Deleted Scenes: Strange Visitor – Not-necessarily-correlated notes on Superman-as-not-Superman and the linguistic framing of the (situation of the) trace

The following is material cut from an early draft of Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero. The full text is accessible on Academia.edu at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook, or via Google Drive at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor

Superman-as-not-Superman: Given the parameters of superheroic fiction, there are various ways that that dis-identification could be rendered strictly, ‘materially’ true–imposters, for example, are a well-worn plot trope–but the statement is generally meant to be taken more in terms of psychosocial identity politics: that character has done something inconsistent enough with his own mediated identity that he has rendered himself no longer appropriate, in the view of the public, to the assumption of that identity. As though the physical body that had, to that point, occupied the responsibilities, powerset, even costume of that hero had been removed and the vacated shell of the superheroic aspect of the identity has been put up for auction, part and parcel¹.

******

The derridean trace is the contextually-influenced, discursively determined outline of a concept–any and every concept of anything–as it exists in language in a constant state of the absence of definitive, universally-employed identificatory terms. the indeterminacy of definition is but the effect of a linguistic structure that provides its users with a potentially-infinite number of ways of expressing everything expressible. Even the broadest definitions of the most well-used terms are inexorably context-dependent, so that the sense of those terms is made dynamic through their very employment. The trace, then, constitutes the outline of the understanding of an identity always within, through, but not necessarily limited to the unique set of contextual circumstances. The trace consists of the historical, experiential, fully contextual, inescapably subjective understanding of what qualifies as the subject being identified v. not.

******

Saussure points out that, “in language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms (Course in General Linguistics 120).” Aside from temporality, definition through negation is the other major reason why the edges of a trace, the boundaries of an identity, are vague and permeable; it’s so much more often about who a superhero isn’t–a killer, simple, sane, capable of living in social isolation–than who he is. Add temporality back in to provide room for the actions of that subject, and the permeability of the trace becomes, indeed, the very demand for change, for becoming. “I” represents not an image of what I am, not some specific, singular statement that absolutely guides me, but rather a number of spans going forward, spaces in which I might initiate, engage with, or react to a situation in a number of different ways, represent myself as a number of different types of people to whatever subjects are present or concerned, including myself². And everyone involved will narrativize it, if only in their own memories, but certainly as they communicate those events to others.

******

Bakhtin came to some similar reckoning of the interminability of indefinability, the constant dynamism of subjective, contextualized becoming through constant resubjectification to language, for it happens to language itself as we consider subjects who are wholly conceptual, “… the (relatively) protracted and socially meaningful (collective) saturation of language with specific (and consequently limiting) intentions and accents (“Discourse in the Novel” 293).” As goes the narrative subject, we might count these ‘limiting intentions and accents’ as refinements and reifications of trace elements, which, in being so refined and reified, must also exist in time, in that element that changes and recontextualizes everything, even if only in reference to itself³.

******

Note how we linguistically frame the trace here, though: not simply as a thing, even a concept, but as an event—the situation of the trace, its continuing event of its own becoming. This modifier may appear often in our dealings with the trace, but why? Because of the trace’s nature as ‘contextually-influenced and individually, discursively determined’. The seeming contrast between ‘individually’ and ‘discursively’ determined states incites, itself, enough of an identificatory complication to justify referring to the trace itself as a site of necessary deliberation–that deliberation constituting an event, a situation. For the trace concerns the definition of the subject within and with language—be that subject a person, a concept, even a word—and, given language’s aforementioned expansiveness…

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1 Such, in fact, is, almost point for point, the origin of the supervillain Sinestro: his story begins as he is serving as a trusted member of the Green Lantern Corps, but, when he violates his oath and succumbs to fear, the sentient ring that granted him his powers deserts him to find a new recruit.

