Personally, I think
this is lazy writing because it is completely baseless. Sexual assaults result
in trauma and PTSD with years of ramifications. Most survivors need therapy and
those who don’t seek help often have long reaching scars. So rape in a comic
book where it is a big deal for one story arch, but then the girlfriend is killed
so the story is over or if she is one of the few to survive then the trauma is
over in the next arch. Nope, just not the way it works.
There are two rape
tropes commonly employed in media. One trope is called “gratuitous rape”
because it doesn’t really progress the plot because we’re not working through
sexual assaults depictions in media, how survivors navigate the healing
process, etc. Rape for the sake of rape. The other is rape of
girlfriend/mother/some woman close to the usually male hero. This has such an
impact on our hero because how dare someone do this to him (wait, what?)
because that is what this is about our male hero and his property. This only
works because these women are seen as property of the male character essentially
they are props. Anita Sarkeesian does
some videos on video game tropes; this is the one on women and violence in
video games. Often, if the woman survives the trauma, it doesn’t impact her
down the road because she doesn’t have feelings except those that impact the
hero. She is a nothing but a foil for the hero so her thoughts and feelings
come and go like the wind.
So why are we
talking about this, again? Because comicbeat.com ran an interview by Heidi
MacDonald with John Romita Jr. Romita was approached by Mark Miller (kind
of known for his sexual depictions of and violent against women in his comics)
to draw Kick-Ass. Romita is well
known and has worked for the major companies. His contract with Marvel just
ended. The interview included a discussion of the toning down of the violence
for the second film. The reviews I’ve read for the second movie have been
pretty positive noting that the film passes the Bechdel test. I’m under the
impression that it is Hit Girl’s story about navigating adolescence and being a
superhero.
Below is the
question and answer that has caused some controversy:
The
Beat: As you may
know, there’s been a huge uproar recently about something Mark [Miller] said.
There were some concerns about how in the comic there is a rape scene and in the
movie they did tone it down and—
John
Romita, Jr: Wait
a minute, there was no rape scene in the book. There was an intimidation of
what could happen and what happened but you never saw a rape scene. It was foul
language and it was violence to a lady, she gets hit. But there was no rape
scene. I get a kick out of having been sent emails that said I can’t believe
you depicted a rape scene in your book [because] it never happened. So I need
to clarify that, yes we touched on it, and we came close to it. But we didn’t
show it and we would never show that. Yet we did show children getting attacked
and that’s rough. I can only qualify this, by first of all, I haven’t seen what
Mark has said or written, I don’t know what the controversy is. I just know
Mark is a sweetheart and a good man, a good father and a good husband. So I don’t
know what he said. If it was taken wrong, so be it. If he said something wrong
I’m sure he will correct it. I don’t know what was said. I do know this, I felt
uncomfortable about doing scenes about children getting hurt. I felt
uncomfortable about the thought of a woman getting attacked. None of which I
haven’t seen on television, soap operas, in magazines, and I don’t think that
we put anything that was so shocking but again, I had nightmares the first time
I saw a rape scene in a movie, I had nightmares the first time I saw a kid get
hurt. That’s me on a personal basis. I can close my eyes and imagine my son or
wife getting hurt and it makes me come to tears. So that goes without saying.
But there’s nothing
that we did that was so outrageous and I again, if I had a choice of not
showing the children getting shot, maybe I [would do] the scene differently.
Mark didn’t ask me to show them getting blown apart like that, I choose that
way and again maybe I would do it differently, I don’t know. Second guessing is
the worst thing I could possibly do, and I appreciated all of the input into it
but again we did not show a woman getting raped, nor would we.
The
Beat: Fair
enough.
John
Romita, Jr: I
don’t begrudge people’s opinions, again you can watch something on TNT or Spike
TV or especially on HBO or any cable network or any DVD that would shock
anybody in any circumstances. Look at The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I can’t watch that scene.
The Beat: Very unpleasant,
yes.
John Romita Jr: So
people have to keep things in context and keep things relative. What did Mark
say that was so shocking?
The
Beat: He said
that he felt that rape was a means of showing how bad the villain was and he
compared it to decapitation, but as it was pointed out, rape is not the same as
decapitation. People don’t say, oh what was she wearing when she got
decapitated? I think it’s partly a very valid criticism. I think you need to
address aspects of rape culture, but Mark says things and a line in an
interview should not be the sum total of how he is judged. I think he should be
judged on his body of work and his work is sometimes very difficult and
[problematic]. It has been very much in the news recently, and I appreciated
you taking on all questions here about it.
