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Semelhante a Fantomas, or the Phenomenon of Destruction
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Fantomas, or the Phenomenon of Destruction
- 1. PARIS 1911 - YALE 2011 Fantômas, or the phenomenon of destruction Monica Dall’Asta, Università di Bologna
- 2. 12 February 1911 Cover of Souvestre and Allain’s first of 32 volumes on The Master of Terror
- 3. Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas and Les Vampires
- 4. Captain Action - 2009 Paul Kupperberg and Roy Mann Captain Action during his transformation as President Barak Obama
- 5. Habemus Fantômas Luigi Bernardi and Onofrio Catacchio, Italy, 2008
- 6. Fantômas (USA, 1921) a serial in 20 episodes dir. Edward Sedgwick
- 7. More French film adaptations André Vernay, 1942 Paul Féjos, 1932 Jean Sacha, 1947
- 8. Fantômas, André Hunebelle 1964
- 9. Nuits rouges, France 1974 dir. Georges Franju
- 10. 19 91 er o n, Face/Off, John Woo, 1997 es C am Jam or 2, inat Term Darkman, Sam Raimi 1990
- 11. René Magritte’s visions of Fantômas Fantômas, 1926 L’Homme du large, 1927
- 12. René Magritte: The faceless characters
- 13. René Magritte’s visions of Fantômas Autoportrait , 1927 Le retour de la flamme, 1943
- 14. Fantômas as a Cubist icon Fantômas, pipe et journal, Juan Gris, 1915 Fantômas, Josef Capek, 1918
- 15. Diabolik’s first issue, 1962 Captions: “Thrilling comics - Diabolik - The Master of Terror” Caption: “Who is Diabolik? The King of Terror! The Genius of Crime! Diabolik means mystery!”
- 16. Two female clones of Diabolik, clone of Fantômas Zakimort, first issue 1965 Satanik, first issue 1964
- 17. Max Bunker and Magnus’s Kriminal Kriminal, no. 1, 1964 Caption: “The King of Crime”
- 18. Max Bunker and Magnus’s Satanik Satanik’s French edition as Demoniak, 1967
- 19. Two French plagiarized versions of Kriminal
- 20. Italian Comics Film Adaptations, 1967-68 Satanik, Italy 1968 Kriminal, Italy 1967 Diabolik, Italy 1968 dir. Piero Vivarelli dir. Umberto Lenzi dir. Mario Bava
- 22. Fantômas, la Amenaza Elegante Editorial Novaro, Mexico
- 23. Julio Cortazar Fantômas contra los vampiros multinacionales, 1975
- 25. The gentleman-burglar: Fantômas as a clone of Arsène Lupin
- 26. Fantômas’s forerunners: Rocambole Rocambole in an illustration A “true portrait” of from Les Drames de Paris, Rocambole, “La Lune,” (Ponson du Terrail, 1857) 11 novembre 1867
- 28. Fantômas’s forerunners: Vidocq Portrait of Vidocq, from the first volume of his semi-fictional memoirs (Paris, 1829)
- 29. The Fantômas-Juve complex Frame from Juve contre Fantômas, Louis Feuillade, 1913 Poster for Fantômas contre Fantômas, Louis Feuillade, 1913 Louis Feuillade, 1914 Poster for Fantômas, le mort qui tue,
- 30. The Fandor-Fantômas, Naarboveck-Fantômas, Trokoff-Juve Mystery (ep. 4, 1911) Fantômas, disguised as Ambassador De Naarboveck forces Fandor to disguise as Fantômas. “Fandor, whose image was reflected in a mirror, had been endowed with the outline of Fantômas!” Fandor-Fantômas is then mocked by Fantômas-Naarboveck by being induced to believe that Fantômas conceils himself under the identity of Trokoff. “Trokoff was Fantômas! Fandor was sure of it!” Fandor is believed to be Fantômas by Trokoff’s men. “I am not Fantômas! “ Incited by Fantômas-Naarboveck, Fandor-Fantômas finally seizes Trokoff and he is about to kill him when he realizes than Trokoff is in fact... detective Juve under disguise! “Could Fandor believe his ears? his eyes? Trokoff was Juve!”
