Matt writes...

Gargoyle Culture & Biology

So, in most social species there is an evolved strategy that encourages gene diversification and limits inbreeding. In lions, for instance, the males leave the pride at maturity to take over a different pride and mate with the females of that group rather than stay and have only their sisters and aunts and female cousins to mate with. In bonobos, it is the females that often leave to join new groups and find unrelated males to mate with.

Now, obviously, in the Gargoyles Universe, up until very recently there was very little genetic exchange between the surviving far flung and isolated clans. But back in their heyday, when the nearest clan to your own was well known and could be reached, was there any sort of social strategy to encourage genetic diversity or has finding a mate among your own rookery siblings always been the norm?

And now that the clans are becoming more known to each other and able to move from clan to clan more easily, will this issue cause more inter-clan mating? Does the mixing of the 2198 rookery eggs have anything to do with this or is that just a symbolic gesture of the Gargoyle Nation?

Esteban writes...

Hey again Greg, I have another question for you

How do gargoyles view homosexuality? More specifically the Manhattan clan sense Lexington is confirmed to be homosexual, but knowing about the other gargoyles would be nice too.

Thanks Greg, I wish Peter David the best and I'll see if I can help.

Masterdramon writes...

Hey Greg! Hope that you're doing well, and that the holiday season is treating/did treat (depending on when you read this) your family happily.

What follows is a paper I recently submitted to my Contemporary Political Theory class at Pomona College, interrelating several of the concepts from the book we discussed that week ("You Are Not a Gadget" by Jaron Lanier) with the notion of namelessness in traditional gargoyle culture.

My professor (unfamiliar with the show, but very intrigued when I explained it to her) really got a kick out of the piece, and I earned a more-or-less "A-" equivalent for it. But as long as I've got it sitting around, I figured you might enjoy giving it a read as well.

[NOTE: You may want to review this post you made on Ask Greg in 2004 beforehand, as it is cited frequently: http://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/search.php?rid=387].

Now, without further ado, the essay. It has been edited from the submitted version only by rearranging paragraph breaks...

The 1994 animated television series Gargoyles posits a highly intelligent species which dominated the Earth prior to human genesis and ascendance.

These gargoyles possess a unique culture which predates humanity's by a significant period, but the first on-screen depiction of the gargoyle species takes place in the 10th century, after millions of years of convergent evolution between the two cultures.

Indeed, the pilot episodes depict the essential death of one lingering component of gargoyle culture, at least for the series protagonists: that gargoyles lack personal names. This idea is first discussed in a conversation between two gargoyles and a human boy:

TOM: I'm Tom. What's your name?
GARGOYLE #1: Except for Goliath, we don't have names.
TOM: How do you tell each other apart?
GARGOYLE #1: We look different.
TOM: But what do you call each other?
GARGOYLE #2: (shrugs) Friend.

For context, "Goliath" is the leader of the clan of gargoyles to which the protagonists belong, and their liaison to the humans with whom they share an uneasy alliance; those humans felt incapable of dealing with a nameless entity, and Goliath did not bother to reject the name they selected for him.

Still, he does not use the name in communicating with his own clan until a betrayal by their human allies and a magical curse cause the protagonists to sleep as statues and then reawaken in 20th century Manhattan.

Here they meet and befriend Elisa Maza, a police detective who is both confused by and - for reasons she has trouble articulating - uncomfortable with this traditional lack of names. The following exchange takes place between Elisa and the clan's elderly mentor:

ELISA: Are you coming on the tour…uh, what do I call you, anyway?
GARGOYLE: Must you humans name everything? Nothing's real to you till you've named it, given it limits!
ELISA: It's not like that! It's just that…well, uh…things need names.
GARGOYLE: Does the sky need a name? Does the river?
ELISA: The river's called the Hudson.
GARGOYLE: (sighs) Fine, lass…then I will be 'the Hudson' as well.
ELISA: Great! Hudson it is.

