Batman: Is Wealth a Superpower?

When Batman is asked in The Dark Knight Rises why he donned the mask to carry out crime-fighting, he answers “The idea was to be a symbol. Batman could be anybody. That was the point” (425 [page refs to The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Complete Screenplays, Faber and Faber]). In case that wasn’t clear enough, late in the film he tells Jim Gordon: “A hero can be anyone. That was always the point” (505).

The thing that has separated Batman from the other major superheroes, that has made him the most relatable figure in the genre, is the fact that he has no superpower. This is somewhat of a cliche of comparative superhero discourse. It is also the view of the director of the Dark Knight trilogy, Christopher Nolan:

The thing about Bruce Wayne is he doesn’t have superpowers other than his extraordinary wealth. Really, he’s just someone who does a lot of push-ups. And in that sense, he’s very relatable[.]

So if Batman has no superpower, maybe anyone could be Batman. Why not? But while noting Batman’s lack of a true superpower, Nolan does mention the character’s “extraordinary wealth”. The implication, then, is that wealth is a sort of superpower, or at least a substitute for one.

Can we imagine Batman without his wealth? A superhero who not only does not have a superpower, but is also not that rich? Probably not. Throughout the Batman canon we find that the Knight’s exploits are wholly dependent on his wealth and resources. In Nolan’s final film in the trilogy, The Dark Knight Returns, for example, this is clear at many points. How could Batman defeat Bane without his gargantuan wealth? His wealth and resources count in several different ways:

1 His mind: Batman can know everything because he has access to police databases to track down Selina Kyle after she burglarizes his manor (369). Later his relationship with her becomes key to defeating Bane.

2 His body: Batman’s body manages to overcome wear and tear through the carbon fiber leg brace that makes him capable of physically competing with Bane. This leg brace is not exactly available through the Public Health Service, rather it is an advanced prototype developed by the research team at Wayne Corporation (395).

3 His appliances: He has The Bat, a flying car developed by the research team at Wayne Corporation in conjunction with the Defense Department. He uses this to fight criminals and later to transport the nuclear fusion bomb out of Gotham, saving the city from destruction (386). Without this specialised vehicle, Gotham is toast.

4 And, of course, he owns a secret and very well-equipped hideaway below ground in the Batcave, property he inherited from his father.

And all these resources despite being nominally an outlaw during this story, wanted for the murder of Harvey Dent, and despite having no official position in the police/military/government. It is clear, then, that Batman’s accomplishments could not be achieved without his wealth, and wealth is his real superpower, giving him resources beyond anyone else’s wildest dreams.

 

The Carlylean Hero and Zero Dark Thirty

The Carlylean type of hero is not a major presence in our society. There are certain aspect of contemporary heroism that don’t fall in with Carlylean ideals. The 21st-century Hero is much more domesticated. This is a contemporary trait that is often seen in adaptations of 19th-century fiction, most clearly, perhaps, in North & South, wherein Thornton as Carlylean Captain-of-Industry type enters into dialogue with contemporary conventions and emerges a gentle, father-type figure more interested in his children than in organizing and subduing the urban proletariat. Or just think about the recently anointed best-selling movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame, whose central hero, Tony Stark, has to balance the needs of the universe with those of being a father – and puts the latter first, though still managing to save the universe. The male hero, then, is far more domesticated and indulgently paternal than he used to be. But if we want to understand the Carlylean hero, there are a small number of contemporary narratives that provide suitable protagonists.

The single most Carlylean figure in contemporary Hollywood is Maya (Jessica Chastain) in Zero Dark Thirty (2012). There are many similarities. In discussing Sherlock Holmes in an upcoming publication I noted three elements of the Carlylean Hero that Holmes displayed. In short:

1 The Hero evinces an absolute dedication to work in a cause which transcends him or herself as an individual

2 The Hero possesses an immediate and infallible insight. Insight truly Heroic, and is always superior to knowledge:

The healthy Understanding, we should say, is not the Logical, argumentative, but the Intuitive; for the end of Understanding is not to prove and find reasons, but no believe […]. [T]he man of logic and the man of insight; the Reasoner and the Discoverer, or even knower, are quite separable — indeed, for most part, quite separate characters. (Carlyle, Characteristics, 1831)

A Hero, as I repeat, has this first distinction, which indeed we may call first and last, the Alpha and Omega of his whole Heroism, That he looks through the shows of things into things. (On Heroes, 1841)

3 The Hero is not prone to self-consciousness. Carlyle posits it as a maxim that: “The sign of health is Unconsciousness” (Ibid.)

So work, insight and the absence of self-consciousness. These are three of the central traits of Carlylean Heroism, and the three I found most applicable to the figure of Sherlock Holmes. They are dealt with in more detail in the essay linked above. To begin with, we can map these onto Maya:

1 Maya is dedicated to her work at the expense of all else. Interestingly, though this is a perfectly obvious observation to make regarding the film, there is no explicit textual reference to Maya’s attitude to work in the film. However, she is almost never seen doing anything other than work, and the attitude of focused intensity she shows at work contrasts with the lethargy and disinterest she displays on other occasions (e.g. when having dinner with Jessica). In the film’s shooting script, there is a direction that sums it up: “Maya is here too, working. She’s always working.”

