Theories of the Fantastic: Postmodernism, Game Theory, and Modern Physics”

Theories of the Fantastic: Postmodernism, Game Theory, and Modern Physics by Karen Pike A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Karen Pike (2010) ABSTRACT “Theories of the Fantastic: Postmodernism, Game Theory, and Modern Physics” Karen Pike Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (2010) Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto This dissertation examines the fantastic mode of narrative as it appears in postmodern texts in a variety of media including literature, television, and film. By analyzing the kinds of changes which the fantastic mode has undergone in order to accommodate postmodern concerns, this project attempts to answer both how and why the fantastic has maintained its popularity and effectiveness. The first chapter seeks to define the fantastic mode by tracing the history of its definition from the early twentieth century up until the present. In doing so, it revisits the contributions of such analysts as Vax, Caillois, Todorov, and Freud. The second chapter discusses the changes to conventions demanded by postmodern discursive strategies, many of which include a back-and-forth movement between equally valid interpretations of the text. A discussion of Armin Ayren’s “Der Brandstifter,” a comparison of a recurring X-Files sub-plot to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and an analysis of an intentionally self-reflexive episode of The X-Files demonstrate these changes. The third chapter introduces game theory as a way of understanding the back-and-forth movement typical of the fantastic mode. Hanns Heinz Ewers’s “Die Spinne” is used to illustrate the psychoanalytical aspect of this movement. ii The next chapter compares and contrasts three vampire films, The Addiction, Lair of the White Worm, and Nadja, in order to demonstrate how the degree to which this back-and- forth movement is present is an indicator of how successfully the fantastic effect emerges. The fifth chapter introduces modern physics as another mode for understanding the presence of the fantastic mode in the postmodern era. The analysis of House of Leaves in the final chapter illustrates how postmodern theory, game theory, and physics all work together to explain the fantastic’s effectiveness. This dissertation’s aim is to explain how and why a mode once defined as a specific nineteenth-century phenomenon keeps reinventing itself and re-emerging to continue to frighten and entertain us. iii Table of Contents Chapter One: Defining the Fantastic . 1 Chapter Two: Postmodern Theory and the Fantastic . 47 Chapter Three: Game Theory and the Fantastic . 118 Chapter Four: Game Theory, Postmodern Parody and the Fantastic . 164 Chapter Five: The Fantastic and Modern Physics . 194 Chapter Six: House of Leaves: The Whole Fantastic, Postmodern, Playful, Quantum Experience . 230 iv 1 Chapter One Defining the Fantastic In the PBS series The Power of Myth (1988), Joseph Campbell introduces his viewers to a remarkable sculpture deep within the shadows of the Shiva cave at Elephanta in India. One must approach the sculpture in near darkness, waiting for one’s eyes to adjust. Eventually, one sees a face which is neither male nor female. It is expressionless, yet serene. The eyes are closed. It is called the Mask of Eternity. It does not assume to represent eternity itself; it is only the mask. Eternity, God, or transcendence by any other name, cannot be apprehended directly. The significance of the mask is that it locates eternity. On either side of the mask one sees two faces looking away in opposite directions: one male, one female. The point, Campbell says, is that “whenever one moves out of the transcendent, one comes into a field of opposites.” He goes on to make the connection with the Judeo-Christian creation myth: “One has eaten of the tree of knowledge, not only of good and evil, but of male and female, right and wrong, of this and that, light and dark. Everything in the field of time is dual: past and future, dead and alive, all this… being and non-being, is, isn’t….” According to Campbell, the moment of transcendence is the moment when one locates oneself in a “between” state, when one escapes the tyranny of binary opposition – the tyranny of language itself. The mask is a rich metaphor because it speaks so eloquently of our problematic relationship to language, to narrative, and to ideas which we can only apprehend as they are mediated 2 through language. The very notion of transcendence implies that there is something beyond language Yet, it is only through language that one can assert this idea and value it. The New Testament writer who says “For now we see through a glass, darkly” (King James Bible, 1 Cor. 13.12) describes beautifully the experience of apprehending all things through language. Is it the glass that darkens the vision, or is it the glass that permits one to see at all? Or is it both? In the Judeo-Christian tradition, one is taught to revile the serpent for introducing evil into the world. It would be equally valid to revere the serpent for introducing good. What it really brought was binary opposition. Campbell makes the connection between binary opposition and the capacity for language which stems from the ability to discern difference. He calls this “humanity’s coming into experience.” But does one revere or revile this problematic gift of binaries? Or can we do both? Or neither? Is there “a moment between” when one can break free and transcend the binary building blocks of experience? These questions, I believe, are central to the defining moments of fantastic narratives. I will argue that “the moment between” is the key to understanding the nature, the modus operandi, and even the appeal of fantastic narratives. These narratives are exercises in apprehending something beyond language, something unnamable or indescribable that can only emerge when language demonstrates its insufficiencies. Are vampires, werewolves, and ghosts really implied by the serenity of the mask of eternity? Buddhists approach the transcendent through meditation upon koans, puzzles based upon paradox which stymie thought and permit a glimpse of something other than logical thought wrapped in language. The emergence of non-existent creatures or impossibilities, which by definition can only exist within discourse, at those moments in 3 discourse where language falters, is precisely the kind of paradox which can underlie such a koan. It is my intention to show how the emergence of impossibility through language, which in the fantastic only expresses impossibility through its own faltering attempts, gaps, ellipses, and inadequacies, is the paradoxical moment which connects these monsters to the serenity of the mask. Though the vision may be dark, as in the Shiva cave or through St. Paul’s glass, to move, even briefly, to a space or moment in which language loses its control over experience implies exactly that kind of transcendent moment which belongs with eternity in that space “between.” The fantastic, as a genre or perhaps even a sub-genre, already occupies a space “between” in that it does not belong exactly with the neighbouring genres with which it is sometimes confused. It is not fantasy – a broader genre that often embraces the marvelous worlds of such creatures as elves and wizards and encourages a certain escapism. Neither is it simply horror, which aims only to frighten, possibly by invoking the uncanny but not necessarily the impossible. The fantastic’s aims and methods are somewhere between the two. Since the ground-breaking work of Tzvetan Todorov, most definitions of the fantastic at least acknowledge his contribution to the description of this rather easily misunderstood genre. While his definition refers specifically to a group of nineteenth-century French texts, the key characteristics he sees in these texts are pertinent to the postmodern fantastic texts that are my focus here as well. What is more, his theory is one of the earliest and clearest examples of the role that “the moment between” plays in the enjoyment and analysis of fantastic narratives. In 1968, Todorov wrote: In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world without devils, sylphides, or vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be 4 explained by the laws of this same familiar world. The person who experiences the event must opt for one of two possible solutions, either he is the victim of an illusion of the senses, of a product of the imagination… or else the event has indeed taken place, it is an integral part of reality. (25) One can see the limitations of this definition within a postmodern context. More recent fantastic texts problematize the notion of any world being “indeed our world.” Is a fictional world our world or is our world fictional? Concepts like reality itself are now used provisionally, so an impossible fictional event functions differently than in the nineteenth century. The notion of the character’s choice between options is what is truly useful even when applied to postmodern texts. Todorov continues: The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighbouring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event. (25) In order for the hesitation to function properly, there must be a simple explanation that does not defy natural laws, but it must be “completely stripped of internal probability” (26). The improbability of the possible is what prolongs the hesitation and permits a fuller experience of that moment between opposites: the possible and the impossible.

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