This piece was originally posted on the blog The Groovy Age of Horror in four parts (1, 2, 3, 4) and is reprinted here in it’s entirety under a new title with the permission of the author.
Part 1
Over at Eurotrash Paradise, Ade Salmon calls our attention to this article , “Why horror writing will be big in 2007.” The funny thing is, despite the title, the writers mentioned seem to disavow the horror genre, refuse to be identified as horror writers, and can’t seem to bring themselves even to use the word without distaste and condescension.
The high road in horror may be more fashionable at the moment, and it’s always more respectable, and the article suggests it’s a stronger market right now. I prefer the low road. I believe that, just as in Dante’s Divine Comedy, it leads to higher heights than the high road ever could. I’d like to lay out here what I see as the advantages and promise of the low road. I’ll correspondingly point out some seldom-acknowledged sacrifices and dangers of the high road, and try to debunk as rigorously as I can its supposed superiority, especially where horror is concerned.
Jahsonic’s “Nobrow” Stance
Jan has given so much attention to questions of high and low culture, art, and writing on his blog, it really is the perfect place to start.
As an obviously very cultured and literate guy who yet loves much that would be considered low in culture and literature, he’s personally torn by the division and its resulting tensions. He’s arrived at an uneasy middle ground that he calls a “nobrow” position, which he explains thus:
“Being nobrow is about knowing the entire corpus of the literature. If you only know two colors, let’s say green and blue, you can’t call yourself an expert on colors. Likewise, if you only know highbrow literature, you can hardly call yourself an expert on literature or literary merit. The first thing you need to know if you claim you have any taste at all, is the corpus. And this is indeed the big paradox of the nobrow position. You can only call yourself nobrow if you know the corpus of both high and low culture. And then you have to make your own choices. If you only know high culture, you are not nobrow. If you only know low culture, you are not nobrow. In practice, this means, that for being a nobrow person, you come from the highbrow position.”
He adds,
“Jahsonic.com aims to show that good works can be found in high and low literary genres, and the more interesting works are to be found where high and low intersect (Cervantes, Stephen King, Simenon, Georges Bataille, . . .).”
That’s not bad, but I don’t think even Jan is entirely satisfied with it. He’s not happy to find himself without an answer to the question, “But what on earth is there to be told about writers such as Danielle Steele and Barbara Cartland?” He writes, “Every time someone displays a patronizingly superior attitude towards Stephen King, my nobrow instincts rise up and I feel the snobbishness as if it was directed towards me.” But I can’t imagine he’s any more pleased by the patronizingly superior attitude King himself now directs toward the horror genre–the article mentions that King’s editor “sniffs” [my emphasis], “Steve does not see himself as a ‘horror’ writer.” The other writers mentioned in that article are explicitly positioned at the intersection of high and low that Jan favors, but the effect is spoiled by their apparent testiness about the low facets of their work.
The common thread in all of this points to a single lack that must be filled: we need a truly positive account of low culture, in this case specifically of genre fiction. Without such an account, what, really, is the basis for a nobrow position? With such an account, we’ll not only have a better sense of what, exactly, genre fiction has to offer in any intersection with literary fiction, but we’ll also see the value of genre fiction in its own right–to the point that it may even be more interesting to see just where the low road can take us if we follow it to the end, as far from the high road as it’s possible to go.
Part 2
What Lies Beneath Genre and Literary Fiction
When most fans try to defend genre fiction, they have an unfortunate tendency to hold up the most atypical examples–those that are most like mainstream or literary fiction. The implication is that genre fiction at its most typical really can’t be defended, and has no merit. That will not be my approach. What I offer here is a positive account of genre fiction at its most typical, a defense of it at its most supposedly indefensible.
Critics fault genre fiction for a remarkably consistent set of characteristic flaws:
- emphasis on story
- formulaic
- stock, undeveloped characters
- melodramatic
- unrealistic
- “comforts, satisfies, and reassures audiences’ expectations”
By contrast, literary fiction is lauded for a similarly characteristic set of corresponding virtues:
- emphasis on character, idea, and style
- original, eschewing formula
- distinctly individual characters of psychological complexity
- subtle
- realistic
- “challenges and questions audiences’ expectations”
(I’d note that in a broader artistic discussion, the low term would also be characterized as more visual–movies, television, comics, illustrated fiction–whereas the high would be characterized as more verbal and conceptual–unillustrated literature, modern and postmodern art.)
