By Harum Scarum
"History shows again and again, how nature points out the follies of
man."
"Godzilla," Blue Oyster Cult
With the advent of the Age of Reason, one could argue that the
Christain concept of God, the creator, care-taker, and angry judge,
was on the way out long before Nietzche declared His death. As God
became less and less a concrete prescene, concrete in the minds of
Western culture, and more and more a fictionary construct on which
our culture was partially based, writers did not forget the lessons
that they had learned through the various stories of judgement as
presented in the Bible, such as the story of Noah and the deluge as
well as tale of the fate of Sodom and Gommorah. However, it could be
said that with the advent of the modern age and its radical
technological advancements the need for such a moral judge and
punisher actually increased as a result of the spiritual loss and
gross objectification of the Post-Enlightenment era. Now that God
was gone from the picture, writers and the reading public in general
still needed this bastion of moralilty, especiallly in light of the
terrors that they saw rising before them. Hence, the rise of a
vengeful yet loving Mother Earth Spirit as seen in Coleridge's Rime
of the Ancient Mariner, a fictional convention which still continues
to this day.
In this paper I will attempt to argue not that the Cautionary
Tale is a genre in and of itself nor that there is a rigid structure
to the Cautionary Tale, but that there are, interestingly enough,
themantic simaliarities which begin with Rime and Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein and continue through today in such dissimiliar works as
Katsuhiro Otomo's landmark in animation as dramatic form, Akira, and
Oliver Stone's ultra-violent, satricical commentary on the media
saturated society of modern America, Natural Born Killers. Furthermore
,I will not attempt to say that these modern works, Akira and NBK,
are indebted to or sprouted from the Romatic works of Coleridge and
Mary Shelley. I merely want to present certain similarities which
unite these contemporary works with the works of the immediate
Post-Enlightenment.
In order to best present the similarities I will discuss the
roles and functions of three character types, the Transgressor, the
Angel of Death, and the Chosen Witness, (types which I have so
arrogantly and poorly named for lack of a better,) which find
themselves in each of the four works discussed herein: Rime of the
Ancient Mariner, Frankenstein, Akira, and Natural Born Killers.
The first character type I will deal with is the Transgressor,
for that is where all Cautionary Tales truly begin.
In Rime of the Ancient Mariner the Mariner and his crew find
themselves trapped by ice, but "at length did cross an Albatross,
thorough the fog it came" (Perkins 406). After the albatross befriends
the crew, eating the food it has been given by the Mariner's men,
the Albatross rises up and flies around the ship until, quite
magically, the "ice did split with a thunder-fit... and a good south
wind sprung up behind" (Perkins 406). At this point, whether
actually working some kind of magic in order to free the trapped ship
,the Albatross has earned that perception among the Mariner and his
crew, and this perception of the Mariner and his crew of the Albatross
makes the act in the last stanza of Part I of Rime appears all the
more amoral, for without warning and for no good reason at all, the
Mariner shoots the Albatross dead. Almost immediately, the Spirit of
the Albatross begins to punish the Mariner and his crew for the
Mariner's transgression, his crime against nature, his lack of
morality, for "down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'twas as
sad as sad could be; and we did speak only to break the silence of
the sea!" (Perkins 407). After several days of no movement and dreams
of a "Spirit that plagued [them] so," the crew, in a state of disgust,
hangs the Albatross around the Mariner's neck as if it were a cross
to bear, and thus begins the Mariner's punishment for his
transgression, his crime against nature, which lasts to the day that
he meets the groomsman and continues beyond (Perkins 407).
Now in Frankenstein this theme of a transgression against
nature continues. Victor Von Frankenstein commits such a crime not
only by rebuilding a man and bringing him to life, but, more
importantly, in abandoning his creation to survive in the world alone
and unloved. At first Frankenstein falls into some sort of sickness,
but as soon as he is nursed back to health, keeping his immoral crime
against nature a secret, he discovers that his younger brother,
William, has been murdered. Instinctively, fully aware of the depth
of the crime against nature he has commited with his little science
project, Frankenstein knows that his creation has begun to seek
vengence upon its creator and that he, Frankenstein, "was destined
to become the most wretched of human beings" (Shelley 72).