From that point onward, that particular gargoyle is known as Hudson, and only Hudson.

The younger gargoyles who survived the centuries follow suit; the two who conversed with Tom become Lexington and Brooklyn, for example. And Goliath more-or-less fully accepts the moniker afforded him by the Dark Age humans.

As Gargoyles creator Greg Weisman points out, "naming is clearly addictive," and once they are established the convenience they offer makes doing away with them virtually impossible. Thus, for the Manhattan Clan of gargoyles, namelessness largely remains a thing of the past for the remainder of the series.

In "You Are Not a Gadget," Jaron Lanier describes the phenomenon experienced by these gargoyles using the term "lock-in."

As Lanier puts it, "lock-in…removes design options based on what is easiest to program, what is politically feasible, what is fashionable, or what is created by chance." Furthermore, the process "also reduces or narrows the ideas it immortalizes, by cutting away the unfathomable penumbra of meaning."

Despite originally referring to programming language, this is a perfect description of the process that "Hudson" has been subjected to in the previous scene.

Names are a method of defining identity, which necessarily must involve "giving it limits." But in traditional gargoyle culture, identity has greater meaning than that; it is amorphous, and changes with the circumstances.

The gargoyle who first made a compact with the humans at Castle Wyvern is the same gargoyle who mated three times and produced three progeny; he is the same gargoyle who fought the evil Archmage and received a wound that blinded him in one eye; he is the same gargoyle who slept for centuries and once awakened, found himself fascinated with the television show "Celebrity Hockey."

Does one name - Hudson - really encapsulate all of these aspects of his identity?

In-and-of-itself, all it signifies is that the place Hudson awoke in was modern-day New York (a cut line from the episode's script even has Elisa commenting, "Good thing we weren't facing Queens," emphasizing with humor how off-hand and esoteric the choice was).

That name was "locked-in" as the full and entire representation of the character from that point onward, solely because it was politically feasible (it makes dealing with Elisa and later human allies far more expedient), it was fashionable (every other intelligent being in 1994 New York has a name, so why not the gargoyles?), and it was created by chance (quite literally in this case, as the "Queens" quote illustrates).

And the result is that the very meaning of his identity is narrowed. He is no longer capable of being someone at a particular moment, and someone else in the next.

He is always Hudson.

There is an even greater story here, however, which Weisman's later musings have helped to illuminate. As he once observed, "Gargoyles don't seem to have a native language. They acquire human language, perhaps much the same way that they acquire names…And language, in many ways, is just sophisticated naming."

This is a compelling point. As he later notes, a different and arguably much more persuasive response that Elisa could have offered is that the river is called "the river."

Languages are systems for describing objects, concepts, actions, etc. using strict and uniform definitions, confining them to names that society calls words.

But does a name like "the sky" really fully encapsulate the meaning inherent within the depths that humans observe from below? Does it even begin to provoke a holistic understanding of its astronomical, religious, chemical, or poetic contexts?

And even more to the point, what of metaphysical concepts like "justice"? Can a single clear definition even exist for such a weighty and nebulous notion - and if not, does sticking the name "justice" to it not necessarily limit it?

Lanier certainly appears to believe so. As he conceives it, the system of symbology under which all current human languages operate is itself a lock-in; at best, a "middleman" between intent and "directly creating shared experience" that he wants to work to cut out.

His method for doing so is improvements on virtual reality, until researchers develop "the ability to morph at will, as fast as we can think."

Lanier envisions a world where the rather simplistic words "I'm hungry" will not be the only way to communicate the sensation which has brought them on - instead, he sees potential in the power of virtual reality technology to place us in the bodies of others, as a way to intimate the sensation itself.

Humanity would no longer have to be limited to extracting some piece of the concept it calls "hunger," giving it that name, and using it as code so that others who know the symbology of the English language will understand some approximation of that concept.

The concept would simply be understood, and communication would be a straightforward matter of imparting that understanding.

