Vladimir Propp’s 31 Dramatic Situations and 7 Character Types

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Russian formalist scholar Vladimir Propp analyzed his country’s fairy tales to identify their simplest narrative constituents, which, following the linguistic approach that breaks language into its smallest elements, he called “narratemes.” Using this method, he catalogued the thirty-one dramatic situations, several of which, following a story’s opening situation, appear, in various combinations, again and again in such tales. Occasionally, a situation is inverted. Typically, each is played out three times, the first two occurrences ending in failure or negation.

Based upon his analysis of fairy tales, Propp also contends that their characters can be grouped into seven categories.

Although his theories have attracted some criticism, especially by Claude Levi-Strauss, an advocate of structuralism, Propp’s views remain influential among readers, writers, and critics and have been applied to both narrative fiction and drama in general, rather than just to fairy tales in particular. Therefore, his theories may also be applied to horror fiction.

According to Propp’s Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928), the thirty-one dramatic situations are:

1. ABSENTATION: A family member leaves the security of the home or community. This may be the hero or the heroine or another family member whom the hero or the heroine later needs to rescue. This division of the family creates conflict. The hero or heroine, if introduced here, is often shown to be an ordinary person, which allows the reader identify with the this character as someone who is similar to the reader him- or herself.
2. INTERDICTION: An interdiction is addressed to the hero or heroine (he or she is told not to go somewhere or not to do something).
3. VIOLATION of INTERDICTION: The interdiction is violated (the villain enters the tale, although the villain does not necessarily confront the hero or heroine). If the villain stalks or spies on the hero or heroine without (yet) attacking him or her, the villain’s presence nevertheless heightens suspense through dramatic irony: the reader, unlike the hero or heroine, is aware of the villain’s threatening presence.
4. RECONNAISSANCE: The villain reconnoiters, seeking children, jewels, or other valuables or the intended victim questions the villain). The villain (often disguised) seeks information. He or she may speak to a family member who innocently divulges information. The villain may also seek to meet the hero or heroine, perhaps knowing already that the hero or heroine is special in some way. The introduction of the villain adds suspense to the story, particularly when the villain is in proximity to the hero’ or heroine’s family or community. The villain’s eloquence or power may also add suspense through dramatic irony: the reader knows that the persuasive rhetoric is false its speaker dangerous, but the intended victim or the hero or heroine may not.
5. DELIVERY: The villain gains information about the victim. This information may be acquired in the form of a treasure map or the location or the intent of the hero or heroine. As the villain obtains this intelligence is obtained, his or her fortune improves as the hero’s or heroine’s declines. This change is the characters’ respective fortunes creates suspense concerning the ultimate outcome of the story: will the villain triumph, after all?
6. TRICKERY: The villain attempts kidnap the victim or steal his or her belongings through trickery, such as the wearing of a disguise and the gaining of the victim’s confidence. The villain’s treachery shows conclusively that he or she is truly evil and again heightens suspense as the reader is left to wonder whether the hero, heroine, or victim will come to harm through the villain’s duplicity.
7. COMPLICITY: The victim, deceived, unwittingly helps the villain, perhaps by supplying the villain with a map or a magical weapon or by working against good characters whom the villain has convinced the victim are actually wicked. The reader is apt to despair as the hero, heroine, or victim acts in a villainous manner.
8. VILLAINY and LACK: The villain causes harm or injury to a family member by abduction, theft of magical agent, the spoiling crops, plunder, kidnapping, the casting of a spell on someone, the substitution of an object for a child, murder, imprisonment, forced marriage, or torment. Alternatively, a family member lacks something or desires something, such as a magical potion. There are two parts to this stage, either or both of which may appear in the story. In the first stage, the villain causes some harm. In the second stage, a physical or emotional lack is identified.
9. MEDIATION: The misfortune or lack is made known and the hero or heroine is dispatched, responds to a summons, is sent away, or freed from imprisonment. The hero or heroine discovers the act of villainy or the lack
10. BEGINNING COUNTER-ACTION: The hero or heroine agrees to, or decides upon, a counter-action as a means of obtaining what he or she lacks.
11. DEPARTURE: The hero or heroine leaves home.
12. FIRST FUNCTION OF THE DONOR: The hero or heroine is tested, interrogated, or attacked, which incident prepares the way for his or her receipt of the magical agent or helper (donor).
13. HERO'S REACTION: The hero or heroine reacts to actions of future donor: he or she passes or fails a test, frees the captive, reconciles a dispute, performs a service, or uses the villain’s powers against him or her).
14. RECEIPT OF A MAGICAL AGENT: The hero or heroine acquires the use of a magical agent which is directly transferred, located, purchased, or prepared, or which spontaneously appears, is eaten or drunk, ort appears in the form of help that another character offers).
15. GUIDANCE: The hero or heroine is transferred, delivered, or led to the whereabouts of an object of the search.
16. STRUGGLE: The hero or heroine and the villain join in direct combat.
17. BRANDING: The hero or heroine is branded (wounded or marked, or receives a ring or a scarf).
18. VICTORY: The villain is defeated by being killed in combat, defeated in a contest, killed while asleep, or banished.
19. LIQUIDATION: The initial misfortune or lack is resolved as the object of search is discovered, a spell is broken, a slain person is revived, or a captive is set free.
20. RETURN: The hero or heroine returns home.
21. PURSUIT: The hero or heroine is pursued, as the pursuer tries to kill, eat, or undermine the hero or heroine.
22. RESCUE: The hero or heroine is rescued from the pursuit as obstacles delay the pursuer, the hero or heroine hides or is hidden, the hero or heroine transforms into an unrecognizable form, or the hero or heroine is saved from an attempt upon his or her life.
23. UNRECOGNIZED ARRIVAL: The hero or heroine arrives home unrecognized or arrives in another country.
24. UNFOUNDED CLAIMS: A false hero or heroine presents unfounded claims.
25. DIFFICULT TASK: A difficult task is proposed to the hero or heroine, such as a trial by ordeal, riddles, or a test of strength or endurance.
26. SOLUTION: The hero or the heroine accomplishes the difficult task.
27. RECOGNITION: The hero or heroine is recognized by a mark, a brand, or an artifact that has been given to him or her.
28. EXPOSURE: The false hero or heroine is exposed.
29. TRANSFIGURATION: The hero or heroine receives a new appearance as he or she is made handsome or beautiful or receives new garments.
30. PUNISHMENT: The villain is punished.
31. WEDDING: The hero or heroine marries and ascends the throne (is rewarded or promoted).
    