Jessica Chastain as Maya in Zero Dark Thirty. (IMDb)

2 Maya brings about the death of Bin Laden (according to the movie) through her irrational confidence that she is right about his whereabouts in Abbotabad, Pakistan. As one of the soldiers’ about to undertake the mission says: “Her confidence is the one thing that’s stopping me getting ass-raped in a Pakistani prison. I’m cool with it.” As this soldier knows, there is no sufficient proof that Bin Laden is in there. As the committee approving the mission note, there was better evidence for WMD in Iraq than for this mission. It, and several previous steps in the process, is based on an insight of Maya’s rather than concrete proof. An insight that transcends rationality is the pre-eminent characteristic of the Carlylean Hero.

3 The theme of self-consciousness is not dealt with directly in Zero Dark Thirty. Of course, a person who is not self-conscious does not talk about their lack of self-consciousness; they are, by definition, not conscious of it. But that is the whole point. Unselfconsciousness does not know itself. That is its strength and its Heroism.

Aside from these elements Maya holds in common with Sherlock Holmes, there are several further points that link Maya to the Carlylean Hero:

4 The lack of importance of personal relationships in her life. This is something of a corollary to Point 1, and is central to a number of Carlyle’s portraits, from the fictional Diogenes Teufelsdrockh (Sartor Resartus) through Abbot Samson (Past and Present), Dr Francia and Frederick the Great. It is almost unheard of for a modern Hollywood film to show its protagonist as friendless, sexless, family-less and unconcerned about this state of affairs. Even Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films rely heavily on his friendship with Watson and give him a sexual life of sorts. But Zero Dark Thirty is truly radical is this sense: Maya never speaks to or of any friend, partner or family member. In a scene with Jessica (Jennifer Ehle), Maya is gently prodded about her love life:

Jessica: Little fooling around wouldn’t hurt you

Maya: [Sigh]

J: So no boyfriend

M: Mmm-mmm

J: You got any friends at all?

This last question is greeted with a long silence, mercifully broken by Jessica’s phone ringing. The implication is No, Maya has no friends, and this is borne out throughout the film.

5 The dissociation from the concept of happiness. Carlyle was very big on this idea, that happiness was not the goal of man. It was not something that could be attained, or should be striven for. Historically, he felt mankind had never been motivated by happiness, but rather the opposite: “They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man” (On Heroes, Lecture II). Maya’s refusal to ever show or, it appears, feel happiness or contentment is of a piece with the Carlylean conception of heroism rather than that of our culture, which almost invariably ends with the Hero in domestic bliss. Maya doesn’t end in domesticity, or in bliss. At the end of the film, in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Bin Laden, as the men congratulate each other, Maya stands aloof and inscrutable, physically present but emotionally inaccessible. Just after this, in the final scene of the film, she takes a seat alone in a cargo plane. The pilot enters and asks her where she wants to go. She doesn’t answer but her eyes well with tears as she gazes into the empty distance. It is at this moment that Maya becomes truly heroic in the Carlylean sense. Nothing could be more Carlyleanly heroic than to meet with total triumph and to be unable to enjoy, unable to feel happiness for even the briefest moment, a moment of absolute triumph over one’s greatest foe.

It this point it would have been easy to show Maya overcome with happiness, or returning to the bosom of a loving family. That Zero Dark Thirty does not do this removes it from mainstream contemporary depictions of heroism.

6 The willingness to indulge in violence in the name of the great goal towards which one is working. This was the most contentious element of Zero Dark Thirty – not violence per se but more specifically torture. Zizek, among others, has had much to say on this topic. Maya was readily prepared to participate in torture, to Zizek’s chagrin:

When Maya, the film’s heroine, first witnesses waterboarding, she is a little shocked, but she quickly learns the ropes; later in the film she coldly blackmails a high-level Arab prisoner with, “If you don’t talk to us, we will deliver you to Israel”. Her fanatical pursuit of Bin Laden helps to neutralise ordinary moral qualms.

Maya looks on while her colleagues torture their detainee into submission, and (according to the film) important information leading to Bin Laden is attained thereby.

In sum, in her attitudes to work, relationships, self-consciousness, happiness and violence, Maya is the closest thing contemporary Hollywood has to a true Carlylean hero. The distinguishing feature is that she is a woman. Carlyle never conceived of a female hero in On Heroes. Yet in a 21st-century when male heroism has moved away from the Carlylean vision, the Carlylean Hero as Woman is finally born.