- 32. The robberd robber : Zigomar, Léon Sazie, 1909-1913 Two episodes from two pocket re-editions of Sazie’s popular novels
- 33. Victorin Jasset’s Zigomar as a plagiarized version of Souvestre and Allain’s Fantômas
- 34. Zigomar-Fantômas Chronology 1909-10: First Zigomar feuilleton published in “Le Matin” 1911, February: First appearance of Fantômas as the Man in Black in Juve contre Fantômas 1911, March: First full description of Fantômas as the Man in Black in Le Mort qui tue: “By the uncertain light of the stars, Jules could see the individual who had just joined him. His appearance was fantastic.... The stranger,, who a short while before had been wearing a long cloak and immense sombrero, wore them no longer.... Now he was clad in a long black knitted garment moulded tightly to his figure, a sinister garment, by means of which the wearer can blend with the darkness so as to be almost indistinguishable. His face was entirely concealed by a long black hood, a movable mask, which prevented his features being seen: through two slits gleamed two eyeballs: they might have burned a way through like glowing coals.” 1911, September: release of Victorin Jasset’s first film adaptation of Zigomar
Notas do Editor
- To begin with, let me thank Dudley Andrew and Yale University for the perfect timing of this Fantomas celebration: today, 12 February, it’s exactly one hundred years since his elusive mask first appeared on the cover of Souvestre and Allain’s opening volume of their 32 episode series. [2] One century is a lot of time, but the Master of Terror has survived in excellent shape.
- One century is a lot of time, but the Master of Terror has survived in excellent shape. Dating since Guillaume Apollinaire’s famous description of the series as an “extraordinary masterpiece of imagination”, Fantomas has crossed time and space to reach us in multiple surprising semblances, from his early cinematic fortune, [3] starting with Louis Feuillade’s five-episode adaptation in 1913-14 and its undeclared sequel Les Vampires in 1915-16,
- starting with Louis Feuillade’s five-episode adaptation in 1913-14 and its undeclared sequel Le Vampires in 1915-16, to some most recent comics revisitations [4]
- to some most recent comics revisitations [4] (as this episode from the Captain Action series, issued in 2009
- this Italian example by Luigi Bernardi and Onofrio Catacchio, a very interesting rewriting of Fantômas as a political allegory of the cynicism and nihilism of present-day global capitalism). To simply list some of his most infamous reincarnations, we can recall his multiple second lives in silent and sound cinema, [6]
- from this American serial released in 1921, now unfortunately lost, [7]
- to Paul Fejos’s, André Vernay’s and Jean Sacha’s French adaptations, respectively in 1932, 1942 and 1947, [8]
- to the popular, if somewhat disappointing trilogy of features directed by André Hunebelle in the 1960s. Nor could we forget Fantômas’s haunting presence in the cinema of Georges Franju [9]
- for instance here in Les Nuits rouges, or his sudden reappearance under new, [10]
- or his sudden reappearance under new, [10] surgical and cibernetic masks in films like Face/Off , Darkman or Terminator 2 . Apart from his fortune in poetry, he’s been a favorite of several painters, and especially of René Magritte, [11]
- whose art is deeply rooted in the fascination of the faceless man, [12]
- to the point of portraing himself in the guise of Fantômas [13]
- – not to forget the dedication of a few cubist artists [14]
- like Juan Gris and Josef Capek. A special mention should be reserved to Fantômas’ disguised reappearence in the world of comics. Beginning in 1961 with the publication in Italy of the first of hundreds of issues featuring Diabolik [15] ,
- a whole new progeny of scaring characters made its debut on the scene of popular culture. Diabolik’s relation to Fantômas is not simply hypothetical, his first adventure being a close rewriting of the first chapter in Souvestre and Allain’s literary saga. Diabolik’s immediate success brought about a proliferation of similar antiheroic figures, all characterized by a set of recurring features [16]
- such as their use of a black bodysuit, their incomparable ability to take on anyone’s identity through disguise, their ceaseless struggle against an opponent representing the spirit of justice, and the fascinating appeal they are able to exert on the reader despite their cruelty and homicidal habits. After Diabolik the cloning of Fantômas gave birth to a gallery of extremely nasty doubles including such ruthless feminine villains as Zakimort and Satanik, and the awfully cruel Kriminal, [17]
- who slighly departed from the model by introducing a new version of the jumpsuit, no longer entirely black but marked with a skeleton motif, and topped with a mask representing a skull. All these characters were pretty popular outside Italy too, and especially in France, [18]
