Current mood:	freaked out
Current music:	Shinedown - Save Me
Entry tags:	the phantom project

The Phantom Project: The Unmasking by Steve Rasnic Tem
Unexpected realism asserts itself, with extremely awful results. But awful in the good way.


"The Unmasking" by Steve Rasnic Tem, 1989
From Phantoms, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Rosalind M. Greenberg
Grade: B+

This story is a new beast, as far as this project goes. The few contemporaries I've so far encountered have been retellings (sometimes without even the sense God gave little grey snails). This, however, is an interesting contemporary tale of some completely different people who happen to have a purely mental connection to the Phantom story. And, odd as that sounds (and good heavens, I can think of so many ways for it to go wrong), it works much, much better than most contemporary retellings because it doesn't try to force characters and situations to conform to a society that has evolved in the century since the original story was written.

This is also the first story I've encountered that is identifiably based almost exclusively on the 1925 Julian/Chaney film; though a few places could be glimmers of Leroux influence, the vast majority of it is undeniably focused on Chaney's skeletal, piteous portrayal of the Phantom. It may be inappropriate for me to find that somewhat exciting--I'm pretty sure it's just a knee-jerk reaction to my annoyance at the oversaturation of the literature with Webber's musical--but then again, it's fairly legitimate to be excited that someone's taking a different direction.

Before we jump in, I'd like to note a few things about the author. I was excited to see his name, because Steve Rasnic Tem is a fairly big name in the world of fantasy/sci-fi fiction, and I've read some of his stuff before. It's nice, after the rash of fairly low-quality writing in this anthology, to see a name like Tem or Malzberg and know that here, at least, is someone who knows which end of the typewriter to point at the page. He's won the British Fantasy Award, and been nominated for the Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Awards. So hooray for professionals!

We start out here with two people: Chelsea, who is pregnant, and Andrew, a guy she lives with. He is not the baby's father, but rather seems to be a friend or acquaintance helping to take care of her while she weathers out the storm of her parents' displeasure over her underage pregnancy. A very large part of this story is the constant referencing of the Phantom tale, but again, it's not done badly at all--the story opens, in fact, with Andrew showing off his aged 1925 movie poster to a polite but uninterested Chelsea.

Basically, Andrew is totally insane. But Tem, like the master of suspense he is, doesn't tell us that all at once; instead we gradually begin to sense something is amiss, until we are very uncomfortable and, eventually, completely freaked out. Andrew has fingernail wounds on his face, for example, that are scabbing over; we are dying to know who scratched him since it doesn't seem likely that it was Chelsea, but after some time it becomes startlingly clear that his facial wounds are self-inflicted.

Herein lies the reasoning: Andrew, as I said, is totally insane. He is a textbook case of a dissociative or psychotic in that he has few discernable emotions (all of which pertain to himself, not to others) and that he seems to be literally incapable of understanding or relating to other people. All people (specifically, he focuses on women) are basically the same to him, the way all chairs are basically the same to us. His obsession with and reenactment of the Phantom story is not out of interest for the story itself, per se, but because he sees himself in the Phantom: a singular entity with singular needs that cannot be understood by any of the less "ugly" people around him. Andrew is aware that he is not "like" other people--through minute flashbacks and references, we are given to understand that he has been disciplined and reprimanded before for his tendency to talk women--and admits that he is more obsessive than anyone else he knows of. His thought processes are very detached and clinical; for example, when he notices Chelsea blush, he thinks about the blood being excited by the nerves to move closer to the surface, or when he makes her eggs, he thinks about them going through her entire digestive process. His thinking sets him apart from the rest of humanity, which prefers to forget such mechanical details in favor of focusing on the emotional and spiritual facets of being a person; Andrew has no such recourse, and sees everyone for the evolved animals that they are. Another good example of this is when he is confronted by Chelsea's brother, whom he internally refers to as "the crewcut", never registering his name or what he looks like beyond that.

Andrew is literally keeping Chelsea a prisoner in his house in order to "take care of her"; the line between fantasy and reality blurs for him more than once, when he turns to speak to her and suddenly "sees" Christine Daae standing there instead. However, it seems clear that he has no specific attachment to Chelsea personally (how could he, when he isn't really capable of knowing her personally?); whenever he sees other women, he thinks similar thoughts about their beauty and perfection, and asides and background information let us know that he's "bothered" many a young woman before Chelsea. Chelsea, who is a pregnant teenage runaway and doesn't seem particularly bright, is only sort of beginning to realize that he's crossed the line from aiding her in his time of need to keeping her in his house against her will.

This story, as the title suggests, is all about masks--particularly the metaphorical masks that people wear in order to hide from other people. Specifically, Andrew loathes his mask; he is forced to wear one in order to seem normal and be acceptable to society, but he is very aware that he is a monster and despises the hypocrisy of a society that is imperfect but would nevertheless ostracize him should his true self be made known to them. He sees Erik's mask in The Phantom of the Opera and recognizes it as a literalization of the metaphorical truth that he must live each day--and further, he uses it to understand the consequences should his true, terrifying nature ever be revealed. The real horror of the Phantom for Julian's Christine is not that he is a potentially deranged kidnapper, but that he is hideous--she recognizes him as other than human, and so Andrew understands that to be outed as a monster is fatal.