2 To get sidetracked, ironically enough, by consistency, then: becoming acts on all discursive elements whatever, including public expectation. The important difference (maybe), though, between the trace of a narrative subject’s identity, and the expectations of the public for that identity is that there are, sometimes, more or less canonical documents to authoritatively fall back on in the determination of the trace (no one questions the canonicity of The Avengers #1 to the relevance of a debate on the origins of The Avengers), while there is no ‘magna carta’ for public opinion (Is The Hulk really a good guy? Really???). And yet, we presume, often rightly, that the superhero will indeed conform not just to something within the full span of possibilities engendered by the shape of his trace at the moment, but indeed to the tighter (sometime much tighter) restrictions of public expectation, all in order to be ‘consistent’. But, then, superhero stories are superhero stories…

3 This is a fancy way of referring to, among other things but most conveniently, the common use of age as a discursive identity marker. A certain character may never age, whether only in relation to us, as serialized characters are prone to be ageless–we do not let superheroes or any of their nemeses or supporting casts get old and die because we do not have to. On the other hand, a character might be immortal within their own realm of aging counterparts, whom that person is not like, whom they are, consequently, othered among. Irrespectively, though, we here in the linguistic realm are perfectly capable of yet tagging a specific age onto a character, made meaningful with respect to our own experience of it as media consumers. Peter Parker, for instance, was a teenager when he first appeared–when he was first created, in his first year of existence–in 1962. Today, at materially 54 years of age, he is, across most of his prominent narrative realms, depicted as somewhere between late mid-teens and early-to-mid 30s. Sometimes he’s dead, too (see: Ultimate Spider-Man).

Deleted Scenes: Strange Visitor – Not-necessarily-correlated notes on the ‘I’, the trace, and meaning-making

The following is material cut from an early draft of Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero. The full text is accessible on Academia.edu at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook, or via Google Drive at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor

… I, as a participant in the discourse, could still define the ‘I’ in some other sentence as something structurally different to that sentence than the thoroughly-narrative subject of Superman: I might use my words, my discursive representation, to talk about Superman as a fictional character, about his various media appearances, or I might otherwise invoke as discursively important the barrier that separates my actual physicality from his fabricated presence.  But, in identifying two different relationships to the discursive ‘I’, one that admits closer proximity with the narrative subject than the other, do I effectively establish two distinct ‘I’s?  If not, what constitutes the rough boundaries of the trace of that single figure I call ‘I’?  If so, if there are two discreetly-identifiable ‘I’s, how do they stand in relation to each other?  And can that thoroughly-narrative subject–the example of Superman–serve as some aid in triangulating the respective positions of all discursive subjects^[1]?

* * * * * *

Language is not simply what remains in the absence of presence; it is the presence of itself, whether the subject (or even the issuer) of the assertion is materially present in the discursive moment or not.  Language knows the subject, but, given that it subjectifies every single thing it is applied to, can it really know the ‘void outside of the very utterance’, the absence of itself?  So then, given the common factor of narrativity in the constitution of all subjects whatever, material or entirely textual, we can return to Hegel to observe how (STILL IN DISSERTATION: textuality itself can serve the desire of the subject to be recognized as a subject–the validation of the subject’s mediation, the success of the process of becoming, the unfolding of the subject’s story, of developing character.)

* * * * * *

When the Derridean trace is considered, it is in constant reference, whether direct or otherwise, to the phenomenon of the unfinalizability of definition in light of the subject’s mediation in temporality.  This unfinalizability is a necessary effect of the dynamic nature of living language, and may be one of the most identifiably necessary conditions of our existence as language users.  This begins to sound more than a little Hegelian, especially when we remember how, when we experience the narrative subject in the current adventure, we endemically demand–desire–to experience or have experienced the origin story as well^[2].

* * * * * *

The linguistic subject communicates via literally every communications form humanly possible–starting, always, with the mechanical functions of his own body–and since he also represents himself and even his efforts in contributing to that self-same discourse (for we have the words ‘author’, ‘narrator’, ‘speaker’, ‘communicator’, etc., all of which can be meaningfully combined with the words “I am [the]”)^[3], he becomes inextricably subject to the discursive structures that he is already constituted as a subject within and works within making meaning.  All of these practical manifestations of language in the social order, in turn, contribute to that subject’s–any subject’s–discursive positioning, and it is the influence of structured communications, how they treat the linguistic and narrative subjects, that renders the differences between those subject types questionable in the first place.  “The first thesis–to my mind, a permanently and radically “de-reifying” one–is that “sense” must indeed always be made, must always be fashioned or fabricated or produced, and by none other than our own all-too-human hands. (Thomas 16)”  But sense does not rely in its making on any particular set of ‘human hands’.  More economically, then, our ‘sense’ must be fashioned by our discourse.

