James Mason, Patricia Roc and Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady (1945)
(Fantastic literature) ... opens up, for a brief moment, onto disorder, onto illegality, onto that which lies outside the law, that which is outside dominant value systems. The fantastic traces the unsaid and the unseen of culture: that which has been silenced, made invisible, covered over and made 'absent'. (Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, Methuen: London and New York, 1981, p4). Explore, making reference to any of the media texts discussed on the module.
Fantastic literature, aswell as fantastic media texts, serve to give expression to elements of the human condition, which would be troublesome in a more naturalistic or realistic context; "reality is a complex beast which needs something larger than realism to hold it, understand it."1 Through the language of the dreamstate, particularly symbols and metaphor, fantasy allows an exploration of issues which a predominantly patriarchal society deems as transgressive and therefore attempts to control or repress. However as well as opening up onto that which is considered outside of civilised society, fantasy also allows an exploration of that which is 'technically' impossible in the real world. Fantastic texts become particularly relevant in the postmodern era, where any concepts or reality or truth dissipate into a multitude of contradictory discourses2.
A prime example of an exponent of postmodern play in terms of fantasy and multiple discourses is Madonna. A performer who has always used the media of the pop song, the music video and even herself (through interviews, public appearances and other publicity stunts) to tackle contentious issues and express identity changes, for example; Madonna the blonde bombshell, Madonna the punk, Madonna the whore and more recently Madonna the earth mother. During what could be claimed as Madonna's most controversial period, the late 1980's and early 1990's, three main texts stand out as examples of her embracing of the controversial. First of all, the music video for "Like a Prayer", released in 1989, sexualised Christianity in a way that had not been done before. Although Martin Scorcese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ" had already sexualised Christ and outraged the Catholic church, the representation of Jesus Christ in "Like a Prayer" as a black man did two things: It challenged the western image of Christ as white and used the (arguably stereotypical) perception of an African male as a highly sexual being to equate sex and earthly love with the numinous and to humanise Christ. In the conclusion to this music video, the performers literally take a bow as if to reassure the viewer that what they had just witnessed was only a show, as if an afterthought to prevent the video from being banned or cause too much offence.
The second and third examples of Madonna's overtly sexual use of the media are the album "Erotica" and the book "Sex". Her exploration of the sexual, in terms of lyrical content, musical style and visual imagery could be seen as a reaction to the moral panic surrounding AIDS and HIV in the 1980's, a reaffirming of the joy of sex. This blatant sexuality in Madonna's work generated a moral panic of its own however, and she was derided as a 'slut' and a 'whore'. The Erotica/Sex project is as close as the mainstream had got to experiencing porn culture and the reaction her work provoked reinforced the idea that even the suggestion of pornography is regarded as unacceptable to mainstream culture. Whether or not Madonna's recycling of pornographic vocabulary and imagery should be considered pornography itself depends on two things: Whether the sex is the only or primary selling point and whether any actual sex is taking place3. In the case of 'Erotica' and 'Sex', there are no sexual acts really taking place other than seduction and teasing, a general celebration of sexuality and a revelling in the psuedo-transgressive are the main selling points. So Madonna gives the impression of transgressing, of breaking taboos, whilst operating within acceptable boundaries, her transgressions are only allusions which never stray into the real world.
One creature in general and one character in particular, the vampire and Dracula respectively, has transcended fantasy and become myth4. Based on historical figures such as Vlad the Impaler and Countess de Batheroy, the vampire in fantastic texts can be seen as a metaphor for the 'other', a being who exists outside conventional social boundaries and can therefore embody elements of humanity which mainstream culture represses or deems unacceptable. Count Dracula has been cited as a personification of rape, I would agree with this up to a point, but this theory becomes problematic when the issue of permisson comes into play. If we are to accept that a supernatural being such as the immortal Dracula exists in a fantasy text, we must then also accept that other supernatural elements are valid, such as the "hypnotic power" Dracula wields over his potential victims, a power which could be seen as a metaphor for the sexual desire of the female subconscious overriding her repressive ego. Could 'Dracula' be an example of a morality play, with the females condemned to eternal soullessness for allowing Dracula to engage with them? The ultimate act of penetration and soul-letting becomes a consentual affair, the illusion of rape relying on the perception of Dracula's hypnotic power as literal and coercive.
Dracula could also be seen as a personification of Nietzsche's Godless superman, without soul and therefore in a sense superior to humans as he is not bound by Christian morality5. This is seen in the representation of Dracula in Francis Ford Copolla's film 'Bram Stoker's Dracula', a film which suggests that this idea of a soulless man is unnatural and despicable, one that can only be cured by injecting that man with positive human qualities, particularly love. Love, in 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' is a metaphor for and closely linked to the idea of God, a higher power. A loss of faith causes Dracula to renounce his soul, whilst he continues to survive by feasting on the earthly, i.e; blood drinking and literally submerging himself in soil, the blood drinking only becomes meaningful and orgasmic when it is engaged in with his eternal love-mate Mina/Elizabeta. Thus in unlife he is redeemed by the reciprocation of his intensified, eternal love and finally set free in death.
Fantastic literature and fantastic texts allow the expression of dreams and desires which if carried out in the real world would be considered transgressive or illegal. Transgression in fantasy, be that in Dracula or Like a Prayer can never be considered true transgression because such acts are operating within the realm of fantasy6, and the main rule of fantasy is that anything is possible. There is a dependant relationship between fantasy and reality, whereby fantasy depends on acts of the imagination in reality to exist and, in postmodern thought at least, reality exists only in the discourses of fantasy. Fantasy then is vital in understanding our own individual identities, our place in society and also in defining human morality and immorality as opposed to the amorality of animals and Gods.
Footnotes
1 Singh, Vandana
2 Hall, Stuart
3 Helen E. Longino (from Social and Personal Ethics (Ed. William H. Shaw)
4 Leatherdale, Clive
5 Leatherdale, Clive
6 Todorov, Tzvetan
Bibliography
Frayling, Christopher Vampires Lord Byron to Count Dracula (faber and faber, 1991)
Gane, Laurence and Chan, Kitty Introducing Nietzsche (Icon 1997)
Holland, Tom The Vampyre, The Secret History of Lord Byron (Warner 1999)
Leatherdale, Clive Dracula, The Novel and The Legend (Desert Island Books 1985)
Manlove, C.N. Modern Fantasy, Five Studies (Cambridge 1975)
Mercer, Mick Gothic Rock Black Book (Omnibus 1988)
Nietzsche, Friedrich Ecce Homo (Penguin Classics 1992)
Nietzsche, Friedrich Twilight of the Idols/The Antichrist (Penguin Classics 1992)
Shaw, William H. (ed) Social and Personal Ethics (Wadsworth 1998)
Smith, Karen Patricia The Fabulous Realm, A Literary/Historical Approach to British Fantasy (Scarecrow Press 1993)
Todorov, Tzvetan The Fantastic, A Structural Approah to a Literary Genre (Western Reserve University Press 1973)
Webliography
www.sawf.org - South Asian Women's Forum: On The Importance of Imaginative Literature - Vandana Singh
Mediography
"Bram Stoker's Dracula" dir: Francis Ford Coppola (Columbia Pictures 1992)
"Erotica" Madonna (Maverick 1992)
"Like A Prayer" Madonna (Warner 1989)
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