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Article:
“Theorising the Fantastic” by Sophie
Geoffroy |
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Introductory Note: |
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The
article that follows on theoretical figurations of the fantastic also picks
up on aspects of Henry James’s fiction, his use of the fantastic, and poses
several insightful questions about what I’m sure the reader will agree is a
notoriously slippery genre. As well as drawing together the work of James,
Sophie Geoffroy considers Vernon Lee and Angela Carter’s use of the
fantastic. The article concludes with a reading of Enki Bilal’s futuristic film Immortel (ad vitam). Readers may
prefer to read the article in its original French language edition (‘Théories du fantastique
(1980-2005) : construction, déconstruction, reconstruction) by
clicking here or here. |
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I
would like to thank Sophie for allowing us to publish this article and also
for providing an English language translation of it. |
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Editor |
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‘Theorizing the fantastic: construction/deconstruction/reconstruction’[1] |
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On account of its evanescent, polymorphic nature and of the various
texts that relate to the genre, the fantastic represents a challenge for
literary theory. Unless one thinks of it as a mere set of coldly implemented
techniques and recipes, its effects leading to climax and its imperviousness
to the mind make analysts eager to theorize, as demonstrated by the
passionate debates that have been held about the essence of the fantastic.
Whenever theorists believed they had grasped the concept at last, their definition
proved limited, not general enough to take account of the diversity of
fantastic texts, authors, literary trends, etc. Therefore, this paper aims at
defining an epistemology of fantasticology. The theoretical references that I
have made use of are most likely typical tools for researchers of my
generation. I have been influenced by Vax, Caillois and Fabre, but also owe
much to the research of Todorov, Genette, the contributions of
psychocriticism (C. Mauron), psychoanalysis (Freud and his notion of “the
uncanny”, Lacan, Green and Anzieu), textanalysis (Bellemin-Noël) and
sociocriticism. My theoretical research initially concentrated on two major
questions: is the fantastic a genre? If so, what are the stages of its
genesis? An in-depth analysis, partly focusing on case studies, partly
dealing with theories ranging from structuralism and formalism to
deconstruction, led me to certain monographs. I also came up with more
general theories concerning modelling (proposals for the study of the
fantastic according to the different categories of texts from ellipsis-based
fantasy such as that of Henry James to gore texts by Stephen King); typology
(to distinguish the gothic from the fantastic, the marvellous, science
fiction, heroic fantasy, magic realism, gender-based fantasies, iconic
fantastic, musical fantastic, fantastic and film); and other methods
(thematic criticism, narratology ; textanalysis and psychoanalysis
applied to literary texts, hermeneutics, deconstruction, reader-response criticism, phenomenology, etc…). By using case
studies, the paper aims at modelling the specific type of fantastic that
characterizes our times: the intermedial fantastic. |
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The lowest common
denominator |
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Instead of trying to find some ideally universal concept that is
abstract enough to encompass all possible occurrences under the banner of one
theory gathering all the fantastics, whether they be effective, potential or
virtual, one is often led to adapt the theory to the object. This limits the
task to defining various forms of the fantastic: in other words defining the fantastics or defining the lowest
common denominator to those fantastics. Indeed, what is the lowest common
denominator shared by texts as different from one another as those of Henry
James, the gore texts of Stephen King (characterized by excess, exaggeration,
bombast, monstrous exhibition), Vernon Lee’s aestheticist and baroque
fantastic, Angela Carter’s Magic Realism (in which carnivalesque elements mix
with poetry and eroticism), and the fantastic graphic novels and films of
Enki Bilal that can be situated in
between fable, science fiction and surrealism? |
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Despite their diversity, these texts all do share a lowest common
denominator : the subject is seized
by something (passive voice) that he cannot
himself grasp (negative form) and that will hinder him/her from ever grasping
anything else. The ontological nature, the essence of that which is happening
is of little consequence. The only thing that matters is the subject’s
traumatizing face to face encounter with some opaque chunk of the Real: that
which can neither be absorbed by the logos, nor evacuated, forgotten, or
denied. Overwhelmed by this emotional experience, the individual can not
understand/make sense of express, or describe an experience that questions
the fundamental categories of human experience (time, space, sense of self)
as well as the fundamental logical categories (either/or ; neither/nor)
that could have enabled him/her to perceive it. This unspeakable and
unforgettable experience (it can not have happened yet I cannot pretend it
never has happened) is characterized by an immediacy that reduces the subject
to powerlessness. The absolute discrepancy between what the senses persuade
him/her of and what his/her knowledge and experience make him/her aware of
results in a state of alienation and anxiety that can be compared to
experiences reminiscent of childhood, nightmares, drugs, psychosis, vertigo,
or dissociation. Not unlike borderline states, fantastic writing is under the
mode of “saisissement” (rapture)
and dissociation. The fantastic experience is characterized by its immediacy
and its irremediable aspects; the individual is unhinged, as much as the
world around him/her. What distinguishes the fantastic from other genres is
not only the violence of such affects and the paradoxical
belief-system that they bring about but also its quintessential
characteristic – im-mediacy – which verges on mythical thought or pure
perception (that of childhood or lunacy). Hence, it has been said that, even
though its forms are extremely diversified, the fantastic feeling is a
universal experience (Bozzetto 65). This is also the reason why the fantastic
and the sacred do not exclude each other.[2] |
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However, though a necessary condition for an artwork to be viewed as
fantastic, is this lowest common denominator enough to distinguish the
fantastic from other forms of writings that do not share its immediacy? The
validity and functionality of this hypothesis is generally tested through
comparison with other genres: that which is fantastic is consequently not
that which is the marvellous, realism, gothic, mysticism, dream, or fantasy.
