Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 110

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Popular Culture Review

This dimension of The Shadow character seems to manifest the “vigi
lante” desires of law-abiding people to take vengeance on evildoers when tradi
tional justice seems inadequate. Criminals may evade capture by police, but The
Shadow metes out justice as inevitably as the Grim Reaper serves up death. Lee
Server caught this aspect of the character well when he described The Shadow as
“a Victorian wraith with his black cloak and sinister cackle” (92). In his first
appearance in The Living Shadow, The Shadow prevented a man named Harry
Vincent from committing suicide and recruited him as one of his agents. Vincent’s
impression of The Shadow follows:
It seemed as though the man’s strength had been wrested from
him as he faced a tall, black-cloaked figure that might have repre
sented death itself. For he could not have sworn that he was look
ing at a human being. The stranger’s face was entirely obscured
by a broad-brimmed felt hat bent downward over his features; and
the long black coat looked almost like part of the thickening fog.
(7-8)
Good versus Evil
A second heroic archetypal metaphor present in the Shadow myth is the
conflict between good and evil. Though The Shadow is mysterious in many ways,
one thing is certain: he exists to fight evil. The opening sequence of The Shadow
radio series, which has become a part of the American language, illustrates this:
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows! [weird
laughter]” (“Message from the Hills”).
The Shadow, who knew all, and who spoke to men from the darkness,
took on the character of one’s conscience. This aspect of The Shadow was present
from his earliest days as narrator on the Detective Story Hour. Recordings of this
early series are apparently rare, but one surviving introduction went like this: “I
am The Shadow. Conscience is a taskmaster no crook can escape. It is a jeering
shadow even in the blackest lives. The Shadow knows and you too shall know if
you listen as Street and Smith’s Detective Story Magazine relates for you the story
o f ‘The House of Death’ [weird laughter]” (Tollin).
The Shadow’s inhuman laughter became a signature of the character’s
disdain for evil. This chilling laugh from the darkness curdled the blood of evildo
ers, signaling that The Shadow had no fear and delighted in destroying criminals.
Gibson described it thus: “It was a long, mocking laugh; a strange, unaccountable
laugh; a laugh that would chill the heart of a man who had never known fear!”
{Living Shadow 67). The radio show heightened this sense of the macabre by
using foreboding organ music and sound effects in the background. Each show
began with the sound of crashing waves or howling wind and the haunting strains