CRAFTING WALL STONES PT. 2

Assuming that one validates my equation between artistic creativity and Mary Wollstonecraft's concept of "virtue" as it is determined by the sexual division of labor-- what then?

Well, if everyone viewed such discrepancies in virtue as the result of a long-standing biological process, we wouldn't get things like THE OBITUARY MARIE SEVERIN SHOULD HAVE RECEIVED, in which we learn, according to author Alex Dueben, that it represents "the career she could have had, had she been born a man."

Not since the days of "Spiderbuttgate" have I seen such a display of blithering ressentiment, in which the shortcomings of any person who fits an intersectional profile can be excused by references to "endemic sexism."

Now, I wrote my own obit for Marie Severin, combined with one for Gary Friedrich, who coincidentally passed on the same day. Mine was not a general assessment of either comics pro, aside from crediting them both with "better-than-average formula entertainment," which assessment I would apply to both pros separately.

What we have here is sheer revisionism, an attempt to build Marie Severin up to a major figure in comic books. In the comments-section, Heidi McDonald avers:

Looking at the work here, Severin should always be mentioned in the same breath as Wood and Kurtzman.

To say the least, I do not agree. Severin simply was not that imaginative. Forget comparisons to Wood and Kurtzman; Severin was not even as accomplished as a contemporaneous "Marvel Bullpen" artist like Bill Everett. Everett is of course most famed as the creator of the Sub-Mariner, but even if one compared Everett's accomplishments in the Silver and Bronze Ages to those of Severin in the same period, there's nothing on Severin's resume that even rates with Everett's co-creation of Daredevil. Indeed, Everett even created one of Marvel's most prominent sixties villainesses, Umar the Unrelenting--

--whom Severin also drew a few issues later.

Now, if one agrees with my proposition that, based only on their Silver-and-Bronze Age contributions Everett was superior to Severin, is there a biological explanation for this opinion? Certainly I would not advocate Camille Paglia's explanation, as discussed in Part 1, to the effect that Everett's abilities in male projection-- and being able to write his own name in the snow-- had anything to do with it.

But Everett may have been a better creator simply because, being a man, he was more invested in excelling in a largely male arena, while Severin was not so invested.

Granted, one can certainly find male practitioners who weren't even as good at formulaic entertainment as was Severin. But on the whole, there were simply more good male creators than there were female ones, and no revisionism can change that.

I assert, further, that there are a fair number of female comics-pros who not only show exceptional creativity, but who arguably can excel their male contemporaries. An example would be Rumiko Takahashi, one of the foremost manga-artists, who IMO easily outpaced her former manga-teacher, the recently departed Kazuo Koike. I admire Koike's writing on such properties as LONE WOLF AND CUB and LADY SNOWBLOOD. But even allowing for the manga-works I have not read, I would say that Takahashi displays a far greater profusion of disparate characters and concepts. And she did so, even though it seems likely that Japan had its own tradition of "endemic sexism."

LOVE OVER WAR (FOR NOW) PT. 1

Nietzsche's "high spirits" line from TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS prompted this current line of thought. Once more, with (high) feeling:

"Nothing succeeds in which high spirits play no part."

I last used the "high spirits" in M FOR EFFORT to assert that such spirited-ness was a necessary component to both of my "big M's," megadynamicity and metaphenomenality. I won't be addressing the latter, because I've decided to focus on a (comparatively) new concept: viewing the mode of the combative through the lens of sex rather than violence.

The combative mode, as I've generally defined it, comes about only when two or more megadynamic agents in a narrative contend with one another. Combative works are, I've specified, a subset of the total set of works dealing with any form of conflict, be it physical, moral, psychological, etc. Over the years I've tended to compare combative works with works that included some form of violence that was not combative, though I've also frequently written about works that have no violence, or works in which the conflict is extrinsic to the narrative.

So in recent weeks I've been meditating on the following topic: if in combative works "high spirits" are best shown by the act of combat between near-equals-- the quintessential "male" theme of war-- then what do "high spirits" look like in works in which the conflict-emphasis is more oriented upon the "female" theme of love?