Even though its themes or structures play an important role in the fantastic,
it must not be regarded only as the sum or product of them. As a result, the
fantastic is rather to be inferred or deduced: the fantastic is what remains. Reductio ad absurdum? |
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Evanescent structures |
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The wide range of privative prefixes is the starting point (a
substantially negative one) from which the fantastic is tentatively defined
as the antithesis of realism, and even the antithesis of reality or of the
real at large. Im/possible, im/probable, in/comprehensible ; un/likely,
un/earthly, un/thinkable, un/assimilable ; for/closed ; il/logical, ab/ject,
; u/topia, u/chronia, u/glossia ; ex/cluded ; dis/possessed; dif/ferent,
dif/fered ; di/gressed, di/verted ; de/formed… How could one conceive a definition
other than negative with such bases during pre-postmodern years? |
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In facing the uneasiness this theoretical negativity triggered with
the solid elements borrowed from the most strict theories, as if to structure
the fantastic by its very theory, as if to provide some kind of jellyfish
with a skeleton, thus keeping at some reasonable distance its – assuredly
stinging – effects (the only certainty if any!). Actually, where does the
power of the fantastic originate?
The subtractive phenomenology mentioned above is only relevant as far
as the character’s experience is concerned. However intense the degree of
self-identification may be, what the reader experiences is not the event
itself, but a text, an artefact which presents itself as a trace of an event
that is indescribable, impossible (Terramorsi), inconceivable (Bozzetto), but
nonetheless efficient. Is this efficiency an effect of writing (intention auctoris)? Of the text (intentio operis) ? Of the process
of reading (intention lectoris)? [3] Different answers have been suggested throughout the 20th century
which have influenced the evolutions of literary theory in general, and that
of fantastic theory in particular. As Martine Joly specifies concerning
literary criticism at large, the questioning in the 1960s of classic
criticism related to the study of intentio
auctoris by analysts that concentrated on the way a text functions (intentio operis), authorial initial
intentions set aside, has given birth to a “first semiology” which aims at
setting up a unanimous and universal typology of signs (referring to Peirce,
Saussure and Hjemlev) and that allows immanent analysis of the text, either
structural or textual (Joly 2). In the 1970s, a “second semiology” – and
specifically the semiotic branch – applied its semio-pragmatic method to the
study of the under-lying meaning (what happens “behind” signs) or the meaning
resulting from interconnectedness (what happens in-between signs), taking
into account differences in meaning and the smallest variations that relate
to it. The Paris School of Semiotics and the greimasian semiotics, the
semiological research of Barthes or Odin belong to that theoretical movement
(Joly 203-4). The third step took into
account the interaction between author/artwork/receiver, its influence on
historical contextualization of interpretation, and the interrelation of the
three intentions : intentio auctoris,
intentio operis and intentio lectoris (Joly 2). |
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To get back to the fantastic, theoretical investigations that are
attached to these questions either rely on the theory of immanence that is
typical of 1970s pan-structuralism and 1980s “tout-narratologique”
(narratological set) or contextualization relative to a historical setting.
These two different tracks resulted in alternating between synchronic and
diachronic approaches, between theories related to form (formalism) or
content, and produced three types of work : some which concentrate on
typology (what is the frontier, the threshold between closely related genres?