* * * * * *

And yet, the commonality between all these things and us, that lack of distinctiveness between ourselves and everything that we are not, is that references to all of it–all of us– can be located within the communications structure that, in itself, we use to discursively relate ourselves to other subjects, as, themselves, distinct; I seem ever caught at a disadvantage by the other, who can, in addressing me, in uttering my name, claim a functional ownership of a specific name of me, while I am bound to refer to myself by the very same name everyone else must use in referring to themselves: ‘I’.^[4]  We are the other linguistic subjects whom we concern ourselves with in the definition of ourselves via discourse no more than we are the narrative subjects which we produce to, among other things, represent those other linguistic subjects, those relationships, and ourselves within discourse.  The resemblances between the ‘presences’ of the word, the thing, and the linguistic and narrative subjects are convenient, as Foucault provides further insight–though he does tend to resolve himself to fruitless frustration too quickly: “[The] universal extension of the sign within the field of representation precludes even the possibility of a theory of signification.  For to ask ourselves questions about what signification is presupposes that it is a determinate form in our consciousness. (Order of Things 72)”  As for the reasons of pretty much everything we’ve talked about so far, the notion that human communication or any of its subjects are in any respect fixed, standardized, or static begins to approach implausibility.^[5]

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^[1] Note that this truly is an open question at this point.  I don’t have a concrete answer, although I would guess, at the moment, that it would end up being some thoroughly-explained ‘no’.

^[2] Not unimportantly, by implication we are also demanding that the structure of the narrative be something we are experientially familiar with, something that will facilitate the making of both sense and meaning, that condition which makes becoming possible as a process: temporality.

^[3] Barthes: “…there is a prodigious variety of genres, each of which branches out into a variety of media, as if all substances could be relied upon to accommodate man’s stories (SPECIFIC SOURCE?? 237).”

^[4] I can, of course, use my own name to refer to myself, but only under special circumstances–never unmodified–such as as an appositive, perhaps during the swearing of an oath.  Were I to consistently use my own name when referring to myself–to refer to myself in the third person–I might be confused with Bob Dole or The Rock, but, more importantly, I would be setting myself as other to myself by unusual, linguistically-conspicuous means that would tend to affect my discursive positioning in undesirable ways..

^[5] But, just to drive the point home, let’s hear it from Bakhtin: “…language is heteroglot from top to bottom: it represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles, and so forth, all given a bodily form (Discourse in the Novel 291).”

Deleted Scenes: Strange Visitor – Appendix: Krypto-Zoology

The following is material cut from an early draft of Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero. The full text is accessible on Academia.edu at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook, or via Google Drive at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor

Like Darkseid, Power Girl, and other major figures in Superman’s narratives, Krypto was not introduced in either of the main titles: Action Comics and Superman.  In the mid-1950s, Adventure Comics was home to the tales of  Superboy; Superman’s dog is initially introduced as Superboy’s dog.  But, Moore’s story would show how well he had come to be integrated into the mainstream Superman narrative in the meantime.

In his retrospective review of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, Lucas Siegel observes that, while the mortal sacrifices of Lana Lang and Jimmy Olsen ring hollow, “Krypto… went out like a champ and that one is emotional.”  And Krypto’s fate somewhat foreshadows Jordy Elliot’s own: Krypto takes a life–but he is not able to negotiate the consequences as neatly.  Is this because Krypto is a different kind of not-Superman?  The reader is occasionally privy to Krypto’s lingualized thoughts, verifying that he is not just sentient, but that he is willfully allied with the good guys.  Meanwhile, given Doomsday’s own early, ineffectual relationship with language, he could stand as not-Krypto at least as much as he is not-Superman.  But, Krypto cannot speak to those of his own realm, and that lack of expressibility renders him without an important component of full volition.