I say these sets are “remarkably” consistent because, if you just stop to look at them, they’re really quite hodgepodge; it’s not immediately clear what they have in common that makes them so likely to occur and recur together as characteristic sets. Why should horror, romances, westerns, and mysteries all be typified by just this same cluster of various flaws, while so much that doesn’t fit those categories is typified by just this shared cluster of odd virtues?
It turns out, there is a real basis for these dichotomous groupings. Mature humans in literate modern societies have two fundamentally different modes of
cognitive/emotional/psychological processing available to them. Everything that characterizes genre fiction derives from one, and everything that characterizes literary fiction derives from the other.
Freud called these dual modes of mental processing “primary” and “secondary,” because:
“the primary processes are present in the [psychic] apparatus from the beginning, while the secondary processes develop gradually in the course of life, inhibiting and covering the primary ones, and gaining complete mastery over them perhaps only at the height of life.”
The primary process is thus subordinated but not obliterated through maturation. It continues to operate in the psyche, governing unconscious life. It finds continued expression in dreams, slips of the tongue and other unconscious behavior, and various culturally accepted and designated outlets ranging from humor to religion.
Many of Freud’s ideas have been contested or rejected, of course, but this one has found fairly broad acceptance. Richard Lazarus, from the very different perspective of cognitive psychology, affirms the need for some dual-mode account of processing, and explicitly names Freud’s theory of primary and secondary process as one helpful account:
“The terms primary process and secondary process were used by Freud to refer to primitive, wishful logic in very young children on the one hand, and reality-oriented, ego processes, which develop later in life through maturation and experience with the world, on the other. Rational rules govern secondary process thinking, whereas irrational rules govern the primary process; thus, primary process thinking is fragmented, condensed, and magical–as it is in dreams and psychosis. “
Lazarus adds that, “Freud was not the only theorist to think in this way,” and mentions Werner and Piaget as others who documented striking differences between developmentally distinct earlier and later modes of cognitive processing.
From yet another perspective, Gisela Labouvie-Vief et al. write:
“The expression and regulation of behavior occurs within a duality of two modes of control. On the one hand, biology equips the individual with response systems constrained by homeostatic laws. On the other hand, participation in culture demands that these organismic systems be transformed and integrated with outer cultural demands. The transfer from one set of processes to the other forms the major theme of theories of cognitive and interpersonal development. As the individual’s cognitive capacities mature, regulations occur less often in terms of the urgent dictates of individual homeostasis and more often in terms of shared cultural rule and symbol systems.
Theories of cognitive development from childhood to adulthood implicitly assume that this tranfer process is a smooth one. Initial organismic response systems, in being transformed, are absorbed into more complex cognitive ones and eventuate in a mature regulation system that provides equilibrium and integration. Theories concerned with psychodynamic processes have not yielded such a serene picture, however. They suggest that what cognitive psychologists construe as a closed equilibrium system can be, in fact, a conflicted coexistence of two modes of regulation–primary and secondary process. These modes are only precariously integrated and often compete for control.”
In short, we’ve got these two modes of cognitive processing. One is more innate, organismic, and primitive; it’s associated with childhood, basically because it’s the only one children have to work with, although it remains operative on one level or another for the entire lifespan (ineradicably, since it is, after all, our instinctual “default” system). The other is more learned, cultural, and developed; it’s associated with adulthood in literate modern societies, because adults are expected to conduct themselves according to its strictures, at least in public, although the primary mode does also remain available to them.
My claim is that genre fiction tends to be characterized by primary process, and literary fiction tends to be characterized by secondary process. That “tends to” qualification is necessary, because there is some bleed and memetic cross-pollination–for example, in the writers mentioned in the article who draw inspiration from both horror and literary sources. Nevertheless, genre fiction at its most typical exhibits all the earmarks of primary process, and literary fiction at its most typical bears the stamp of secondary process, The clearer we remain about that, the better we’ll be able to appreciate what both literary and genre fiction may contribute at any point of intersection.
This might seem like a strange approach to the goal I stated at the outset, of providing a truly positive account of genre fiction. I’m linking genre fiction here to a mode of cognitive processing that is often disparaged as primitive, childish, and irrational–in other words, inferior. How does that help my case? Here’s how: once we understand why primary process is looked down upon, we’ll see that there is absolutely no good reason for doing so. Quite the contrary, in fact.
