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.In the case of Pet Sematary, the fear inquestion is the primordial fear of the dead and the archaic forces associatedwith death and dying.Zizek is at least partly correct when he notes that the fundamental fantasy of contemporary mass culture is that of a person whodoes not want to stay dead but returns again and again to pose a threat to theliving (22).Zizek s description is lacking in two regards.First, the fantasy, as it isrooted in the popular imagination and the archaic religious mind, is based ona fear of the dead, and that fantasy is not that someone will want to comeback from the dead but that someone or something will bring that person 170 Jesse W.Nashback.In Pet Sematary, it is not little Gage who wants to come back; it is hisfather who will not let him go.A second and perhaps even more significantaspect of this common fantasy is that it expresses a pre-scientific orsuperstitious fear that death is not final, that death can somehow beoverturned, that one can be both dead and alive at the same time.Theimportance of this fear is that it flies in the face of what we know from ourown experience and from what we know medically and scientifically.But it is precisely this superstitious fear that King privileges in hiscritique of the American family and society in Pet Sematary.The fear heevokes is not escapist; it is evoked in earnest.It is obvious from King scomments in Winter s work and his own Danse Macabre that he takes hisnovel, its social commentary, and its supernatural ambience seriously.Winterrefers to King s use of the supernatural as rational supernaturalism, inwhich the order and facade of everyday life is overturned (5 9).That is, Kingand his admirers tend to take his supernatural creations seriously, as morethan literary creations, as in nineteenth century ghost stories.Thesesupernatural beings represent a popular and archaic distrust of the scientificand the rational.In King s hands, the supernatural and the fear it generatesdo not offer an escape from the rigors of culture, as in more traditionalGothic novels, but they offer an avenue by which a direct confrontation withthe problematic nature of the modern American experience can be launched.More often than not, the object of the supernatural attack in King sfiction, especially in Pet Sematary, is the modern family and its haplessmembers.King s postmodernism is nowhere more in evidence than in hisinsistent deconstruction of the magic circle that is the modern Americanfamily.An essential element of this deconstruction is King s privileging ofadolescent discourse over that of adults and rationalism.Adolescents mustbattle the supernatural because adults cannot or will not, as in IT.Even whenthe supernatural is not introduced, as in Rage, the adolescent is given aprivileged place from which to speak, and to speak unchallenged.The enemyof such adolescents, of course, is that symbol of American modernism, themiddle-class family.It is the family that makes of adolescence such agruesome age.According to King, it is the sorry state of relationships withinthe family that makes the adolescent vulnerable to the enticements of thesupernatural, especially in Christine.It is the fragile, illusory nature of thenuclear family that gets Louis Creed in trouble in Pet Sematary.But onecould easily point out that King s own rage in this instance is misplaced.The American family is not designed to prepare its young for battles with thesupernatural.Whether or not such families do a good job of preparing theirmembers for the adult world is another question, but that is not the focus ofPet Sematary or his other postmodern Gothic novels.The irony is somewhat Postmodern Gothic: Stephen King s Pet Sematary 171incredible.The American family is judged to be inadequate because it doesnot prepare its members to deal with the imaginary.In King s works, it is as if troubled, hypocritical families attract theattention of the supernatural.There is a logical problem, however, withKing s presentation in these novels, one that also plagues and eventuallyundermines the textual integrity of Pet Sematary.The supernatural in King sfiction is rather catholic in its choice of families.In IT, the children of both healthy families and obviously dysfunctional ones are targeted.InChristine, Arnie Cunningham is an easy mark for the supernatural because ofhis rebellion against an overbearing mother and a weak father, but so is hisfriend Dennis who comes from a more normal and loving family.In PetSematary, ancient supernatural forces toy with the Creeds, a young familyriddled with problems, but also with an older more mature family, theirneighbors, the Crandalls.Thus, whether or not one comes from a healthy ora dysfunctional family makes little difference in the battle with thesupernatural.So we have to wonder if, logically, the attack of the supernatural hasanything to do with the health or structure of the American family.If this isthe case, we have to wonder what role a critique of the American familyactually plays in the postmodern Gothic novel.The American family is notthe source of the evil that threatens people, and it is not ultimately the familyitself that attracts evil.More often than not, it is the child, the adolescent,and the adolescing adult, to use Erikson s apt description (91), who attractevil because they are in rebellion against the adult world.King s privilegingof the discourse of adolescents and the discourse of fear traps him.Theultimate complaint of adolescents is that they are misunderstood by adults,but King s monsters and supernatural beings seem to understand them wellenough, that they are akin to monsters in their own right, giving awkwardcredence to what adults have feared all along, that their children aremonsters, that they might want to eat their parents, as they do in both Salem s Lot and Pet Sematary.In short, what King says he is doing in hisnovels is not what his novels actually do.In fact, his novels work so well asartifacts of popular culture because that old subversive fear that popularculture has preserved since archaic times is rarely challenged.But if thesupernatural, the object of archaic and popular fear, is so catholic in its choiceof families and individuals, what difference does family structure make? Onecan only assume that because King s work is popular and postmodern, it mustinclude an attack on adulthood and the family even if that attack has nological place in the tale.One can go even further.In the battle with thesupernatural, as we learn in IT, coming from a dysfunctional family may beto one s benefit. 