It's axiomatic that male audiences generally like violence and contentious situations, and female audiences generally like love and domestic situations. There are basically just two extant explanations for this differentiation of gender-taste: either the tastes are expressive of the physical natures of the respective genders, or the tastes have been manipulated into existence by the Evil Culture Industry. Anyone who reads this should be able to guess which explanation I find more credible, but even though I agree that physical nature is a primary influence, I don't agree with those who consider it determinative.

I'm aware, of course, that the latter explanation is the one most favored, possibly because it gives its adherents the chance to wallow in victimhood. To them, absolute equity between the genders is the only possible ideal. In this essay I took issue with Heidi McDonald's ideal of equity by saying:

The whole "who's exposed more" question should never have been one of pure equity.  Equity is something to be observed in the workplace or the boardroom, but not in fiction.  Fiction is a place where fantasy reigns, and as I said in the essay, it's simply a lot harder to sell hyper-sexualized fantasies to women than to men.  I tend to think that this is because in general men are hornier bastards than women, but others' mileage may vary.

A couple of years previous, I wrote DEFINING PSUEDOFEMINISM, in which I contrasted remarks by a writer I considered a "pseudo-feminist" with remarks by noted "anti-feminist" Dave Sim. Both, I pointed out, attempted to shore up their opinions with appeals to what each of them considered empirical fact. Sim's views about female athletes dispensed with any considerations of equity whatever. I observed:

Sim "proves" that women are "inherently, self-evidently, inferior beings" by asserting that women cannot beat men on an equal footing.  Hence fantasies of women kicking butt, in sports or in other forms of entertainment, are related to "the Charlie's Angels Syndrome," and so stand as further proof of women's inferiority.

In addition to disproving Sim's view in that essay, I championed the concept of the "fighting woman" archetype in several essays, and showed in NON-ADDICTIVE VICTIMAGE that I was not allied to the "biology is destiny" crowd.

I wouldn't have written as much as I have on the subject of "the Fighting Woman Archetype" if I believed that the greater body mass of the human male decided all questions of supremacy. But if it's almost inevitable that most men are stronger than most women, then this physical factor inevitably will be reflected in fiction. This inequity will at all times comprise an "is" that cannot be negated by any *ought.*  Even comic books, which have arguably been a greater haven for the Femme Formidable than any other medium, can't refute the basics of physical law. 

To re-state: even though I don't believe that biology is the sole determinant of gender differentiation, I categorically do believe that the biological potential of males to develop greater strength and body-mass makes a crucial difference in their tastes in fiction. The next logical questions, then, would be:

(1) What tendency of females can be seen as the "objective correlative" (borrowed from T.S. Eliot, even if I don't agree with his application of it) for the female preference for "love and domestic situations?"

(2) Assuming that I find such an objective correlative, in what way do fictional love-narratives express "high spirits," paralleling the expression of similar spirits in fictional war-narratives?

More in Part 2.

QUICKIE BEAT-COMMENT #7799

I hope to write more fully about the asinine concept of "cultural appropriation" at some future time, but for now, here's a quickie BEAT-comment that may get deleted from this thread soon:

-----------------

Anyone want to "educate" me as to how Haron can claim that Asian martial arts originated in Africa? I mean, with a straight face?

But of course "appropriation" is perfectly OK when it's done by anyone but a Caucasoid.

If I were Asian, I'd be a lot more irate to think that the origins of a major part of my culture was being cavalierly ripped off, just for the sake of making common cause against non-POC. But I suppose a lot of people will buy into anything.

ADDENDUM: To her credit, Heidi did not delete my comment or that of anyone else who objected to P.C. thinking; she merely closed the thread. I love that one of the posters labeled any protests against the PC mentality  as "false outrage" and associated all such outrage with Donald Trump. Way to have an open conversation, all right-- and in the same spirit, Heidi said that all anti-PC posters ought to "check their privilege." Once again I'm reminded of more than one guest who appeared on the happily defunct Larry Wilmore show, claiming that they wanted to "have a conversation" about race. The tenor of their remarks, like those of Heidi, reveal that they didn't want to "have a conversation" any more than Heidi does: they wanted, and she wants, purely to "win the argument."