Such a pattern of behavior would indicate a greater individual will than in the case of the Eradicator, for instance.  Krypto’s lack of opportunity to participate in discourse–the process of subalterning discussed by Said and Spivak–will likewise constitute a significant question for the project of verisimilitude as rendering technologies continue to develop.  Krypto suffers an imprisonment of a kind, perpetrated not by anyone in his own world, but by the content creators who have shaped that world.  How should a simulataion system be made to render such a character?  Must we ‘let the dog talk’, or should verisimilitude win out?

And what would a simulated Superman have to say about a super-pet that, all of a sudden, he could directly converse with?  From what extant narrative material might a simulation system adapt such a response?  For there is certainly a narrative president of some kind among Superman’s stories, making the effect less strange for him, at least.  For our own part, how would material visitors to that simulated realm be oblige to engage with Krypto, especially were he to not be made lingually-expressive?   Though such may seem fanciful, the question is truly one of how we humans should comport ourselves before emerging intelligences who may not be able to express themselves fully, yet may still have full selves to express–an eminently human problem.  And such will likely be the state for some artificial intelligence in the near future.

Deleted Scenes: Strange Visitor – Narrative Proximities and Not-Superman

The following is material cut from an early draft of Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero. The full text is accessible on Academia.edu at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook, or via Google Drive at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor

A subsequent revision of this material will appear in a future article on Lois Lane and the “Not-Supermen”

In-narrative proximities can be determined comparatively, based on narrative content evidence.  And, at first, I thought that developing such a list based purely own my own ‘feel’ for each character might be sufficient.  Before I was finished the process of making such informed guesses, though, I had come to recognize that this step would not be an appropriate endpoint.  I have, however, included my initial guesses as to proximities before taking the subsequent step of inventorying and setting score ranges for the various trace elements and ranking each character accordingly.  Even as some elements are usefully quantified, I’ve included my initial arrangement below because it might help remind us of the absolute basis of identity–its construction, refinement, and assessment–in subjectivity.

So then: My initial, presumptive, largely undercooked arrangement of the various narrative subjects to be examined in this chapter, from furthest from the center of their narrative realm–Superman himself–to closest, with some notes:

• Brainiac – Brainiac is set the furthest from Superman here and would prove to stand as one of the most distant from the center in final scoring.  He was one of the only to so align with expectations.
• Bizarro – Bizarro scored far closer to Superman than I give him credit for here.  During research, he also proved unexpectedly compelling for how he could and couldn’t be compared to his antecedent.
• Zod and Darkseid – These characters fall close to where I expected in proximity to both Superman and one another.  That similar distance is interesting for how distinct their respective goals have proven to be.
• Lex – The scored version of Lex did not end up as far away from the center as I thought he would.  In fact, after scoring, Lex comes to occupy one of the most interesting positions among all the not-Superman, kicking off a discussion about the shape of the assessment itself.
• Superman-as-not-Superman and other variants – How is Superman not self-identical?  In some surprising ways.  However, this group did not exist as a singular unit during initial research.  I did not score occasionally-referenced figures such as Superman One Million, Superman Red & Blue, Sunshine Superman, Calvin Ellis, and others.  Instead, the entire concept of the out-of-character Superman will be examined toward the end of this chapter, in light of other important considerations.  Meanwhile, a non-DC character such as MiracleMan lands closer to Superman after scoring, but the Plutonian, another non-DC figure, lands at about this place in the overall rankings.  In the deeper explications to come, though, I have opted to group the two characters together because of their similar non-DC backgrounds.
• ‘Death of Superman’ not-Supermen – Also referred to here as the ‘Reign of’ not-Supermen , this brace of figures was grouped together in earlier steps of this research, but scoring would make clear the need for their dispersion¹.  Steel and the Superboy clone subsequently land close to Superman, but the Eradicator, Cyborg Superman, and Doomsday are scattered among the rest of the list.
• Supergirl/Power Girl –  Despite disparate scores, I am still ambivalent over Supergirl and Power Girl’s independence from each other. Supergirl is significantly closer to the center, but Power Girl is perhaps more remarkably derivative.  I am still unsure Power Girl even is a not-Superman, but she is a member of the Superman family (except when she isn’t).  She thus stands as an example unto herself of how complex social relationships can get, even (or especially) in superhero comic books.
• Jordy Elliott – Jordy didn’t score far from my prediction, but I am surprised that he scored somewhat farther away than I placed him, and noticeably separate from the Superman Family.
• The Blur (Smallville) – As Superman is so multimodal, so there is at least one television version that has a difficult relationship with Superman-as-Superman.  This is also the version of the character I was least familiar with and, therefore, whose problems were among the most emergent for me as a consumer².  Accordingly, his final proximity to the center in light of his differences from the norm is surprising.
• Injustice’s High Councilor – In the final scoring, this fallen Superman would land farther away from the center than I expected–and in a jarring proximity to Jordy Elliot.  But I think I have identified the error of my initial guess; before scoring, I could have over-considered the circumstances of his first sin–the killing of the Joker, responsible for the deaths of his wife and the metropolitans–rather than properly considering all the subsequent crimes he would go on to commit as his world’s new overlord.
• Superboy – Superboy stands closest to Superman, as expected.  And yet, he has one of the most problematic relationships with his own future.  Superboy’s proximity to Superman–his distance from the name and life he will ostensibly assume–will be regarded closely.
• Superboy Prime – Prime does not rank closest to Superman–for a whole range of reasons, he is closer to Zod and Darkseid–nor had I thought he would. He is placed here (and similarly in the body of this chapter) instead because of his unique relationship with Superboy proper and Superman directly.  Prime is a not-Superman, but he is also very much a not-Superboy.