That general argument will be the substance of my next post. After that, I’m going to show at length and in detail how the characteristics of genre fiction listed above all derive from primary process thinking. Since I’ll have already argued for a more positive understanding of primary process in general, we should be ready by that point to see them in a clearer light, and I’ll explain the legitimate aesthetic possibilities inherent in those so-called flaws. And don’t worry, folks–after that, I will come specifically to horror! Stay tuned, and stay groovy!
Part 3
Primary and Secondary Process: A Lateral View
So far I’ve argued that the characteristics that typify genre fiction and literary fiction derive from primary process and secondary process, respectively. That explains what each set of characteristics has in common, and also why the sets form such a stark dichotomy.
It also begins to explain why so many critics and creators despise the genre characteristics as vices, and praise the literary characteristics as virtues. Primary process tends to be disparaged as low, childish, and primitive, whereas secondary process tends to be esteemed as elevated, mature, and sophisticated.
Now, let’s be clear–I’m not claiming that critics or anyone else hold these attitudes in terms of “primary process” and “secondary process.” I’m using those technical terms as shorthand for everything that falls within two broad modes of cognitive/emotional/psychological processing. The truth is, most people, even most critics, just see certain forms of thought or expression as childish or mature, primitive or sophisticated, etc., and that’s all there is to it, as far as they’re concerned.
Anyway, I’d argue that this bias against primary process in favor of secondary process is a groundless prejudice that commonly emerges, for reasons that aren’t hard to understand, in the natural course of our development. What’s more, it’s a prejudice that further development should correct, but often doesn’t.
Freud remarks that we have a natural tendency to form a repressive, antagonistic “defence against a phase of development that has been surmounted.” His favorite example to illustrate this is when “the gods of a superseded period of civilization turn into demons.” I’d suggest that this quirk of human psychology is what gives rise to the prejudice against primary process and everything it characterizes.
Here’s a very simple example. Let’s say I’m a child. Before I learn to read, the only things in books that speak to me are pictures. As I begin to learn to read, I rely on the pictures to give me information, and from that, I begin to grasp the simple words that accompany them. A gradual reversal takes place, where I look more and more to the words for meaning and information; the books I read have fewer pictures, and the illustrations begin to function more like training wheels on a bike–they merely confirm what I’m drawing from the words. Eventually, I reach a point where I don’t need pictures either to sustain my attention or to supply any information. I can gather all the meaning and information from the words themselves. I’m a big boy–I can read!
Now, this is quite an accomplishment, and one that any child should feel proud of. Often, though, there’s an unfortunate side effect–illustrated text now represents something the child has gotten beyond. That stuff’s for babies! And to reinforce the notion, there’s little brother, flipping through a picture book because he can’t read like I can. Is there anything inherently childish or inferior about illustrated text? Of course not. But that’s the impression that emerges all too naturally from such a course of development.
That’s not all, though. Secondary process is necessary for full adulthood in literate modern civilization, but it’s only acquired through long and difficult learning, discipline, and training. It presents itself initially as something alien and even hostile to the child, who is quite content with the natural, comfortable, and familiar primary process. Inevitably, achievement toward secondary process is praised and rewarded, and continued reliance on primary process is disparaged and even shamed, to spur the child to take the arduous steps toward acquiring the secondary process.
What’s more, primary process can never be finally conquered or dispelled, because it’s rooted so deeply in our instinctual lives as organisms. That means secondary process is never entirely secure as the dominant mode. Reversion to primary process (i.e. regression) always remains a possibility, and by its nature, a temptation. Now, there are many contexts in modern adult life where primary process is absolutely very appropriately subordinated to secondary process–the world of work being probably the paradigm example. In these contexts, it takes continued discipline and energy to be a professional, rational, competent, polite, reality-based grown-up, and sometimes we have to admonish ourselves or others for inappropriate lapses. Again, though, the necessary and legitimate stigmatization of primary process in inappropriate contexts has an unfortunate tendency to foster a stigmatization that is more general or even absolute.
Considering such factors, it’s no wonder we tend to view primary and secondary process in terms of a vertical, polar hierarchy. Primary process appears childish and primitive, something of low or negative value to be outgrown and left behind by individuals and cultures. Secondary process becomes the exclusive measure of individual and cultural achievement. What I hope I’ve shown here is that this bias emerges as the outcome of certain dynamics that tend to skew our perspective even as they drive our development.