    These dramatic situations are not usually all present, and the order in which they occur may change from one narrative or drama to another.

Propp identifies these seven character types:

1. VILLAIN: struggles against the hero or heroine.
2. DONOR: prepares the hero or heroine or gives the him or her some magical object.
3. MAGICAL HELPER: helps the hero or heroine in the quest.
4. PRINCESS and her FATHER: gives the task to the hero or heroine, identifies the false hero or heroine, marries the hero or heroine, often sought for during the narrative. Propp notes that, functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.
5. DISPATCHER: makes the lack known and sends the hero or heroine off.
6. HERO/HEROINE or VICTIM/SEEKER: reacts to the donor, weds the princess or prince.
7. FALSE HERO OR HEROINE: takes credit for the hero’s or heroine’s actions or tries to marry the princess or prince.

Retake

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

One of the things I enjoy reading about is how businesses solve problems. When the business involves storytelling, the reading is, for me, all the more interesting.

Consequently, reading about how Merian C. Cooper, the executive producer of Son of Kong (he had also produced King Kong, of course) was told that he had to limit himself to a budge to a budget of $250,000 (originally $238,000), solved the problem of making the movie on a shoestring, as it were, was fascinating.

What he did was to “scale the project back considerably,” Ray Morton recounts in King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson. This scaling back required Cooper to revise “the script, condensing and simplifying all the way through,” so that some scenes were eliminated altogether and the film’s action sequences were combined or juxtaposed without the originally intended transitions. For example, Morton writes:

To save money on recreating the native village and the Great Wall, the scenes set in the village were eliminated--the natives would nor confront the landing party on the beach and refuse to allow them to come ashore, forcing them to row around the island looking for a landing spot. When Denham’s party finally did land, it would be right near the site of the temple, eliminating the need for any lengthy treks through the jungle. The remaining jungle and temple scenes were all consolidated so that they would take place in just two primary locations. . . (95).

