If I rack my brain, I can come up with an English language corollary by which to describe Fantomas. But that doesn’t change my perception that there is something irreducibly French about the character. Certainly, Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu is similar, in that he is one of those rare examples of a villain serving as the central figure and driving force behind a popular series. But, while Fu Manchu’s representation was that of a monstrous “other”, playing on the racial anxieties of the age in which he was created, Fantomas seems more like a personification of the id unleashed. As such, he engages his audience in fantasies of a life lived without borders or moral constraints, with the traditional heroes and cops-and-robbers aspects of the stories serving to house those fantasies within a socially acceptable context. It’s as if Bataille or De Sade had chosen to couch their transgressive works within the format of a dime detective novel.
#1 by Naomi on April 25, 2011 - 9:42 am
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Not to be overly critical of your methods, but it would be nice if this post contained a link to the review.
#2 by KeithA on April 25, 2011 - 9:50 am
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You think Fantomas makes it that easy to find Fantomas? When the review is ready to be read, the link will find you!
#3 by Ken on April 25, 2011 - 4:53 pm
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My introduction to Fantomas was by Gahan Wilson’s novel Everybody’s Favorite Duck. I immediately recognized the master criminals parodied by the Professor and the Mandarin, but the mysterious masked psychopath Spectrobert was a puzzle. A little digging turned up the name of the original, but in those pre-Web days the books were impossible to find; fortunately Project Gutenberg now has several. Personally, I feel they’ve held up better than Rohmer (the racial attitudes are just too jarring nowadays) but not as well as Conan Doyle.