Alyssa Rosenberg in all her awesomeness wrote a piece for ThinkProgress
on the dismissing of sexism by several legendary comic creators. The creators
in question are Michael Kantor, Todd McFarlane (Spawn), Len Wein (Wolverine),
and Gerry Conway (The Punisher).
Rosenberg begins her article with a quote from the Television Critics
Association press tour from MacFarlane, “The vast majority of dudes [are] doing
this high testosterone sort of storytelling, and so we put out fantasy on the plate
on the pages. As much as we stereotype the women, we do it with the guys. The
guys are all good looking, not too many ugly superheroes. They’ve all got their
hair gelled back. They have got perfect pecs on them. They have no hair on their
chest. I mean, they are Ryan Gosling on steroids. Right? They are all
beautiful. So we actually stereotype both sexes. We just happen to show a
little more skin on the ladies.”
Oh behalf of comic fans everywhere please shut up. You can’t equate the
way women are depicted and the way men are in mainstream comics. I’ve
written about it before. And we can talk about violence against women (girls in
the refrigerator as motivation for male characters, poor
Ms. Marvel, etc). McFarlane’s statement ignores the costumes, power
dynamics between men and women, fantasy power dynamics between men and women,
and as Rosenberg notes, “the difference between admiring what someone can do
with their body, and what you can do to theirs.”
She followed up with McFarlane, Wein, and Conway where she was met with
the same perspective, which isn’t that far off from consumers (see con harassment).
Conway said, “the comics follow society. They don’t lead society.” So society
is ok with fantasies that include dominating superheroes.
McFarlane asserts that people can
make comic about whatever they want, even women! Thanks dude for the
permission. He even claims there are no barriers in the field, except in the
major two companies…and of course women are in the business, so equality (Jenette
Kahn is head of DC now). Also, the major two companies cause problems for independent creators all the time. Talk about barriers.
These three dudes defaulted into the
traditional argument about how if someone wants/creates a character just
because they want more diversity in comics then it won’t be good story telling
(oh, we’re coming back to this assertion). They say it becomes tokenism because
the character is completely about that one characteristic…yeah, some of these
guys work for Marvel, and this is what they believe. McFarlane said this on the
subject, “There hasn’t really been historically a comic book that has worked
that is trying to get across a kind of message, if you will. So the female
characters that work are the ones that are just strong women that actually it’s
good storytelling, and the odd character that is a minority that works is the
one that is just a good strong character. They’ve tried to do minority
characters and bring that label that surrounding [debate] into it. You’re aware
that you’re reading a minority comic book. I think it’s wrong.”
Well, golly gee, I’m glad you have a
moral opinion about it. Also, arguably Wonder Woman was created
to be a female hero for the sake of being a female hero, and that worked out
pretty well, except we can’t get a movie must be because she isn’t a strong and
complex character not like the Hulk (smash). *sarcasm*
Wein argued for race neutrality, I
imagine because we live in a post racial society after all Obama’s election
ended racism…except with Martin, and the kid the cops killed (over and over and
over), etc. Wein said, "I have written anything you can possibly think of. I
have created Storm who was the first black female superhero. I created a number
of other characters, and it never matters to me what the color of their skin
was. I was writing about who they were as human beings, and it wasn’t Black
Storm. She was Storm.”
Few things. One, Eric Jerome Dickey
would probably have a different opinion. He wrote the story arch where Storm
married Black Panther and became co-ruler of Wakanda, an independent African
nation that stands against Western imperialism. Additionally, Anna Beatrice
Scott wrote “Superpower
vs. Supernatural: Black Superheroes and the Quest for a Mutant Reality”
where she discusses the use of race and subsequently the impact a characters race has
on things like powers. It sounds very much like the discussion around the
Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire archetypes.
Conway went on to tell Rosenberg that his daughter reads comics by Faith
Erin Hicks, and she doesn’t write guy stories. He separates Hicks' The Adventures of Superhero Girl from
the other superhero comics for some reason, probably because Hicks has a vagina. Additionally, it sounds like Conway
was dismissing Rosenberg’s knowledge on the subject which pisses me off because that is pretty damn condescending.