Exceptional Violence and the Hero: Todd McGowan on Nolan’s Batman Trilogy

The age of heroes is past. In Heroes: Saviors, Traitors and Supermen (Harper Collins, 2013, kindle version loc 76), Lucy Hughes-Hallett reflects:

It is fashionable to lament the littleness of those accorded celebrity within our culture – so many footballers and rock stars and models, so few great spirits – but such collective frivolity should be cherished as one of the privileges of peace. It is desperation that prompts people to crave a champion, a protector, or a redeemer and, having identified one, to offer him their worship.

But while we might not talk about the role of heroism in public life, fictional narratives about heroic figures are enduringly popular. The superhero genre is one that is often seen as being divorced from realistic concerns, but some such narratives do indeed have their heroes deal with dilemmas recognizably drawn from contemporary political situations. The possibility of real heroism is still alive in the imagination of storytellers and their audiences.

One of the more interesting analyses of what heroism looks like in a contemporary narrative context comes from Todd McGowan’s The Fictional Christopher Nolan  (University of Texas, 2012). In this book, McGowan analyses in some depth all of Nolan’s films up to Inception, but here I will look briefly at his chapter on The Dark Knight, the second in Nolan’s massively successful Batman trilogy. The Dark Knight is an interesting film in the context of contemporary political thought, a film that provoked much critical debate and has proven good to think, as Lévi Strauss would say. McGowan introduces the various debates in initial reaction to the film. He notes that several conservative commentators saw it as a clear vindication of G.W. Bush’s “War on Terror”, while others took an opposite view. The film does not yield up its position lightly, but provides plenty of fodder for considering war, evil, heroism and terrorism in the contemporary context.

One reason why it might not yield up a position lightly is that it doesn’t have one. Indeed, Jonathan Nolan (co-screenwriter of the films with Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer) in an interview included in The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Complete Screenplays dismissed the idea of political relevance: “[W]hen The Dark Knight was released, there was a lot of talk about the echoes and resonances with the global war on terror. He has nothing to do with that” (xiii). Nolan’s dismissal seems slightly arrogant. He didn’t write the entire screenplay for one thing, so he cannot speak for his co-writers’ intentions. And, in any case, the author does not have control over how his film is to be read. One doesn’t need to go full Barthes “Death of the Author” to affirm this. Meanings proliferate and the opposed readings of TDK confirm this. It is also rather obtuse to believe that one can create a complex narrative that somehow floats free of all surrounding political structures, cultural conditions and ideas and ideologies. In fact, if TDK did somehow manage to do this, it would be a much less interesting film.

With regard to TDK, the portrayal of the figure of the hero and this figure’s relation to the surrounding society has a distinctly contemporary twist. McGowan argues that TDK “takes as its overriding concern the problem posed by the hero and the hero’s exceptional status in relation to the law” (125). That is an ideologically problematical and dangerous feature of superhero films in general: the hero is above the law. He or she behaves like a criminal in order to protect the good as they define it. This is a large part of the reason for the persistent arguments that the superhero genre inherently tends towards fascism. McGowan males a good argument that Nolan escapes this generic trap:

As the film portrays it, the form of appearance of authentic heroism must be that of evil. Only in this way does the heroic exceptionality that the superhero embodies avoid placing us on the road to fascist rule (127).

Thus at the close of TDK, Batman is denounced as the murderer of Harvey Dent, while the evil Dent is presented as a hero. This strategy is put into play by Commissioner Gordon, who believes that a fragile Gotham couldn’t handle the truth that their beloved Dent is a murderous psychopath. Batman, on the other hand, is an already ambivalent figure, so an appropriate figure for the populace’s hate to be directed towards. Batman’s truly heroic act is not in violently punishing criminals, it is in embracing the appearance of criminality, for this is what prevents the slide into fascism and this is what ensures that the violent act remains exceptional. Gordon watches Batman flee into the night, and memorably intones: “[H]e’s the hero Gotham deserves… but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero.”(323)

Harvey Dent, Gotham’s White Night, In TDK (from here)

McGowan offers a novel and convincing reading of TDK. The only problem with it is, from this vantage point, that TDK was the second in a trilogy and now cannot really be read in isolation. The ending of TDK must be read as merely provisional. The film’s sequel, The Dark Knight Rises, makes a few things clear. First is that rebuilding Gotham on the lie of Batman’s evil/Dent’s heroism is a catastrophic failure. As Carlyle would say, A Lie Cannot be Believed (I discuss this elsewhere here; I also discuss the ending of TDKR in more detail here) and beneath the veneer of Dentian heroism (the necessary counterpoint to Batmanian evil), the city-state rots. Nolan’s vision in TDKR is puritanical and violent: lies must be purged, and they go so deep that the city must be destroyed. In the final act of the film, we see ranks of blue-shirted policeman take over the streets as the politicians have already been expelled from the city. The denouement of this film, and of the trilogy, is by no means so sophisticated and intellectually satisfying as that McGowan reads into TDK. But it is the real ending of this Batman saga. To adapt one of the trilogy’s most famous lines, it’s not the ending we wanted or needed, but maybe it’s the ending we deserved.

