the unknowable Other
14 Apr 2007 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigou[Several different threads prompted this response: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
meritjubet's comment on my Faith/Buffy rant, and difrancis's thread on vampires. It started to get too long (yeah, like you're suprised) for a single response-post, so here it is as its own post-topic.]
I think the bottom line of vampires, fairies/fey, werewolves and the rest being so sexy is because, fundamentally, they are Other. They exist outside the lines, outside society, outside our everyday rules. They are unknown and possibly unknowable -- and a society will happily lay all its fears and anxieties and secret wishes at the feet of the unknown/foreign Other. Our current favorite Other, thus, becomes the container of all we fear, want, would do/take/say if we could.
Look at the plethora of Hollywood movies from the 30's through the 60's, when the Dangerous Woman in so many action movies was Asian. Dressed in red cheomsang, possibly with cigarette in one of those long holder-things, the Dragon Lady is unattainable, unpredictable, and oozing a sex appeal that plays not only on her own attractiveness in an objective sense, but also playing up our innate fascination with the Unknowable Other. (And, too, upon the predominantly male audience's automatic instinct to see Female as Other, thus doubling the Dragon Lady's distance: Asian, and Female.)
And, too, we do it in a negative sense. The foreign Other is the bad guy, who takes on the worst (or lost) aspects of ourselves:
In that last point -- much like when the Master Vampire deigns to 'explain' something to the human protagonist -- there are two things at play. One, that this is an Other communicating, reaching across that chasm between us and Other; our attraction to the Other and its containment of our hopes/fears transfers to our attraction/attention to the Other's words: we long to know the Other, and here is information that might tell us how. Two, there's a darker side, in that when the Other gives us an explanation, it's playing on an ancient human prejudice: the Other is our servant. That which we designate as 'we' is civilization, culture, that which the Other would/should achieve, should want to become, to sluff off the status as our cultural waste basket. That which we designate as 'Other' is the inferior, our lesser halves, and it makes sense to us on some primal level that this inferior Other should answer us, when we ask a question, that this Other is at our service. The Shaman, the Master, the Other with knowledge of any type, will -- eventually, at some point in most stories -- slide right into the space alloted for The Helpful Black. It goes way, way, way, back, and every culture on this planet does it. The term 'foreign devil' ain't just a Western concept; the Other as 'barbarian' is universal (except when the Other is godlike!).
Fictional examples? Thunderheart, where the Native Shaman takes a special interest in our hero, a part-indian fully assimiliated into White Civilization. (Talk about an Other-focused fantasy, that of the half-breed who has achieved parity in Our World but has a hold or inheritance from the Other.) The hero has importance, granted and/or underlined by the Other's willing assistance. Or Gone with the Wind, in which a black slave humbly asks, hat in hand, for the heroine to tell him what to plant and where -- even though he was raised in the fields and the most she ever did was maybe some needlework. His actions are that of the Other, a tacit agreement that the heroine, the non-Other, holds the knowledge/power. Or, in Shogun, when Blackthorne teaches the Shogun's men, and the conveyance of his knowledge is seen as express admission that he serves the Shogun, and not the other way around: Blackthorne is the barbarian. (One reason I think Shogun did enjoy so much popularity, is for this flip: it's not often the White Man experiences life as Other.)
Time and again, in film and book, I see the Other assisting the (usually white, middle-class) protagonist; the authors hide behind a motivation of "how can we know why s/he would help, when s/he is the unpredictable, unknowable Other?" Underneath it, seeing it play out over and over, I get the impression of two issues at play. First, that the Other-to-us communication grants us an importance: this foreign Other is assisting, serving, us. It satisfies something, deep down, that considers Our Civilization as the strongest, most important, best, and its goals to be the most important -- the Other, in communicating, is aiding us. Second, it's very rare that there's even a passing acknowledgement of the Other's position/motivation. That is, the Native Shaman who fears the hero's ability to bring men with guns -- lots of men with guns -- down on his, and his people's head, if he doesn't play along. The black slave who is a slave, a possession, no matter one considered dangerous and unpredictable; if he's to see the next sunrise, he must play by the rules laid down by his 'owner'. Or the white man stranded in Japan, who must rely on the Shogun's mercy, who in risking the Shogun's displeasure thus risks the life of him, and his men. Where we unconsciously feel a 'rightness' when the Other assists us, we do so only by ignoring that often, the Other has no choice. But rather than admit we've created the situation of superior-inferior, it's easier to just gloss over such uncomfortable awareness, and pat ourselves on the back for being So Special that the Other has tried to communicate with us.