Still not as vapid and as prone to prevarication as Berlatsky, though...

NON-ADDICTIVE VICTIMAGE

Two of this week's essays are devoted to situations in which female characters are "victims' (and, in one case, "Victims" with a capital letter). Late last year I accused Noah the Huddite (hmm, sounds rather Biblical)  of being "addicted to victimage," So now I'll toss out a few more words to explain why I don't consider it an addiction simply to enjoy this category of fiction

First, NTH wanted-- and probably still wants-- to find "victims" in every form of literary work. By his cited examples, it didn't matter if a fictional woman is being treated to literal Sadean humiliations or is seen simply getting her rocks off in a way that-- horrors!-- might entertain straight males.  His outlook was to evince extreme hypersensitivity to the maltreatment of anyone who was not a "straight white male," even to the extent of reading narratives like Rorschach tests, designed to let him see in them whatever he wanted to see. That said, there have been others, notably the founders of WAP, who have made slightly more cogent arguments about the marginalization of women in a male-centered culture. I might not, at the end of the day, truly subscribe to their arguments any more than I do to those of NTH. But at least I can see why the early members of WAP might have been naive enough to see pornography as no more than an excuse to celebrate "Woman as Victim." NTH, writing at this point in history, has no such excuse.

I once speculated that Heidi McDonald might be something of a "Wapster." She didn't carry on about every little transgression made by straight white males, but she sometimes expressed the idea that fiction ought to conform in all particulars to progressive ideals, particularly those related to the equitable depiction of women in comics. Back in 2014 I wrote my first essay on the principle of "equity" in response to one of her BEAT-posts, and said, in part:

The whole "who's exposed more" question should never have been one of pure equity.  Equity is something to be observed in the workplace or the boardroom, but not in fiction.  Fiction is a place where fantasy reigns, and as I said in the essay, it's simply a lot harder to sell hyper-sexualized fantasies to women than to men.  I tend to think that this is because in general men are hornier bastards than women, but others' mileage may vary.
Equity should never have been the question because equity of this sort is not feasible.   There will probably always be more sexualized female characters in pop fiction than sexualized male characters-- but that doesn't mean that the latter don't occur at all, or that one can slough off all the chiseled chins and buff bodies as manifestations of "idealization."

 With some alterations, it should be evident that it is also not feasible to avoid a preponderance of "female victimage" in fiction, even though it is obviously desirable to reduce victimage of all kinds in real life.

Why not feasible? Because although fiction is not real life, its characters' "unreal lives" inevitably follow some though not all patterns taken from real life.

I devoted some space to the differences between male and female biology in SACRED AND PROFANE VIOLENCE PART 2, but only a few sentences apply to this essay:

With some exceptions, the so-called "great apes" follow the example set by a majority of birds and other mammals in that most male apes possess greater size, about 25 percent larger than the females. This gives the biggest ones a generally greater capacity for imposing their will, either on females or on other males.

Now, I wouldn't have written as much as I have on the subject of "the Fighting Woman Archetype" if I believed that the greater body mass of the human male decided all questions of supremacy. But if it's almost inevitable that most men are stronger than most women, then this physical factor inevitably will be reflected in fiction. This inequity will at all times comprise an "is" that cannot be negated by any *ought.*  Even comic books, which have arguably been a greater haven for the Femme Formidable than any other medium, can't refute the basics of physical law. Thus, there's a certain inescapable physical-- and narrative-- logic that female characters can be more easily victimized than male ones.

That said, to be victimized is not quite the same as being victims. As I noted earlier, the Victims are not Femmes Formidables, but they still show an unwavering persistence in the face of their travails. In contrast, Phoebe Zeit-Geist only gets one or two moments to defy her assailants, but her torments-- whether any reader actually enjoyed them or not-- were apparently meant to make readers give some thought to the prevalence of the "damsel in distress" archetype in fiction. O'Donoghue's hyper-intellectual attitude is in some ways just as scornful toward the archetype as the animadversions of the Wapsters; he's just not framing his critique as a political statement.

