The Moral Freak
Posted by Matt Foley on February 12, 2009 in Blog tagged with
Post-modern Gothic has an ambivalent attitude to the relationship between freakish appearances and inner moralities. Fred Botting, around the turn of the current century, commented that "in a (post)modern world… love all monsters, love your monster as yourself, becomes the new refrain" (Botting 2001, p. 3). Perhaps this idea can be fleshed out in terms of freakishness and inner morality. The notion of the loveable freak with morals – the ethical, monstrous elephant man – can be seen as a reaction to, and movement away from, fin de siecle essentialism.
In tackling Bram Stoker’s literary corpus critics, in many cases, focus upon Stoker’s predilection for fictionally staging an adherence to physiognomy. A succinct critical example is David Glover’s reading of both Dracula and the lesser-known novel The Jewel of The Seven Stars (1992, pp. 983-1002). Glover, in an aside, also reveals that a young Winston Churchill was subject to Stoker’s phrenological analysis and so reveals that Stoker saw a link between real people’s inner qualities and surface appearances. In a Daily Chronicle article of 1908 Stoker eulogises that Churchill’s, "mouth is an orator’s mouth; clear cut, expressionable, and not small. The forehead is both broad and high, with a fairly deep vertical line above the nose; the chin strong and well-formed" (ibid, p.987). In terms of fictional staging, Glover argues that,
"not only are Count Dracula’s malevolent power’s recognizable from his "fixed and rather cruel looking mouth" or "his peculiarly arched nostrils," but when we meet Dr. Van Helsing… moral fitness can be immediately discerned from his "large, resolute, mobile mouth," and his "good-sized nose… with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy eyebrows come down and the mouth tightens" (ibid).
It is clear, then, that in both the imaginative world of fiction and the dusty, corporeal political world Stoker believed in an unequivocal link between personality, innate skill and appearance. The question arises, however, as to when this idea first arose, during the creative act of fiction or as an observation of reality? Also, why could Stoker not decouple the two?
Phrenology, with as much certainty as is possible in scientific discourse, has been disproved and as an essentialist fallacy has become something of a joke in the contemporary real world. Fiction, however, persists in allowing a vent for partially judging characters through physicality; but it is only liberally acceptable if staged in terms of monstrosity and not with racist undertones. A creepy recent example of monstrosity that involves anatomy reflecting innate characteristics is Pan’s Labyrinth’s (2006) The Pale Man, with his elongated fingers mirroring his desire to grasp, cut and eat children and his removable eyes affirming a castrative impulse that is awoken by gluttony and over-indulgence:
However, a mixture of post-modern play and a staunch resistance to essentialist readings of appearance has infected fiction too. One need only look once more at Guillermo Del Torro’s back catalogue to see a striking example of freaks who are morally upright (at least in a legal sense):
Hellboy (2004), however, is not in anyway revolutionary as X-men began exposing the gap between surface freakishness and inner morality in the 1960s and there could be earlier examples (can anyone think of any?). However, Botting’s embracing of the monstrous is certainly at play here.
It is difficult to get a general argument going but perhaps I can posit it in the following terms. Stoker’s comments on Churchill seem to invoke a hobby horse, or Achilles’ heel, in reasoning; Churchill is firstly a great orator and Stoker, in turn, notes that he has an orator’s face and believes there is a reasonable link between the two. In this case, personality comes first and phrenology – the fallacy – backs it up. Surely racism is a reversal of this: characteristic is valued over personality or skill.
In terms of fiction, though, things get a bit sticky. Can we say that Dracula’s appearance is purely a symptom of his personality, or does appearance inflect personality? Is the chicken first, or the egg? Hellboy clearly divides the two: a moral person can look like a hellish creature and thus a normal appearance is not a pre-requisite for an admiral moral slant. However, does the morally perverse, horrific monster, like the Paleman in Pan’s Labyrinth, not persist in providing a freakish canvas of Otherness onto which we subjects can project natural anxieties about unfamiliar physical appearance?
Bibliography
Botting, F 2001. The Gothic. D.S Brewey: Cambridge.
Glover, D 1992. ‘Bram Stoker and the Crisis of the Liberal Subject’. In New Literary History, Vol. 23, No. 4, Papers from the Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change (Autumn, 1992), pp. 983-1002.
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Physiology and phrenology are sciences that were very popular from Aristotle’s time to 19th century. For post-post-modernity “we love our monsters” because they look very much like us. Maybe they have always resemble us, but the fear and panic of such a fact has made writers create horrible creatures,so very different from us.
Monsters can also be considered human beings that are different, that do not obey, or follow the norms of mainstream social realities. Monsters are foreighners, liberated females, queers, punks, goths. But again this is not based on some physical characteristic, but based on performing subjectivity, a willed transformation or becoming outside the patriarchal order. What becomes more frightening, I think, now, is that issues of morality, ethics no longer exist. We cannot face the monster anymore. I am on cyberspace, my avatar is Nosferatu, I bite people for fun and then I log off. You cannot see me, I become the monster. Technology, capitalism,power-you fear them, but you cant see them.
This is interesting and I’m still thinking about it. What about technologically moderated bodies?
“Unfamiliar physical appearance” : beauty surgeries, enhanced body parts, they are eroticised, produced and consumed at the same time. Aren’t they unfamiliar? or they have become too familiar? Just another thought.
Hi Aspasia, yes in terms of human monsters it is their label, often, and not appearance that signifies monstrosity: rapist, paedophile, nazi. This labelling is enough to move a human into the field of the Other.
Also, Yes I think a tech-modified body could be an object of fear, if that modifications takes the body out of the normalised zone. For example, breast implants are not scary because they look like breasts, but a pneumatic leg, which is not cast over with sythesised skin, could be an object of fear. Of course, making the object of fear familiar disarms it. For example, if i met someone who looked like Nosferatu i might jump a tad at first but, assuming he didn’t drink people’s blood and the resemblance to Nosferatu was only surface, if we were to go for a few drinks and have a chat and he crossed the field of the Other into that of being an individual subject then I wouldn’t be as scared of his surface appearance. If that makes any sense at all!
Probably the earliest movie example of inner morality and outer deformity I can think of is Tod Browning’s “Freaks.”
The flip side of the “ugly yet noble” character is fascinating to me–for modern examples, the increasingly exotic and beautiful movie vampire, or to go with a wholly human monster, the main character of “American Psycho.” There’s something terrifying about a pretty outside hiding a monster.
I imagine the idea of technologically moderated bodies as “other” can go either way, depending on who you ask. And it’s about cultural acceptance–different cultures have long different body mod acceptance.
The best thing IMO about the internet is the fact that the multitudes of previously pariah-ed “freaks” (for whatever reason) can develop a community unfettered by geographical constraints–but the increase in diverse communities also means that many monsters are no longer universal.
Yes i think i’ve missed a trick with the beautiful monsters. good idea for another post though! And yes you’re right Freaks is an interesting case study. I guees under-pinning their morality is a cast-iron group bond, and they turn to violence only once that a member of that group is threatened.