the marvellous, the gothic, the fantastic, science-fiction, heroic fantasy,
magic realism, the grotesque, the carnivalesque, the baroque?); some are
dedicated to theme-related questions : themes, motifs, specific characters as
in aberration stories (“histoires d’aberrations”), or stories about the Devil
(“histoires démoniaques”), about nightmares (“histoires de cauchemars”),
about monsters, delirious stories and evil spell stories as they are referred
to in the Grande Anthologie du
fantastique (Pocket) ; there is also “the theme of” the doll, the
golem, the automaton, the mirror, the portrait, etc. This is the most popular
approach among encyclopaedias and dictionaries of literatures of imagination,
one of which is the Dictionnaire
encyclopédique by Jacques Goimard and Serge Manfredo (to be published
soon). The third trend in critical theory focuses on the analysis of the
different modes of expression that can be found in fantastic texts : this
theory lays the emphasis on the specificity of the techniques, by studying
not only macro-structures, but also micro-structures : framing, focalization, optical effects (phantasmagoria,
anamorphosis, specularity, mise en abyme), first-person narrative, modality,
dialogism, “non-dit” (what is left unsaid) associated with the dialectic of
excess and deficiency, intertextuality: the fantastic seems to belong to
experimental writing and to be at the same time the height of literature. [4] |
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One of the best examples of this most “classic” type of fantastic is
certainly the tremendously abstract, elliptic hence enigmatic Jamesian
fantastic. If most of the writings by Henry James – because, among other reasons,
of their “psychological realism” – belong to mainstream and canonical
literature, the analysis of his fantastic texts requires a combination of
formal criticism and psychocriticism. Maurice Lévy having advised me to
resort to the “semio-pragmatic” method of analysis that is characteristic of
“second semiology”, I applied the greimasian theoretical model to Henry
James’ fantastic. My aim was to identify the fantastic on the actantial
model. In a corpus including all of James’s fantastic texts, that have been
contrasted to the realistic texts of the same author, one recurring element
stood out: the illustration of the ablative power of the ghost, who is
capable, on the ground of his presence only, to annihilate the subject and
the world around him, but also the ablative power of the victim.[5] The Jamesian “phantom” – whose fundamentally paradoxical nature is
always an impediment to a true fantastic meeting – is undoubtedly the locus of this Jamesian fantastic, as
it is the element that invalidates and annihilates the initial actantial
scheme to replace it with other actantial schemes that are simultaneously
functional. The text gradually inflects the initial axis of desire until it brings
about the decisive change in the narrative, through which a new actantial
scheme emerges, which turns out to be totally perverted and inverted when
contrasted with the generic model. [6] In other words, the Jamesian
delusions keep challenging the hermeneutic codes of traditional ghost
stories, so that the Greimas square and “simple forms” (Jolles) that have
been developed by myth and folk-tale structuralist criticism cannot be
exclusively relied on, as they lack the tools to give a fair account of the
complexity of the Jamesian fantastic texts. When combined with narratology,
the Greimasian approach shows how the contradictions between the implicit
actantial schemes and the explicit model strengthen an ambiguity that already
stems from the author’s ambivalent choices as far as narration is concerned
(focalization, temporality, modality). As a matter of fact, more than dealing
with structures, the author concentrates on the discrepancy between the
apparent actantial structure(s) and the numerous and substantial
sub-structures that are enigmatic, contradictory, diverted, which entails
that the narrative is fundamentally based on a double ellipsis. [7] The Jamesian fantastic leads the reader, while progressing in the
story, to experience void locations on both sides of his path: on the one
hand, the real – idiotès – resists
the mind, and on the other hand, the logos
is postponed, incomplete. The Jamesian fantastic is characterized by the
active notion of ellipsis: a lack and an absence (of structure) which must be
viewed both as writing strategy and reading path (itself determined by dissociation and double bind). We must remember that according to the double bind
theory, as it was conceived by the Palo Alto researchers, the receiver of a
message that contains a meta-message he does not have access to is not given
the means to appropriately react.[8] The fantastic text offers no cathartis. |
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The conclusions drawn from the analysis of the Jamesian fantastic can
be extended to the fantastic in general. The structural divisions and voids
may not be used by the fantastic genre exclusively, nor are they the only
ingredients of the fantastic. Still, they bring about tension and pleasure[9], which necessarily derive from the fantastic. [10] |
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I hence replaced the Todorovian subjective and empirical notion of hesitation with that of discrepancy and suggested it could be
applied to all aspects of the fantastic text. Being at the same time
historical, epistemological and cultural,[11] diegetic,[12]narratological (more precisely dialogical)[13] and phenomenological[14], this discrepancy is fruitful and can be regarded as the keystone in
defining the fantastic not as a structure – deconstructed and dealt with by
the text as lacunary – but as a hyperbolic itinerary between two blank spaces
or ellipsis (deficiency and
absence). One is empirical and relates to experiencing the “real,” and the
other concerns the way the logos
(i.e. reason and language) deals with the aforesaid experience. |
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A deceptively indexical
artefact : indexical illusion/ referential illusion[15] |
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The fantastic text presents as an authentic trace (index) what is
actually an artefact (symbol) that has been built, and that mimics (icon)
what can not have happened. It gives material evidence of what it shows as
impossible and irremediable at the same time. It reverses the illusion on
which realism is based – indeed, the very existence of the text allegedly
proves that the event did occur. The fantastic stems from double illusion:
indexical illusion (trace) and referential illusion (real). The writing is
deceptive for two reasons: it gives evidence and at the same time denies it;
it exhibits the trace and calls into question written evidence – maybe even
the possibility of it; it maintains the receiver in a double bind scheme, as it stipulates the text should be read as
factual account, but at the same time, casts light upon its fictive
dimension. For it is paradoxically the exhibition of this fictive dimension,
which may often include the process of writing itself, which is delusively
indexical, that makes the text convincing.