For the most part, we still cast the red, black, or yellow Other as the holder of our anxieties and repressed wishes; in F/SF, the Other may be blue, purple, water-breathing, or dead, but it's still an Other. Vampires, in the past twenty years, are the forerunners in the race for Most Popular Social Anxiety Container. We don't see them as monsters, now; we see them as holding/being all the things we can't have/allow/admit if we're also to be members of our social/cultural community. Yes, we do sometimes see them as monsters (as much as jingoistic Arabs or brainwashed Communists are inhuman and monstrous) -- they contain those parts of us that we see as horrific, after all. But what's horrific, too, is also human: who hasn't, at some point, wished for the ability to just haul off and punch someone? Or imagined picking up a gun and shooting an intruder threatening your family? Is that assault, that murder, a non-civilized behavior? If we can't admit we have those urges, we must repress them, transfer them elsewhere, and then point fingers at the Other and say, "there is the murdering savage." So the Other is both attractive and replusive, all at once.
Story after story, like Thunderheart, in which the hero/ine is part-Other: part-Japanese, part-nonhuman, part-vampire, part-Native, part-whatever. One foot in this world, passing nicely, but with a foot in the other world, a veneer (or substrate) of Otherness. It's literally having one's cake and eating it, too: such characters are a kind of Mastership, in which the socially acceptable part combines, and commands, the Otherness. That's the root of the Specialness, I think -- that the rest of us must push away, repress, but here is someone who has both halves, actualizing them into a single, merged, being -- and the fact that the vast majority of the time, the character's public face, the demonstrated half, is aligned with us, is yet another way to subtly emphasize our cultural belief that we are superior. The one who is Both, has an option for both, and chooses to be us. What more could we ask, to prove that we are what the Other would be, if it could?
(How many stories can you name, in the past twenty years, in which vampires have longed for their humanity?)
The ambivalence of the repulsion/attraction is also why we sometimes cheer for the bad guy, and joke about how women want Bad boys. Underneath it, we vicariously enjoy (and long for) the freedom the Other has. It's not just that the Other doesn't play by our rules, too, I have to add: it's that the Other doesn't give a damn. The Bad Boy who really wishes he had a nice job, the Dragon Lady who wants the white picket fence and minivan... these aren't the dangerous unknowable. They're the wannabes; they're immigrants, of a sort. Those who want to join us -- and thus care about our 'rules' -- get put in the second-class citizen shoebox (as we do to all newcomers). They're not entirely Other, but they're not entirely Us, and as long as they keep desperately wanting what we have, we have power over them, just as the assimilated half-Other has gained power over the Other-half of himself.
The Other who won't bow to our superior civilization? Those are the ones to fear. The ones who don't want what we have, who could care less what we have -- they're the dangerous ones. Yet how often do these show up in our fiction? The vampire master who declares humans are pawns -- but then explains his goals, or some aspect -- who gives knowledge to a pawn? The proud, stoic natives... who crumble in delight at their first taste of sugar, and go out of their way to help the White Man despite his existence spelling the end of theirs. The ageless fairies, who require the seven-year human sacrifice, because without such they have no power. I can't think of an instance, off the top of my head, in which the Other holds truly distinct, and is not -- by whatever authorial machinations -- required to assist the protagonist, our cultural-representative.
Thoughts?
Yes, I know, the more I think about such things, the more it's apparent to me that I play this game, too: I'm writing about non-humans who'd do anything to have a place in human society... it's the Other, subjugating itself to be granted entrance to the Superior Civilization. Believe me, I ponder this greatly, and wonder of the deep-down, unrecognized biases on my part. But is it really any better to write the Other as distinct and distant, to play along with an almost descartian-separation of the Other as container of all our repressed fears and hopes?
meritjubet's comment on my Faith/Buffy rant, and difrancis's thread on vampires. It started to get too long (yeah, like you're suprised) for a single response-post, so here it is as its own post-topic.]I think the bottom line of vampires, fairies/fey, werewolves and the rest being so sexy is because, fundamentally, they are Other. They exist outside the lines, outside society, outside our everyday rules. They are unknown and possibly unknowable -- and a society will happily lay all its fears and anxieties and secret wishes at the feet of the unknown/foreign Other. Our current favorite Other, thus, becomes the container of all we fear, want, would do/take/say if we could.