Short story writers and novelists don’t face such restrictions, because they don’t have to film their stories. However, by imagining that they are forced, by the vagaries of the economy, the whims of studio executives, or other unanticipated problems, to make similar changes to their plots, settings, or cast of characters, such writers could learn (or hone) their skills in plot development, description, and characterization, which is always a good thing.

Imagine that you are plotting a story about a radio talk show host, while operating a metal detector, which he does as a hobby, finds an artifact in the Nevada desert. It is inscribed with odd characters. Suspecting that the piece may be worth a fortune (and that it may even be of an otherworldly origin), the man attempts to decipher the strange characters inscribed upon the relic. He is unable to find the characters in any of the sources he consults at a major university. Finally, he decides to copy them onto a sheet of paper and take the paper to an anthropologist at the same university. Unable to identify or decipher the characters, the anthropologist consults a linguist. The linguist is a consultant for a secret government project which is recording a history of an alien species in its own language--the strange characters on the artifact that the talk show host found--and the linguist alerts the government that the talk show host has discovered the object that was lost decades ago. The talk show host is taken for a ride by government agents who inform him that the government has confiscated the artifact and threaten him not to divulge anything about his discovery. After going into hiding, the talk show host tells everything to his audience during a show and promises to share the characters with the world in the hope that someone somewhere can decipher them and interpret the message on the artifact that the government has confiscated.

So far, so good, you think.

But, then, out of the blue, you are told that your story cannot feature either an alien species or the government. You have to shoot a retake, as it were, to provide another explanation for the mysterious characters.

Perhaps you come up with something like this: a radio talk show host, while operating a metal detector, which he does as a hobby, finds an artifact in the Nevada desert. It is inscribed with odd characters. Suspecting that the piece may be worth a fortune (and that it may even be of an otherworldly origin), the man attempts to decipher the strange characters inscribed upon the relic. He is unable to find the characters in any of the sources he consults at a major university. Finally, he decides to copy them onto a sheet of paper and take the paper to an anthropologist at the same university. Unable to identify or decipher the characters, the anthropologist consults a linguist. The linguist identifies the characters as belonging to a lost tribe of ancient mystics. Finally able to interpret the characters, the linguist says that they are the words to an incantation that supposedly summons The Nameless One, which he believes is the tribe’s guardian daemon. On his show, the radio talk show host recites the linguist’s “wild story” and reads the translated text aloud, joking that he hopes he hasn’t thereby summoned the tribal daemon.

You’d now have two explanations for the origin and significance of the characters. As a result, you can create a more sophisticated plot. For example, perhaps the linguist’s account of the artifact’s characters is a deliberate falsehood, told to deceive the talk show host as to the true origin and significance of the inscription, which is that it really is a history of an alien species, written in their own language, which the government wants to cover up. When he subsequently learns the truth, the host can then tell everything to his audience during a show and promise to share the characters with the world in the hope that someone somewhere can decipher them and interpret the message on the artifact that the government has confiscated.

By further tweaking the original storyline, you can add more twists to the plot. Maybe your imaginary studio executive says he wants the host to advertise the characters on billboards before he announces the truth bout his discovery on his radio show, and, in major market areas across the country, the strange symbols appear on billboards, without explanation (ore perhaps with the caption, “Curious? Listen to KXYZ radio’s Hot Talk.” At first, you may think the exec’s demand asinine, but what can you do but humor him. You revise your plot, incorporating the billboards. In the process, you must explain why the talk show host posted the message on billboards rather than just explain things on his radio show.

Maybe his show is local, but he wants a national audience. Maybe he wants to protect himself against possible reprisals by the government or the aliens (or both). Maybe he is trying, as it were, to smoke the extraterrestrials out of their hideout, wherever it may be.

In this manner, by forcing yourself to plot and revise, shooting “retakes,” as it were of scenes and acts that you’ve already filmed (that is, written), you may facilitate your creativity as a writer, develop less straightforward (and predictable) plots, heighten suspense, and compose more sophisticated and complex plots.