Furthermore, Frankenstein knows that "nothing in human shape could
have destroyed that fair child. He was the murderer! The mere
prescence of the idea was an irresistable proof of the fact"
(Shelley 73). Spiritually, not actually, Frankenstein feels the
truth, feels that he has crossed some line and is now justly being
punished. Thus begins Frankenstein's punishment for his transgression,
an obession of a new sort, an obessision not with the boundaries of
technology but an obessesion with the result of his transgression,
"the wretch, the filthy daemon to whom [he] had given life" (Shelley
73).
As with Rime and Frankenstein, Akira continues with this
tradition of a crime committed against nature (however, a
technological one like Frankenstein and unlike Rime,) however, on a
much grander scale. The story begins in 1988 when a blast of unknown
origin and immeasurable magnitude completely destroys Tokyo, and then
immediatley shifts to 31 years later. Over the course of Akira, we
discover that Neo-Tokyo's Executive Council was working on a top-
secret government project, the Akira Project, back in 1988, involving
creating tele-kinetic abilities in young children through accellerated
evolution. The initial destruction of Tokyo was a direct result of
one such child, Akira, who in the blink of an eye lost total control
of his abilities, wiping out the entire city with a single tele-
kinetic blast. It doesn't take much effort to see Frankenstein's
message of science gone too far in Akira. However, what is more
interesting is that the Executive Council, after constructing Neo-
Tokyo, a fat, bloated neon sore on the face of the earth, the pride
of the Executive Council, but a dung heap for the rest of humanity,
returns to the experiments conducted under the Akira Project, having
learned nothing at all. As can be easily guessed, the experiment goes
horribly arry yet again, but this time in a far different way. Gone
is the single, all destructive blast of Akira. This time it is the
wandering, revengeful, in control wrath of Tetsuo, one of the new
child experiments, parading the streets of Neo-Tokyo like "I was a
Teenage God," taking out whole groups of tanks and soldiers in
whatever way tickles his fancy, slowing inacting judgement on the
Executive Council, bringing ruin to the Executive Council built and
governed Neo-Tokyo, thereby, once again, punishing those who crossed
the line established instinctively by Mother Nature.
Unlike the previous three examples of the Transgressor
character-ingredient, NBK's moral boundary crosser, the media,
commits no crime against nature directly; the media commits a crime
against good taste, but it's a moral crime nevertheless. In NBK the
media makes no distinctions between good and evil, and therefore sees
no reason not to treat evil with as equal vigor, if not affection
(after all, they love a good story), as good. The media as
Transgressor in NBK is personified by a Geraldo Rivera-style tabloid
journalist, Wayne Gale, who makes his living off of glamorizing
serial killers, from Charles Manson to Ted Bundy. However, the latest
serial killers that Gale has chosen to glamorize are Mickey and
Mallory Knox, two love-birds with more telegenic power and personality
than most Presidents. As the story approaches it's end, Gale finds
himself a willing participant in Mickey and Mallory's escape from
prison, after all, it being Super Bowl Sunday and all, the single
biggest viewing day of the year, Wayne Gale needs to do whatever it
takes to make the story more exciting, thereby increasing his show's
ratings, Gale's ultimate goal. However, once Mickey and Mallory lead
Wayne Gale to his highest ratings ever, they kill him in front of his
own camera, for the crimes he has committed:
Wayne Gale: After the whole escape thing, I
thought there was some kind of bond between us.
Mickey Knox: No, not really. You're scum, Wayne. You
did it for ratings.You don't give a shit about us or
about anybody except yourself. That's why nobody
gives a shit about you. That's why
helicoptors were not deployed.
Wayne Gale: Wait a minute you fucking hypocrite. What
about the Indian? You said that you were done
with killing. You said love beats the demon.
Mickey Knox: I am, and it will. It's just that you're
the last one, Wayne. This is not about you, you
egomaniac. I kind of like you, but if we let you go, we'd be just like
everybody else. Killing you and what you represent...
is a statement. I'm not a hundred percent sure exactly what it's
sayingbut,you know, Frankenstein killed Dr. Frankenstein.