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However receptive, the reader is not deceived and experiences pleasure[16] through those illusions that participate in a “genre-related effect”
(Odin). He has a pre-comprehension (Ricoeur) of the artefact. Though the
character does not know what is happening, the reader does know what he is
reading (a piece of fantastic literature); he knows that he enjoys playing
with his own fear, that he nonetheless believes in what he is reading,
because he wishes to believe (and is aware of that desire). [17] The effect emerges from a “call” or a radiation that emanates from
the text, but also requires some responsiveness from the receiver, according
to Jauss, who shows, along with the Ecole de Constance, that meaning is the
result of intersubjective dialectical relation (Jauss 246), which makes the
reader the author’s accomplice. |
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As was true about the Jamesian corpus, the paradigmatic axis of the
text itself is built through the interaction between networks of meaning
relating to themes, genres and history (chronological or spatial aberrations,
incarnation of Evil under any shape, hypotyposis of the different aspects of
human character, eg. the double, the ghost, the vampire), and a wide range of
personal obsessions and key biographical elements (about the author, the
character and readers). The fact that so much has been written about “The
Turn of the Screw” – this text that is essentially made of “blanks”, that
anticipates and integrates, in its very narrative and plot, interactions with
the interpretative instance – gives evidence that the artefact is born when
reception comes into contact with the text (Wolfgang Iser)[18] and when the text is open to the greatest extent – when in fictions
indetermination is conceived so as to encourage the active reader to make use
of his imagination. Each new reception is based on some expected meaning or
some meaning that exists prior to the reading process which in either
realizing itself or failing to do so betrays the implicit question the reader
had in mind and triggers reinterpretation (Jauss 113). When the reader can no
more make sense of the “ambiguous complexity” of the text, then the initial
question which the narrative has failed to answer or refused to answer[19] stimulates new readings and new theories of the fantastic. The “new
interpreter” can no longer be satisfied with the answer or meaning that he
has been given and starts looking for a new answer to the question that is
inherent to the text or that has been communicated to him (Jauss 113).
Through this process, new forms are created, which might induce that readers
fail – even temporarily – to fully grasp the text. |
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The study of syntax, or of narrative schemes and models, from a
narratological and structuralist view, does not suffice when one deals with
major questions such as meaning and effect. Given that the fantastic is a
“cultural fact” that is to a large extent determined by the “horizon of
expectation” of readers who may deliberately not take into account or even
fail to detect the “virtual meaning” that is inherent to the text, how do
forms and systems of representation relate to intercultural exchanges and
interaction between aesthetic codes? (Jauss 219) This is the question that I
looked into in my studies of folklore fantastic and of the fantastic of
“minorities”, that can be defined as a pocket of resistance within mass /
mainstream culture or like a unifying factor when different cultures interact
and that addresses the issue of the relation between the fantastic as a genre
and gender (concerning the transmitter as well as the receiver),
intertextuality, homosemiotic or heterosemiotics. |
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The fantastic as para-doxa : an example of feminine
fantastic (Angela Carter) |
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As they are rooted in oral culture and folklore (folk-lore) and
because they mix genres, Angela Carter’s fantastic tales – which borrow from
the gothic, grotesque realism, carnivalesque and Magic Realism – must be
analyzed with theoretical tools that are at the crossroads of different épistémè (relating to such various
fields as folklore studies, structuralism, narratology and comparative
literature), as only a combination of multiple viewpoints can give a fair
account of the author’s writing. |
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In the collection of short stories The
Bloody Chamber, for instance, Angela Carter revisits the canons of
childhood literature, taking a psychoanalytical viewpoint on them, and uses
them as inspiration for her poetical, surrealist and feminist re-writing. She
ends up with adult tales that combine oral literature, classic literature and
para-literature. Thanks to narratology (the use of tenses and pronouns),
structuralism, folklore analysis (motifs, types of tales) and comparative
literature, one can identify the changes that those tales have undergone and
the consequences of this transformation from oral to written form, on to the
status of piece of literature, and from folklore to feminine and poetic
fantastic[20] while her text still remains close to folklore culture (proverbs, old wives’ tales, legends, feminine
knowledge). The fact that her writings are deeply rooted in folklore culture
and as such tend to a re-appropriation of feminine imaginary (femininity) and even of feminine
identity can be linked with hypertextuality (as in “The Erl-King”), a mixture
that in my view characterizes the works that do not belong to mainstream
literature. Consequently, the approach is not only structuralist. Attention
must also be given to historical context and socio-criticism must be applied
that takes into account historical conditions during creation, distribution
and reception, as they influence effects.