Gisela Labouvie-Vief et al. actually see this alienation from primary process as the natural cost of one stage of development. And they do see it as a cost. They see the acquisition of secondary process as entailing not only gain, but also significant loss. That loss, specifically, involves a “devaluation of the inner, subjective, and organic,” and a disconnect from “meaning systems that originate in the organismic, the sensorimotor, the figurative, the dynamic, and the personal.”
Fortunately, that cost can be recuperated–and should be, in further development, in a subsequent stage of reconnection with the “organismic core of meaning.” Labouvie-Vief et al. argue that, once the secondary process has been acquired, the primary process must come to be appreciated, embraced, and reintegrated all over again, from the vantage of maturity. Full maturity has not yet been achieved, on this view, so long as the individual persists in a generally negative attitude toward primary process, and regards “a whole mode of potentially adaptive adult functioning . . . only in pejorative terms.” Further development, they argue, properly replaces the hierarchical view with a view according to which:
“[Primary and secondary process] constitute two irreducible forms of knowing, experiencing, and processing. One of them provides structured closure, stability, and precision; the other, dynamic openness, richness and personal significance. Thus the two modes are laterally organized, and they cooperate in a mutually enriching exchange.”
A Positive Account of Genre Fiction
To say that genre fiction at its most typical is characterized by primary process is to say that it’s oriented toward that “organismic core of meaning.”
That lends it a kind of immediate, near-universal accessibility. This is what critics sneer at as “mass” or “popular” appeal, and it’s why, as Jahsonic points out, genre fiction travels and translates so well.
This orientation also lends heat, vitality, a deeply human pulse.
Ultimately, it means that genre fiction not only doesn’t achieve literary ideals, but doesn’t even aim for them. Genre fiction’s orientation, diametrically opposed to that of literary fiction, suggests different ideals altogether. And if we accept the lateral view of primary and secondary process outlined above, we must recognize that the ideals of genre fiction are, in fact, legitimate ideals. They emphasize intensity of experience, warming oneself at the radiant core of life, unleashing the id, connecting with the archetypal and reconnecting with the primal. These, in my judgement, represent the promise of genre fiction at its “lowest,” and its own measures of excellence. These are what I aspire to in my own writing, and why I’ve chosen the lowest roads through horror: sex, violence, and the supernatural.
The funny thing is, just as primary process may be embraced both before and after acquisition of secondary process, so genre fiction can be created and appreciated “on both sides” of literary fiction. Many people, “the masses,” only establish the secondary process in themselves to the minimal, rudimentary degree necessary to function in modern society, and then cultivate it no further. For them (and I know how condescending this will sound, but tough shit–it’s the truth) reversion to primary process may be very easy, comfortable, and natural, so that hacking out genre fiction or enjoying it would pose no difficulty whatsoever.
For someone who has more drastically transformed their personality and cognitive style, on the other hand, secondary process may feel much more like second nature; it may be much more difficult to relax and regress to a point where primary process may be accessed and indulged, and genre fiction may be created or enjoyed. And yet, this capacity to relax and regress to primary process does represent a higher stage of maturity than a rigid clinging to secondary process.
Critics who disdain genre fiction out of hand, and writers who scorn to create it, thus reveal not an elevated taste or any special sophistication, but rather a kind of immaturity and psychological rigidity. They cling to a prejudice founded upon a fallacy that emerges from a middle stage of development. They’re stuck at the stage of having acquired secondary process–perhaps to a remarkable degree–but haven’t taken the next step of recuperating what’s worthwhile in primary process. A more mature critical attitude, one that has made that reconnection, rather manifests a healthy flexibility described by Ernst Kris as,
I think this truly positive account of genre fiction is what’s needed to put Jahsonic’s “nobrow” position on its firmest footing. I’m no more interested in Danielle Steele than Jan is, but now we’re in a position to say something about her–at least to the extent that we’re in a position to say something about genre fiction in general. Likewise, when Jan likens exclusively highbrow critics to someone who “only know[s] two colors, let’s say green and blue,” we’re now in a position to complete that metaphor by filling in the blanks of what the other colors represent that are missing from that palette–the warm colors, appropriately enough!
This completes the fundamental argument I’d like to make about genre fiction and its merits. In future posts in this series, I’ll elaborate more specifically how the various characteristics that typify genre fiction derive from primary process, and the possibilities they hold for excellence, contrary to the view of most critics who see them only as flaws. And, of course, eventually I’ll get to horror. Stay tuned!