[Wayne runs away.]
Mickey Knox: Wayne. Have some dignity. [Mickey cocks
shotgun.]
Wayne Gale: All right. So I'm a parasite. So what.
Life is cruel. No one said it was going to be easy.
The day you two killed, your ass belonged to us,
to the public, to the media. That's how it is, and we are married.
And the point is, what do we do next. I say a Salman Rushdie type
thing.Books. Talk shows. We do Oprah. We do Donehue. Do you have any
idea how huge we could be?
Mickey Knox: [Raises shotgun and points it at W.G.]
Let's make a little music Colorado.
Wayne Gale: Don't Mickey and Mallory always leave
somebody alive to tell the tale?
Mickey Knox: We are.
Mallory: The camera.
(Stone Natural Born Killers)
As you may have noted, the defining characteristics of the
Transgressor are: (1) the Transgressor crosses some sort of
instinctive moral line and (2) the Transgressor creates, through his
act of transgression, the very agent that will serve as his own
personal punisher. This is the heart of the Cautionary Tale. This is
what we are being warned about, whether it's a message about the
abuse of technology which most often is as in the case of Frankenstein
and Akira or a simple message about treating all things with love
and respect as in the case of Rime. The Transgressor is the
character-type in the Cautionary Tale through which the author shows
you that if you cross the line, if you piss off Mother Nature, God,
or whoever, then you better believe you're going to pay, so just
don't do it, and yet, we must also identify with the Transgressor,
for the Transgressor is what we could become, what we must try not
to be. In this sense the Cautionary Tale is the soley the story of
the Transgressor. However, there is the Angel of Death.
Now, this character type, the Angel of Death, is the
instrument of judgement which punishes the Transgressor for his
crimes, usually at great cost to the Transgressor and to those around
him. It is almost always a given that innocents must die for the
Transgressor's crimes, a phenomenon that occurs in order to further
heighten the Transgressor's guilt and suffering. Furthermore, it is
usually a given that the Angel of Death character-type feels none of
the guilt that the Transgressor feels for the subsequent loss of
innocent life. Remember: the Angel of Death exists only to punish the
Transgressor.
In Rime, it could be argued that Life-in-Death, Death, the
Spirit of the Albatross, or simply Mother Nature might either one be
the Angel of Death in this case; however, since the Albatross was
killed and the crew certainly believes that the Spirit of the
Albatross was plagueing them, I'll just stick with the Spirit of the
Albatross for all intents and purposes as the instrument of punishment
which dogs the Mariner so.
The Spirit of the Albatross begins his game by first causing
the breeze to cease to blow and then next, indirectly, by the crews'
placing of the Albatross around the neck of the Mariner. After that
time in complete idleness, the ship bearing Death and Life-in-Death
arrives, and, after a roll of the dice in some game of which we are
uncertain of its rules or meaning, the crew, some "four times fifty
living men," "with heavy thump, a lifeless lump, they dropped down
one by one," and their "souls did from their bodies fly, they fled to
bliss or woe! And every soul, it passed me by, like the whizz of my
cross-bow!" (Perkins 408). Here the Mariner's guilt in killing the
Albatross is directly tied into the loss of his innocent crew members,
the connection being in the "whizz of [the] cross-bow" (Perkins 408).
After this experience, the Mariner goes on to live out an unspecified
period of time on the ship alone, but not on the sea alone, paying
for his crime, until, after finding some affection in his heart toward
the slimey water-snakes which swim beside his dead ship, thereby
signifying that the Mariner now understands the santity of life even
amongst such slimey things (the absence of the crew and the Mariner's
loneliness being the cause of this new-found affection,) the Mariner
is finally released from this part of his punishment, the second part
being the re-telling of his tale of which this poem is a part.
However, while Rime is the literary role-model for the
Cautionary Tale, it is also the only one of the four discussed here
in which the Transgressor is pardoned before his ultimate doom, and
probably the only one of its kind since Rime, unlike most Cautionary
Tales, has a strong Christian context. The rule that the Transgressor
must die might certainly begin in Frankenstein, the first placing the
Cautionary Tale firmly in the realm of technological advancement and
away from some sort of mystical animism.