Look at the plethora of Hollywood movies from the 30's through the 60's, when the Dangerous Woman in so many action movies was Asian. Dressed in red cheomsang, possibly with cigarette in one of those long holder-things, the Dragon Lady is unattainable, unpredictable, and oozing a sex appeal that plays not only on her own attractiveness in an objective sense, but also playing up our innate fascination with the Unknowable Other. (And, too, upon the predominantly male audience's automatic instinct to see Female as Other, thus doubling the Dragon Lady's distance: Asian, and Female.)
And, too, we do it in a negative sense. The foreign Other is the bad guy, who takes on the worst (or lost) aspects of ourselves:
- The Arab 'terrorists' who are obsessively jingoistic for their own cause:
like we have no social quarter consumed with ultra-patriotic fervor... - The Russian Communists trying to steal our secrets:
like they've none of their own, that we might want, and that only ours are valuable... - The indigenous native trapped in the Noble Savage stereotype:
with all the innocence that we've lost, but with a naivete we refuse... - The dark(er)-skinned Native or African whose uncontrolled sexuality will cause him to go bonkers at sight of a pretty white girl:
as though our civilized world has achieved asexuality or purity of self-control...
In that last point -- much like when the Master Vampire deigns to 'explain' something to the human protagonist -- there are two things at play. One, that this is an Other communicating, reaching across that chasm between us and Other; our attraction to the Other and its containment of our hopes/fears transfers to our attraction/attention to the Other's words: we long to know the Other, and here is information that might tell us how. Two, there's a darker side, in that when the Other gives us an explanation, it's playing on an ancient human prejudice: the Other is our servant. That which we designate as 'we' is civilization, culture, that which the Other would/should achieve, should want to become, to sluff off the status as our cultural waste basket. That which we designate as 'Other' is the inferior, our lesser halves, and it makes sense to us on some primal level that this inferior Other should answer us, when we ask a question, that this Other is at our service. The Shaman, the Master, the Other with knowledge of any type, will -- eventually, at some point in most stories -- slide right into the space alloted for The Helpful Black. It goes way, way, way, back, and every culture on this planet does it. The term 'foreign devil' ain't just a Western concept; the Other as 'barbarian' is universal (except when the Other is godlike!).
Fictional examples? Thunderheart, where the Native Shaman takes a special interest in our hero, a part-indian fully assimiliated into White Civilization. (Talk about an Other-focused fantasy, that of the half-breed who has achieved parity in Our World but has a hold or inheritance from the Other.) The hero has importance, granted and/or underlined by the Other's willing assistance. Or Gone with the Wind, in which a black slave humbly asks, hat in hand, for the heroine to tell him what to plant and where -- even though he was raised in the fields and the most she ever did was maybe some needlework. His actions are that of the Other, a tacit agreement that the heroine, the non-Other, holds the knowledge/power. Or, in Shogun, when Blackthorne teaches the Shogun's men, and the conveyance of his knowledge is seen as express admission that he serves the Shogun, and not the other way around: Blackthorne is the barbarian. (One reason I think Shogun did enjoy so much popularity, is for this flip: it's not often the White Man experiences life as Other.)
Time and again, in film and book, I see the Other assisting the (usually white, middle-class) protagonist; the authors hide behind a motivation of "how can we know why s/he would help, when s/he is the unpredictable, unknowable Other?" Underneath it, seeing it play out over and over, I get the impression of two issues at play. First, that the Other-to-us communication grants us an importance: this foreign Other is assisting, serving, us. It satisfies something, deep down, that considers Our Civilization as the strongest, most important, best, and its goals to be the most important -- the Other, in communicating, is aiding us. Second, it's very rare that there's even a passing acknowledgement of the Other's position/motivation. That is, the Native Shaman who fears the hero's ability to bring men with guns -- lots of men with guns -- down on his, and his people's head, if he doesn't play along. The black slave who is a slave, a possession, no matter one considered dangerous and unpredictable; if he's to see the next sunrise, he must play by the rules laid down by his 'owner'. Or the white man stranded in Japan, who must rely on the Shogun's mercy, who in risking the Shogun's displeasure thus risks the life of him, and his men. Where we unconsciously feel a 'rightness' when the Other assists us, we do so only by ignoring that often, the Other has no choice. But rather than admit we've created the situation of superior-inferior, it's easier to just gloss over such uncomfortable awareness, and pat ourselves on the back for being So Special that the Other has tried to communicate with us.