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The hypertextual dimension that is inherent to feminine fantastic characterizes
both the fantastic of minorities and marginal literature that have been too
long and too often regarded as “paraliterature”. The effective presence of a
text within another (Genette) and more precisely the presence of mainstream
literature within a text – either used as a legitimation factor, [21] or under the forms of carnivalesque parodic effects and the
derealisation of the magic realist text – is always linked with the fantastic
when authors belong to minority groups. Those texts revolve around the
crucial question of identity and authors oscillate between the need to be
recognized by male-dominated society and the feeling of not belonging or even
of being unworthy of notice. This observation comes from socio-semiotic
analysis of the impact of editorial strategies and commercial practice on
reception and effect (Wirkung),
hence on identification of text genre. Folklore literature typically varies
and its readers are particularly sensitive to the interaction between text
and paratext: to analyze folklore fantastic, special attention must be
granted to the interaction between text/context/co-text. [22] |
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Para-doxa and paratext |
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The link between transmediatic and trangeneric transformation can be
illustrated by the evolution of Ray Badbury’s science fiction. He started as
a popular author among pulp magazine readers and other fanzines and ended up
as a classical author published in deluxe edition and paperback, whose
best-sellers have been adapted into plays, movies and comic books (that have
become classics in Europe) and translated in many languages. To a large
extent, the reading process depends on the interaction between the
institutional context of production, direction and distribution, on inherent
style and contribution of the interpreter. [23] In other words, the meaning of
a work of art is no more conceived as transtemporal but as a whole set that
is built throughout history (Jauss 213). Yet contextual and co-textual
analysis, when combined with textual analysis, call into question what was
until now taken for granted. Some go as far as concluding a failure of
interpretation, of “unlimited semiosis” or “blurred semiotics”. Imagination
is characterized by the multiplicity of its objects and confusion, each new
object being an additional attempt at making order out of chaos, while it
actually adds to confusion. Literary organisation, as obvious as it claims to
be, is always a source of obscurity.[24] |
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Theoretical limits and
theory of the limits : non-textuality and non-verbality |
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Doesn’t such a remark imply that the very notion of structure should
actually be rejected? Shouldn’t it be admitted that, to a certain extent, the
structuralist/neo-structuralist strategy failed, violently criticized by
deconstructionist theorists inspired by the Derridean inheritance that took
the lead in the theoretical field? How is it possible to reconcile different
approaches that were until then regarded as incompatible? |
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As far as conceptualisation is concerned, a jubilatory feeling of
helplessness followed, adding to general scepticism and theoretical vagueness
concerning the object of analysis which had itself changed. If any text can
be deconstructed, is it possible to
conceive a theory that relates to the fantastic only? Is it useful? To begin
with, does the fantastic only emerge from writing, from its written form,
from its status as a piece of literature? How can one give a fair account of
contemporary fantastic in particular, as it almost transcends the limits of
verbal form? |
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At that stage, these questionings resulted in a relative dilution of
theory through practice (Max Duperray) – i.e. pedagogical practice: after the
1990s ambitious and exacting theoretical reflections, a pedagogical book was
produced, which privileged a minimalist but consensual definition (as the
result of a compromise with the publisher), in which the fantastic in
literature is presented as an effect
triggered by the reading process that stems from a particular system of
representation and writing mode, which is often experimental, based on
the dialectic of excess and deficiency (it should also be noted that the
“fantastic effect” can also be induced by texts that are not labelled as
“fantastic”), and has a great potential for producing forms. [25] Therefore, this definition evolved towards more undetermined
associations (of which the texts of Vernon Lee, that had been rediscovered
around that period of time, are quite representative) that make me think of
the dynamic image of wave and fold, an aesthetic scheme which integrates
movement, and which complements the concepts of discrepancy and fantastic
ellipsis that have previously been described. The fluidity that characterizes
waves and the malleability that characterizes folds are key-elements to
understand how Lee’s text proceeds to make its way towards the fantastic,
through lap dissolve of palimpsests and accumulation of hypotiposes. |
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Frontiers of the fantastic
and writing frontiers |
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This led to a new stage, that focused entirely on technical questions,
on the relations between the fantastic and some related aesthetical
categories: the fantastic and the baroque; the fantastic and the grotesque; [26] the sacred and the spectacular; and the strategies of special
effects, excess, and exhibition. At that stage, the focal point of my
theoretical analysis was the limits of writing and my attention was drawn to
the relationship between two arts that centre on the limits of representation
and the “voices of silence”: music – which is typically non-representational art
– and the fantastic – writing what is by definition non-figurative. |
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Transartistic fantastic that characterizes the texts of some 19th
century authors and that prevails today generated a renewed interest in
theories, more particularly in interactions between intertextuality,
interculturality and heterosemiotic sets. In combining image semiotics and
phenomenology one may investigate the relations between the imaginary, the
fantastic, the iconic and the virtual, to reflect on theories and apply them
to case studies that focus on the relation between text and music, or text
and image. This reflection ended up
with the notion of heterosemiotic fantastic or intermedial fantasy. |
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I then came back to the hypothesis of the fantastic as the height of
literature, and tried to analyze the relation between text and music in
musical adaptations of fantastic texts, as for example “The Turn of the
Screw” by James that was adapted as an opera play by Benjamin Britten. Can
the fantastic be submitted to adaptation or translation from one mode of
expression, or from one code to another? Does this transposition imply any
generic change? What are the consequences on the effect (Wirkung) that is, according to Jauss, determined by the text, and
