Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies
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- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Jeffrey A. Smith, M.A., Ph.D.
- Table of Contents: Introduction
- Discovering the Merger: Recent Depictions of American Angels
- Conclusion
- Summary
- 2. Theoretical and Cultural Preliminaries
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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Bc. et Bc. Tereza Walsbergerová Not That Kind of Angel A Merger of Archetypes in Recent American Popular Narratives Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Smith, M.A., Ph.D. 2016 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Bc. et Bc. Tereza Walsbergerová
1. Introduction Given the emphasis on faith and spirituality connected to the very origins of America as a nation, it comes as no surprise that American entertainment industries seem to love exploring religious motives and particularly topics related to Christian faith. Filmmakers and TV networks have produced a myriad of narratives featuring the topic of religious faith (e.g. Seventh Heaven), adaptations of individual excerpts from the Bible (e.g. The Prince of Egypt), or isolated depictions of biblical characters (e.g. The Passion of the Christ). Additionally, there is one particular group of biblical characters which appears in American narratives so frequently that is is possible to consider it a phenomenon – the angels. From Henry Travers’ Clarence, through John Travolta’s Michael, to Misha Collins’ Castiel, angels have appeared in American popular narratives – and more specifically on American screens – consistently since the Silent Era. Furthermore, the fact that there are, at the moment, at least four angelic TV series on the American air suggests that the fascination with angels, and particularly with angels as certain character type, has not dwindled by any means. In general, the biggest number of angelic characters have appeared in American narratives since the 1990s and it can be said that these depictions differ a lot from the earlier ones. While the early narratives portray the angels in a more simplistic and stereotypical manner – fluffy wings, white robes, innocent, inherently good, obedient, and selfless – these new angels are often distracted, selfish, unreliable, vicious, hypersexual, and morally ambiguous. In other words, it is possible to detect a certain development within the archetype, which has transformed the angels into more complicated and relatable characters. This thesis focuses on this development by analysing the more recent depictions as they appear in common angelic tropes, and identifying the specific features which disrupt the stereotypical understanding of angels as it can be seen in the early portrayals. Moreover, this thesis argues that the features which have in some way disrupted this stereotype and thus stimulated the development of the angel archetype may have derived from another archetype – namely, the “trickster” – as it shares many common characteristics with the recent depictions of angels. Therefore, this thesis proposes that the current depictions of angels in American popular narratives are in fact “mergers” of two archetypes – the angel and the trickster. 2. Theoretical and Cultural Preliminaries 2.1. Angelic Fascination In The Angels And Us, Mortimer J. Adler muses that “there seems to be no end to the fascination about angels or to the unexpected corners and corridors of art and letters in which we may encounter them” (Adler 16). Indeed, a case could be made that this fascination has been keeping angelic characters “well and alive” in American popular arts, such as film, television, or radio, to this day, especially seeing as there are at at least four series, featuring angelic characters on air at the moment. Admittedly, it is perhaps not such a surprise, as most things related to Christianity seem to be thriving in American popular culture. Many American films and TV series like to focus on questions of faith, even bringing in actual characters from the Bible – such as Jesus or God, to illustrate their points. In this manner, angels are perhaps the most frequently used biblical characters. Furthermore, it is becoming clear that this angelic fascination which Adler highlights in his book continues prompting American creators, writers, and producers to keep exploring the potential of angels, which is why new films, TV series, and even radio series, keep appearing every year. In general, we can talk about several sources of angelic fascination in America. The most logical source of angelic fascination is, of course, religious faith and spirituality overall. On the whole, the belief in angels can be traced in at least three of the largest world religions – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism – all of which may have had a chance to influence the development of angel mythology and folklore in America. According to Scott Draper and Joseph O. Baker’s article “Angelic Belief as American Folk Religion”, angelic belief in America is indeed very common across-the-board: “The notion that angels exist and are readily available to intervene in the material world is promoted by advocates and adherents from a broad range of religious traditions in the United States, ranging from Catholicism and Protestantism to the ‘New Age’.” (Draper and Baker 624) In