Modern Female Archetypes: The Succubus

By on March 2, 2011 ·
Yoko Ono

Cover of Yoko Ono

 

We’ve seen it plenty of times. A group of guys who’ve been friends for years suddenly find their world disrupted by the arrival of a new female. She typically enters the scene on the arm of one of the fellows, and the others tolerate her because of their loyalty to their buddy. But before long, things begin to change. The guys start to see less of their friend, or if he does come around, the girl is always with him. In subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) ways, she manages drive a wedge between her man and his old comrades until finally, she comes to dominate every aspect of his life. Their pal’s fun-loving personality gradually drains away, and he becomes a mere shadow of his former self. Things soon fall apart: the band breaks up, friendships are jeopardized—all because of a manipulative, soul-sucking female.

Yoko Ono’s infiltration of the Beatles is the most obvious modern example of this phenomenon. (In fact, the Urban Dictionary defines the “Yoko Effect” as: “The aftermath of an individual in a group of friends dating a nut-case girlfriend or boyfriend. The significant other will intentionally or unintentionally control the group member’s entire life and eventually stomp out anyone he or she sees as ‘unfit’ based on arbitrary criteria.”)

In the realm of storytelling, the roots of this archetype run deep. For instance, the goddess Circe turns Odysseus’ warriors into swine in order to keep her man by her side. It’s not until Odysseus recognizes Circe’s ploys that they are finally able to break free and resume their journey. Likewise, medieval folk legends surrounding the character of Lilith reflect the notion that certain females (succubi) will use their sexuality to corrupt men and drain them of life. The temptress in John Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” fits this model, as does King Arthur’s faithless wife, Genevieve, whose actions are instrumental in destroying Camelot.

In modern cinema, examples of the succubus archetype abound. Who can forget David St. Hubbins’ girlfriend, Jeanine Pettibone, in the “rockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap? Or what about Judith (Amanda Peet’s character) from the movie Saving Silverman? Of course, there is also the girlfriend of Jack Black’s roommate, Patty DiMarco (played by Sarah Silverman), in The School of Rock. Vinnie Chase (the movie star heartthrob on HBO’s Entourage) has a run-in with a vegan yoga fanatic (Fiona) whose behavior is eerily reminiscent of Yoko’s. And let’s not forget Stu’s passive-aggressive wife, Melissa, from recent hit film, The Hangover.

The methods of these soul-suckers range from manipulative puppet-masters at one end of the shrewish spectrum to selfish, emasculating harpies at the other. Yet all of these gals have one goal in mind: to separate their men from the group. For awhile, the women are successful. However in the end, it’s the men’s buddies who rescue them from these girls’ conniving feminine clutches. If only Paul, George, and Ringo could have been so lucky. But then again, maybe we can all learn a thing or two from their example as well.

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Crash Course in Literacy: Part 3

By on January 19, 2011 ·
Self made image of Eastern Cottontail
Image via Wikipedia

My previous book to brainwash convince my young illiterate that reading was fun was Call of The Wild.  Call of The Wild is about a dog.  Everybody loves dogs and so even someone who’s new to reading should be able to get into the story.  Who doesn’t like stories about animals?

Watership Down is about a bunch of rabbits.  The first time I heard about the book was when I was reading The Stand.  Stu Redman of Texas is not much of a reader but buys Watership Down as a gift, for a niece if memory serves.  Stu supposed from the title the book was about some kind of shipwreck but he reads the first page and finds out it’s about a bunch of rabbits.  He can’t put it down and reads the whole thing in about two days. 

It was years later when I saw a copy laying around my house (still don’t know how it got there but I don’t question the book faeries) and had a similar experience to ol’ Stu’s.  I remembered Stephen King’s brief description and there was a rabbit on the cover so I wasn’t quite as surprised; but I was captivated.  By the middle of the first page I was totally in the world of these rabbits and the more I read the more immersive that world became.  Unlike Buck, these rabbits talk.  They in fact have their own language, myths and legends, and the world we see is wholly theirs. 