Viva la Difference

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

 

One might suppose that readers of horror fiction and viewers of horror films would be difficult to offend about much of anything. Such is not the case--or not always, anyway. This article is not intended to offend, and, hopefully, it won’t offend. That having been said, please, if you are easily offended, do not read this post. Otherwise, duly warned, proceed at your own risk. The subject matter of horror fiction is simple and familiar, for the most part: demons, ghosts, monsters, vampires, werewolves, witches, zombies, and the like. However, these bogeymen are exhausted, sooner or later, as villains who are both (a) villainous and (b) scary. How many times can readers or audiences be expected to shriek at the same, tired menace? After a few hundred demons or ghosts, they’re really not all that menacing. Therefore, writers, being a creative sort, seek other means than just the monster of the week, so to speak, to horrify and terrify their fans. For Dean Koontz, the solution has been to cross-pollinate horror with most of the other popular genres of fiction to create a sort of hydra-headed hybrid of narrative that is part action-adventure, part comedy, part mystery, part science fiction, and part romance--and, oh, yes, part horror story. And there has to be an almost-human dog, with or without psychic powers. (Hey, it works for him.) For Stephen King, the trick seems to be to investigate the psychology and the sociology of small-town life, exposing the pale underbelly of apparent goodwill and friendliness that, in the final analysis, goes only skin deep and doesn’t usually apply to strangers, who’d be best advised to keep moving and pass through without stopping. For Bentley Little, everything is a matter of creating eerie atmospheres and seasoning the whole bizarre stew with plenty of spicy forbidden sex. Another trick, less often used and, therefore, perhaps more effective in some ways than the tried and the true approaches to energizing horror’s menaces is a technique that I like to call viva la difference because it’s French and it sounds good. (Really, it’s because it identifies the technique.) This approach is simply this: make some element of the narrative different than it is normally. Step outside the norm, and deliver, in one detail, the unusual. The Alien series does this with reproduction. Men and women are bypassed as the vehicles for dissemination and conception, to be replaced with the so-called face-hugger (also known as a xenomorph) (Wikipedia) describes the critter’s “life cycle” as horrifically as any other source:

Their life cycle comprises several distinct stages: they begin their lives as an egg, which hatches a parasitic larval form known as a face-hugger, which then attaches itself to a living host by, as its name suggests, latching onto its face. The face-hugger then “impregnates” the host with an embryo known as a chest-burster, which, after a gestation period of several hours, erupts violently from the host’s chest resulting in the death of the host. The chest-burster then matures to an adult phase within a few hours, shedding its skin and replacing its cells with polarized silicon. Due to the transfer of DNA during the gestation period, the alien also takes on some of the basic physical attributes of the host from which it was born.

Not surprisingly, women have seen more than a bit of misogyny in this image of reproduction. However, something similar occurred much earlier in the notions of the succubus, a demon who assumes a womanly form to rape men during their sleep (the male counterpart was the incubus) and in reports, made (perhaps under torture) by suspected witches, in which sexual intercourse with the devil is not only described as a painful experience, but his seed is also characterized as ice cold. These are examples, sexual in nature, of the application of viva la difference to horror threats: a difference in one or two details (casting reproduction as a parasitic rape of sorts or representing semen as a substance as freezing as it is fertile) of a larger process, sequence, or situation is introduced, thereby making the whole event seem all the more horrible, since, otherwise, it remains much the same (that is, unchanged). This technique is a micro-level adaptation of what horror stories routinely do on a larger level. In many horror stories, everything is as it should be (or, at least, as it usually is) at the beginning of the narrative or drama. However, before long, something slightly out of kilter takes place. Then, something else uncanny (or, at least, unsettling) occurs. And then something else, worse, and so on, until it becomes clear, even to the most inattentive protagonist that something unnatural or otherworldly is happening. Instead of making something bizarre happen at the level of the community, the region, the nation, or the world, viva la difference makes something strange take place at a much smaller and more localized level, such as in the “life cycle” of a species or even at the microscopic or cellular level (semen is cold, like ice, instead of body temperature, as normally it is--and should be). The difference need not relate to sex, of course. The difference might be the appearance of a ghostly figure in a photograph, especially one that was not present--as far as anyone could see--when the picture was taken. Usually, such differences should be subtle, although I recall being spooked by the description of one man’s look of abject terror in a family portrait in which the others all looked serenely normal, and the addition, in The Shining, of Jack Torrance’s image to a much earlier photograph on display in the Overlook Hotel is quite eerie and frightening. Viva la difference does not have to be objective. Maybe the difference that is introduced is entirely subjective. In flipping through an album of mounted family photographs, for instance, maybe it’s only Aunt Millie who sees corpses where everyone else sees Uncle Joe and Cousin Betty. So, what have we learned today? To effect horror and, possibly, disgust, manipulate a detail or two in a normal or natural process, series, or situation so that it (or they) are made bizarre without otherwise distorting the process, series, or situation as a whole. In short, remember that a birth is neither horrible nor repulsive, but a birth defect can be both.