Don’t worry though; McFarlane says something much more offensive. McFarlane
steers his daughter in another direction because, “It might not be the right
platform. I’ve got two daughters, and if I wanted to do something that I
thought was emboldened to a female, I probably wouldn’t choose superhero comic
books to get that message across. I would do it in either a TV show, a movie, a
novel, or a book. It wouldn’t be superheroes because I know that’s heavy
testosterone—drive, and it’s a certain kind of group of people. That’s not
where I would go get this kind of message, so it might be the right platform
for some of this.”
I should probably apologize to my father given one of our normal outings
is superhero and action movies. Seriously, he made my brother-in-law and I sit
apart from one another during X-men 3
because we were making predictions and then arguing with the screen. It was a
dark time in my life, and I don’t want to talk about it. Also, Joss Whedon
writes comics. Any of his are appropriate for girls. *drops mic*
MacFarlane’s comments are pretty disturbing on several levels once you
step away from the sarcasm. First, somehow biology dictates what you like.
Secondly, sex and gender are the same and finite. Back up man, there are Trans(ish)
comic characters (see The Runaways). Additionally,
his assertion should work both ways, men and women shouldn’t be interested in
any art the other gender creates (not to mention third genders). Does this mean
I have to give up Shakespeare? Or are we operating under the assumption the man
perspective is the default so we should all just accept it and comics are
somehow the exception? Also, gentlemen, step away from Frankenstein, you’ll get cooties. Rosenberg puts it in excellent
perspective, “The decision to stay within the narrow lanes of your own
fantasies is a choice, not biological determinism.”
Preach. Rosenberg goes on to point out that these creators don’t share
the views in the actual documentary, Superheroes:
The Never-ending Battle. Michael Kantor is the executive producer on the
film who pointed out that women are included in the film, which focuses on why
the industry has shrunk. Kantor says, “When Stan lee introduced Luke Cage and
the Black Panther in the ‘60s, there’s a level of tokenism to that, but it also
reflects the growing Civil Rights movement.”
Of course, wanting more diversity isn’t tokenism. It is only tokenism if
the creators under develop the characters making them shells. Rosenberg and I
agree with something Conway said about origin stories and the nature of
superhero storytelling, “I think part of the issue is that people who are
making these movies feel that the basic that the origin story is the story,
that there is no other story that you can tell about a superhero. I think they
missed the point that these characters can be plugged into almost any story
structure. They are focused on the origin story because that’s sort of what they
think superheroes are. You know, their these little mythic creations that are
about an unempowered person becoming empowered. But of course they are not. They
are symbolic of story telling structure. There are modern day myths so they can
tell any story you want to. They can tell about the story of the fall of a good
man.”
But not a good woman I guess. Rosenberg countered the comment about
comics not being able to get ahead of society by saying, “’That seems like an
unambitious position.’ I told him. One might even say it’s decidedly less than
superheroic.”
I’m going to be brief because this thing is lengthy, but comics have been
ahead of society or running right alongside it (all art does, see last week’s
post on subversion and fiction). Additionally, comics have quite the history of
being political, though maybe not in the most heroic of ways, but as
propaganda. Take Captain
America, he was created for political reasons (I’m not saying this is bad
or good, just true). And for every Miles
Morales, we get a reinterpretation, retelling, and violation of Wonder
Woman and Starfire, which just feeds into stereotypical male fantasies
about women as object not subject.
I once had an argument with a good friend of mine over Twilight. L loved the books, and I hadn’t
read them at the time (I did eventually, and they are just romance novels for
conservative teens). I pointed out the problematic themes to L (violence
against women, often for their own protection, infantilization of women, the
creepy pro-life messages, consumerism, racism, knock a girl up, not only will
she love you forever, literally, but it makes her want to be a mother even
through for the first three books she had no interest in it, so troubling
themes). L asserted Meyers had no agenda, let alone a political agenda when
writing the books. To which I replied, then Meyers is a shitty writer because all
writers should want to convey a message, an agenda. Anyone who doesn’t might as
well be a monkey at a keyboard.
I say this to the men who believe adding women, queer individuals,
Muslims, and people of color will deter from storytelling, what exactly is your
agenda? Let me tell you, it is the agenda of the patriarchy.