Some people label it allegory but that misses the mark.  Certainly there are political themes; each warren runs on a recognizable ‘political’ system.  Fiver and his small band’s search for freedom and sovereignty while respecting the individual should appeal to any red blooded American despite the quite English flavor of the book.  But these aren’t representations of people.  The characters are rabbits and this is an heroic tale about rabbits. 

Because the characters are bunnies (though not all of them are cute) the book is often considered children’s lit.  It is children’s lit and Adams started by telling the stories to his daughters.  But they made him write it down and we owe them because it’s damn good children’s lit.  The kind of book that if you read it when you’re nine you can read it over and over again and love it more each time. 

That makes it a perfect book to get someone like my poorly read protege to love reading.  So perfect that I debated putting this one before Fahrenheit 451.  If you haven’t read it, I insist you do so as soon as possible.  If it’s been a few years, like it has for me, then I suggest you give it another read.  In fact I think I’m gonna put that in my new Kindle right now.   

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The New Archetypes: Part 5

By on September 27, 2010 ·
Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in The Sile...
Image via Wikipedia

Until now the archetypes I’ve talked about have been heroes.  Well technically some of them like the Rogue Cop and the Assassin are antiheroes but they’re all the protagonist.  So how about a little love for the villain?  In ancient myth the hero’s opponents are often pretty simple monsters, a dragon or a cyclops.  But the need for character makes the best villains more interesting.  Grendel isn’t exactly a fully fleshed character by modern stories but he does have a backstory and a mother and even though there’s no doubt they’re the bad guys the poet gives us a sense of theiry struggle and pain.  In modern stories we have a bit of a problem though.  Most people don’t wake up to go fight monsters, or at least not fantastical ones.  The cops don’t get a whole lot of calls for minotaurs running around.  There are of course human monsters; genocidal heavies like Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin.  Story wise though these are army versus army type affairs.  Most of the grunts who (heroically it’s true) took fortress Europe never set eyes on Hitler.  But in a smaller, more personal story we need a more personal villain and we’ve got one who shows up a lot.

The Suave Pshycopath.  It’s true that the Suave Pshycho is evil.  He may be the head of a criminal organization or perhaps a serial killer.  But man is this guy urbane!  He’s most likely very well spoken with impeccable manners.  It’s quite likely that he listens to a lot of classical music and can definitely quote Shakespeare as well as more obsure poets.  If circumstances permit (he’s not in prison) he’s well dressed and a gourmande.  He’s probably a handsome chap.  And yes he’s pretty much always a he.

The prototype for the Suave Pshycho is probably Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories.  Holmes is urbane, witty, upperclass and has a keen mind versed in a wide range of topics.  And so his archrival must be of a similar type.  A professor of mathematics with a keen mind that in this case is turned toward the building and running of an extensive crime syndicate.  Plus they’re both British so you know they’re terribly polite. 

Despite his ruinous hatred of the Great Detective though it might be argued that Moriarty is not truly psychopathic.  There are other examples, the Bond villains tend to fall into this type, Hans from Die Hard is another but we all know who the gold standard is.  Hannibal the Cannibal.  Dr. Hannibal Lecter.  He is a monster.  His own doctor says so.  He lives in a dungeon, a cave worthy of any monster out of myth.  Yet he’s soft spoken.  He’s polite.  He sketches.  He even has perfect posture.  He’s charming and in fact he’s fascinating.

And that’s the whole point.   When we have to look for our monsters in ourselves we don’t like what we see and we shouldn’t.  So maybe we make it look a little better.  Good looking on the outside but also someone who you’d like to invite to a party.  Someone who excels at dinner conversation.  Why?  Well here’s where it gets complicated because I think it’s more than wanting to take the sting out of the monster’s actions.  Lecter is brilliant and sophisticated but that makes him more terrifying, not less.  He’s not a foul smelling schizophrenic talking to himself in an alley.  None of us would go into that alley but most of us would be thrilled to be invited to Dr. Lecter’s house (before we knew about all his hobbies). 