on the reception that is, according to the same author, determined by the
receiver? Is there a “musical fantastic”? To what extent does this
masterpiece of fantastic literature lose – or keep – its fundamentally
enigmatic and ambiguous characteristic when transposed from one medium (in the literal sense) to
another, while in the process the Jamesian equivoque is vocalized and becomes audible, while the
non-verbalized and the unspeakable become articulate language? |
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The analysis of the changes of codes applies to the transposition from
the Jamesian piece of literature to the libretto, from writing to staging,
from text to music and aims at determining the relation between transmediatic
and potential generic changes. Some of the hypotheses have been
verified: music implies changes in the
text, yet it abides by generic conventions and rules of composition that
favour expressivity and ideological faithfulness to the text. Britten resumes
the endeavours of James in experimental art, and his music uses modes of
writing that generate the fantastic. The very structure of the opera play
itself revolves around the musical theme of the screw, which generates
suspense in the manner of literary suspense[27]. As they both stem from the screw motif, the musical motif that
relates to the governess and the one that characterizes Quint make the
audience wonder at the governess’s allegedly redemptive plan. Those
characters consequently appear as doubles. The fundamental ambiguity of the
text is thus left unscathed and the ambivalence of characters (the governess,
Quint, Jessel, the children) is echoed as a musical equivalent can be found
for the literary themes of the double and the mirrored image. |
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Conversely, James, though he has often been said to know nothing of
music and to be indifferent to it, seems to apply musical techniques in “The
Private Life” (1982). The fugue is not only the musical background to the
story and the main topic of conversation, but also the thematic and narrative
technique on which this whole story about disappearance is based, in which
James makes the text and character vanish, in which he associates fugue, fold
and mise en abyme, and, more
generally, the fantastic and music. [28] |
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In the same perspective, other works centre on literary transposition
of musical elements, on composition forms, structures and effect of musical
fantastic texts and effect. This is
illustrated within the text in Vernon Lee’s writings. Indeed this author
ventures to put in parallel semiotic codes an equivalence that relies on and
is justified by the homology of the effects that each of these codes
produces: a perceptive synesthesia
which takes shape in her transartistic aesthetics, and which is transversal
to pictorial, musical and literary art forms. Because of the recurring
presence of indexical artefacts, her texts that exhibit numerous ekphraseis
and her imaginary museums have a strikingly homological structure; this
overabundance of cultural references in the text results in tangible presence
of the past and favours the emergence of the “genius loci”. These texts are made of an accumulation of
verbal, iconic and musical signs that refer to listless sources (and thus
justify genetic and intertextual research) but that are also created by the
writing process. Semiology and narratology allow the analyst to determine the
status of the works of art that are mentioned, that may vary according to the
way they are presented in the text: collage and montage, or collage of
collage. As relates to the voice, to its effects and representations that are
at the core of all her texts, Lee transcends the fundamental apory that there
is in telling the voice by
inscribing, in-between sound and letter, a visual space. She mediatises the
voice with the inclusion of image. Indeed, the voice – that becomes a
character (voice picturalization) – is incarnated when the fantastic
paintings are brought to life. Beyond the sheer musical fantastic, these case
studies illustrate transartistic writing and intermediality. |
|
Next comes the crucial theoretical question: in what ways is the
fantastic literal and to what extent is it linked to the literary world?
Shouldn’t it be associated with representation and image at large? We have to
get back to the basics to be able to take into account the recent evolution
of fantastic production itself that is clearly influenced by the technical
innovations (in such various fields as cinema, television, photography and
visual arts in general),[29] and above all by the elaboration of new images and the development of
a new relation to reality (to the virtual) that conveys a new ideology
regarding some special kind of “communication” which leads to virtual
reality, which does not refer to the real as its basis, but relies on fantasy
and desire instead.[30] We have to get back, beyond
adaptation theories that are linked with rewriting (e.g. parodic rewriting)
and intertextuality, to the relation between image and the imaginary. |
|
A reflection on intermedial
fantastic |
|
Since the very beginning, according to Bozzetto, the pictorial
fantastic has provided the literary fantastic with images and characters, as
image would be the most appropriate medium to represent a hallucinated scene.[31] Optical effects and pictural techniques suited to literary form (like
anamorphosis for instance) have afterwards contributed to the evolution of
fantastic. Based on techniques – special effects, image editing,
hallucinations – as well as content or themes,[32] the evolution of the media gives evidence of the strong connection
between image, media and mediumness. As Derrida summed up in his famous jest:
the television era is profitable to ghosts. Can we expect that postmodern
times, that lay the stress on (tele)vision, will turn out to be the era of
pan-fantastic, inaugurating the era of generalized spectralisation? |
|
It is true that media turn the invisible into something that is
visible and visual – Swedenborg’s dream has become true! The spectral becomes
visual while the real becomes virtual, while, conversely, in the view of a
certain type of audience – the numerous spectators of “reality shows” – what
is visual is real, or even what is visual is the only thing that is real.[33] Does that mean that any represented object or any image must be
viewed as fantastic? What is this new heterosemiotic and intermedial
fantastic made of, that merges signs of various origins and connects them in
different ways (signs coexist, interact) which entails that codes influence
one another and that phenomenology and semiotics must both be used in textual
analysis? Is it not time to combine “immanent” analytical methods to
“historical” approaches (utterance theories, semiotics, sociocriticism) and
phenomenology to analyze this new fantastic? |
|
The Nikopol Trilogy,[34] a collection of three comic books by Enki Bilal, that has been
adapted as a movie entitled Immortels
ad vitam (March 2004)[35], is an ideal study case to put our hypotheses to the test. The story
takes place from year 2023 to 2034,[36] and the setting is either futuristic megalopolis (New York, Paris,
Berlin, London), the archetypes of Western developed countries, or deserted
places (Egypt), the epitome of a more natural, archaic, primeval world.