- where their names were conflated and/or plagiarized to produce new series of pulp photonovels [19]
- that openly exploited the morbid attraction of their audience’s sadistic drives. The most successful of these figures, [20]
- Kriminal, Satanik and of course Diabolik, were soon adapted for the screen between 1967 and 1968, while numerous further clones kept sprouting up [21]
- in the pulp fiction industry, presented under such evocative names as Mister X, Infernal, Fatalik or Fantasm. At about the same time, a new comics metamorphosis of the faceless antihero was occurring in Mexico. Inspired by Jean Marais’s dreadful portrait of Fantômas in the Hunebelle’s film series, which had gained a giant success in Latin America, Mexican comics publisher Editorial Novaro launched [22]
- Fantômas, la Amenaza Elegante (the elegant threat), a witty super robber whose exploits were pursued until the 1990s. Most interestingly, this best selling pop icon became the involuntary object of a political rewriting when in 1975 neo-Surrealist novelist Julio Cortazar appropriated one of its adventures [23]
- to transform it into a situationist pamphlet denouncing the crimes of the Argentinian dictatorship. A late example of Fantomas’s natural disposition to be used to the purposes of political allegory – as Julien Leclercq remarked in his 1967 article “Fantomas et la révolution prolétarienne” – Cortazar’s work followed directly in the steps of the avant-garde tradition of appropriating Fantomas as a powerful element of social critique. So, after one hundred years we are still dealing with the enigma of Fantomas, or better with the persistence of what I would call the “Fantomas concept” throughout the century [24] .
- The question we need to ask, then, is why this presence has remained so exceptionally alive during all this time, how did it succeed in preserving its disturbing allure despite the competition of so many, ever new geniuses of crime unceasingly created by the modern and postmodern culture industries. For sure, the answer has not to be found in any claim of originality. In other words, Apollinaire’s observation about the quite special imaginative quality of the Fantomas series should not be seen as an invitation to appreciate it in terms of originality. On the contrary, Fantomas is fundamentally a product of imitation, plagiarism, mechanical reproduction of preexisting models. See for instance his truly mythical first portrait on the cover of the series’ first volume: [ 25]
- apart from the anecdote related by Marcel Allain that the image was originally meant to be used to advertise a brand of pills (the Pillules pink pour personnes pales , or Pink pills for pale people), the figure is clearly an evocation of another extremely popular character of early 20th century French literature, gentleman-burglar Arsène Lupin. [ Click ] With regard to the ability to simulate any possible identity, just consider the playful way in which, already in 1905, Lupin asserts “to be exempt from the ordinary laws governing appearance and identity. Appearance? That can be modified at will. For instance, a hypodermic injection of paraffine will puff up the skin at the desired spot. Pyrogallic acid will change your skin to that of an Indian. The juice of the greater celandine will adorn you with the most beautiful eruptions and tumors. Another chemical affects the growth of your beard and hair; another changes the tone of your voice.” More sources for Fantomas’s art of disguise can easily be traced in the 19th century tradition of French popular literature. One important forerunner of both Lupin and Fantomas is certainly Rocambole, [26]
- a merciless criminal who progressively redeems himself over the course of his adventures to become a ferocious avenger. Once defined by his author Ponson du Terrail as “a sphynx of a thousand faces,” Rocambole is by far the most long-lived character of 19th century French literature and an explicit model for Souvestre and Allain, who mention his name in the very first pages of their first novel. Similarly to Lupin, Rocambole claims to be able “to change my age and fisionomy at ease, as I change my costume.” On a different level, a third important model for the Fantomas concept was provided by the legendary figure of Vidocq, [ 27]