But perhaps there is an even better solution than this - although one that is, unfortunately, largely forgotten.

Presented with the puzzle that gargoyles are highly gregarious and intelligent by nature and yet appear to lack any notion of their own language, Weisman has mused that perhaps, long before human language evolved and became the locked-in method for communication, the gargoyle species possessed "mild psychic abilities that left them with no need to create language."

While emphasizing that he was only asserting a possibility, the communication he imagines - where it was not "words that they intuited (or transmitted or read or whatever) but emotions, maybe images or sensations" - sounds exceedingly similar to what Lanier hopes to achieve through virtual reality.

Such communication would be consistent with what audience knows about pre-human gargoyle culture, where definition and identity are situational as opposed to consistently codified.

But if that is the case, it leads to a rather lamentable conclusion. As Weisman puts it, "perhaps the very language skills that gargoyles learned from the human race dampened their psychic intuitiveness;" in other words, lock-in of a very particular method of communication (symbology) "locked-out" another method that presented communicative possibilities human technology can currently only dream of.

The initial insistence on not using personal names, then, can be considered a lingering hold-out of a bygone era where every concept was considered unlimited, and every sensation intimated in their full depth.

In dealing with nascent human cultures, gargoyles must have gradually accepted the limiting of concepts like "sky" or "river" because this made interspecies congress significantly more efficient, but they resisted the longest on the limiting of the very depths of the self.

But with the permanent instatement of "Hudson" and the rest, there does not appear to be room to return to the possibilities an unlimited identity presents. Human language has killed them.

Of course, both the gargoyle race and their culture are fantastical constructions, but that does not necessarily mean that humans cannot learn from their fictional example.

While humans do not seem to share these "mild psychic abilities" (although there are some who would vehemently disagree with that statement) that Weisman hypothesizes, that there are methods of sensation and communication which precede language skills is clearly documented.

As with gargoyles, members of the species Homo sapiens did exist well before the development of the earliest known language, and while current understanding of those early cultures is limited at best, there is also a much more immediate example to turn to.

Newborns spend a few years before they learn to define the world around them in the code of words - the sun is an experience to them long before the strictly defined, limiting name of "the sun" is ever applied to it.

The depths of what could be learned from observing children raised without learning language skills, interpreting sensations and intimating them to others via methods of their own device, are boundless; of course, the enormous ethical travesty presented by such experiments means they are not a viable avenue for inquiry.

So instead, humans turn to fiction - attempting to realize through others what that they have long since lost, and yearn to find again.

Greg Weisman has often described gargoyle culture, and pre-human gargoyle culture specifically, as something of a wish fulfillment for him. "I'm such a human," he laments with a written-out sigh, "But I aspire to gargoylosity."

Well, if the virtual reality morphing that so excites Jaron Lanier can indeed allow humans to experience sensation as a pre-human gargoyle (or a pre-language human, or a baby, or even a cephalopod) did/does - if it has the potential to turn the clock back as well as forward, and show what it is like for things simply to be, without the cumbersome and restrictive middleman of naming them - then perhaps that is an aspiration that more humans should share.

Katie writes...

I live with roommates directly across the street from a church and directly above a funeral home. We have a gargoyle in the window facing the church. Is this bad? We've been experiencing weird happenings in the house and get uneasy in a particular area of the house and I'd like to know if removing the gargoyle might help. I know that they're meant to keep evil out of a church and that's why they face away from them, but I wonder if having a gargoyle facing the church is bringing bad vibes to my apartment.

Todd Jensen writes...

When you were writing the "Gargoyles" comics for Slave Labor Graphics, did you ever mentally associate any of the scenes you wrote with the different musical themes from the television series? (I thought of this question after I realized that I was mentally linking Brooklyn's words when he returns from his Timedancing, "Forever... forty years... forty seconds... however you keep time, the dance is finally done" to the music that played in "The Gathering Part One" when Goliath was talking about how Avalon had finally released them from its quest and now they were home.