When the Pshyco is suave we can’t tell friend from foe.  A frightening thought by itself but there’s also the horror of knowing him afterhis true nature is revealed.  All the times you were alone with him in his office.  Maybe you helped him pick out a credenza for his well appointed study.  Maybe you went on a date with him.  And that’s the other side.  We make the Suave Pshycopath charming so we can talk to him but it also absolves us of guilt.  How could anyone have known?  He was the perfect gentleman! 

And for some reason they are gentlemen.  The closest female equivalent I can think of are the great femme fatales in noir.  They’re dangerous, smart, and fascinating but they’re not quite the same.  For one thing, their allure is usually overtly sexual and the Suave Psychopath tends to use a gentlemanly charm that lacks sexual menace (Patrick Bateman from American Psychobeing a notable exception).  And the target of the femme fatale usually has a good idea she’s trouble, he just can’t help himself (usually because of the aforementioned sexuality). 

Of course when the Suave Psychopath is a serial killer is when he’s most modern.  If the serial killer isn’t wholly a product of the modern age his proliferation certainly is.  So are many of the investigative techniques that law enforcement use to track and catch them (in fact FBI Profiler is almost an archetype).  Despite the monstrous, heinous acts of these defective humans and the workmanlike way that cops catch them; we want to glamorize.  If you don’t believe me consider Saucy Jack.  A real serial killer who in retrospect shadowed cases to come.  Modern profiling techniques suggest that the Ripper was a man poorly educated, barely literate, whose first language was probably not English, had a deep resentment/hatred for women, lived in the area where the murders took place, was a poor working class man (perhaps a butcher), and it was likely the police had interviewed him but not charged him.  Yet still movies portray a handsome man in evening dress, top hat, cape, and white gloves that will soon be red with blood. 

Whether it’s the allure of the dark side of human nature or the wish to ignore the mundane aspect of murder and death I’m not sure.  It’s poor police work but the good news for Storytellers is it makes a great character.  Actors don’t want to play mustache twirlers and audiences don’t want to watch them.  But a well done Suave Psychopath is impossible not to watch.

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The New Archetypes: Part 3

By on August 16, 2010 ·
When Lego Ninja Attack...
Image by Neil Crosby via Flickr

Last time I talked about the Nobody.  Everybody has felt like a Nobody at some point which makes the Nobody a sort of everyman.  If you can’t root for him at least you can identify with him.  Before that was the Rogue Cop.  This guy (it’s almost always a guy) plays by his own rules but we know he’s the good guy.  But what if our good guy doesn’t do good things?  What if he’s a bad guy?  How can he still be the hero?  Why do we root for the modern Archetype of The Assassin?

Murder is by and large a bad thing, even in the violent make believe world of movies.  We the audience can’t seem to get enough killing though and the storytellers are always happy to oblige.  But that whole morality thing keeps popping up.  Even if it’s fiction some of us might feel guilty for cheering on killers.  Some of us might feel guilty enough to digitally alter (and not very well, I might add) a decades old iconic scene to make a cantina shooting look like self-defense.  So how do we make it okay for the hero to murder people in cold blood?  Simple.  We pay him lots and lots of money.  For some reason we love movies about assassins.  The Professional,  Assassins, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Grosse Pointe Blank, Wanted, La Femme Nikita/Point of No Return…that’s just off the top of my head but the list is pretty long.  So what is it about the Assassin?

Well for starters he’s cool.  I don’t know anything about the real world of assassins.  I don’t know if they’re cool or not but in the movies they’re cool.  They wear cool clothes and use cool weapons.  They have cool training sequences perhaps in a cool facility or in some secret ninja stronghold in the mountains.  They have cool moves for every situation; getting into and out of buildings, finding their targets and evading detection.  They remain cool under all kinds of pressure whether they’re being shot at or laying in wait for their targets.  Just laying in wait has to be cool.  You can’t just sit on a lawn chair with a deer rifle; you have to hang on to the chassis of a car or climb headfirst down a rope or…whatever.  Call it the Batman factor:  if you look cool enough it doesn’t matter how insane your actions are.