addition, as Draper and Baker note that nearly the same percentage of Americans who believe in God also believe in angels (630), it can be said that the belief in angels is therefore in most cases just a natural part of faith. In other words, the belief that angels are real and are capable of intervening in people’s lives can be considered an automatic extension of most American Christians’ belief in God. While the connection to religion and faith is clearly the key source of angelic fascination in America, it is not by far the only source, nor is it the most popular one. In fact, there are many cases where Christian faith does not even have to be there in order to generate interest in angels. Adler, for instance, takes a more philosophical approach to the question of angelic fascination. He claims that angels are “the most fascinating of all objects of fantasy and thought, because, unlike all other forms of superhuman intelligence that fall short of the infinite power of the divine intellect, angels–and angels alone–are minds without bodies” (Adler 4). In other words, another source of angelic fascination is the idea that there are creatures whose intelligence is equal to human intelligence yet they do not need a physical body to contain it like humans do. Therefore, it can be said that angelic fascination may also be connected to human desire for disembodiment and immortality, which is a concept that has fascinated people from the time of Plato to the time of cyborgs. Moreover, Adler mentions that “our fascination with intelligence apart from our own is intensified when minds conjectured or imagined are thought to be superior” (3), which emphasises the importance of the fact that humans are actually supposed to be inferior to angels, which can be both thrilling and frightening to some people. Furthermore, since the handful of descriptions of angels in the Scriptures are not nearly enough to establish their universal image, and the few that exist predominantly depict the angels as spiritual (or celestial) beings, it is perhaps natural that people have been attempting to connect the image to something that they could understand or at least something they could imagine and depict with the help of arts and literature. In America in particular, many parallels have been drawn between angels and extraterrestrial beings. Adler, for instance, claims that “throughout the series of theological treatises, some attempt [has been] made to relate the hypothesis of superior intelligences inhabiting other parts of the physical universe with the Biblical doctrine of God’s heavenly host of holy angels” (Adler 9). This parallel is, for the most part, based on the concept of the human need for entities that exist in order to fill the gap between themselves and God. In addition, Adler also points out another parallel between angels and extraterrestrial beings in “the probability of biophysical and biochemical conditions favorable to extraterrestrial life that underlies guesses about the presence of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos” (10). In other words, angels, just like aliens, are capable of surviving on other planets of our galaxy, as they are equipped to cross between spheres, such as heaven and earth and life and death. According to Draper and Baker, “a significant and substantive association between these views and angelic beliefs would indicate cross-over appeal of angels beyond formal religion” (632), which, again, highlights the redundancy of the religious influence when it comes to angelic fascination. In a similar manner, it also possible to talk about a link between the angels and the supernatural world. In such a world, angels would be considered “creatures” rather than “beings”, in many ways similar to vampires or werewolves. As a matter of fact, in America there is a long tradition of celebrating the supernatural in connection with American folklore. In her book The Supernatural in Short Fiction of the Americas, Dana Del George connects the American inclination towards supernatural narratives to the desire of America as a newly formed nation for its own mythology: “A short past does not hinder a young nation's connection to a timeless other world. American authors have at their disposal, if not a long historical record, at least a considerable inheritance of intricate supernatural beliefs.” (George 2) Taking this into consideration and given the strong religious foundations of America, putting angels into the supernatural category seems logical and fitting. In the TV series Supernatural (2005–present) for instance, the angels are considered a “species”, just like humans, demons, or witches are a species, which, again, means they are understood as “creatures” or even “monsters” rather than unfathomable spiritual entities or beings that cannot be perceived or imagined. Ultimately, it can be said that the most crucial common aspect of the last two sources of angelic fascination is their disconnect from formal religion. The fact that it is possible to take it completely out of the equation then suggests that religious faith does not, therefore, have to be a prerequisite for angelic fascination. On top of this, placing angels into new contexts – no matter whether we see them as aliens from space or supernatural creatures – has guaranteed that the mythology has stayed alive in the American subconscious and popular culture even today.