In Frankenstein, Victor Von Frankenstein is punished by the
very Creature he has created; this idea that the Transgressor's own
creation will become his very downfall continues through-out most
Cautionary Tales and can even be seen in Rime if one takes the view
that the Spirit of the Albatross as the Angel of Death character-type
is created the moment the Mariner kills the peaceful Albatross. But
back to Frankenstein. First the Creature, bitter that it has been
abandoned by its father and bitter at few more things as well, seeks
revenge of Frankenstein by first murdering Frankenstein's brother,
William, and then, indirectly, the arrested lady-servent. After that
, Frankenstein's best friend bites the dust and then Frankenstein's
wife until finally the Creature drives Frankenstein so far in his
obession that he finally dies from exposure and exhaustion. However,
Frankenstein is probably also the first time that the reader is made
to feel sympathy for the Angel of Death character-type, the Creature,
a trend that continues in Akira.
In Akira, the most sympathetic character of the Angel of Death
character-type is fashioned in the form of Tetsuo, the nerdy, Beaver
Cleaver-ish runt who is always the brunt of joke and ridicule by his
fellow gang members in the Red Bennies. One can always sympathize
with the Creature, but one can't ignore the fact that he's a walking
monstrosity, a true horror to look at, a dead-thing brought back to
life; however, with Tetsuo, we are given a naive, over-eager young
man who could easily be us or our younger brother or friend, so,
when Tetsuo finally makes his final transformation in Angel of Death
with the murder of one of his fellow gang members (the true bully of
the bunch no less, but not the leader,) we can't help but feel more
sympathy for him because, all in all, Tetsuo is a lot like us. He's
the only Angel of Death that isn't a superficial monstrosity. But how
is Tetsuo an Angel of Death, you ask? Well, let me quickly explain.
First, Tetsuo kills a few of doctors and guards at the secret
Executive Council run hospital. Next, he takes on the Executive
Council run police force/army, wiping out whole squadrons with just
a thought. And then finally, Tetsuo, through the reawakening of
Akira and the rapid mutation of his own body, begins to devourer
most of Neo-Tokyo, thereby destroying much of what the Executive
Council has created (one can only speculate if the Executive Council
perishes or not, but please note that the President of the Executive
Council most certainly does.)
While Tetsuo most surely is the most sympathetic of the Angel
of Deaths, this certainly cannot be applied to Mickey and Mallory in
NBK, despite the inclusion of past information which points out that
Mallory was sexually abused while Mickey was just physically abused.
They are simply evil. However, their over-whelming evil is exactly
what makes them attractive, and, interestingly enough, heroes (It
could also be argued that Tetsuo is a hero, some most certainly see
him that way, but with the inclusion of Kaneda, this is certainly not
the case.) Now, as I mentioned before, Mickey and Mallory pretty
much go running around the West killing whoever comes across their
path with a big ole smile on their faces, and this is what partially
makes them heroes to the viewers. Their unwavering love is another.
However, what truly makes them heroes in the classical, good-guy
sense is the fact that they kill Wayne Gale, the symbol of the
parasitic News Media, the very industry that has made them as cold-
blooded serial killers into media-stars/celebrities, the very crime
for which the News Media is being punished (now how's that for a
paradox.) Furthermore, the innocents killed along the way are just
the bait that attracts Wayne Gail, a man who has made his living
profiling Americas most notorious serial killers through reporting
segments and interviews, for it's him and not the innocents that they
kill, however vile they might be, that they have been sent to kill.
Interestingly enough and in tune with the subversive nature of the
film, once Mickey and Mallory kill Wayne Gail, this tale's
Transgressor, they get to ride off into the sunset to live happily
every after in true fairy tale fashion.
