein jeans not so that men will pursue her, but so that she will stand out from other young women.

10. The Need for Autonomy

We tend to want to do things our own way, to be independent and to set our own tasks, according to our own agendas. “ The focus here is upon the independence and integrity of the individual,” Fowles says, and it is opposite to the need for guidance.

11. The Need to Escape.

“Escape” can be actual, literal escape or to figuratively and emotionally escape from the responsibilities and routines of everyday life. The latter type of escape is motivated by a search for pleasure and the freedom to do as we please. The need to escape can include other people besides oneself; a group can escape together as easily as a solitary individual.

12. The Need to Feel Safe

It's only natural to want to feel safe, and advertisements can appeal to this need directly, by showing models who are safe, or indirectly, by showing models who are in danger, because, even when we're at risk, we feel the need to be safe. Product durability often plays upon this need, as do references to natural ingredients.

13. The Need for Aesthetic Sensations.

“Aesthetic” refers to persons, places, or things that are beautiful or otherwise bring pleasure. Everyone has a need to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch beautiful objects, visit beautiful places, meet beautiful people, and dine on delicious food. Anything that satisfies the need for aesthetic sensations can be used to make this type of appeal.

14. The Need to Satisfy Curiosity.

This need involves “a need for information” and addresses people's natural sense of curiosity. In advertisements, Fowles says, “ Trivia, percentages, observations counter to conventional wisdom . . . all help [to] sell products,” and “any advertisement in a question-and-answer format is strumming this need.”

15. Physiological Needs.

Physiological needs are the needs of the body: food, drink, and sleep, among them. Many food advertisements make this basic appeal.

Styles

Fowles also identifies three “styles” that many advertisements employ to influence “the way a basic appeal is presented”: humor, celebrity endorsements, and “time imagery.”

Although humor can backfire, overwhelming the advertisement's message or offending people, “softer appeals” using a humorous approach can be effective.

Celebrity endorsements can backfire when celebrities behave obnoxiously or offend people, but this approach can work well; it allows famous men and women to “introduce” a sponsor's product, using one or more of the basic appeals, such as the need for guidance, the need to achieve, the need for aesthetic sensations, the need for affiliation, and the need to escape.

Time imagery can supply advertisers with historical heroes, traditions, and artwork, appealing to such needs as those for achievement, guidance, aesthetic sensations, affiliation, and escape. Nostalgia, the fond remembrance of times past, is an example of a time imagery approach.

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How does Fowles's analysis pertain to horror fiction? We offer examples in upcoming posts.