As angelic fascination in America is unparalleled in any other country of the world, it is no surprise that angels have been frequently appearing throughout its cultural history. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, used the power of the angelic myth in his first inaugural address delivered on March 4, 1961 in connection with his appeal to people’s sense of morality regarding the Civil War: The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. (Lincoln 35) Furthermore, another use of the angelic myth can be found for example in the area of sport in the name and the symbol of popular baseball team “The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” (also known as simply “Angels”) where the A is stylised with a little halo around the top. While in both of these instances, the angelic myth serves more as a symbol, it is in American popular narratives – film, TV, and the radio – where angels can become actual characters with their own specific appearances and voices. Time-wise, although the biggest influx of angelic characters can be detected in the 1990s and onwards, they have been appearing since as early as the Silent Era, albeit these early examples may seem rather underdeveloped and stereotypical when compared to the more recent depictions. One of the earliest such instances is the 1923 silent film The Kid. After falling asleep and entering “the dreamland”, the Little Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) finds himself in a strange place where everyone has turned to angels. What is important to note about this particular depiction is that these angels are portrayed in quite a simplistic manner – fluffy wings, long white shirts, wide smiles, no personality – all of which can be considered rather stereotypical. Gabriel Over the White House (1933) offers an angelic character that does not even get to be really seen in the film. After a newly elected US president Judson Hammond (Walter Huston) suffers a near-fatal car accident, he falls into a coma and it is implied that he has become “possessed” by an angel. When the president wakes up, he starts tackling one national issue after another, showing no signs of fear or the previously emphasised apathy and passivity. Again, although this angelic depiction seems more elaborate than Charlie Chaplin’s fluffy-winged angels, it is still somewhat simplistic, as the angel in question is merely reduced to some kind of a force and the whole focus is on Judson, the human. Similarly, in Frank Capra’s Christmas fantasy-drama It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), the angel Clarence (Henry Travers) is sent to Earth to save George Bailey from committing a suicide by showing him how miserable everyone in his town would be if he was never born. Again, as the plot of the film focuses on George rather than Clarence, the depiction of the angel is reduced to a simplistic image, emphasises by the fact that he often becomes the centre of multiple funny scenes, such as when Clarence is putting on his lacy night-shirt, claiming that he “passed away in [it]” (1:40:00). In The Bishop’s Wife (1947) the angel Dudley (Cary Grant) is originally sent to earth to help a human, Henry Brougham, build a cathedral in his town. As time goes by, however, Dudley falls in love with Henry’s wife, which results in several dramatic moments. Again, while it can be said that Dudley is one of the first instances of angels on American screen who are given their own plot, the film still focuses on the humans in the end, pushing the angel aside and reducing it into a simplified character who does not have the right to fall in love or desire things because of what he is. The animated adaptation of a classic Christmas tale for children The Littlest Angel (1950) tells the story of a cute little cherub who, from the first moment he enters the heavenly realm, causes trouble everywhere he goes: during the heavenly choir practice he sings out of key, he is always late to the prayers, and he is always dirty. In general, it can be said that this story emphasises the connection between angels and children by portraying the angel itself as a child – naive, innocent, and simple-minded – which again highlights this depiction as rather stereotypical and simplistic. The 1969 live-action musical version of this story only enforces this image, even though at least in this adaptation the young angel is given a name – Michael. In fact, all of the angels portrayed in this film can be considered the epitomes of stereotypical understanding of angels. They are clad in long white robes, they have fluffy wings, and they are all quite annoyed by the new angel as he seems to be disrupting the piece of heaven, which also suggests that they are rather simplistic in nature. Correspondingly, in the 1978 film Heaven Can Wait, Los Angeles Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) nearly dies in an accident and his soul is taken out of his body by an enthusiastic angel (Buck Henry) who does not realise that Joe is not yet entirely dead. Before this mistake can be rectified, Joe’s body has already been cremated and so he is put into the body of a millionaire industrialist instead. While the fact, that angels can make mistakes visibly clashes with the traditional idea of angels as incapable of failure, it can still be said that this depiction of an angel is still rather simplistic and unimportant in comparison with the human characters, as it is Joe Pendleton who is the main focus of the film, reducing the angel into a mere plot tool. In the 1980s, angels start appearing in American popular narratives in earnest. Additionally, despite the fact that most of them are still presented