- a former adventurer and an outlaw who had become the head of the Security Brigade of the Parisian Police Department in 1811 before turning into a semi-fictional character with the publication of his Mémoires in 1828. A fundamental source of inspiration in the history of detective fiction in France as well as abroad, this best-selling four volume partly documentary novel first introduced the concept of the detective as the bandit’s doppleganger, describing with an abundance of details Vidocq’s intimate knowledge of the illegal underworld in which he had lived for a half of his life. Interestigly, Vidocq’s report of his adventures before his legal turnaround include a number of prison escapes, all succeeded especially by means of disguise. As Jean-Claude Vareille astutely explains: “when Vidocq is an outlaw he disguises himself as a law officer to escape from prison [whereas later] when he represents the law, he disguises himself as an outlaw to better penetrate the Parisian underworld.” Vidocq is then the original matrix of what could be termed the “Fantomas-Juve complex,” the core of the secret link that bounds the detective to the criminal and viceversa. In Fantomas Vidocq’s two halves acquire an autonomy that allow them to separate from each other, but their obvious specularity, or better, their sheer reversibility betrays a fundamental monism. In other words, the policeman and the bandit are reciprocally dependant. [28]
- As we all know, Fantomas’s narrative existence is totally dependent on Juve’s ability to recognize him in a series of disparate figures, with no resemblance to each other. But on the other hand, Juve seems to exist only to fulfil the task of recognizing Fantomas. This is important since differently from what appears, Juve’s narrative task is just not to seize the bandit. [Click] To dissolve any possible doubt in this regard, consider the plot of Le Magistrat cambrioleur , the twelfth installment in the series, corresponding to Feuillade’s fifth and final episode: here not only Juve tricks the Belgium police to allow Fantomas to escape from the prison of Louvain, but he schemes a complicated plan to personally replace the bandit in the cell. The motivation for such frankly absurd move is really instructive: Juve wants that Fantomas goes back to France to be judged, condemned and executed, which could not be done properly in Belgium, where death punishment has been abolished. He then organizes the criminal’s escape, planning a shadowing that should lead to his capture in France. Surprisingly, however, the plan also implies Juve’s own replacement of Fantomas in prison and his tricking of the Belgium police, that is, his adoption of a truly illegal behaviour. The reversibility of the criminal and the detective respective figures is one of the key aspects of the Fantomas narrative mechanism, and a major motive for its persisting fascination. The whole plot revolves around this principle, which is eventually openly exposed in the unforgettable coup de théatre that ends Souvestre and Allain’s last episode, when Juve, who has finally managed to seize his enemy, gets to tear off his mask, just at the same time when the steamer on which they are fighting is about to sink in the ocean: what appears under Juve’s horrified eyes is… his own face. That is, Fantomas is none but the detective’s evil twin, his dark double and his most intimate truth. This explains why Juve is so often described as being subjugated by his own imagination of the bandit, as for instance when he exclaims: “Fantomas! He’s driving me crazy! I no longer can distance myself from this bandit! He now lives in me and controls my own thoughts”. Therefore, a major impulse in the whole series is what I would call the “drive to become Fantomas”. [Click] This is made clear in the irresistible attraction that the black bodysuit exerts on a number of characters in the narrative, who, Juve included, are seemingly driven by the desire to wear it at least for a while. The best example of this behaviour occurs in the scene of the masquerade ball in Le Policier apache , brilliantly transposed by Feuillade in his fourth episode, Fantomas contre Fantomas : here, after discovering that Fantomas will join the ball in disguise, Juve sends two of his men to the party, asking them to wear an identical black costume. No need to say that Fantomas will make himself recognizible in his usual way, that is, by killing one of his doubles. Or, for another example, we can think of the plot of episode four, L’agent secret . [29]
- The action reaches its peak when Juve’s assistant Jerome Fandor is forced to dress up as Fantomas by Fantomas himself, here conceiled under the identity of Ambassador de Naarboveck [Click] . Fandor-Fantomas is then mocked by Fantomas-Naarboveck by being induced to believe that Fantomas conceils himself under the identity of Trokoff. [Click] . At the same time Trokoff’s men assume Fandor to be Fantomas. [Click] . Finally, incited by Fantomas-Naarboveck, Fandor-Fantomas seizes Trokoff, and is about to kill him when he realizes that this Trokoff is in fact... [Click] detective Juve under disguise! The confusion of identities is one of the most typical and certainly most intriguing features in the Fantomas concept. It bears a major function in the production of a particular effect of defamiliarization, the estrangement of all and any elements from their usual conditions of perception. This is why, I would argue, Fantomas is not a character in the common sense of the word, no more than he can be reduced to a single figure. [30]