There has to be more to it though and I think there is.  It’s not just cool moves that are attractive but the power and freedom.  The Assassin strikes at will and without hesitation.  He has the power of life and death.  He’s free from moral judgement, at least from himself, because he’s only doing his job.  A plumber doesn’t feel guilty about snaking a drain.  Despite the fact these people are ending lives most of us wish we could operate so surely and powerfully.  We live by countless rules every waking moment and being free of those rules is a strong fantasy.  Of course there’s a price to pay and that’s humanity.

Humanity is the other side of the coin for the Assassin.  Most of these characters have either been stripped of their humanity through training or lost their connection to humanity from years of killing.  It’s the lack of morality and humanity that give the Assassin storytelling legs.  The assassin story is usually a redemption story.  Perhaps the Assassin never wanted the life he was in and has to find a way out (Point of No Return).  Perhaps there is an unexpected connection that makes the Assassin want to be human again (The Professional).  Sometimes the Assassin sees the effect he has on the rest of humanity and wants to make things right (The Killer).  Whatever the case the Assassin is usually trying to regain his lost humanity and we root for him to make it.  If a paid killer can find redemption than so can the rest of us.   

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The New Archetypes Part 1

By on July 19, 2010 ·
Harry Callahan, played by Clint Eastwood
Image via Wikipedia

Archetypes in the movies is certainly nothing new.  It’s almost impossible to discuss Star Wars (OT obviously) without talking about heroic archetypes and heroes’ journeys.  Many of those archetypes are so ancient that they are as old as storytelling itself.  Movies aren’t ancient but they seem to have had quite an effect on storytelling in barely over a century.  That effect is big enough that some characters seem to be becoming archetypes peculiar to the modern age.  Since this is the sort of stuff that fascinates me I guess you’re stuck reading it.  I have five in mind off the top of my head but I think I might find more as I ponder a bit.  Hopefully the comment sections will yield some I haven’t thought of.  Let’s start with…

The Rogue Cop.  This one is modern in part because the idea of a police force as we think of it is modern.  Not that much older than movies really.  Cops make good Hero archetypes naturally.  They’re good guys who stop bad guys.  They take oaths and carry shields.  Knight of the Round Table type stuff.

Then came Dirty Harry.  We love that guy.  Why?  There aren’t many reasonable people, including real life cops, who think a man like Harry Callahan should be walking free, let alone armed and carrying a badge.  Yet there aren’t many people, including real life cops, who don’t root for Harry.  He shoots people down rather than arrest them and apparently gets every partner he has killed as well.  Still, most people think of him as the good guy.  There has to be something there that we like or identify with.

I think it’s just the fact that he will always do what he thinks is right.  We all wish we were so confident about what to do that we can just go ahead and do it.  It doesn’t seem to matter that Callahan’s code isn’t legal and under the cold light of reason not particularly moral.  What matters is that it’s not relative.  Dirty Harry knows what has to be done and he’s the one to do it.  If you go against the code you go down.  Zero ambiguity.  Zero guilt.

I can’t really think of an ancient story Archetype that really fits the Rogue Cop.  Arthur’s knights were expected to follow the chivalric code at all times.  A knight that followed some made up code of his own just wasn’t a good guy.  Much of this is modern because of modern social structures of course.  Not just the idea of law enforcement but the idea of civil rights.  We tend to believe in civil rights but we can’t help but be pissed off when those rights protect those we know are bad guys.

So is Inspector Callahan and the Rogue Cop a true Archetype?  Well, what was the last movie you saw where a cop interviewed witnesses, filled out paperwork, got a warrant, gathered evidence, made an arrest (not by himself but with a squad of patrolmen), booked his man, filled out more paperwork, testified in a court of law, and then clocked out and went home?  How many people did Martin Riggs arrest compared to how many people he shot or just broke their necks with his bare hands?  I haven’t seen the last Die Hard movie but in the first three the only thing John Mclane does that even remotely resembles police work is flash his badge and say ‘I’m a cop’.  

The funny thing is real police makes pretty good story.  My wife is a True Crime addict and she got me hooked on The First 48, a show on A&E that follows real homicide detectives on real cases.  Fascinating stuff and real human drama but it takes the fantasy of movies to achieve the archetypal status and Dirty Harry is the gold standard.  

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