Cunning Devices: Plot as Invention

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences,” Mark Twain observes that the author of the Leatherstocking series lacks inventiveness:

Cooper’s gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such as it as he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage-properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go.

(For Twain‘s own “rules governing literary art,” refer to “Mark Twain’s ’Rules For Governing Literary Art”). The analogy in which a narrative plot is compared to an invention is fruitful as an aid in understanding the plotting of fiction. Many patents are issued not for original inventions but for improvements to them. For example, the original mousetrap could be patented, but so could a better mousetrap. This fact suggests something analogous in regard to fiction. To devise an original plot for oneself, a writer can adapt the plot of another writer. But, wait! Isn't that plagiarism? It could, but need not, be. Huh? Let me explain. To steal another writer’s plot is definitely plagiarism, but ideas cannot be patented. Therefore, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, among many others, which all feature dinosaurs, are acceptable (that is, legal). If more than one writer has succeeded with a particular type of monster (dinosaurs, for instance), you might do likewise, provided that you use only the idea of dinosaurs as your monsters and not the specific treatments of dinosaurs that others have employed. Here’s a way to go about the business of “improving” upon (or tinkering with) the plots of others so as to produce a story idea of one’s own. Consider the original in terms of its categories or elements: character, setting, theme, conflict, plot. Can you think of a twist on any (or more) of them? In the 1932 film version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a scientist, Henry Frankenstein, creates a monster from parts of human cadavers which he electrifies in his laboratory. (In the novel, it is unclear how the protagonist, medical student Victor Frankenstein, animates his monster, although a chemical [or alchemical] means is suggested.) The film version departs from the novel in these, and other, ways, but Shelley’s novel could also have suggested H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. Wells’ setting is an island laboratory. Instead of human cadavers, human-animal hybrids are the mad scientist’s raw materials, and Dr. Moreau uses vivisection, rather than chemistry or electricity, to accomplish his wonders. Although it is debatable whether Shelley’s novel suggested The Island of Dr. Moreau, these sorts of innovations do represent the kind of adaptations to the plot of another, earlier work of which I speak. Thinking of plots as inventions also suggests a caution. Twain was a great writer, but a poor investor, and he lost a fortune in his investments in the James W. Paige’s “compositor,” a typesetting machine which boasted 18,000 parts! Sadder but much wiser, the author gave up “speculating” as a means of getting rich (or richer) quick and recouped his fortune by returning to what he did best: writing and reading his literary works to paying audiences. The moral of the story? To a degree, complexity in a story, especially a novel-length narrative, is a good thing. Readers want twists and turns in their stories. However, a plot that is more labyrinth than zigzag is apt to lose the reader. After all, one typically has only so many hours or days that he or she is willing to devote to the reading of a novel. If readers complain of, rather than praise, the length of a story, as even Stephen King’s most ardent “constant readers” are wont to do on occasion, their grievances may suggest more maze than meander.

What Constitutes Horror?

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

What constitutes horror? The answer is both simple and complex.

To understand the meaning of a word, it helps to know its origin. Originally, words usually have simple meanings which relate either to the body or to the world at large. It is only through repeated usage and adaptation of meaning that they develop more complex significance.

According to Online Etymology Dictionary (a great resource for writers), “horror” made its debut in the fourteenth century, from Old French horreur, meaning “bristling, roughness, shaking, trembling.” In other words, it referred to the standing of hair on end and to the shuddering of the body, not from cold, one may surmise, but from fear--to the physiological manifestations of terror.