Footnotes

1. Thereby validating the scoring process as, if nothing else, an element that brings a valuable difference in perspective.
2.  See, for instance, the complicated fate of Clark Kent’s folks in Smallville, examined in ‘The Kent Farm Report’ (to be published).

Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero – RELEASED ON ACADEMIA.EDU – https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook

We recognize myths for what they indicate about the values and beliefs of the cultures who were the authors and audiences of those myths; many of the earliest communicators of myth were telling stories about subjects they counted as people (somewhat) like themselves. Yet, despite our modern sophistication, today’s consumers of narrative still often treat fictions as though they are real, thinking and feeling people.  We are introduced to Superman, for instance, as a fiction, but circumstance often leads consumers to discursively treat that invented hero as a human subject.   Now, though, we verge on a technological future in which just such sympathies might become functionally useful. In our modern science fiction like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Westworld, we have already begun to imagine how we will come to treat our narrative inventions of tomorrow. Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero begins to ask what our actual responsibilities will become when fictions can be rendered with volition.  In its opening chapters, the text studies how we humanize a figure like Superman in our own perceptions, and how that treatment–along with his continuing narrative development–makes him a prime candidate for an experiment in complex, highly verisimilitudinous simulation.  Superman is a central point of consideration here simply because there is so much of him to consider. He may be the most content-dense fiction ever created, but the innumerable opportunities consumers have had to get to know the character mean that he is also eminently familiar.  Superman has maintained his presence in our media and discourses, across the decades, as consumer populations have continued to grow and our communications structures have commensurately evolved and expanded. Superman is the subject of this study not because he has become so popular, but because he has managed to stay that way at a particularly sharp inflection point in the history of human communications.  

But, the Man of Steel is often generalized as infallible and, therefore, rather dull.  The first part of this work–an expansive psychological assessment–troubles such a presumption, though, by examining the complex mind that has accrued within decades of narrative, across media, and which must be carefully navigated in any exhaustive analysis.  This first section also considers Superman’s relationship with his media consumers: from how we use him to form childhood bonds with one another, to how we respond to his continuing humanization.  For, Superman is powerfully determined by how audiences actually treat any given instance of the figure as Superman.  Today, we find that we can engage with particularly realistic media, encouraging us even more urgently to invest in the verisimilitude and humanity of the characters and places being presented, and doing so often makes a narrative more appealing.  Accordingly, Superman’s relationship with his own media is particularly convenient to an examination of the intersection between fictional narrative, high technology, and identity negotiation.  To understand Superman’s potent humanization, the first half of this text presents an assessment of his identity from multiple essential perspectives, including those of his content creators and consumers, as well as the complex judgments of himself and his fictional society as they have been presented in his narratives. Diegetic evidence is considered in historical and psychological capacities in order to assess how Superman’s media has been constructed–practically from the beginning–to encourage consumers to invest themselves in the figure’s humanity and relatability.