Greg Bishansky writes...

I have a question about gargoyle justice. Goliath considered dropping Tony Dracon to his death in "Protection," but decided that "gargoyle justice isn't human justice." So, I have to wonder... in what circumstances does a gargoyle arrive at taking the life of another to extract justice? I guess I'm just curious to know where does banishment end, and death begin?

Sydonai writes...

I did my best scouring the AskGreg archives trying to look for this answer and I'm PRETTY sure it hasn't been asked. If it has, I totally apologize. :(

I was re-watching 'Deadly Force' and really got to thinking about Goliath coming so close to doling out 'justice' for Elisa when he thought she had died. My question is this:

1. If a clan member does commit a crime what do his/her clan mates do? I know the trios infraction in the first episode got them a night in the rookery, but what do modern day gargoyles do in order to 'punish' the gargoyle whose committed the crime?

2. If a gargoyle kills a person (justified or not), is their punishment strictly dispensed by their clan, or are they given up to the human authorities?

Derek writes...

You've mentioned before that name designations don't mean much to Gargoyles. Does that extend to things like dates, months and seasons? For example if a Gargoyle clan lived totally isolated from humanity would they bother with any kind of classifications of time as they already seemed to be very attuned this by their biology.

Matt writes...

Hey Greg.

In July 2008, Chip asked you "Do Leo and Una have any biological children, and have we seen them so far in the comics?" and you responded "Lunette is theirs. That wasn't meant to be a secret. Leo + Una = Lunette."

Did you mean that this wasn't meant to be a secret from us or did you mean that Leo and Una and the London Clan themselves are aware of Lunette's biological parentage? You've said in the past that the London Clan continues to raise their young in the Gargoyle Way, but they are not blind. Despite the communal parenting, do they generally have a good idea about which hatchling came from which couple? And was Lunette's name, and it's Leo+Una-like pronunciation more than a coincidence. Was the name given to her because the Clan knew her parentage?

Thanks!

Greg Bishansky writes...

You've said in the past that gargoyles follow a vague religion that is both monotheistic and pantheistic, and that at present Coldfire would be the most interested in it. What are Demona's spiritual viewpoints? Was she ever a "believer." Is she still one, or is she lapsed? The closest we've ever gotten was her not considering a Wind Ceremony for her smashed clan a priority in "Tyrants."

For that matter, what are Angela's spiritual beliefs? She was raised by humans after all.

Greg Bishansky writes...

And now, here's a question about gargoyles, clones, attraction, and gender traits. I really miss the Blue Mug A Guests, this would have been a perfect question for them.
Male gargoyle clones' eyes glow red, and the female clones' glow white. The complete opposite of natural hatched gargoyles. I was just wondering, how would gargoyles who might attempt to mate with clones deal with this?
The only way I can extrapolate is by picturing human women with gender specific traits that only a man would have, or vice-versa. Most heterosexuals would consider such things to be massive turn-offs, unless they're a bit kinky. I know it's not as extreme as a female with a penis, or a male with a vagina. But I'm trying to extrapolate. Maybe like a beard on a woman, or breasts on a man. Okay, that feels a bit off too.
Now, we didn't see Brooklyn get anywhere with Delilah, he probably never even saw her eyes glow. And considering he was just seeing her as a body, an available female, I wonder just how much of a turn-off that would have been for him if he did make even a little progress.
On the other hand, we have Demona who was with Thailog for at least half a year, and assuming she is 100% heterosexual, I am wondering if that would have unnerved her at all. But, she definitely seemed very physically into him, so maybe she has bisexual tendencies, or she's just really kinky, or maybe she just didn't care one iota. I don't know.
What are your thoughts on this?

anon writes...

I realize this may have been answered before, but would the manhattan clan be tolerant of homosexuality? What about other clans?

Matt writes...

In the time long ago when there were gargoyle clans all over the world, how common was mating between members of different clans? Did gargoyles nearly always choose a mate from their own clan or was inter-clan mating fairly common when multiple clans existed in a general area?