The last character type that I wish to deal with is the
Chosen Witness, beginning with the groomsman in Rime, and what purpose
this character type serves in the Cautionary Tale. The groomsman,
stopped by the ancienct mariner upon entering the church for the
wedding feast, himself in no way related to the mariner's misfortune,
first wonders, "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, now
wherefore stopp'st thou me?", a question which the mariner does not
choose to answer; he merely begins to tell his story with "There was
a ship," holding the groomsman there outside the feast with his
"skinny hand," his "glittering eye," and his story/sermon (Perkins
405). The groomsman, so chosen it appears at random, "cannot choose
but hear." This randomness suggests that the groomsman is in no way
specifically tied to the Mariner's tale or in serious need of hearing
the Mariner's story, but that he somehow, through the randomness of
the Mariner's choosing him, represents mankind in general, those who
need to hear and heed the Mariner's warning, us, the readers.
Interestingly enough, this randomness in selecting a Chosen Witness
is not used in any of the other Cautionary Tales, for in the others
the Chosen Witnesses are all picked because they have a pressing
need to know. The groomsman, it could be said, needs to know of the
Mariner's tale, but it certainly isn't a pressing issue.
For example, the ship's captain in Frankenstein is chosen
because he, through his own endevors, has ventured dangerously close
to the line which he should not cross, namely, the arrogant act of
misguided will and ignorance that Victor Von Frankenstein himself
crossed on the day that he brought his Creature to life. His
boatsurrounded by ice, "scarely leaving her[the ship] her the
searoom in which she floated," the ship's captain spies the
Creature driving a sled of dogs further north (Shelley 23).
Immediately after seeing the Creature driving further north,
the "ice broke, and freed our ship," allowing the captain to drive
his ship and push his crew further north, in the quest for a
mythical Northern Passage (Shelley 24). However, the fog and the
night prevents the captain from departing immediatley, so he waits
until the next day to begin venturing further north, that is, until
Frankenstein himself shows up, "his limbs nearly frozen, and his
body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering," mirroring the
Ancient Mariner in physical condition. Upon arriving at the side of
the now freed boat, Frankenstein asks the captain, "Before I come on
board your vessl, will you have the kindness to inform me whither
you are bound?", to which the captain writes in his journal:
You many conceive my astonishment on hearing such a
question addressed to me from a man on the
brink of destuction and to whom I should have
supposed that my vessel would have been a resource
which he would not have exchanged for the most precious wealth the
earth can afford. I replied, however, that we were on a voyage of
discovery towards the northern pole (Shelley 24).
Now, one could say that Frankenstein is asking the captain
this question merely to inquire if this vessel is headed the same way
that the Creature is going in a very literal sense. But if one
considers the "voyage of discovery" that the captain is on as well
as the the folly and probable ultimate demise of the captain and his
crew that would have happened had he chosen to go further north in
obession, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that Frankenstein
has chosen the ship's captain in order to save him from his own
personal obession, the quest for a northern passage. Moreover, like
the groomsman in Rime before it, the ship's captain is "our" man in
this tale; he is our representative. He is us: the Chosen Listener,
those who need to hear Frankenstein's warning.
Furthermore, both the ship's captain and the groomsman only
play a passive role in the story, and no where is the passive Chosen
Listener more present then in Natural Born Killers. In NBK, the
Chosen Listern is more than just a listener; the Chosen Listener is a
seer, ie., it is the camera eye, and it's viewers who have allowed
themselves to held captive but what the camera sees. Through out the
film, it is mentioned that Mickey and Mallory, the two serial killer
love birds, leave a single surivour to tell the tale each time they
chose to iniate a bloodbath whether it be in a diner, a drug store,
or a store in a mall. However, at the end of the film Mickey and
Mallory, after they have broken out of prison with a representitive
of the media and his television camera, choose to kill the lone
survivor, who, moments before he is shot exclaims, "You can't kill
me. I thought you always left one survivor to tell the tale," to
which Mickey and Mallory reply, "We are. The camera." To further
emphasize that the camera is a passive representation of us, the
Chosen Listener, the viewer is immediately bombarded by a barage of
media clips which include the various hallmarks of recent news
notoriaty, the OJ trial, the Mendez Brothers, Lorena Bobbit, and
Rodney King which we, the Chosen Listeners passively absorbed, held
in thrall by that "glistening eye," the television screen. These
clips, as well as the story of two killers on the run, glamourized
by the media and fashioned into stars, is the cautionary warning
("you lay down with the dogs, you'll wake up with fleas") which the
Chosen Listener, through our representative the camera, both in the
movie and in a very literal sense (after all, we are watching a
scenes which have been captured on film,) should heed. At this point
in the film, the Chosen Listener is prodded to come to some sort of
moral conclusion in wake of the Cautionary Tale.