Cops ready for battle at the climax of TDKR

Death of Democracy and Rebirth of Aristocracy in Doyle’s The Poison Belt (1913)

In my last post on The Poison Belt (1913), I wrote as follows:

That all death including mass death should be looked on with equanimity is the thrust of the book. Indeed, had it been published a year or two later I would be sorely tempted to see it as a propaganda exercise justifying and glorifying WWI. Each time Doyle writes of the beauty of his armageddon it seems as if he is talking about the near future, about the wholesale slaughter of the trenches that was just around the corner, as if he is trying to convince the reader and himself that it is all for the best.

[…]

Reading Belt, it seems that there was already something in the air, that Europe could see it coming, and was bracing itself for death on a wider scale than had ever been seen. Think of this novel as a straw in the wind, a demonstration of Raymond Williams’ concept of the structure of feeling, which is given expression in literature before becoming an acknowledged part of the general experience.

That point has since recurred to me in connection with another passage from the book, a particularly revealing one, I think, and one that has stayed with me more than any other from The Poison Belt. In this passage, Challenger, his wife, Roxton, Malone, and Summerisle are sealed into the former’s house, awaiting the death of everyone outside. Most of the people who are to die are at a great distance, but one is close by and in plain sight: Challenger’s chauffeur, Austin. Austin has already appeared in the book; he has been depicted as loyal and wholly devoted to Challenger. The discussion about him that I wish to discuss is as follows:

“By George, that poor devil of a chauffeur of yours down in the yard has made his last journey. No use makin’ a sally and bringin’ him in?”

“It would be absolute madness,” cried Summerlee.

“Well, I suppose it would,” said Lord John. “It couldn’t help him and would scatter our gas all over the house, even if we ever got back alive. My word, look at the little birds under the trees!” (Arthur Conan Doyle, The Poison Belt, Hesperus, 2008, 46)

And that’s that. They don’t bring him in, and he soon dies – or seems to at least. Why, then, has Challenger made no effort to save the life of his loyal servant of ten years’ standing? It’s not that he is wholly indifferent to the death of humanity. He has tried to warn them in a letter to the Times which was, of course, ignored. If he cannot perform the heroic duty of saving the whole world, then can he not at least fulfil the Carlylean dictum: “Do the duty which lies nearest thee.” The duty that lies nearest is saving the life of Austin, and Challenger has made no effort to do this. It seems not to have even occurred to him until now, when Roxton mentions in somewhat dismissive terms, inviting the rejection of the idea that arrives. Why?

It is obvious from reading the discussion of Austin, and from reading between the lines of the situation, that for Doyle’s characters there are two grades of human, and their lives are of different values. The classifying principle is, well, class. The working class and the gentleman’s class: Challenger, Roxton and Summerisle are all titled persons. Malone is not, but is a writer, and, as such, Doyle attributes him a dignity equating to that of Professors and Lords. We must recall Carlyle, a particular favourite of the young Doyle, here. Of the Man of Letters, Carlyle had written: “he is the light of the world; the world’s Priest;—guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.” So Doyle’s protagonists – Professors, Lords and Men of Letters – are the true elite, the aristocracy of talent as well as, for the most part, of title, the men worthy of inaugurating that new world that Doyle longs for.

Austin, representative of the untalented herd, must die. Doyle’s apocalypse is thus revealed as a class purge, leaving behind 20^th-century democracy for a return to a primitive patriarchy under Challenger. His dominance is emphasized by the fact that only he is allowed a female companion. It is like the Primal Horde of Freud’s Totem and Taboo. It is a rejection of democratic tendencies for a return to history as the vehicle of Great Men.

And to complete our analysis here, we must again remember that the book was a straw in the wind, that it anticipated the slaughter of the WWI trenches, and that Doyle himself was to welcome that conflict, enlisting Sherlock Holmes, no less, as a vehicle for propaganda. In the famous closing lines of the Holmes story “His Last Bow”, the Great Detective, having just captured a German spy, proclaims:

There’s an east wind coming […], such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared

Even before the Great War began, I maintain, Doyle was in The Poison Belt considering with a sort of joy the regeneration of the world, the sacrifice of the herd, and the birth of a new aristocracy from the ashes of democracy. This was the cleaner, better, stronger land into which Challenger and his companions were almost born.

Heroism, Conventionality and Living with Death: Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt (1913)

My last post was on John Buchan’s gripping WWI propaganda thriller, Greenmantle (1916), and this review deals with that book’s near contemporary The Poison Belt (1913) by Arthur Conan Doyle. Another thing that Belt and Greenmantle have in common is the status of sequel – sequel, in both cases, to a much better known novel. While Greenmantle had The 39 Steps for a precursor, Belt, a slim novella in form, follows on from The Lost World (1912), Doyle’s famous tale of explorations in the South American jungle leading to the discovery of a dinosaur-inhabited plateau. It is a sequel in the sense of characterological continuity: Professor Challenger, Lord John Roxton, Edward Malone (the narrator) and Professor Summerlee are once again the protagonists, together again for the first time since their jungle adventures.

