Wherein Our Hero Flogs a Dead Horse (but only because everyone else is.)
Man…it took me three columns to write a rant about sexism in comics…a new personal best, although to be fair this one is completely Matt’s fault.
For those not in the know, the internet seemed to be ablaze this week in response to Green Lantern Corps #36 wherein writer Pete Tomasi and artist Pat Gleason brought back Kyle Rayner’s FIRST dead girlfriend as a Black Lantern (as opposed to his other dead girlfriend they brought back a few months ago), refrigerator and all, for an admittedly flimsy scene of extreme violence that was probably supposed to show the strength of character Kyle has developed over the years since this first belle, Alex DeWitt, was murdered, mangled and stuffed into a refrigerator by Major Force, but failed to come across as anything other than hokey.
In case it wasn’t clear, spoilers for Green Lantern Corps, Blackest Night and parts of the last two decades of the Green Lantern mythos are in effect.
Hooboy…I wonder if Ron Marz knew the can of worms he was opening what that one? That one singular act of violence against a woman in a comic book has been one of the biggest spearheads of the comic book feminist movement since that issue (Green Lantern Vol. 3 #54) landed.
Full disclosure admittance: like with most topics I cover in this column, I generally (and in this case strongly) disagree with BOTH sides of this debate. I have no reasonable recommendations to combat the problem of sexism in comics…except maybe getting a few more creators and fanboys laid…but that’s beside the point.
First I want to call out all those activists who have used the fridge scene as a flashpoint of their crusade: while I get what you are riled up about (I’m personally mortified by the hyper-violence of the act), you are almost 100% missing the point. Was this scene meant, as you claim, to be a revelation of a woman’s place in society according to the author? Hell no. This was the dearest person in the heart of the title character getting brutally murdered and STUFFED INTO A GODDAMN FRIDGE! Kyle Rayner was a straight man who loved his girlfriend and a super villain found out his identity and opted to attack his heart as opposed to his body. Due to the sexual orientation of the character, this loved one happened to be his girlfriend. This is an attack on A woman, not ALL women and if you disagree you REALLY need to calm yourself and stop looking for a scapegoat. I know what its like to fight against an unfair and misguided social norm…but seeing the devil everywhere you look will do NOTHING to further your cause. One has to wonder…if Kyle was gay and that was a man stuffed into that fridge, would the event become as controversial to the feminist community? Probably not…though the gay community would probably be pissed. I for one find this incredibly disturbing…extreme violence against members of all gender orientations should be treated as equally horrifying. The world is a terrible place wherein women AND men are attacked and horrifically killed a LOT more often than anyone wants to admit. This scene, if it perpetuates ANYTHING, it is violence against HUMANS, not just women. Is it really fair to, after decades of hyper violence taking place in comics, to focus on one example and say it defames an entire gender? Real world violence happens all the time…yet in comics, it only phases you when your favorite character or a character you decide is a representative of a group kicks it? That’s kinda selfish right?
Which brings me to the first point I’d like to make: The Walking Dead, the so-called “most sexist comic ever written”, is a great example of real world sexism manifesting itself accurately in a fictional medium. Now I will admit, a lot of the arguments against that series are valid in that they claim the women in the series are not particularly empowered (given that the most physically empowered person in the book is a woman, I don’t really get this argument) and, especially in the early days of the book, completely defined by the men they were romantically involved with. These are both true statements, however, THIS KINDA STUFF HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE, ESPECIALLY IN THE AREA OF THE COUNTRY THE BOOK TAKES PLACE IN. As sad as it is to admit, not every woman ever has overcome the global patriarchy and either empowered themselves or been empowered…a lot of women IN REAL LIFE act like some of the women in The Walking Dead. Should comics ignore this reality completely, or try their best to intelligently comment on it, as I feel The Walking Dead has come to do in recent years.
Continued belowSo then, the question must be asked…should comics embody the world that exists, or the world that we want to exist? Clearly, in many ways, they already embody the latter as last I checked people couldn’t leap tall buildings in a single bound yet…and yet, established real world gender roles remain.