It is similar, the Dictionary suggests, to the Sanskrit word harsate (“bristles”), to the Avestan term zarshayamna (“ruffling one’s feathers”), to the Latin noun eris (“hedgehog”), and to the Welsh word garw (“rough”). The Latin word horrifus (“horrific”), the same source informs its readers, means “terrible, dreadful,” or literally “making the hair stand on end,” and the Latin adjective horrendous, likewise, means “to bristle with fear” and to “shudder.”

Scientists tell us that animals make themselves as big as they can by assuming an erect posture, rearing upon their hind legs, and raising their forelegs; by bristling their fur or quills; ruffling their feathers; or, in the case of frogs, for example, puffing up. These physiological responses to a perceived threat are intended to intimidate and warn. They are protective postures. People have similar responses: their hair stands on end. They swell their chests and raise their arms.
They glower. Perhaps they will even display their teeth in a snarl.

Horror fiction concerns both the physiological effects of fear: the standing of hair on end, an increased heart rate, hyperventilation, the widening of the eyes and the gaping of the mouth, and so forth, and the objects of fear--that is, the causes of such physiological responses. The horror writer, in fact, brings the two together in a cause-and-effect relationship: the appearance of the monster (or the monstrous) causes the standing of hair on end, an increased heart rate, hyperventilation, the widening of the eyes and the gaping of the mouth, and so forth. In a nutshell, horror writers use words to create pictures and situations that produce a fight-or-flight response in their readers.

How writers perform this amazing feat is the complex part, but it is answered, more or less, in many of the articles I have already posted on Chillers and Thrillers, and, no doubt, it is an issue that I will continue to revisit and update.

Horror Story Failures

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

When one analyzes the cause of the failure of a horror story, one realizes, in short order, that the failure usually results from an inept handing of one (or more) of the basic elements of fiction, such as action, character, or theme, or from artistic self-indulgence.

M. Night Shyamalan’s recent film, The Happening (2008), is a good study in all of the following failures, any one of which could be sufficient, of itself, in some cases, to kill a film. With all these problems in the same piece of, uh, work, it would be truly astonishing if the horror film managed to survive its own debut let alone actually frighten anyone. Mercifully, it was stillborn.

The Happening fails because of its:

• Lack of compelling action
• Unsympathetic characters
• Clunky dialogue
• Unbelievable monster
• Obtuse theme
• Artistic self-indulgence

Let’s consider these items point by point, for there is something to be learned from artistic failure, just as there is something--much, in fact--to be learned from artistic success.

Lack of Action

The Happening doesn’t happen. That is, there is no action--or, rather, during the occasions that actors and properties are in motion, there isn’t any interest in, or suspense concerning, what is (allegedly) happening, partly because we don’t really give a fig what happens to the wooden characters who are supposed to be our hero and our heroine (a problem which we will consider in the next section of this post).

Unsympathetic Characters

To be of interest to an audience, the main character and those about whom he or she cares and to whom he or she is in some way related must be sympathetic. By “sympathetic,” I don’t mean kind and considerate (at least not necessarily), but understandable and believable. We have to know where they’re coming from, where they’re headed, and why. We have to know enough about them to say to ourselves, I may not agree with your perspective or your goals, but I understand both you and what you want to accomplish; you seem like a true-to-life individual with hopes and pain and plans. The Happening’s characters are none of the above.

Clunky Dialogue

Dialogue should sound natural. It should be a good imitation of the way that real, flesh-and-blood people actually talk, and it should mirror the inner worlds of the individuals who speak it. In short, it should be realistic. The dialogue in The Happening is clunky at best, absurd at worst, and destroys verisimilitude in either case.

Unbelievable Monster

Shyamalan asks his audience to believe that plants are mad as hell and refuse to take any more of humanity’s environmental abuses.

Really.

Obtuse Theme

What’s this movie about? It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature? We've only ourselves to blame for greenery’s coming curse? What happens in America is sure to happen elsewhere, too, especially in France? Current events in science can make money for filmmakers as well as scientists? Global warming may not be that big a deal, after all? Killer bees are the least of our problems? It doesn’t matter what kind of garbage a director delivers if he is selling his name instead of his art?