However, those two civilizations have one thing in common : dictatorship,
tribal wars and armed struggles between militia and Mafia. The plot centres
around an improbable love story featuring a mutant journalist (Jill Bioskop),
the Egyptian God Horus and Alcide Nikopol, a human protester whom the
powerful Eugenic Firm “Globus” has cryogenized Nikopol has accidentally been
defrosted and has been forced to leave his heavenly hypothermic space
capsule, like another Adam who is twice punished and has to endure the Fall
for the second time in his life, to eventually land in a terrifying world,
which he tries to escape by reading Baudelaire’s most morbid poetry. |
|
In shooting the movie, Bilal deconstructs his own comic book: he
selects, summarizes and interprets the most important elements and then
reconstructs and transposes the trilogy – which is a classic for a new genre
which is not yet considered as such – in another medium that is likely to
meet the expectations of the targeted audience (young adults who expect to
see a cult film). |
|
Bilal teamed with computer graphic designers who are renowned for
their video clips to create an original work of art and an original medium
that mixes genres a lot as it alternatively uses original shots – that have
sometimes been coloured or altered –, computer-generated images, photographs,
cartoons, animated movies. These technical evolutions entail a change in
genre and a change in reception (from a comic book which has become a classic
to cult movie). |
|
The result of transfer and condensation is a long dream-like video clip, which is in between surrealism, science
fiction and the fantastic. The Bilalian network of images typically revolves
around representations of postmodern urban reality which – though dysphoric –
betray a deep concern for aesthetics, and which can be characterized by two
major aspects: its violent aesthetics and its aesthetics of violence. |
|
The rough, marble-like, strangely fascinating beauty of his characters
who are either ventriloquist or nearly mute, whose facial expression hardly
change, whose eyes are fixed and who, like masks or idols live among crowds
of automata physically testify that the people is politically and
intellectually enslaved by the aesthetical dictatorship of Ferdinand
Choublanc (image manipulation and fragmentation being recurring themes in
Bilal’s work). |
|
Using an expressionist range of colours, Bilal benefits from the
psycho-physiological effects of images through the tactile sensations they
evoke,[37] through the semiotic system he uses regarding shapes and colours –
the connotations and symbolical surdeterminations that are connected to them.
He contrasts the non-organic existence of opaque, glossy objects endowed with
a smooth, cold and hard metallic texture symbolizing absolute beauty and
nobility, to soft, elastic, malleable, warm textures with a mat complexion,
which is the typical consistency of human kind – or rather what is left of it
– pushing triviality to the excremential, as incarnates Nikopol who is
haunted by the most obscene poems of The
Flowers of Evil, which he recurrently quotes from. |
|
This movie combines the canonisation
effect of literary and poetic intertextuality, and the cult effect brought about through
references to art forms that are familiar to the audience and which “genre
effect” Bilal fully uses. The fact that Bilal borrows elements from other
codes – iconic, plastic or linguistic codes – [38] and assimilates them to his own typical visual and intertextual codes
is flattering for the audience: spectators feel gratified to find that their
own “horizon of expectation” has been taken into account and encoded in the
work of art. Homo- or heterosemiotic intertextuality can be viewed as a code,
which creates complicity between the author and the receivers and thus participates
in the dialectical transposition from a comic book considered as a classic to
a cult movie. |
|
Cinema is at the very heart of the third volume of the trilogy, which
starts with the projection of rushes from the fictive movie Amour/Amore. The comic strips of the
comic book are to a certain extent the storyboard of the movie that has not
been finished because the actors (Nikopol and Jill) have disappeared, and
that is shown image after image, like a series of photographs that are almost identical except for
slight differences (types of shots, framing, definition of the off-camera
space that is more or less visible or implicit). This results in a
spectacular mirror-effect : the mise en
abyme of the shooting sequence in the comic book is echoed by the mise en abyme that is inherent to the
movie – a movie which is inevitably regarded as the one that was shot… in the
comic book. |
|
Bilal’s graphical type of writing, which is already cinematographic, predisposes such a case of specularity.
He resorts to camera movement to compensate for the expressionless faces of
his characters; the composition of each panel is like that of paintings,
photographs or shots, and he shows a preference for “affection-image” (when
panels are saturated with close-ups and medium close-ups) ; he draws and
composes his landscapes (urban wastelands, waste grounds, deserts destroyed
by wars) like panoramic shots. The way he deals with dialogues (characters
are presented in shots and reverse shots) bears some resemblance with classic
Hollywoodian rhetoric. Bilal also uses duplication and repetition (the very
same scene is represented more than once, according to different
perspectives), which gives the impression that the off-camera space is
gradually disclosed. The effects of framing/deframing[39] as well as the different options in collage (which can be either
homogeneous or heterogeneous) and editing (alternate editing, expressive or
productive editing, “sideshows” editing[40]) endow some images with the status of meta-images. |
|
Those techniques that have something in common with collage, have a
similar function. They connect two heterogeneous elements thanks to a third
element that replaces and hides what has been cut and erased. It is important
to notice that there is a striking structural and formal equivalence between
these technical choices and the two major themes that are developed in the
work, that are strangely interrelated : on the one hand, the solder or graft
theme, and on the other hand the perverse relation to History. The predominant motifs of disintegration,
of dismemberment with bodies chopped up in numberless parts, fragments,
grafts, stumps, portions, have to be linked to the schemes of mutilation (war, torture, bloody
sports) and graft (plastic surgery,
organ transplants, the soldering of Nikopol’s metallic leg). Fragmentation,
laceration, reconstruction, remembrance, the random occurrences of graft,
collage, suture and solder motifs must be connected to a morbid relation
(forclusion, censorship or denial) to the traumas that have been generated by
History. There is a homological relation between those “drive-images”
(Deleuze) and the predation scheme that is at the basis of the relations
between characters and the whole work of art, that is embodied by Horus – the
height of hybridity: a hawk-headed deity with a human body, that fuses with
Nikopol’s body.[41] |
|
The incongruous presence in the sky above New York city of a flying
pyramid in which the Egyptian Gods live can be equated in meaning with the
apple – which being out of place, is absurd – that replaces and hides the
“Son of Man” ’s face in Magritte’s surrealistic painting. Suddenly and
illegally appearing in the sky of New York, the pyramid is the tangible
materialisation of screen memory (the collective memory that is built from
history books, from an obsolete past, from a fundamentally different history)
that covers up the trauma of recent history that has been censored and
forgotten (the civil war in Sarajevo, where Bilal spent his childhood, that
haunts him). It points to the past of another world, which obliterates and
conceals an alienating memory blank.