I placed the four protagonists in that particular order because there is an implicit hierarchy in Doyle’s character dynamics. Challenger is obviously the leader of the group, a domineering, blustering man whose intuitions and theories always turn out to be right. It is he who sets the plot in motion by calling his erstwhile companions to his dwelling with variations on the following telegraph:

Malone, 17 Hill Street, Streatham. – Bring oxygen. – Challenger. (Arthur Conan Doyle, The Poison Belt, Hesperus, 2008, 9)

The peremptory and terse nature of Challenger’s communication recalls Holmes’ famous telegraph to Watson in “The Adventure of the Crooked Man” (1923):

Come at once if convenient – if inconvenient come all the same. – S.H.

Watson does come, of course, and so does Malone (with a canister of oxygen). So the Challenger-Malone dynamic echoes the Holmes-Watson dynamic, involving boundless admiration and unquestioning obedience on one side, an unreflective assumption of superiority on the other. On their first meeting in Belt, Malone writes:

He gave me the amused handshake and encouraging smile which the headmaster bestows upon the small boy. (17)

In our unheroic days, an adult putting himself in the position of a small boy with regard to another man is odd, but one can’t have a Hero without followers who follow unquestioningly.

Challenger in an illustration from the first publication of The Poison Belt 

Challenger isn’t exactly Holmes, though. He’s much more obnoxious. He’s overbearing and pigheaded, as well as pompous and conceited. But, on the other hand, he’s always right, so he gets away with his bad behaviour. Challenger is a much later creation than Holmes (first appearance 1912 as opposed to 1887), and the change in Doyle’s conception of heroism probably relates to his own personal progression from a young single man, struggling to make ends meet on the margins of two professions (doctor and writer) to wealthy, highly respected country squire and paterfamilias. Where once heroism came couched in the fin-de-siècle bohemianism of the detective, now it is a characteristic of the blustering and autocratic country gentleman. Holmes’ indifference to his relationships with others is replaced by Challenger’s demands for obedience. Unlike Holmes, Challenger is married, and he treats his wife like a child (into which role she slips with great enthusiasm in Doyle’s characterization). There is a certain conventionality about Challenger’s situation (also as a Professor, he’s an establishment figure, which Holmes isn’t) that makes him less attractive and less worthy, one might feel, of Hero-worship.

Once the Professor has all his friends together, he informs them that the earth has entered the eponymous poison belt, which explains the odd behaviour that everybody has been exhibiting. In fact, the “ether” has been poisoned and everybody’s going to die. That’s what the oxygen is for, so Challenger, Roxton, Malone and Summerbee can counteract the effects of the poison, for a while at least. The plan is to watch everybody else die from Challenger’s hilltop residence and then prepare themselves for a dignified exit.

Insofar as Belt is a novel of ideas, the main idea is that of the beauty of death. Death, as Challenger expostulates, and the others come to agree, is not the end:

“The physical body has rather been a source of pain and fatigue to us. It is the constant index of our limitations. Why then should we worry about its detachment from our psychical selves?” (53)

That all death including mass death should be looked on with equanimity is the thrust of the book. Indeed, had it been published a year or two later I would be sorely tempted to see it as a propaganda exercise justifying and glorifying WWI. Each time Doyle writes of the beauty of his armageddon it seems as if he is talking about the near future, about the wholesale slaughter of the trenches that was just around the corner, as if he is trying to convince the reader and himself that it is all for the best. Towards the end, he writes:

Surely we are agreed that the more sober and restrained pleasures of the present are deeper as well as wiser than the noisy, foolish hustle which passed for enjoyment in the days of old. (88)

Doyle was, it seems, more influenced by his own notoriously credulous spiritualist beliefs than anything else. With the advent of war, however, Belt became timely in a way that its author apparently did not predict. Here was the armageddon Doyle’s characters had longed for. Reading Belt, it seems that their was already something in the air, that Europe could see it coming, and was bracing itself for death on a wider scale than had ever been seen. Think of this novel as a straw in the wind, a demonstration of Raymond Williams’ concept of the structure of feeling, which is given expression in literature before becoming an acknowledged part of the general experience.

Hero and Master: Carlyle and Žižek

Carlyle’s theory of the Hero no longer enjoys much in the way of scholarly repute. “Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here” is not a formulation to which many modern thinkers would subscribe. Famously, of course, it enjoyed considerable currency in the 19th century, and its shadows can perhaps be seen later in Freud’s speculative account of human history in Totem and Taboo (1913), wherein primitive history is indeed controlled by an all-powerful despotic leader, albeit one who had to be overthrown and murdered to make way for a more democratic leadership. History, for Freud and other anthropologists of the era like Frazer, had been the history of Great Men, but modern history had moved away from the paradigm.