Thanks Greg!

Anonymous writes...

Do gargoyles have the same nudity taboos that humans have? I know that Demona cannot go around bare breasted like Goliath does for obvious reasons of cultural modesty in the real world. But what about within the universe of the show?

happyteen writes...

What's Demona's insight towards other forms of life in earth? For example, does she share human's outlook in life that everything in this world is there to be exploit by "superior intelligent" creatures like her kind?

Does she consider human ways of exploiting animals and the enviroment acceptable (she hates us and all we do, but I mean...taking aside its us who are doing it)?

Would you say she is more of a cat or a dog "person"¡

Thanks!!

Eva writes...

Hey, Greg! If you don't remember, we met at the Gathering last year in L.A. (I was the one in the black hat and the striped scarf)

Okay, this may sound strange...
Besides Halloween, can gargoyles celebrate any other holiday?

Laura 'ad astra' Sack writes...

You've said gargoyles find human rascism nonsensical. Do gargoyles have their own sorts of rascisms we'd find nonsensical? If so, have we ever seen its effects? can you give examples?

Dragomir writes...

Greetings Greg,
I've read that Angela and Broadway will/would eventually have three hatchlings of their own at some point in their future. Now, while I am VERY happy for the two lovebirds, I can't help but wonder if their different upbringings and views on parentage & child raising would prove an issue for them. I mean, Broadway was raised in the traditional Gargoyle way and never knew who his actual biological parents were, nor showed any interest in learning who they were, & I've even read that if he ever did find out Hudson is his dad it wouldn't really change anything between them (which is the norm for most garg clans). However, Angela was raised by humans and cares very much about her blood ties with Goliath & Demona, wanting her father to acknowledge their bond & rejoicing once he does & over time their bond deepens, & wishing to bring Demona back into the light because of her connection to her despite being aware of her dark & troubled nature. I guess what I'm saying is, Angela strikes me as someone who'd want to raise her children personally & form a strong mother/child bond with them whereas Broadway would likely treat them the same way any gargoyle of an older generation would treat those of a younger generation. So I guess my question is, would Angela's & Broadway's different upbringings cause some problems for them in their relationship & in raising their hatchlings? Or would Angela convince Broadway to form a real parental bond with the kids as Goliath has formed with her? I can't really see Angela NOT making her blood ties known to her kids while Broadway just keeps quiet about it. Hope my questions make sense, this is my first time doing this, & thankyou for your time.

Laura 'ad astra' Sack writes...

A recent question about the relationship between Hudson and Demona got me thinking...

There was one off note in the question (the rest of the analysis was pretty cool)- Hudson would not have any discomfort at the idea that his rookery children were mated to each other. Given that the chance of multiple births is statistically zero and the strong predilection to marry within ones own rookery there is nearly no chance of biological incest ever happening so there would be no sibling taboo.

I recalled a factotum that caught my attention a few months back- Even the most gung-ho kibutzes in Israel got rid of true communal child raising in the 70's because their children were forming sibling bonds and not marrying. Of the thousands of children raised in the system, about 30 married within their own community and not even one married within his or her age group. (err... I suppose, by definition, two would be the minimum for that....) These children were raised with the intention of being future potential spouses but humans are hardwired not to look at siblings that way, even none biological siblings. A similar problem arises in some endangered animal sanctuaries - I remember a documentary mentioning that if male and female rhinos are housed together they eventually stop mating completely - it may have been anthropomorphizing, but they called it developing a sibling relationship. Obviously there are degenerates and incest does happen, Egyptian royalty was designed with sibling marriage, but we are biologically wired against it even when it is not based on blood and therefore dangerous on a Darwinian level.

It makes sense that Gargates, having evolved as very different species with different circumstances would be fundamentally different at times, but they are so very similar in some ways is it surprising when the differences pop up.