The central yearning of the story is for freedom; not Chelsea's somewhat peripheral desire to espace from the ex-ice-cream-salesman who is keeping her locked up, but Andrew's desire to be free of society's expectations and mores, to have the freedom to reveal himself without fear. When he muses on Erik's tragedy (which it is hardly surprising he sympathizes with, all things considered), he makes the very poignant internal statement that it is not having his face revealed that the Phantom is afraid of; when Christine snatches off his mask and screams in horror, the fear is not related to having his face revealed, but comes from Erik's dread that she will see past the horrible face to the even more corrupt soul beneath. He's not afraid that she'll discover that he looks like a monster; he's afraid she'll discover that he is one. Andrew faces the same fear: while he desperately desires the freedom to be his monstrous, unbalanced self, he is terrified of the backlash should society discover him. He remains behind his metaphorical "mask" of normalcy, even going so far as to let the first floor of his house fall into disrepair and informing the post office that he no longer lives there, in order to give himself yet another buffer against society.

Like Leroux's and Julian's Phantoms, Andrew also lays the blame for Chelsea/Christine's inability to love him solely on his own shoulders. Where the original Phantom knew that she could never love him because of his hideous demeanor, Andrew knows that if she does not love him it is because he has done something wrong; he has worn an imperfect mask, and since he views all human love as simply the enjoyment or appreciation of the mask someone has put into place, it is no one's fault but his own if his monstrous nature bleeds through, or he fails to reinvent his image correctly. Even so, there is no real guilt or regret; Andrew is incapable of experiencing those emotions. At the most, there is mild disappointment, and the knowledge that he will do better next time. The suspense, which has reached a shrieking crescendo and shows no signs of stopping at this point, is almost unbearable as he picks up a kitchen knife and goes off to Chelsea's room.

This is where the reader finally completely "gets" it, and where I, personally, considered losing my lunch (but in the good way! I'm just a total wuss when it comes to horror stories). Andrew has been, as mentioned previously, hurting himself mildly when it comes to his face; fingernail scratches and marks that are scabbing over and that he keeps picking at, etc. This tendency becomes worse and worse as he deteriorates over the course of the story, until by the time he arrives home to menace Chelsea he has clawed bloody furrows into his own cheeks. This is in no way a tendency toward masochism or an expression of self-hatred; rather, it is the physical manifestation of Andrew's frustrated desire to free his inner beast, to unmask himself as the Phantom was finally unmasked. Even so, he hesitates and will not let Chelsea see his bloodied face; his fear of societal retribution is too deeply ingrained in him, no matter how much he wants to break free. Instead, he talks to her, lets her beg for her own freedom from inside the locked room--and begins to methodically mutilate his own face with the knife that the reader assumed was intended for Chelsea.

It is hardcore, folks. He cuts off most of his own nose. He pushes the knife into the wounds that are already there and slices. Flesh falls off the land on the floor and he only stops pressing the knife when he hits something hard. The blood loss (though, strangely, he says more than once that he doesn't feel pain, only mild discomfort, another symptom of his dissociation) and systemic overload are so severe that he has serious dificulty remaining conscious. He completely destroys his own face, finally driven past the point of endurance in his struggle between conforming to society for his own survival, and breaking free of it to be himself, however horrendous he actually is. The description of the mutilation is extremely descriptive and detailed, to the extent that I felt very ill while reading it (which says favorable things about Tem's powers of narration).

As Andrew very literally destroys himself, his eyes and thoughts are constantly drawn back to Chaney's piteous Phantom, a madman with a curse who craved acceptance but was unable to interact with his own society. Nothing as silly as literal soul transference happens in this story, but Andrew's deranged mind feels kinship with Erik once more; he feels the same dread of Chelsea seeing his true self--of finally revealing his twisted, hideous soul--and shows it as his descriptors of her suddenly change (where her hair was described as "glorious" at the beginning, it is now "terrible", and likewise her skin goes from "palely beautiful" to "chalk-white" and her lips from "beautiful" to "blood-reddened") to reflect his fear of her. She represents all that is "good" and "beautiful" in society, so for him to present his deformed, hideous self to her is an act equivalent to surmounting his most basic fear.

And as he staggers into her room covered in blood, having completely carved his own face into oblivion, he tries to give her the knife and begs her to finish the job for him--perhaps because he can no longer do it, or perhaps because he believes that it is her right to do it as representative both of society and of fictional Christine Daae, or perhaps most basic of all, because he does not know himself where his "mask" truly ends and the monster beneath begins.

I really, really wanted to give this story an A, but it fell just short of the mark because of the ending. Specifically, that there was no ending; the last thing we see is Andrew begging Chelsea to finish what he's started and her screaming her poor fool head off. I like a good cliffhanger ending now and then, especially when done correctly, and I can see why Tem chose to end the story there: his points had been made, and the final, horrific images had practically seared them into the reader's mind, leaving us to sort, traumatized, through the implications of the story. But I felt that there needed to be more--in fact, being the pushy bitch that I am, I demanded that there be more. I understood Andrew's insanity, but I wanted to see the aftermath. That's where the final point of the story comes: where the character is either redeemed and exonerated, or damned. Tem denies us that, probably assuming that the outcome is obvious. And it is, to a certain extent, but I wanted to see it; I wanted Tem to finish his metaphor and show us the hopelessness of the Phantom/Andrew's pitiful desires and derangements. Denying us the conclusion to the story he had set in motion was like refusing to have sex after an hour of foreplay.

It's interesting that this story was next on the bill just after John and I had watched the entire first season run of Dexter, which deals with many of the same themes and ideas.

Amusingly, I saw the name Andrew and instantly thought, "Please, please, please don't let this be a story where Sir Lloyd Webber is actually a character. Please. Fate couldn't be that cruel." I should have had more faith. I can only excuse myself by saying that reading all the dreck has lowered my expectations to a shocking degree.

In conclusion, my face really hurts now.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)