But perhaps the Hero or Great Man isn’t dead. Perhaps if we consider the more acceptably theoretical figure of the master we will discover echoes of Carlyle’s concept. The master is often associated with Jacques Lacan. As well As Lacan’s theory of the “discourse of the master”, there is also his assertion, often quoted by Slavoj Žižek, that the revolutionaries of 1968 in Paris were “hysterics who demand[ed] a new master.” It would appear, then, that even when the master disappears from history, he remains in the human unconscious, even that of the most revolutionary subjects.

And Žižek himself is very much alive to this feature of our unconscious. Trouble in Paradise (2014) has a subsection entitled “Towards a New Master” in which he argues for the historical necessity for a master. It is the role of the master to “simplify [the situation] into a point of decision” (179). Žižek is explicit that in making the necessary decision, the master is bound by neither rationality nor by democracy. His historical example is De Gaulle, who claimed in 1940 to speak “on behalf of true France” even though he had no popular mandate (and, Žižek points out, had a democratic vote been possible, the Nazi-collaborator Petain would have won it). Žižek’s point is that De Gaulle’s assumption of the master role as the one who speaks for true France was unarguably for the greater good, and that a democratic approach here would have been been a disaster.

With reference to contemporary politics, Žižek again calls for a master, a “Thatcher of the left”, as only such a figure can transform “the entire field of presuppositions” (185) and create room for radical change. It is not that ultimate power will come to rest in the hands of the master, but that in the intermediary stage the voice of the master is key. And how to produce a master? Even Carlyle didn’t think that the Hero entirely produced himself from nothing: “No man works save under conditions. The sculptor cannot set his own free Thought before us; but his Thought as he could translate it into the stone that was given, with the tools that were given.” So to help free the space in which the master may speak, Zizek insists that “we should shamelessly reassert the idea of ‘vanguard'” (185). How we do this is not clear.

But the point is that the superior individual is central both to Žižek and to Carlyle. The difference is that for the latter he is the locus of absolute power and for the former he is a sort of vanishing mediator who ushers in the revolution then fades into the background. This is a surprisingly idealistic view of the master from Žižek. Where are we to find such masters, with the wisdom to provide guidance and the humility to step away from power at the right moment? Perhaps we don’t have the embodiment, but we have kept alive a certain ideal, and a moment may yet come when it can be put into practice.

The Stark Munro Letters (1895)

This book, now available free on Kindle, is one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s lesser-known works – a large category including all of Doyle’s considerable output bar the Sherlock Holmes stories and dino-adventure story The Lost World. This particular one is from 1895, a time when Conan Doyle had killed off Holmes (only to bring him back a few years later) and was consciously trying to do more “serious” work – like many very popular writers he became obsessed with being “serious”. In line with this ambition, The Stark Munro Letters is a bildungsroman, or coming of age story, which is as focused on articulation of the intellectual development of the title character as on his actions. Stark Munro is an obviously autobiographical character – he is a newly qualified small-town doctor struggling to make ends meet, just as Doyle was in the early 1880s (the time in which the book is set).

There’s a degree of plot external to Munro’s musings, mostly concerned with fellow doctor James Cullingworth, based on Conan Doyle’s onetime friend George Budd. Cullingworth is a man of great charisma and energy, but also selfish, unreliable, and even somewhat vindictive. He seems to be another rumination by Conan Doyle on the Carlylean Hero doctrine, though a more ambivalent one than Holmes. Though Cullingworth is a Hero in the sense of being a man of many and great talents, he turns out not to have the moral fibre integral to the Hero. Cullingworth himself expounds a theory of the “properly balanced man” that is reminiscent of Carlyle:

A properly balanced man can do anything he sets his hand to. He’s got every possible quality inside him, and all he wants is the will to develop it. (loc 1144)

Cullingworth considers himself, as well as a doctor, a novelist and an inventor, and is convinced of his own mastery of all these fields. Recall Carlyle:

The grand fundamental character is that of Great Man; that the man be great. Napoleon has words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles […]. burns, a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better Mirabeau. (On Heroes, loc 1113)

Doyle subverts this theory by putting it in the mouth of the unreliable Cullingworth, and by Munro’s judgement that Cullingworth’s novel is actually of inferior quality, and his inventions lacking in practical utility. Elsewhere in the novel, Munro reflects on Genius, and considers Carlyle’s line that genius is “transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all” (Frederick the Great, Kindle: Library of Alexandria, loc 4882):

Carlyle’s definition always seemed to me to be a very crisp and clear statement of what it is NOT. Far from its being an infinite capacity for taking pains, its leading characteristic, as far as I have ever been able to observe it, has been that it allows the possessor of it to attain results by a sort of instinct which other men could only reach by hard work. (loc 48)

The reader may recall that Holmes also deals with this definition, but without referencing Carlyle explicitly: “They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains […]. It’s a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.” (A Study in Scarlet, Chapter 3) Holmes is evidently acting as a mouthpiece for Conan Doyle here, as is Munro later. Conan Doyle did not believe genius was predominantly about effort. Instead, he is interested in greatness as an intrinsic trait, as, in truth, was Carlyle, notwithstanding his emphasis in the quote from Frederick on “taking trouble”. Considering both Holmes and some Carlylean Heroes, it appears that intrinsic talent and work tend to go together, anyway: the Hero unites natural talent with moral fibre; the said moral fibre will compel him to work at his talent, and so achieve greatness. Holmes is both gifted and industrious: he finds his gift for “observation and inference” (“The Gloria Scott”) early in life, and hones it assiduously thereafter.