Now, before I move on to state my issues with the masculine creators and consumers of comics…because the accusations made by the feminist community are NOT baseless…I want to address the specific scene in this week’s Green Lantern Corps. I will admit, when I first read it I found it really absurd…and not in the good, Grant Morrison way either. Quite frankly, the way the scene reads initially makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Alex appearing stuffed inside the fridge makes NO sense and while the argument could be made that the fridge itself was a construct created by her power ring, the book made no clear indication that was the case. Furthermore, no black lantern has thus far exhibited powers beyond what they had when they were alive (Alex was a non-powered human) other than those provided by the ring itself. Said ring powers do not include telepathy of any kind or the seeming spatial control exhibited by Black Lantern Alex and her fridge of mystery. Therefore, the fact that she pulled Kyle into this maybe-was-a-construct-maybe-it-wasn’t fridge and placed his mind into the body of Major Force for a flashback to Alex’s death made NO REASONABLE SENSE. There really is no way a Black Lantern could have done that, TO THAT EXTENT, based on their defined power set. Furthermore, evidence for the “not a construct” argument comes from the fact that when Alex’s body appeared outside of the fridge, it was mangled and contorted as it would have been when she was stuffed inside. Every other Black Lantern that has appeared has done so free of whatever status they were in when they died…all mortal wounds healed…except for Alex. It is more or less entirely clear that it was not simply a “former loved one appearing to get emotion out of the living hero” motif we’ve seen since the start of Blackest Night, though that was a part of it. Alex’s appearance now was fundamentally entwined with the way she died…everything done with the fridge was deliberate…and frankly, it did not give the respect it should have to the original event. In fact, it almost…not quite, but almost…satirized it. All gender issues aside, satirizing a scene of extreme violence, no matter what the intent, isn’t right.
Which brings me to the portion of the article where I put all you “comics aren’t sexist” thinkers in your place. Though I will say I do understand your trepidation…no one likes to admit that something they like represents a negative stereotype. However, you need to get the hell over it. Comics, as a medium, are NOT the Holy Grail and to ignore the very obvious sexist inclinations exhibited by the medium is, quite frankly, asinine.
Now, while it may seem like I am making broad generalizations about the medium, I will of course admit this is not the case. Not ALL comics are sexist and in fact there are quite a few creators, both male and female, who write and draw respectful representations of all genders…AKA, writers who are good (Jonathan Hickman, Gail Simone, Mike Mayhew and Greg Rucka amongst them.) There are also plenty who indulge in established gender roles in their writing and art and nothing I say in this article will really change that. That having been said, there is one instance that really caught my eye and pissed me off in recent memory that I intend to use to illustrate the entire problem.
Before we get to that though, I feel it necessary to clarify that artistic representations of humans in comic books aren’t quite true to life…and in many ways, that’s the point. These fictional characters are FICTIONAL (surprising, I know!) and therefore artists can take creative license to make them look as fantastical as they are written. Now this has, of course lead to…certain parts of the female anatomy…getting exaggerated a little more than other body parts…usually, but not always, by male artists. While I could write a book on this specific issue, I’ll summarize by telling you to take a look at how Power Girl has been drawn over the last few years and ideally my point would be proven. Now of course, one has to wonder whether there is a relationship between an empowered woman and excessive amounts of cleavage…since in the real world, this is an equation I have seen play out…but that’s not really the road I want to go down right now.
Continued below
While excesses in character design are a lot easier to justify, women in comics are…I wont say frequently since that’s excessive…but certainly a lot of times drawn in compromising and overly sexual positions…assumingly done so to benefit the largely male target audience of the books. Greg Land is extremely guilty of this, however the one example I mentioned above that I’d like to cite is the work by Bong Dazo in his current run on Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth. In one particular scene in the third issue of the book, while delivering dialogue completely unrelated to sex or clothing changes, Dr. Betty is actually drawn TAKING HER PANTS OFF. Not bent over…not with pants riding up higher than physically possible…TAKING THEM OFF. While every woman Dazo has drawn in this series is as exaggerated in the same ways I mentioned above, but this was completely unforgiveable and more than a little indicative of the points I illustrated above. I mean seriously, what is the goddamn point? There is none…none that I can really see anyway.
As I mentioned above, I don’t really have a solution to offer for the issue of sexism in comics. Whatever the solution is though, I feel it has to involve the industry’s male clientele becoming more aware of the way women are (again not always, but enough that I can reasonable say) often portrayed and realizing how not okay it is. Ultimately though, comics do reflect, in a lot of ways, the world in which we live…theoretically, if people could learn how despicable and out-dated gender roles are, comics would almost certainly follow suite.
Joshua Mocle is aware that as a man, his feminist leanings will probably be disregarded by most. He is not letting this stop him. To read his rants about things that DON’T have to do with comics (AKA punk rock and burritos), go here.