- We should rather conceive of it as a narrative and figural machine, a device that works by repeating a pre-established set of logical and narrative operations to produce ever new characters and figures, and a kind of special effect. As soon as the Fantomas machine is set in motion, everything appears under a new light, normality is absorbed in strangeness, reality in absurdity, everyday gestures in a sense of danger and menace. Suddenly the monster can be everywhere, take on the most different aspects and names, inhabit the most familiar countenances, [Click] survive, and of course inflict, innumerable deaths. Fantomas’s nonidentity disseminates itself like a virus, appropriates multiple semblances to always reproduce the “thing” that he is: that is, a virtuality, a potency, a dreadful eventuality. [Click] In other words, Fantomas is essentially a device of reproduction. This, I think, is the major motivation of its persistence in the history of popular fiction and iconography: nothing but its ability to function as an allegory of modernity, an optical representation of modern concepts of serialization, massification, and, of course, reproduction. If, as Benjamin and Gershom Scholem have shown, allegory is produced through montage and combination of old images to convey a new meaning, we can see how the Master of Terror performs this operation by reproducing and appropriating figures of earlier popular literature like Rocambole, Vidocq and Lupin. [Click] Again, no issue of originality is here at stake, but simply a power of serial replication through which Fantomas emerges in the form, not of an archetype, but rather of a prototype, or a matrix of repetition. [Click] Fantomas’s mastery of reproduction appears in his fantastic ability to double the replication process itself. The trick is that Fantomas reproduces himself at the same time that he reproduces someone else, that he doubles himself by doubling other people’s figures. What is represented in the process is the indiscernibility of the model and its copy, of the plagiarizing and the plagiarized, since here it is the model itself that is copy and conterfeit by its very essence. In other words, Fantomas replicates, imitates and becomes someone else just at the same time that he replicates, doubles and reproduces himself. This is seen continuously in the novels, as well as in Feuillade’s adaptations, but it also occurs on the intertextual level, particularly in the case of Fantomas’s relation to his most immediate model, Zigomar,
- ] King of the bandits. The hero of an interminable series of feuilletons published in “Le Matin” daily paper between 1909 and 1913, Zigomar was already a Fantomas by all means: much more pitilessly cruel than both Lupin or Rocambole (for example, he kills his mother with no remorse), Zigomar too excels in the art of disguise and is in command of a band of men who obey his orders like robots; moreover he is countered by his own specular figure, protean detective Paulin Broquet. Finally, a further analogy with Fantomas is the body-concealing costume he wears when he does not assume a fake identity. So it is quite clear that Fantomas is a plagiarized version of Zigomar. Yet things are more complicated, since as soon as the Master of Terror appears on the scene, Zigomar is doomed to become one of his copies. This is what happens in Victorin Jasset’s film adaptations of Léon Sazie’s feuilleton, [32]
- where Zigomar, no longer dressed in his original red costume and hood, is shown wearing a dark bodysuit similar to that which Fantomas has first displayed in March 1911 in the memorable scene at Lady Beltham’s villa in Juve contre Fantomas , brilliantly recreated by Feuillade at the end of his second chapter. [33]
- So in a way Zigomar becomes Fantomas, which amounts to say that the original becomes identical to its reverse, that is, to its copy. This is exactly what Fantomas regularly accomplishes over the course of his criminal exploits. His process of plagiarization is typically double: he becomes those whom he substitutes but correspondingly these latters become Fantomas. Now we should ask: what does it mean to become Fantomas? Simple answer: it means to become the opposite, the negative of oneself. The concept is already made clear in the title of Le Policier apache , where the monster usurps the identity of detective Tom Bob, of course after killing him. As a detective, Tom Bob is a figure of Good and Law, but once the replacement is made, he is definitely reverted into a figure of Evil. No doubt Fantomas’s greatest skill is his ability to make himself pass for the opposite of what he is: representatives of law, order, respectability; policemen, judges, bankers, statesmen, military officers. He does not even hesitate to dress up as a woman, [34]