There’s another passage of reflection from Stark Munro closely recalling the great detective:

Most things on this earth, from a woman’s beauty to the taste of a nectarine, seem to be the various baits with which Nature lures her silly gudgeons. They shall eat, they shall propagate, and for the sake of pleasing themselves they shall hurry down the road which has been laid out for them. But there lurks no bribe in the smell and beauty of the flower. Its charm has no ulterior motive. (loc 1667)

Holmes makes similar remarks in “The Naval Treaty”, but goes so far as to conclude that “[o]ur highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers.” This has always struck me as an odd comment for the character to make, though it’s interesting that he makes it before several other characters involved in the case; it’s unusual for Holmes to become distracted before clients/suspects in this way and start musing on irrelevancies.  Several scholars have written about this passage, and been puzzled by it, but none that I’ve read have mentioned the speaking-before-clients/suspects aspect. There may be something else going on with Holmes here, beyond a genuine expression of his worldview. He may be stalling as he sizes up the suspects or the case. As I wrote earlier, Holmes’ advocacy for Winwood Reade in The Sign of Four indicates a sceptical viewpoint, at least towards conventional theistic ideas.

In The Stark Munro Letters Conan Doyle goes more substantially into religious questions than other early works. He has two basic convictions that he’s trying to work with and develop:

1 Religion in its then current state is inadequate and a tissue of half-truths and outmoded superstitions: “Is religion the only domain of thought which is non-progressive, and to be referred for ever to a standard set two thousand years ago?” (loc 206) “There was a time when it took a brave man to be a Christian. Now it takes a brave man not to be.” (loc 539)

2 Atheism is unthinkable: “The very existence of a world carries with it the proof of a world-maker, as the table guarantees the pre-existence of the carpenter. Granting this, one may form what conception one will of that Maker, but one cannot be an atheist.” (loc 414)

The second point is rather problematic, as Munro simply chooses an object for which we know there to be a creator (a table; creator: a carpenter), rather than one of the myriad objects which are not made by any identifiable entity (e.g. a rock) and gives this as proof that all things have a Maker. It doesn’t take a philosopher to identify this as sloppy thinking; to which, in truth, Conan Doyle was quite prone. In any case, this is only the beginning for Munro. If Christianity is definitely misguided, but there definitely is a God, then how to comprehend and describe this deity? This is, undoubtedly, the difficult part. Where is the intellectual scheme that will make such a move possible? Here again we see the importance of Carlyle, now referenced directly by Stark Munro:

I had so identified religion with the Bible that I could not conceive them apart. When the foundation proved false, the whole structure came rattling about my ears. And then good old Carlyle came to the rescue; and partly from him, and partly from my own broodings, I made a little hut of my own, which has kept me snug ever since, and has even served to shelter a friend or two besides. (loc 402)

Munro’s religion is based on Nature: “Nature is the true revelation of the deity to man.” (loc 410) By attention to Nature, one can observe that “[w]isdom and power and means directed to an end” (loc 415) are everywhere apparent. One further  notes that “ALL is good, if understood” (loc 886). Munro reflects that “it is fine to think that sin may have an object and work towards good” (loc 923). Munro accepted that evolution explained development of biological organisms, but evolution was effect before it was cause (loc 421). There was something before and behind even this:

The survival of the truest is the constant law, I fancy, though it must be acknowledged that it is very slow in action. (loc 1515)

No; let me be frank, and say that I can’t make cruelty fit into my scheme. But when you find that other evils, which seem at first sight black enough, really tend in the long run to the good of mankind, it may be hoped that those which continue to puzzle us may at last be found to serve the same end in some fashion which is now inexplicable. (loc 857)

Munro’s philosophy is resolutely positive, it’s all about the “survival of the truest” and so forth. There’s no empirical evidence for this, though, as Munro implicitly admits when he notes that it’s “very slow in action”, and again in his discussion of cruelty. It’s very much a “leap of faith” doctrine, rather than one rooted in observation of the workings of the world and of Nature, as is claimed. The will to faith was strong in Conan Doyle, and the foreshadowing of his later spiritualist leanings are already very clear in Stark Munro, with its insistence on the divinity and moral purpose of all things, even where empirical evidence suggests quite otherwise.