John
Romita, Jr: Not
a problem. I am involved in it as he is. I did the artwork for it. But again
there was no rape scene. It needs to be hit on that there was no graphic rape
scene.
Ok, so a few
things. The images above are the scenes in question. Sure, we don’t see what happened
to Katie (yes, the character has a name, which no one seems to know). But the
assumed scene not shown is the gang rape of
Katie by the big bads. But let’s go over this briefly. Miller claimed the
non-shown rape scene demonstrated the level of badness of the villain, and The
Beat does well in articulating the critique of Miller’s response. Miller has a
history of work that does women poorly and is hella homophobic.
However, I’d like
to talk about Romita’s response. I think first we should look at the language.
Nothing pisses me off more than using language the places the responsibility on
the victims such as “getting”. Getting implies action. So when the subject is
the victim then the victim is given the role of actor. For example, “Katie
getting raped by a gang of villains” has Katie in the actor role and the bad
guys as the object. Now, “Katie was being raped by a gang of villains” puts the
sentence in the passive which makes Katie passive and it doesn’t read as if she
is responsible for her own rape. Just saying it is hard to take men seriously
who want to talk about how rape isn’t a big deal like it is the same as a
little girl who happens to be a superhero getting punched in the face.
Which brings me to
the next issue. Stop. Just stop equating sexual violence with other kinds of
violence especially in a medium where women are routinely victimized as a means
for the male hero to develop. If rape is going to be used as a motivating factor,
why not rape the male hero? Why wasn’t Kick-Ass or one of his male BFFs raped?
Some of the bad guys were in prison. Is it impossible to imagine they might participate
in the rape or sexual degradation of other males? No, Katie was picked because
women get raped (intentional language).
Additionally,
saying someone else did it first isn’t an excuse. If anything, shouldn’t as a
creator you be striving to do something different? But yeah, rape is regularly used
as a plot device. You know who did it well? General
Hospital. I know a lot of men read this blog, but hold on it is a good
point. GH is a soap opera, and my mom’s
favorite. She loved Luke and Laura, whose wedding was the most watched show for
like years, people still talk about it. However, Luke raped Laura, and then
they fell in love over time. That’s pretty problematic because men can’t just
rape women and then women fall in love with them. That is an awful and
dangerous plot. It wasn’t immediate, but regardless, that isn’t the story arch
that does rape well. Luke and Laura have a son, Lucky, and he falls in love
with Liz (so many L names). Liz is raped by a stranger (statistically low probability),
and through this Lucky learns about his father raping his mother. The fallout
from this went on for years. It was one of the most complex and well done stories
I’ve ever seen. Why? Because it focused on the victims and the perpetrator, all
of them including their families, because the rape wasn’t just one episode, the
impacts of it continued for decades. Because that is how trauma works. Years would
pass and no one mention it, then all of a sudden Liz would be working in the
hospital and triggered. So to Miller and Romita, I say, if you’re going to do
it you better do it well.
Romita also
references The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo. There is a graphic and horrific gang rape scene
in the book. I imagine they toned it down for the film, but I haven’t seen it. The
novel was written by Stieg Larsson who witnessed the gang rape of an acquaintance
where he did nothing to help her. Days later feeling so guilty he found Lisbeth
and begged her for forgiveness, which she refused. That is why he wrote the
book. He wanted to write a character that was empowered to absolve him of his
own guilt. Again, Miller and Romita, what did the rape of Katie provide?
The last thing that
may have pissed me off the most in Romita’s response was about his son and
wife. You see it hurts him so much to think someone might rape his wife or hurt
his son. Take a moment to pull yourself together, tears and pearl clutching. *Sarcasm*
This is the same shit the women hear from the menfolk all the time in
reproductive health and violence against women debates. As a man you may one
day know a woman who something awful has happened to so best protect and infantilize
them as a monolith. Fuck you very much. There is this wacky theory where women
are people. Essentially, this argument that “I have a wife/mother/daughter/third
grade teacher who was a woman” makes women props see the beginning of this
post. Women only matter as much as they matter to the men in their lives. The scenes above
also show Kick-Ass blaming himself because you know Katie experiencing sexual
assault is all about him.
I am by no means
rejecting the just of rape in media. It can be very effective, but tread
lightly. If you’re going to employ this then make sure you do it well and
complete. You will need a few things: complex and completely developed female
characters (if you’re going to rape a woman in your media), an understanding of
sexual violence, and basic understandings of human interactions. Miller and
Romita’s use of rape is lazy and pretty offensive once they start talking about
it.