- adopting the semblances of a young bride and even those of a nun [35]
- As a result, all of these figures are automatically overturned into the opposite of what they are or at least should represent, reverted into so many doubles of Fantomas. For in fact Fantomas is simply the negative reflex of all what surrounds him, a mirror or a camera that gives an inverted image of what it reproduces. A reverting machine, but at the same time a device for propagation, dissemination; a mechanism for the fabrication of fakes: fake figures and fake characters. This explains Fantomas’s exceptional value in terms of allegory. [36]
- Similarly to the cinematographic image, his negative form of reproduction has the power to reveal what is concealed under the surface of reality. He plays forgery to reveal the fakeness of reality and society’s bad consciousness. No wonder he became a symbol of revolution at a time when the workers’ movement in France was saturated with Stirnerian theories of illegalism and individual appropriation. There is more to his political significance than the violence he uses against the bourgeoisie, [37]
- although there can be little doubt, as Leclerq observes, that the sadistic impetus with which he “severed the general’s head, ripped the banker’s eyes, invested a proprietor with a train, mangled a baron, decapitated a prince, impaled a priest” could easily interpret the drive to revenge of his working-class readership, that is of a whole class of “exploited and suffering people who were condemned to physical wear and tear and to a miserable old age by long and badly payed workdays.” Yet there is more. The unintentional allegory that Fantomas represents offers what Jean Tortel has called a “radiography” of social morals. [38]
- His negative appropriation of the tradition of French popular literature amounts to a demolition of moral structures, which he performs simply by showing, as Tortel writes, that “Good and Evil have one and the same origin. Therefore it becomes impossible to discern them and their perpetual struggle becomes a whirlwind of the same within the same, which will never be able to generate any stable form.” The “radiographical” aspect of Fantomas’s exploits emerges already in the memorable ending of episode one. Here, as we know, Fantomas escapes decapitation by having one of his doubles – a vane actor who has been so unwary as to take on his role on the scene – executed in his place. [39]
- In all its absurdity, the scene has a truly appalling, even petrifying effect, as we witness the Fantomas mechanism while it blindly, sistematically takes the Law to the point of its self-annihilation, by overturning the function of the most terrible and exemplary of all its instruments: the guillotine. [40]
- Fantomas does more than simply mock the Law: he runs it, appropriates its power, and thus becomes, literally, its executioner. His scheme does not interrupt the execution, which instead is carried out as regularly and implacably as planned. Yet the consequence of Law enforcement is the killing of an innocent. [41]
- In other words, Fantomas enforces the Law just at the same time that he revokes it, in such a way that Law is executed and Justice brought to Justice. Yet the capital point here is that such monstruos result is not dependant on Fantomas, but on the Law itself, since in fact it is only because capital punishment is envisaged by law that Law exposes itself to the risk of killing an innocent. Appearing in the role of risk in person, [42]
- Fantomas shows that in a regime of death punishment Law refutes itself by its own means. We then understand the fatal attraction that the guillotine exerts on the monster, who does not hesitate to operate it repeatedly over the course of his exploits. As an emblem of Law, it represents the nuclear device that originates the whole series of negative reversals. [43]
- It goes as follows: if death punishment makes the Law virtually homicidal, then nothing can stop Fantomas from performing homicide as his own law. As Hubert Juin has written, in the end “it is the guillotine that which gets Fantomas even with Juve.” Borrowing the title of Tortel’s penetrating article, I would say that Fantomas’s relentless movement as a “phenomenon of destruction” is triggered by his identification with this dreadful instrument of legal homicide. This is the unresolvable contradiction that Fantomas incarnates to reveal it as a “mortally clear image,” an obsessive “figure of destruction” that can only reproduce itself blindy, out of any rational control. [44]
- As we discover in the second chapter, Fantomas’s black costume was given to him by a retired executioner. Nothing else needs to be added I think. The real mystery is the absence of any mystery.