Furthermore, this act of coming to a moral conclusion, this
act of learning a lesson, becomes the climatic purpose of the Chosen
Listener, whether literarily us or representatives of us. The ship's
captain, after hearing Frankenstein's tale and upon seeing the
Creature face to face, judges himself and his obession, ultimately
deciding to turn back around and head home to England. The groomsman
takes to heart the Mariner's message that "he prayeth best, who
loveth best all things both great and small; for the dear God who
loveth us, He made and loveth all," waking the next morning "a sadder
and wiser man" (Perkins 413). And in NBK, the viewer is left
wondering if all the carnage that they have just witnessed in the
name of entertainment wasn't a barrage of overkill and that maybe
they should turn off the damn tube from time to time instead of
remaining slaves to the shit that the media offers as substance.
However, during the course of each one of these Cautionary
Tales in the time before the author has chosen for the Chosen Listener
to come to a moral conclusion (carefully mapped and guided of course,
the Chosen Listener is confused, asking questions, and wondering
about the significance of what they are hearing. This aspect of the
Chosen Listener is evident in the character of Kaneda in Akira as
well as the ship's captain and the groomsman. When confronted with
the weight of the seriousness of the problem at hand, Kaneda treats
the issue somewhat light-heartedly and with more than one question
and look of total confusion, unable to believe what he is hearing.
The scene goes as follows:
Kei: Akira has achieved pure energy.
Kaneda: Pure energy?
Kei: You know, a human being achieves a whole lot of
things in a lifetime right like discovering things
and making things like houses and motorbikes and
bridges and towns and rockets. Where does all that
knowledge and energy come from?"
Kaneda: (shrugs shoulders and gives goofy look.)
Kei: After all, humans are descended from monkeys,
right? And before that, insects and fish. And long
before that, plankton and one-celled
ameoba. When you think about it, each life form
must have its own energy.
Kaneda: Well, I, uh, that's evolution right?
Kei: I'm talking about the lifeforce that exists
even perhaps in water and atmosphere.
Kaneda: Hey, hold it. What's the matter with you?
Hey are you alright? Maybe you hit your head back
there.
Kei: Perhaps all things in existence have that memory.
But what if the order of things was disturbed.
What if through experimentation, as ameoba were
transfused with the power of a human.
Kaneda: What? Is that what Akira is?
Kei: Ameobas don't make motorcycles and atomic bombs.
They only eat up anything that happens in their way.
Kaneda: You mean Tetsuo? Are you saying he has that
kind of power?
Kei: Before, there were those men who tried to harness
such energy. At the request of the Executive Council.
They failed. The destruction of Tokyo was inevitable
(Otomo).
As typified in this situation by Kaneda, the Chosen Listener
when confronted by the bits and pieces of the cautionary warning
finds himself in a state of confusion, if not utter disbelief. This
can be seen in the ship's captain who at first does not believe a
word that comes out of Frankenstein's mouth and in the groomsman who
thinks the Mariner is just some crazy man talking gibberish. Little
does the Chosen Listener know that what they are hearing is of the
upmost importance.
Through out this essay, I've tried to show how the four
works presented here have some of the same components, the
components being the character-types of the Transgressor, the Angel
of Death, and the Chosen Listener. Like I said earlier, I do not
believe that what has been dubbed the Cautionary Tale in this essay
has a rigid format nor that these artists purposefully mimiced each
other. However, what I do suggest is that these Cautionary Tales,
each one highly concerned with morality, are structured in such a way
in order to best get their message across. These are works whose
over-riding purpose is to morally instruct and not to entertain, so
it's no wonder that these works discussed at times appear to be
more like a sermon being preached and not a spectacle meant to
entertain. In a world over-ripe with the fruits of technology and
the human desire to discover, these works exist to show the
reader/viewer that, despite the fact that God has been proclaimed
dead, those who cross the line will most surely be judged.
W