1) Do gargoyles have an incest taboo or does it just not come up?
2) If they do not have it, or, at least no strong one, what do they think of it when it occurs with humans? (I don't mean abuse, rather, for example, if they read about Egyptian kings marrying siblings does it give them pause or it just passes as an oddity.)
3) Are there any other instances that come to mind of there being a basic difference between humans and gargoyles? Not a culturally based one - or if it is culturally, it as outgrowth of their biological reality.

Sorry this last one is so vague. It is hard to think of examples. You once answered that racism puzzles Goliath. It makes sense that a species that seems to have nearly uinlimited skin color possibiilities even within a small and relatively isolated population would think the human skin tone based racism is plain odd. (Granted, gargoyles might have their own version of nonsensicle racism that makes no sense to humans.) I can think of where similar differences would be rooted- they are completely nocturnal, they have wings, the do not share the sleeping experience in any way etc…- but it still seems more the sort of thing that occasionally pops up and surprises you. Maybe...a creature with usable wings would be hardwired against agoraphobia or fear of heights. err. Maybe, not so much, they can still fall if their wings get bound up, so at minimum the concept of falling might lurk somewhere even in their minds.

thanks

Ariell Choy writes...

As humans, we can express ourselves culturally, emotionally and even spiritually through the arts (music, dance, drama, literature, etc). Do gargoyles practice the arts? Do gargoyles even have the capacity to create art? I have always wanted to know since having seen the episode "Kingdom" in which Broadway, Lexington, and Brooklyn return home to the Clock Tower after having attended a rock concert in which Brooklyn proclaims "did you hear that guitarist wail?"

Charisma82 writes...

Did Hudson influence Goliath’s decision at all as to who should’ve been Goliath’s second in command?

If something had happened to Goliath before he had chosen a second in command, I would assume that Hudson would’ve become leader at first, but then would choose someone else to lead since he’s older and believes that a younger leader would be best (which is indicated in the episode Upgrade). If this was the case, who would Hudson have considered becoming the new leader of the clan? Would he have based his decision along the same lines as Goliath, or would he have looked for other qualifications?

Thank you for your time and all that you do,

-Charisma82

Greg Bishansky writes...

And now I have a question on Goliath and religion.

In the VHS version of "Awakening" as the trio glide off to steal the disc, Goliath says "godspeed lads. They'd better not be harmed." In the TV version he just says "They'd better not be harmed."

Since you edited the VHS release, I have to ask. Would Goliath say "godspeed?" Considering what you have since revealed about gargoyle religious beliefs, I was wondering. In your mind, did he say it?

And while I'm here, what's the canon status of the VHS version of "Awakening?" There is some material in it that wasn't in the TV and later DVD version?

Lambda writes...

Hi Greg,
I just realized something very sad. Because gargoyles only age at half the rate of humans, by the time the Trio/Angela and Goliath are in their 40s and 50s respectively, Elisa, Fox, Matt, Xanatos and all their other 'original' human friends will have either died or be quite elderly.

1.How do the gargoyles cope with knowing they will outlive these friends (pending unnatural deaths)? It has to be depressing, especially watching your friends grow old before your eyes.

2. Was this something Elisa and Goliath considered before admitting their feelings for one another?

Thanks!

Elle writes...

The whole 'Gargoyles don't have names' thing has been bothering me for a while.
1. If Demona had been given a chance to choose her own name (not an alias), what would she have chosen?
2.Would she have chosen one at all?
2. The Wyvern clan originally didn't have names. But the Gargoyles in other countries we meet later on all have names. Did they choose the names themselves? Or were they named by their biological parents? Or perhaps the clan as a whole named them?

Random Fan writes...

Anouther question that should reach you by the holiday season. Happy Holidays!
You've gone over the importance of the equanoxis in the garg verse as they are important to garg breeding, but what about the soltices? seeing as how they are the longest and shortest nights of the year do they have any significance to gargs beyond a diffrent time frame?