For the most part, we still cast the red, black, or yellow Other as the holder of our anxieties and repressed wishes; in F/SF, the Other may be blue, purple, water-breathing, or dead, but it's still an Other. Vampires, in the past twenty years, are the forerunners in the race for Most Popular Social Anxiety Container. We don't see them as monsters, now; we see them as holding/being all the things we can't have/allow/admit if we're also to be members of our social/cultural community. Yes, we do sometimes see them as monsters (as much as jingoistic Arabs or brainwashed Communists are inhuman and monstrous) -- they contain those parts of us that we see as horrific, after all. But what's horrific, too, is also human: who hasn't, at some point, wished for the ability to just haul off and punch someone? Or imagined picking up a gun and shooting an intruder threatening your family? Is that assault, that murder, a non-civilized behavior? If we can't admit we have those urges, we must repress them, transfer them elsewhere, and then point fingers at the Other and say, "there is the murdering savage." So the Other is both attractive and replusive, all at once.
Story after story, like Thunderheart, in which the hero/ine is part-Other: part-Japanese, part-nonhuman, part-vampire, part-Native, part-whatever. One foot in this world, passing nicely, but with a foot in the other world, a veneer (or substrate) of Otherness. It's literally having one's cake and eating it, too: such characters are a kind of Mastership, in which the socially acceptable part combines, and commands, the Otherness. That's the root of the Specialness, I think -- that the rest of us must push away, repress, but here is someone who has both halves, actualizing them into a single, merged, being -- and the fact that the vast majority of the time, the character's public face, the demonstrated half, is aligned with us, is yet another way to subtly emphasize our cultural belief that we are superior. The one who is Both, has an option for both, and chooses to be us. What more could we ask, to prove that we are what the Other would be, if it could?
(How many stories can you name, in the past twenty years, in which vampires have longed for their humanity?)
The ambivalence of the repulsion/attraction is also why we sometimes cheer for the bad guy, and joke about how women want Bad boys. Underneath it, we vicariously enjoy (and long for) the freedom the Other has. It's not just that the Other doesn't play by our rules, too, I have to add: it's that the Other doesn't give a damn. The Bad Boy who really wishes he had a nice job, the Dragon Lady who wants the white picket fence and minivan... these aren't the dangerous unknowable. They're the wannabes; they're immigrants, of a sort. Those who want to join us -- and thus care about our 'rules' -- get put in the second-class citizen shoebox (as we do to all newcomers). They're not entirely Other, but they're not entirely Us, and as long as they keep desperately wanting what we have, we have power over them, just as the assimilated half-Other has gained power over the Other-half of himself.
The Other who won't bow to our superior civilization? Those are the ones to fear. The ones who don't want what we have, who could care less what we have -- they're the dangerous ones. Yet how often do these show up in our fiction? The vampire master who declares humans are pawns -- but then explains his goals, or some aspect -- who gives knowledge to a pawn? The proud, stoic natives... who crumble in delight at their first taste of sugar, and go out of their way to help the White Man despite his existence spelling the end of theirs. The ageless fairies, who require the seven-year human sacrifice, because without such they have no power. I can't think of an instance, off the top of my head, in which the Other holds truly distinct, and is not -- by whatever authorial machinations -- required to assist the protagonist, our cultural-representative.
Thoughts?
Yes, I know, the more I think about such things, the more it's apparent to me that I play this game, too: I'm writing about non-humans who'd do anything to have a place in human society... it's the Other, subjugating itself to be granted entrance to the Superior Civilization. Believe me, I ponder this greatly, and wonder of the deep-down, unrecognized biases on my part. But is it really any better to write the Other as distinct and distant, to play along with an almost descartian-separation of the Other as container of all our repressed fears and hopes?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 14 Apr 2007 09:01 pm (UTC)(And of course, that the objectification of The Other is what allows us to -literally, at times - slaughter what we fear...)
no subject
Date: 15 Apr 2007 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Apr 2007 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Apr 2007 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 May 2007 06:06 am (UTC)WTF, no, seriously, WTF?