After spending ten bucks and a couple hours of one’s lifetime, a moviegoer expects to learn, or be reminded of, something worthwhile. Again, The Happening doesn’t deliver.

Artistic Self-Indulgence

Being a film director, even an auteur, doesn’t give anyone, least of all M. Night Shyamalan, the right to indulge his own personal and private takes on society, politics, or anything else--at least not without entertaining his audience first and foremost. Like the messianic Lady in Water (2006) (recipient of four Golden Raspberry Awards), this film is nothing more than a vehicle for narcissistic and sanctimonious self-indulgence.

With only two successful films, The Sixth Sense (1999) and Signs (2002), to his credit, Shyamalan's career is desperately near extinction, and one can only wonder how long it can continue while he himself is running on empty.

Hieroglyphic Horrors

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

When images are used symbolically, to suggest identities, situations, statuses, or other qualities, conditions, or states, a nearly subliminal effect may be obtained.

Stephen Crane, an impressionistic writer, achieves such effects in his writings. In The Red Badge of Courage, for example, he implies that nature is indifferent to humanity. As the protagonist, Henry, wanders away from the horrors of the battlefield, during the American Civil War, he stumbles into a forest, which Crane describes as if it were a cathedral.

At first, he takes heart at the sight of a squirrel that flees when he throws a stick at it, reassured that his own desertion is not a cowardly, but a natural, act. However, as he continues to wander the deep woods, he sees a predatory act: an animal seizes a fish. He encounters the ravaged corpse of another soldier, and he realizes that the forest, despite the resemblance of its canopy to a cathedral, offers no protection from war.

Despite the clashing of the armies and the hundreds and hundreds of dead who rot upon the battlefield, the sky is serene, undisturbed by the catastrophe that men have unleashed upon themselves. The juxtaposition of human struggle against nature’s peaceful disregard, as it were, of this struggle makes it clear to Henry that nature is indifferent to humanity.

Through his narrator’s comments, Crane occasionally offers direct statements concerning how his imagery should be interpreted, but his message is mostly implicit, conveyed through his imagery and the juxtaposition of violent human conduct and nature’s apparent indifference to such behavior as it goes about its own processes. Here is an example from Chapter 7 of The Red Badge of Courage:

This landscape gave him assurance. A fair field holding life. It was the religion of peace. It would die if its timid eyes were compelled to see blood. He conceived Nature to be a woman with a deep aversion to tragedy.

He threw a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ran with chattering fear. High in a treetop he stopped, and, poking his head cautiously from behind a branch, looked down with an air of trepidation.

The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the law, he said. Nature had given him a sign. The squirrel, immediately upon recognizing danger, had taken to his legs without ado. He did not stand stolidly baring his furry belly to the missile, and die with an upward glance at the sympathetic heavens. On the contrary, he had fled
as fast as his legs could carry him; and he was but an ordinary squirrel, too--doubtless no philosopher of his race. The youth wended, feeling that Nature was of his mind. She re-enforced his argument with proofs that lived where the sun shone.

Once he found himself almost into a swamp. He was obliged to walk upon bog tufts and watch his feet to keep from the oily mire. Pausing at one time to look about him he saw, out at some black water, a small animal pounce in and emerge directly with a gleaming fish.

The youth went again into the deep thickets. The brushed branches made a noise that drowned the sounds of cannon. He walked on, going from obscurity into promises of a greater obscurity.

At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and entered. Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was a religious half light.

Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight of a thing.

He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that once had been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of a bundle along the upper lip.

The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was for moments turned to stone before it. He remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes. The dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. Then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.

The branches, pushing against him, threatened to throw him over upon it. His unguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in brambles; and with it all he received a subtle suggestion to touch the corpse. As he thought of his hand upon it he shuddered profoundly.

At last he burst the bonds which had fastened him to the spot and fled, unheeding the underbrush. He was pursued by a sight of the black ants swarming greedily upon
the gray face and venturing horribly near to the eyes.

After a time he paused, and, breathless and panting, listened. He imagined some strange voice would come from the dead throat and squawk after him in horrible menaces.