Part 4
Formula, Convention and Cliché: Repetition in Genre Fiction
I love genre fiction and find it endlessly fascinating. As someone who’s devoted much thought and study to understanding it, I think it deserves much better than the low estimation in which it’s often held–to some degree, even by its fans. A while back, I did a series of posts presenting some of my ideas in defense of genre fiction. This post is a somewhat loose and indirect continuation of those, but what remains absolutely constant here is my view that genre fiction should be defended on its own terms, and not on the high-handed terms of literary fiction that are so often imposed upon it:
“When most fans try to defend genre fiction, they have an unfortunate tendency to hold up the most atypical examples–those that are most like mainstream or literary fiction. The implication is that genre fiction at its most typical really can’t be defended, and has no merit. That will not be my approach. What I offer here is a positive account of genre fiction at its most typical, a defense of it at its most supposedly indefensible.”
My purpose here, then, is to offer a positive account of repetition in genre fiction. I intend to show not only how and why repetition appeals to fans, but also how and why it’s uniquely capable of producing certain qualities of excellence. Fans, I hope, will come away with a greater understanding and appreciation of the genre fiction they love, and will embrace it more confidently and less apologetically, more as a pleasure–period–and less as a “guilty” pleasure. Critics and those of a more literary persuasion will, I hope, come away with something to think about, and a lot less smug condescension. There are a fair number of creators who try to combine genre and literary elements; I think they tend to have a better understanding of what the literary elements bring to the equation, and I hope they’ll come away from this with a stronger sense of what the genre elements might contribute.
I. Story as the Basis for Repetition
In order to understand the functions and value of repetition, it will be helpful to see how it’s related to another much-maligned aspect of genre fiction–an emphasis on story. Genre fiction, at its most typical and at its heart, tells stories. Literary fiction, by contrast, typically disdains story in favor of other emphases–character, idea, mood, style, form, etc. The literary contempt for story most often finds expression through implication, omission, and neglect, but E. M. Forster delivers a startlingly cheap and mean-spirited rant against what he calls “this low atavistic form” in Aspects of the Novel:
“For the more we look at the story (the story that is a story, mind), the more we disentangle it from the finer growths that it supports, the less shall we find to admire. It runs like a backbone–or may I say a tapeworm, for its beginning and end are arbitrary. It is immensely old–goes back to neolithic times, perhaps to paleolithic. Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping round the campfire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or the woolly rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? . . .We are all like Scheherazade’s husband, in that we want to know what happens next. That is universal and that is why the backbone of a novel has to be a story. Some of us want to know nothing else–there is nothing in us but primeval curiosity, and consequently our other literary judgments are ludicrous. And now the story can be defined. It is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence–dinner coming after breakfast, Tuesday after Monday, decay after death, and so on. Qua story, it can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next. These are the only two criticisms that can be made on the story that is a story. It is the lowest and simplest of literary organisms. Yet it is the highest factor common to all the very complicated organisms known as novels.
When we isolate the story like this from the nobler aspects through which it moves, and hold it out on the forceps–wriggling and interminable, the naked worm of time–it presents an appearance that is both unlovely and dull.”
I’d speculate that story was probably one of the earliest cognitive techniques our ancestors employed to manage larger and larger amounts of information as they were developing the full human consciousness we now enjoy. At its most rudimentary, story takes a stretch of experience or sequence of events that exceeds the capacity of working memory, and compresses it into one or more chunks that are much more manageable for working memory. I’d hazard a guess that this was story’s earliest and most primitive function. This mnemonic compression turns out to serve other functions, though–it encodes unique and fleeting subjective experience (whether real, imagined, or invented) into something objective that can be repeated, transmitted, evaluated, and modified.
It is, then, in the very nature of stories to be told, enjoyed (or not), improved upon (or not), and retold. This is the basis for the repetition of elements that is the hallmark of genre fiction. But just because story provides a basis for such a repetition of elements, that doesn’t explain why we do it, why we like it, or what value it may impart. The rest of this essay will be devoted to answering such questions.
II. Repetition as Pleasurable in Itself
I used to work at a Borders bookstore, and one of my co-workers would, on a regular basis, purchase a whole hand-basket-full of romance novels–usually all belonging to some very specific subgenre-niche, usually with some single word common to all the titles and signaling the theme of the niche. To anyone unfamiliar with genre fiction, it must have looked like she would be reading pretty much the same story over and over again, thirty times or thereabouts (however many mass market paperbacks can fit in one of those hand-baskets). In a number of senses I’ll discuss in later sections, that impression would be wrong, but in a very fundamental sense, it’s absolutely right. And I do that myself. Consider, for example, the interest I’ve taken in sleaze paperbacks about swappers (can it get any niche-ier than that?), or in nurse novels, or in giallo films. I routinely go on these kicks, where I find something I like, and crave as much more of the same as I can get my hands on.