If the history is about the dominant paradigm, then we're all about the historical authenticity. If it's focused on the inferior Other, then even a story supposedly focused on the Other must still have the Us at its center. Sheesh!
no subject
Date: 15 Apr 2007 03:42 am (UTC)Hum, well, maybe the greek gods, who never were particularly helpful to mortals.
"Is it..any better to write the other as distinct and different...?"
Keep in mind that living in two worlds is not static; it's not even a continuum, but more...like playing poker than anything else: I have these cards, and I choose to use or reveal them as I see best, and I will bluff you without remorse to get what I need. Not the best metaphor, but sort of how I see things.
no subject
Date: 12 May 2007 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 May 2007 03:26 pm (UTC)This is just how I think of them; I don't have any training or background in the subject to back me up.
This sort of goes off on a tangent to the original post, anyway, so I think I'll just quit here.
no subject
Date: 15 Apr 2007 04:17 am (UTC)The Other in this instance felt superior, knowing a secret the protag doesn't know - a secret that may save his life or screw him over- and giving out only a little at a time; sometimes a sort of initiation. But...maybe I'm not thinking of the same example of Others. The one that did pop into mind, reading this, may be a little bit tenuous; the centaurs in Harry Potter, who are supposed to be very distant and inapproachable to normal humans, and who eventually go far out to help Harry because he's special, wow, they even let him ride. Maybe that's not a good example. THough it puts an interesting spin on that scene, now that I remember it in that light...
As for having the Master Vampire explain his Evil Plan (tm) to the good guy instead of just ripping the good guy's throat out is, for me, less a sign of subtly expressed servitude and more a sign of rather poor writing and lazy exposition ^^;
no subject
Date: 12 May 2007 06:15 am (UTC)Whereas the Other-to-Hero is more of a crossover between cultures, and not just generations.
Oi, I'd not thought of the centaurs in HP. You're right, that does shift the tension in what I recall of that scene. For me, at least, adds a note of "are they being nice because they're pleased to meet someone so powerful, or are they being nice because they have foresight (in whatever way) that if they're not nice, he'll later kick their ass?"
no subject
Date: 16 Apr 2007 12:08 pm (UTC)I'm thinking of The Man In The Leaf Green Coat, from Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell". He's a depiction of the King of Faery that draws heavily on the classical (pre-Victorian -- maybe even pre-Shakespearian? -- fairy tales) where Faery and its beings are dreadful, unknowable, capricious, and above all, without souls; their gifts come with huge hidden price tags. They seem bloodless, unable to feel real love the way humans do, so what makes us human is both our weakness and our strength.
In the old tales, it's the love of the heroine or hero for his/her lover that wins the stolen human back from the grasp of the otherworld. Truly knowing someone enough to love them unreservedly, to pick them out from the false duplicates, being willing to sacrifice oneself (hold on to one's beloved even while the Faery Queen turns him/her into snakes, lizards, fire, etc.) is what wins the day.
----------------
Speaking of Shamans, Salon has an article (http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/04/12/castaneda/) on Carlos Castaneda. I haven't read his books -- a deliberate avoidance, since I certainly ran into more than a few people who had when I was running more in neo-pagan circles, and reading the review confirms my suspicions that the man was a huckster. I was silly enough to register for a weekend seminar on Shamanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Harner) once, and wound up being pretty disgusted with the other registrants. I guess I was hoping for something a wee bit more scholarly, but I should have known better. The room seemed to be filled with people who either were extremely credulous or had the air of wanting to have power over other people. I wound up spending most of the weekend in "people-watching" mode; it was amusing to find the "power-seekers" deliberately choosing locations in the room that gave them prominence.
Interestingly, in traditional Shamanism, the calling to be a shaman is not something most people want. It's often something that one comes to after a long illness or other crisis in life that leaves one no other options. The Otherworld isn't a place you want to deliberately spend a lot of time in; it's a hazardous place, and the job of the shaman is to navigate it (placate the dangerous beings who live there) for the benefit of the people in their tribe.
I think neopagans are attracted to shamanism because they already feel alienated from society as a whole, and are seeking answers -- or power. If they want to deliberately live in Faery, maybe their souls are already well down the road to being lost...