as simplified, they also start to become more involved in the plots, which already shows a certain development in the understanding of angels in America. A significant film featuring the first clearly female angel, Date with an Angel (1987), introduces an angel named Angel (Emmanuelle Béart), who is sent to earth to accompany a man called Jim Sanders to heaven, as he is suffering from a brain tumour. Angel ends up falling in love with Jim, which leads to her defying God’s authority and abusing her angelic powers in order to save his life and stay on earth with him. While appearance-wise Angel is, again, the epitome of the stereotypical understanding of angels – she is beautiful, dressed in white, and has fluffy wings – these actions can also be understood as one of the first instances of a depictions of an angel going directly against God. Perhaps the best example of the start of development of angelic image in America is then the TV series Highway to Heaven (1984–1989), which can be considered one of the most popular and most often referenced American angelic narratives even to this day. It tells a story of an angel called Jonathan Smith (Michael Landon), who gets stuck on earth as a punishment for something he did in heaven. He teams up with a human man called Mark Gordon and together they travel across America, helping people in need. As Jonathan is one of the first examples of angelic main heroes in America, this already suggests that his character is more developed and thus farther away from the stereotypical image of the angel that can be found in the earlier depictions. 2.3. Angel Stereotypes and Their Origins Based on these examples, it can be said that the earlier depictions of American angels are predominantly portrayed as simplistic and naive, which is only emphasised by the fact that they are almost exclusively used as supporting characters, “side-kicks”, or mere tools whose function is to help the “more important” human heroes with their struggles. Furthermore, since all of the depictions of angels in the Scriptures are rather vague, generalised, and scarce, they cannot be considered the prime source of this conception. Where does this stereotypical understanding of angels come from, then? In her article “Stereotypes and Real People”, Margaret M. Heaton defines stereotypes as “unrealistic stock characters” (327). They are the simplified images of things or people acquired in childhood that have developed in everybody’s minds through the influence of family, early education, and other social environments. By this formula, the stereotypical image of an angel can be understood as it is, for example, described by Adele Nozedar – “winged, haloed, floaty-gowned, androgynous, beautiful figures that appear somewhere up in the clouds maybe pointing towards earth, perhaps plucking a harp or blowing the trumpet to suggest the glory of God” (Nozedar, ch. 2). Nozedar suggests that this image may have in part come from centuries of depicting angels this way in art, particularly in the paintings by the early Italian Renaissance artist, Fra Angelico, who portrayed them exclusively as beautiful people with wings and halos, dressed in beautiful gowns. (See Fig. 1) This stereotypical conception of angels is mirrored in the modern world as well. For instance, most of the images of angels that can be found on websites such as Flickr or Getty Images depict them as children or beautiful women (or even a combination of the two) dressed in white. As Cowley, Denton, and Flores emphasise in their discussion of the use of angelic mythology in Supernatural, the trend in American popular narratives has – especially recently – been to subvert this stereotypical idea. In other words, the contemporary writers have made sure that their angelic characters are three-dimensional, emotionally complicated, and prone to making mistakes. “Those angels are much like Greek and Roman God stories. They’re petty, they’re playful, they serve God, but they’re not friendly – ‘hey, we’re floating on a cloud, we’re here to help you’.” (“Lazarus Rising: Angel Mythology.” 34:35) Correspondingly, Heaton talks about use of stereotypical images in popular narratives, emphasising the fact that such “characterizations and situations [are] unreal and lacking in the qualities which are sought in real literature” (Heaton 327). To put it differently, those who perceive or depict angels in accordance with their stereotypical image are lacking certain significant features or aspects, which are being used in the more recent American popular narratives. This thesis argues that these features in fact disrupt the stereotypical conceptions in order to offer the American audience more complete and sophisticated understanding of angels in general. 2.4. The Archetypal Merger Since stereotypes are nothing but archetypes reduced to cultural cliches, distinguishing the angel as an archetype from its stereotypical form is essential here. Archetypes are a type of characters whose basic characteristics tend to be reproduced throughout all forms of narrative. Pertaining to this, the angel archetype stripped down to its basic characteristics can be roughly defined as a nonhuman being of heavenly origin which acts as a connection between humans and God. Additionally, perceiving the angel as an archetype means that it can be analysed in the same way that scholars have analysed other well-known archetypes such as the “mother”, the “wizard”, or the “evil genius”. Furthermore, since the angel archetype cannot appear in popular narratives as it is without being reduced to a stereotype, merging with another archetype seems to be the only viable strategy for its “survival”. This