It symbolizes the collective memory, which – as any memory-related machine –
is a machine that creates oblivion as it is the antagonism of subjective
memory and as its aim is to replace subjectivity with collective/consensual
speech. (Alain Brun, in Joly 163).
Characters may thus cling to protective amnesia and keep on denying the
metamorphoses and mutations that History displays; memory rhymes with
madness, and this is precisely what Jill, like Nikopol when he quotes from
Baudelaire, tries to escape in taking pills,.
|
|
The access to the real is not possible, which is even shown through
the paradoxical use of newspaper articles, which are physically present,
literally pasted in the comic book’s panels and the fake issue of the
newspaper Libération which is
included with the comic book. The reality effect that is expected to result
from the referential elements (a plausible date, “Thursday, the 14th of
October 1993”, and a real editorial writer, Serge July) is toned down by the
derealizing effect of obviously science-fictional elements, like some
headlines: “The Day when the Future telescripted”, “Today the 3rd of February
2025 and the 14th of October 1993 meet”. The ontological status of the
pseudo-photographs that have been drawn and pasted is particularly ambiguous:
they are traces, hence they reveal[42] and give evidence of “what-has-been”
(Barthes) ; yet they illustrate impossible scenes. They play the role of
indexes (Peirce) that refer to unreal objects and fantastic epiphanies. The
genre and ontological status of this work that Bilal views as poetic,
fantastic, oniric, fantasmatic and surrealistic is problematic. The label
“intermedial work” seems to give a fair account of the plurality of
techniques that are borrowed by the movie – a medium that, contrary to the
comic book, centres around its reality effects – and that triggers numerous
effects. When discussing the technical aspect of his movie,[43] Bilal simply claims that the movie has nothing to do with the real.
But what about reality effects? |
|
Intermediality entails uncertainty in interpretation, ties up the
audience in double bind in giving both documentary-oriented and
fiction-oriented reading instructions. Reality effects are constantly in
interaction with hyperreality effects (insertion on a neutral and homogeneous
background of shots, virtual images or characters,[44] of video games or retouched images), [45] irreal effects (use of drawings, colourings, backgrounds that are
painted then animated, [46] cartoons,[47] pencil portraits) and surreal effects (coloured sequences or
characters, superimposed images like that of the pyramid above New York
city). [48] The choice of those particular techniques – which aim at generating
surreal, unrealistic and hyperreallistic effects from heterogeneous editing
and collage is structurally and formally coherent with Bilal’s vision of a
painful and repressed reality. |
|
According to Jauss, when a piece of literature calls into question the
established order given by the institutions and traditions of some society,
when it frees itself from the boundaries of social standards and conventional
literature, and when a diachronic dimension is restored within a
civilization, the synchronic structure of the aforesaid society and the forms
of its literature can no longer be reflected by the homogeneous substance of
the same logos… (Jauss 116). The fiction-oriented reading
(the “genre effect” that relates to SF) that is induced by unreal effects
constantly calls into question any documentary-oriented reading (that is
based on the reality effects) ; at the same time, the creative process –
linked to the adaptation of the comic book into a movie – is deconstructed
through the derealisation effect – disappearance of the real, aphany – that
are generated through the paradoxical effects of hyperreality that are
brought about by intermediality and mediatic representations (heterosemiotic
and homosemiotic intertextuality). |
|
Such fantastic goes far beyond the freudian notion of “the uncanny”.
It relies on a paradoxical semiotic chain, as it is based on a reality effect
that gives the illusion that the symbol (a convention) is an index (a trace)
or even an icon (implying some analogical relation with) of some particular
kind of real… that is presented as impossible[49] through the fantastic effect that lays the emphasis on the deficiency
of the symbol (the ellipsis as a void : there is no word to phrase “that”)
and of the icon (the ellipsis as a lack). Not only does the fantastic produce
some out of vision space at the very heart of the image it generates, but it
also pictures the real as some out of vision space[50] and the gaps, the blanks and voids can only be filled through the
reader’s imagination. |
|
BIBLIOGRAPHY |
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Sophie Geoffroy |
|
Université de La
Réunion (France) |
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