In its second part, Strange Visitor moves from relevant questions of identity into a more practical application of those insights to current and emerging technologies.  We already enjoy vastly interactive ways of engaging with our fictions, and we can anticipate continuing advancements in the verisimilitude, interactability, and spontaneity of artificial intelligences.  Accordingly, fewer and fewer holes in the experiential tapestry of narrative will have to be ignored as both storytelling techniques and rendering technologies continue to evolve.  Soon, what we practically treat as a ‘human’ subject may have more to do with that figure’s specific engageability than with its biology or physical consistency.  Given the view of the detailed project proposal that constitutes the second part of this work, spontaneous, humanlike, autonomous simulations culled from fictional worlds could very well become reality within the foreseeable future.  Emerging from our science fiction dreams, several considerable, real-world technological initiatives would see us reconstruct the intellects of great thinkers, such as Gandhi, Curie, or Hawking. But, reconstructing and functionalizing the consciousness of a real person–living or dead–is an ethically dubious proposition from the start.  Instead of an original personality, though–seemingly ‘complete’ at first, but limited in contextual understanding–what if researchers built a simulated subject from the material of a robustly developed fiction?  If the first of our deep, humanlike engagements with such technology will be the most important, Superman seems a fitting choice, given how we have already embraced him on personal and cultural levels.

But, as real technologies advance toward that imagined outcome, we must also ask how the practical, livable terms of fictionality would change. How would our own responsibilities evolve as we produced and engaged with such personalities?  The prototypical solution I propose here–referred to as the Metropolis Simulation System–could be considered one of Andrew M. Butler’s necessary explorations into the role of the simulacrum (“Postmodernism and Science Fiction” 147).  Whatever of these speculations does or does not bear out, it is my hope with this text to show the reader that we must pay substantial attention to our future relationships with our media and computing technologies. Such a situation need not be feared, though, if we approach with the optimistic combination of thoughtfulness and adventurousness that a character like Superman can inspire.

Strange Visitor is intended for any who might have the interest and/or resources to help realize the rendering of a densely-developed fiction as an exemplary representative of humanlike, fully-engageable general artificial intelligence, including the developers of the many technologies referenced.  Portions of the work might also be used as an introduction into the complexities of mediated identity construction, while the critical questions presented could be utilized in advanced media studies courses, or as portions of a forward-thinking philosophy curriculum. Other segments may benefit discussions on popular fictions generally, the ethics of narrative, or psychological and identiary dynamics.

https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook

Random Theory

So, as The Vision in the MCU, Paul Bettany has been thoroughly motion captured.  Any other issues aside, his likeness could be used indefinitely, in a wide range of capacities.  Meanwhile, there’s been talk that Wonder Man, another Marvel superhero, will eventually by introduced as played by Nathan Fillion.

In the comic plots, Vision possessed some portion of Wonder Man’s consciousness.

So, what if we were to eventually get a CGI rendering of Paul Bettany, but motion-controlled based on a performance by Nathan Fillion?  Which performer would ‘own’ what part of that performance and how would it potentially impact our own impressions of those two actors and the characters they were portraying as independent/inter-related?  How would the performers end up relating to one another?  Would Fillion be playing Bettany just by looking like him, even if he were playing as Wonder Man?

Random Theory

Important superhero comic book vocab:

Meanwhile (adv.)

Meaning, ‘at the same time as’, though comic book superhero narratives have been known to stretch their interpretations.  ‘Meanwhile’ might have become so prominent because of the particular combination of language with descriptive images in the communication of the plot.  It might also have something to do with the bombastic, action-centered nature of the subject matter.  Especially in team titles, there are often several different plot threads unfolding simultaneously.

So, comics are kinda like soap operas and war movies that way.