Freud observed that, generally speaking, children take great delight in repetition, whereas most adults find it tiresome:
“Nor can children have their pleasurable experiences repeated often enough, and they are inexorable in their insistence that the repetition shall be an identical one. This character trait disappears later on. If a joke is heard for a second time it produces almost no effect; a theatrical production never creates so great an impression the second time as the first; indeed, it is hardly possible to persuade an adult who has very much enjoyed reading a book to re-read it immediately. Novelty is always the condition for enjoyment. But children will never tire of asking an adult to repeat a game that he has shown them or played with them, till he is too exhausted to go on. And if a child has been told a nice story, he will insist on hearing it over and over again rather than a new one; and he will remorselessly stipulate that the repetition shall be an identical one and will correct any alterations of which the narrator may be guilty–though they may actually have been made in the hope of gaining fresh approval.”
“The difference between men and animals is repression. Under conditions of repression, the repetition-compulsion establishes a fixation to the past, which alienates the neurotic from the present and commits him to the unconscious quest for the past in the future. Thus neurosis exhibits the quest for novelty, but underlying it, at the level of instincts, is the compulsion to repeat. In man, the neurotic animal, the instinctual compulsion to repeat turns into its opposite, the quest for novelty, and the unconscious aim of the quest for novelty is repetition.”
I think the repetition of elements in genre fiction speaks to and reawakens this primal pleasure in repetition, and fans like my co-worker with her romance novels or myself with all my little mini-obsessions are just enjoying it. There’s nothing in it to look down upon or apologize for, and indeed, as Brown suggests above, there’s actually something unhealthy about someone who would sneer at such a simple pleasure–who couldn’t understand or appreciate it, much less indulge in it or enjoy it themselves.
III. Repetition as Ritual
Ritual, when repeated or repetitive, is usually not just repetition for its own sake; it is often a cue that prepares the mind for a special kind of experience. It is a threshold that we step across into another kind of space or world. Religious ritual primes us to encounter the sacred. Coming-of-age rites propel one into the new life of adulthood. Not all rituals are as grave as that suggests–when we demarcate a field for an organized sport, enter it with the specialized paraphernalia, and agree to be bound by stipulated rules, there’s a ritualistic quality to it all that opens a special world for us in which we may play.
I think the conventions of a genre serve a similar function. They establish the world of the genre, but they also take us there, if we let them. They cue our minds and open a space for us in which certain kinds of fantasy may unfold. This is one reason, I think, why fans may sometimes experience intense immersion in something of even mediocre quality, whereas someone unfamiliar with a genre may feel excluded from it at first, as if they were observing the ceremony of a foreign culture or faith.
IV. Repetition Generates Complexity and Depth
We normally regard a work as an isolated unit and the product of an individual imagination, but that isn’t how genre fiction is created or consumed. To create genre fiction is to interact with a tradition or trend, to receive and reflect the influence of an existing or emerging body of work, and to make one’s own contribution, however grand or paltry. What’s more, genre fiction tends to be consumed, experienced, and enjoyed cumulatively.
Any individual work of genre fiction may be quite simple and superficial in itself. But if we consider all the works that make up a genre, the repetition of conventions from one work to another actually introduces modifications, variations, interpretations, and even startling innovations. Repetition, no matter how brute or rote or mechanical it may appear, thus builds up complexity and depth at the level of the genre as a whole. The complexity and depth are distributed throughout the individual works, rather than being concentrated in any one of them.
Certainly some individual works of genre fiction are impressively complex and deep in their own right, but my point is that, even in those that aren’t, the repetition of conventions still serves an interesting and valuable purpose.
V. Repetition Projects an Ideal
Every work suggests its own promise or potential–an ideal version of itself. When the promise of all the works belonging to a genre is focused by the repetition of their shared conventions, it coalesces into something more–an ideal in a much more robust sense of the word; the distilled promise of the genre as a whole. Some sense of that is useful, I think, for both critics and creators, and I’d say it’s a large part of the appeal that genre fiction holds for fans.
Well, those are my thoughts on the matter for now. I’m sure they won’t be the last, but in the meantime, let me know what you think!
–Curt Purcell