thesis proposes that given the need of the angel archetype for the disruption of its stereotypical qualities – such as selflessness, purity, or innocence – the best possible candidate for merging with it is the “trickster” archetype. In American Indian Trickster Tales, Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz describe the trickster as the kind of character “who provides the real spark in the action” (Erdoes and Ortiz 13), meaning the very nature of this archetype can already be seen as generally disruptive. Moreover, the trickster is “always hungry for another meal swiped from someone else’s kitchen, always ready to lure someone else’s wife into bed, always trying to get something for nothing, shifting shapes (and even sex), getting caught in the act, ever scheming, never remorseful” (13), all of which has the potential to subvert the stereotypical image of the angel. Additionally, as this thesis will go on to show, the angel and the trickster archetypes also share many similarities with each other, which is another reason why they are highly compatible for merging. For instance Lewis Hyde’s introduction of the trickster archetype already highly correlates with what is generally known about the angelic myth: “The road that trickster travels is a spirit road as well as a road in fact. He is the adept who can move between heaven and earth, and between the living and the dead.” (Hyde 6) This “spirit road” as well as the “move between heaven and earth” can, for instance, be likened to the angels’ ability to fly and move between spheres, which can be depicted as resurrection or, on the contrary, the accompaniment of dead souls to heaven (or the afterlife). To approach it from the opposite side, famous Czech psychiatrist Vladimír Vondráček and travel writer František Holub introduce their entry on angels with words that correlate with the trickster archetype: “People needed creatures which would be close to them but more perfect and which would not stand as high as God and were not as threatening, and so they created the assembled conception of angels” (Vondráček and Holub 101)1. Again, the trickster figure is often depicted as the mediator between Gods and humans: “All tricksters like to hang around the doorway [between heaven and earth, life and death, good and evil...], that being one of the places where deep-change accidents occur . . . It may well be that fate is set in heaven, but it must be played out here on earth, and between heaven and earth there is a gap inhabited by these shifty mediators.” (Hyde 124–125) Moreover, by calling the angels an “assembled conception”, Vondráček and Holub are also already drawing attention to the heterogenous nature of the angelic myth as it appears in cultural history, which, again, demonstrates the ability of the angel archetype to merge with other archetypes. The merging of archetypes in this instance means the act of different archetypes combining their features in order to survive their journey through cultural history. To put it differently, by merging together, different archetypes may, in fact, adapt in order to meet the demand of the audience in accordance with contemporary cultural fashions. Additionally, the compatibility of the archetypes can play a significant role in this survival. In Cultural Selection, Agner Fog offers a possible interpretation of similar phenomena (e.g. an internet meme) by devising a theory of cultural selection. According to this theory, “certain cultural phenomena are copied and transmitted more than others, and the characteristics of each cultural phenomenon are just as decisive for the outcome of this selection process as are the characteristics of the humans” (Fog 61). In a way, it can be said that Fog’s theory demonstrates how Darwin’s theory of natural selection may be also applied to culture. Cultural selection may thus be seen as the apparatus that determines which features of a certain archetype stay, which are added or enhanced, and which need to be omitted so that it can develop from its stereotypical form into a more sophisticated one. More importantly, if a specific culture calls for it, two (or more) archetypes may merge in order to create a new form of archetype with greater chances of survival in specific cultural regions or eras. For instance, the “warrior princess” archetype has lately appeared across the board in popular culture (e.g. Princess Leia from the Star Wars franchise, Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, or Snow White from Once Upon a Time). This phenomenon could be considered a merger of the “princess” and the “warrior” archetypes in relation to the contemporary feminist and gender equality debate and the increasing demand for strong female characters in popular culture. In a similar manner, today’s form of the angel archetype can be considered the merger of the angel and the trickster archetypes. This thesis will now go on to explore the more recent depictions of angels in American popular narratives in detail, paying attention to how merging with the trickster archetype may have disrupted the stereotypical understanding of angels as it can be seen in the examples from the era before the 1990s, transforming them into more sophisticated and appealing characters. Concretely, it focuses on six different common angelic tropes – the messengers of God, guardian angels, the issue of angelic ethics, the playfulness of angels, angels as a mirror to humans, and the trope of “otherness” – pinpointing specific subversive features and identifying them with the trickster archetype. Yüklə 11,58 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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