The trees about the portal of the chapel moved soughingly in a soft wind. A sad silence was upon the little guarding edifice.

Of necessity, motion pictures must also employ images that are packed with symbolic value. They do not, as a rule, have as much time to devote to extended treatments, and although dialogue allows them the opportunity of making direct comments on the images they display, films rarely do so, leaving it to audiences, instead, to interpret the symbolism of these images themselves. However, on occasion, the same or similar images will be repeated to establish a motif by which characters’ actions should be evaluated or interpreted.

For example, in his film version of Stephen King’s novel Carrie (1976), Brian De Palma wants to make it clear that protagonist Carrie White is a target of her peers’ harassment. When she misses a volleyball return during a physical education class, she is bombarded by her fellow students, who take turns slamming the ball into her. Later, surprised by her first menstrual period (her mother, a religious fanatic, has not bothered to tell her the facts of life), Carrie, terrified, calls for assistance, only to be pelted by the tampons and sanitary napkins that the other girls throw at her. Twice, without a word of direct commentary concerning Carrie‘s status (or lack thereof) among her peers, De Palma has identified her as a target of her peers’ hatred and abuse. (He has also made Carrie a sympathetic character, whom the audience pities.)

Tony Williams points out another example of this technique in Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film. Concerning Alice, Sweet Alice (1978) (which is also available by the alternate titles Communion [1976] and Holy Terror [1981]), he observes: “Alice’s credits show a female communicant holding a cross. She lifts it up, revealing its lower end as a blade. . . . This image aptly signifies Catholicism’s repression of female sexuality and its unexpressed eruption into violence. A virginal Bride of Christ is also a psychotic murderer” (169).

A similar image is presented in Cruel Intentions (1999) when, at the end of the movie, Kathryn Merteuil’s hypocrisy in posing as a blameless, virginal, saintly young woman is exposed and her conniving and fraudulent character is revealed as the headmaster of her private and exclusive school opens the crucifix she wears around her neck and the cocaine inside the cross spills into the air, for all to see.

Sometimes, not even an image is needed to reveal character or suggest a theme. A camera angle can be sufficient, as Williams points out. Following Carrie’s death, he says, “a dark legacy remains. As Sue [one of Carrie’s tormentors, now repentant] awakes from a traumatic nightmare in Carrie’s climax, the camera cranes out to show Mrs. Snell comforting her daughter. Her words, “It’s all right. I’m here” are ironic. Mrs. Snell was never a good mother. The final camera movement dwarfs mother and daughter into insignificance” (240).

In a previous article, “Building Suspense the Tobie Hooper Way,” I indicate other examples of writers and moviemakers who characterize or suggest identities, situations, statuses, or other qualities, conditions, or states through the use of images, symbolism, and other forms of indirect communication.

Writers of horror can follow the examples of Crane and moviemakers, using symbolic images to effect subliminal suspense, fear, and other emotions. In doing so, forego direct commentary through narrative exposition or dialogue between characters, and, instead, limit yourself only to the use of symbolic images.

Describe (show) a trait in action (for example, a jealous character acting in a jealous fashion) or associate a character with a physical object, or property, that symbolizes something important about him or her, shows how he or she is regarded by others, or what is at the core of his or her being.

The use of a dream dictionary can help you to select such objects, because such a reference shows what various commonplace things often represent psychologically.

An examination of William Shakespeare’s use of images and symbols in his poems and plays will pay huge dividends, because these works are written not only in blank verse but also, by and large, in symbolic images that, rather often, link to and build upon one another. Seeing how the bard accomplishes this literary feat will help you to become accomplished at it as well.

Finally, another way to research how artists translate intangibles such as thoughts and emotions into pictures is to consider the images in the works of visual artists such as illustrators, painters, and photographers, whose very media are dependent almost exclusively upon their use of symbolic imagery. How does an illustrator represent fear? How does a painter portray hope or despair? How does a photographer suggest victimization, evil, saintliness, or honesty? Search the works of fine artists rather than their popular counterparts, for there is a reason that classic art is classic. Then, sure, take a look at the popular forms, too, after you’ve seen what the masters do. An Internet images browser is a helpful tool in tracking down such images, but I also suggest A World History of Art as an excellent starting point.