172 Jesse W.NashSuch contradictions especially complicate the narrative logic of PetSematary and Louis Creed s symbolic role in that narrative [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.In the case of Pet Sematary, the fear inquestion is the primordial fear of the dead and the archaic forces associatedwith death and dying.Zizek is at least partly correct when he notes that the fundamental fantasy of contemporary mass culture is that of a person whodoes not want to stay dead but returns again and again to pose a threat to theliving (22).Zizek s description is lacking in two regards.First, the fantasy, as it isrooted in the popular imagination and the archaic religious mind, is based ona fear of the dead, and that fantasy is not that someone will want to comeback from the dead but that someone or something will bring that person 170 Jesse W.Nashback.In Pet Sematary, it is not little Gage who wants to come back; it is hisfather who will not let him go.A second and perhaps even more significantaspect of this common fantasy is that it expresses a pre-scientific orsuperstitious fear that death is not final, that death can somehow beoverturned, that one can be both dead and alive at the same time.Theimportance of this fear is that it flies in the face of what we know from ourown experience and from what we know medically and scientifically.But it is precisely this superstitious fear that King privileges in hiscritique of the American family and society in Pet Sematary.The fear heevokes is not escapist; it is evoked in earnest.It is obvious from King scomments in Winter s work and his own Danse Macabre that he takes hisnovel, its social commentary, and its supernatural ambience seriously.Winterrefers to King s use of the supernatural as rational supernaturalism, inwhich the order and facade of everyday life is overturned (5 9).That is, Kingand his admirers tend to take his supernatural creations seriously, as morethan literary creations, as in nineteenth century ghost stories.Thesesupernatural beings represent a popular and archaic distrust of the scientificand the rational.In King s hands, the supernatural and the fear it generatesdo not offer an escape from the rigors of culture, as in more traditionalGothic novels, but they offer an avenue by which a direct confrontation withthe problematic nature of the modern American experience can be launched.More often than not, the object of the supernatural attack in King sfiction, especially in Pet Sematary, is the modern family and its haplessmembers.King s postmodernism is nowhere more in evidence than in hisinsistent deconstruction of the magic circle that is the modern Americanfamily.An essential element of this deconstruction is King s privileging ofadolescent discourse over that of adults and rationalism.Adolescents mustbattle the supernatural because adults cannot or will not, as in IT.Even whenthe supernatural is not introduced, as in Rage, the adolescent is given aprivileged place from which to speak, and to speak unchallenged.The enemyof such adolescents, of course, is that symbol of American modernism, themiddle-class family.It is the family that makes of adolescence such agruesome age.According to King, it is the sorry state of relationships withinthe family that makes the adolescent vulnerable to the enticements of thesupernatural, especially in Christine.It is the fragile, illusory nature of thenuclear family that gets Louis Creed in trouble in Pet Sematary.But onecould easily point out that King s own rage in this instance is misplaced.The American family is not designed to prepare its young for battles with thesupernatural.Whether or not such families do a good job of preparing theirmembers for the adult world is another question, but that is not the focus ofPet Sematary or his other postmodern Gothic novels.The irony is somewhat Postmodern Gothic: Stephen King s Pet Sematary 171incredible.The American family is judged to be inadequate because it doesnot prepare its members to deal with the imaginary.In King s works, it is as if troubled, hypocritical families attract theattention of the supernatural.There is a logical problem, however, withKing s presentation in these novels, one that also plagues and eventuallyundermines the textual integrity of Pet Sematary.The supernatural in King sfiction is rather catholic in its choice of families.In IT, the children of both healthy families and obviously dysfunctional ones are targeted.InChristine, Arnie Cunningham is an easy mark for the supernatural because ofhis rebellion against an overbearing mother and a weak father, but so is hisfriend Dennis who comes from a more normal and loving family.In PetSematary, ancient supernatural forces toy with the Creeds, a young familyriddled with problems, but also with an older more mature family, theirneighbors, the Crandalls.Thus, whether or not one comes from a healthy ora dysfunctional family makes little difference in the battle with thesupernatural.So we have to wonder if, logically, the attack of the supernatural hasanything to do with the health or structure of the American family.If this isthe case, we have to wonder what role a critique of the American familyactually plays in the postmodern Gothic novel.The American family is notthe source of the evil that threatens people, and it is not ultimately the familyitself that attracts evil.More often than not, it is the child, the adolescent,and the adolescing adult, to use Erikson s apt description (91), who attractevil because they are in rebellion against the adult world.King s privilegingof the discourse of adolescents and the discourse of fear traps him.Theultimate complaint of adolescents is that they are misunderstood by adults,but King s monsters and supernatural beings seem to understand them wellenough, that they are akin to monsters in their own right, giving awkwardcredence to what adults have feared all along, that their children aremonsters, that they might want to eat their parents, as they do in both Salem s Lot and Pet Sematary.In short, what King says he is doing in hisnovels is not what his novels actually do.In fact, his novels work so well asartifacts of popular culture because that old subversive fear that popularculture has preserved since archaic times is rarely challenged.But if thesupernatural, the object of archaic and popular fear, is so catholic in its choiceof families and individuals, what difference does family structure make? Onecan only assume that because King s work is popular and postmodern, it mustinclude an attack on adulthood and the family even if that attack has nological place in the tale.One can go even further.In the battle with thesupernatural, as we learn in IT, coming from a dysfunctional family may beto one s benefit. 172 Jesse W.NashSuch contradictions especially complicate the narrative logic of PetSematary and Louis Creed s symbolic role in that narrative [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]