Deleted Scenes

Recently excised from the ‘What’s in a Name?’/’Identity Crisis’/??? subsection of Chapter 2.  Clipped for being wordy, jargony, and too on-the-nose.  The Derrida ref didn’t help, even though I’m a Derridean:

Superman is weird because he seems so cleanly iconic but has so many different names!^[1] 

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[1] Superman, in his mediated status as a current pop culture figure, is an example of psycho-socio-historical, imaginative, often explicitly narrativized discourse.  But this is where naming becomes qualitatively distinct from categorization or even definition, for, despite all the complexity of that string of adjectives, what more contextualized material–such as feelings or  prioritized memories that reinforce the trace of the character–do we call up for ourselves in the utterance of his name?  ‘This looks like a job for Superman!’  Don’t you want to deepen your voice a bit as you say it?

Random theory

“Some panels and pages [of some erotic comics, like the work of Molly Kiely and Colleen Coover] unfold like snapshots, gesturing at a larger hole that is unrepresented and perhaps unrepresentable.”    -Lyndsay Brown, ‘Pornographic space-time and the potential of fantasy in comics and fan art’

My own question, then, isn’t whether unrepresentability is possible in the ways we communicate our narratives–especially our fictions–but how.

Deleted Scenes

Text (for context) and a deleted footnote (the fun part) from the methodology chapter of my dissertation, currently in development:

Superhero comic book culture itself recognizes its own media situation: the Marvel Comic Universe is sometimes, in fandom particularly, referred to as Earth-616, while the Cinematic Universe is conceived of as an ‘alternate dimension’—a variation rather than a derivation—known as Earth-199999.^[1] 

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[1] This is an intentional distinction on the part of the content creators, but the discursive situation is further complicated by other factors, such as business and politics.  For instance, the Spider-Man and X-Men films do not exist in nor recognize the continuity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe–or each other, for that matter–yet they nevertheless stand in an identifiable proximity to the same Marvel Comic Universe that provided their origins and which, through the assignment of designation numbers, both recognizes them and reserves some potential for mounting future narrative mergers and crossovers featuring them.  Their designations are as follows: the Spider-Man series beginning with 2002’s Spider-Man is denoted as ‘Earth-96283’, while the ‘reboot’ is known as ‘Earth-120703’, effectively validating the concomitant canonical existences of both: according to Marvel, both are Spider-Man.  The X-Men series, beginning with 2000’s X-Men and extending into the Wolverine franchise constitutes Earth-10005 (though others, such as 2016’s Deadpool and 2017’s Logan, occupy Earth-TRN414; the new television show Legion, meanwhile, takes place in another X-Universe offshoot, Earth-TRN620).  Interestingly, the Marvel Database (Marvel.wikia.com) lists the original X-Men film universe, Earth-10005, as ‘destroyed’, due, narratively-speaking, to the timeline-bending events of its ‘last’ film, Days of Future Past, itself a plotline culled from the 616 universe.  But it doesn’t end there, the complexities of licensing have also given us, among others, Earths 121698 (beginning with 2005’s Fantastic Four film), 400083 (2003’s Hulk, as opposed to the iteration of the character that appears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Avengers films, part of the aforementioned 199999), 92131 (cartoons such as X-Men: The Animated Series), 58627 and 58732 (the 1989 and 2004 Punisher films), and even 58470 and 58472 (the Howard the Duck film and its own subsequent comic book adaptation, respectively; ‘58471’, oddly, has no listing).  

Our own material reality is designated as Earth-1218, but we also inhabit what Marvel calls the “Omniverse”, which itself comprises: 

“every single universe, multiverse, dimension (alternate or pocket) and realm. This includes not only Marvel Comics, but also DC Comics, Image, Dark Horse, Archie, Harvey, and every universe ever mentioned or seen (and an infinite amount never mentioned or seen)….  The Omniverse is EVERY reality, including those published by all other companies. Even fan-fictions, cancelled works, mere thoughts created by people, and fictional universes yet to be published are considered part of the Omniverse, simply put the Omniverse is every version of every type of reality and existence imaginable.”