In reviewing the book, I’ve written as if my experience of the book was very much abstracted from the reading of fiction as narrative, and focused on fiction as elucidation of ideas. But in fact, as a narrative I found this book very readable and interesting. I’m a sucker for late 19th-c., early 20th-c. bildungsromans: David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Portrait of the Artist, Of Human Bondage, This Side of Paradise, Tono-Bungay; more recently,  I discovered Paul Kelver by Jerome K. Jerome (definitely not a classic, but one I still found plenty of interest in). Given that predilection, I was always going to enjoy Stark Munro, especially given the vitality and simple elegance of Conan Doyle’s prose. For all his insight and storytelling powers, though, the philosophy he tried to impose on life was, basically, bosh, and it was for this that he wanted the book to be judged. Some may find Holmes’ “true cold reason” a little arid, but Conan Doyle could with profit have applied a little of it to his own arguments in The Stark Munro Letters.

“The Religious Opinions of Sherlock Holmes”, A Case of Witchcraft http://acaseofwitchcraft.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/the-religious-opinions-of-sherlock-holmes/

Sherlock Holmes, The Lovable Quack

Mastermind: How to Think like Sherlock Holmes is a recently published book by a PhD in psychology, Maria Konnikova. I’m studying the Holmes stories and their adaptations at the moment and Mastermind was going pretty cheap as an ebook, so I’ve had a look, and it’s got me thinking about the attraction of Holmes to many people, myself included. Konnikova theorizes two models of mind: the Watson system and the Holmes system. I won’t go into detail, as anyone familiar with Holmes and Watson can figure out the basic points of the contrast. As an early-stage academic writer and researcher in the humanities, one conclusion I’ve reached about my intellectual tendencies is that I’m more interested in specific analysis than generalizable theorizing. I sometimes recall the words of Carlyle on this:

[W]hat theory is so certain as this, That all theories, were they never so earnest, painfully elaborated, are, and, by the very conditions of them, must be incomplete, questionable and even false? (French Revolution, Vol. 1,Bk. 2, Ch. 7)

So rather than a general theory of mind and reductive binary categorization, I was interested in specific analyses of Sherlockian techniques or moments, of which Mastermind has some interesting ones, and some less so. The thing that struck me, though, and not for the first time, was how poorly Holmes’ own techniques often demonstrate his principles.  Holmes’ principles are excellent; ones quite applicable to my own occupation as well (I suggest):

It is a grand mistake to theorize before one has the facts. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (A Scandal in Bohemia)

The temptation to form theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. (The Valley of Fear, Bk. 1, Ch. 2)

His uncompromising commitment to “severe reasoning from cause to effect” (The Copper Beeches”) is likewise impressive, as is the impartiality with which he tackles all fields of knowledge – a true interdisciplinarian; his ultimate aim is the simple yet profound one of seeing “all things […] exactly as they are” (The Greek Interpreter)  while his independence from all institutionalized forms of power marks him out as a true Hero, in the Carlylean sense. If we take Carlyle’s definition that: “A Hero, as I repeat, has this first distinction, […] That he looks through the shows of things into things.” (On Heroes, lecture 1) we find that Holmes fits it very well.

And yet, Holmes’ actual methods, far from eliminating the impossible through the use of severe reasoning, are often based on less secure grounds, sometimes the most crass generalizing. The only reason one can read Conan Doyle’s stories without paying much attention to this is that Holmes does always turn out to be right, simply because the narratives are constructed to reinforce the idea of his great intellect. So, Holmes can receive a telegram and announce that it is from a man, giving his reason as follows:

No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram. She would have come. (Wisteria Lodge)

He has eliminated the idea of a woman sending a telegram as impossible! Thus, of course, it had to be a man. And it does turn out to be a man, but that is no testament to Holmes’ assumption being a safe one, simply to Conan Doyle’s commitment to showing Holmes as an (almost) infallible genius – and, perhaps, his lack of commitment to coming up with properly thought-out demonstrations of this. An even more egregious example of Holmes’ presumptuousness is from The Blue Carbuncle. He can declare that a large hat he finds must be the possession of an “intellectual”. Why?: “‘It is a question of cubic capacity,’ said he. ‘A man with so large a brain must have something in it.'” It has been said that Holmes’ reasoning is effectively not deductive but abductive, or reasoning to the best explanation, but often he falls far below even this lesser standard.

Holmes, in short, is something of a quack, setting up as a professional science what often amounts to simple jumping to conclusions based on generalisations. Yet we all still love Holmes. Even I do. It is perhaps rather pedantic to find fault in the way I have done. This is not a real person, after all, but a fictional character. By his manner, his attitudes, his wit, and his explication of a certain worldview and a certain way of being-in-the-world, he fulfils our idea of a Hero. But also he quite nicely illustrates, as, probably, do most acknowledged real-life heroes, the difference between appearing to be heroic, and actually putting that into practice. So anyone intent on being “system Holmes” 24-7 should realize that not only is it a hard thing to be, it proved impossible to even write for Conan Doyle, whose Holmes is really most Holmes when he’s talking about being Holmes, rather than being Holmes.