More on these matters at a later date.

ADDENDUM: I thought about expanding these remarks for a Part Two, since I didn't really answer the concern with which I started: how to prove that one may in theory have a taste for "female victimage" in fiction without being "addicted" to it. However, I've decided to sum up here. My basic point is that even if an author uses or even emphasizes female victimage in a given story, this does not pre-determine that he's getting his rocks off on seeing women suffer: both of my examples, O'Donoghue and Hewetson, are clearly using female victimage for other thematic purposes than those of, say, the Marquis de Sade. It remains one of my central postulates that fiction should privilege the ideal of absolute freedom, and that there is no particular trope-- no matter whom it offends-- which holds the exact same content that the politically correct seek to transform into a modern taboo.

RIGHTS AND WRONGS

On the previously mentioned Sarkeesian BEAT-thread Heidi McDonald intimated that by my comments I was allying myself to the "winning side" in the Gamergate conflict.  I assume that the "winning side" must be the aggro male culture that allegedly opposes change in the sexual representation of gamer characters/situations-- if, indeed, the culture is as Anita Sarkeesian describes it.

To me it seems a little early for Heidi to proclaim that side the winner in an ongoing conflict, not to mention that it appears to conflict with her moral stance, which has always been to insist that the fight for equality goes ever on, no matter what opposition one encounters.  So I'm going to speculate that Heidi's real meaning is quantitative: I've aligned with the "winning side" because males are numerically superior in gamer culture, and she assumes that I am defending male privilege.

On the contrary, my whole purpose in responding to the Sarkeesian interview is to better define what constitutes a genuine infringement upon the rights of an individual, or group of individuals, in society. No prudent person could possibly doubt that Anita Sarkeesian's personal rights were contravened by the individual who sent a death-threat to Utah State University, as well as by any others who sent similar threats on other occasions. The bone of contention, however, is whether or not all of these threats to Sarkeesian are also exclusively aimed at women, which was Sarkeesian's statement on the Colbert show. One BEAT-poster disproved this statement by listing three male individuals who had received anonymous threats, theoretically because of those individuals' relationships to the Gamergate controversy. When other posters continued to claim that this "toxic" behavior was characteristic of "fanboy culture," I pointed out that the alleged female-phobic behavior was common to sports and politics, where those targeted by anonymous threats may well be males just as easily as females.

None of these observations reduce the seriousness of the actual threats. They do, however, call Sarkeesian's accuracy into question, and raise the possibility that she has purposely distorted the overall facts in order to create a narrative of gender polarization.  The girls just want to have fun, but those cro-magnon guys keep kicking them out of the clubhouse.

If Sarkeesian had admitted that men who took unpopular stances had also been targeted, would that have weakened her talking-points?  Ethically, it should not. Threats against both men and women should be just as insalubrious as threats only against women-- particularly since Sarkeesian claims to be a feminist, and supposedly believes that men and women possess equal rights.  Certainly, from the standpoint of the law-- the principal medium by which men seek to both deny or affirm rights for one group or another-- a crime against a woman is not, generally speaking, more odious than the same crime committed against a man.

Now I've demonstrated that the sexes are theoretically equal before the law, and that if anyone should believes that, it ought to be Anita Sarkeesian, by her own stated convictions. I've also stated that the makers of anonymous death-threats-- who, for sake of argument, may be viewed as dominantly male-- also make such threats against both women and men.  Having established that broad spectrum of this kind of criminal behavior, only then can it be fairly stated that some of the people making such threats are, as Sarkeesian claims, particularly phobic to females and/or feminism. Indeed, one of the three threats issued in the USU case-- does not make any statements re: game culture, but only to Sarkeesian's species of feminism.

"We live in a nation of emasculated cowards too afraid to challenge the vile, misandrist harpies who seek to destroy them," the threat stated. "Feminism has taken over every facet of our society, and women like Sarkeesian want to punish us for even fantasizing about being men. This is why I’ve chosen to target her. Anita Sarkeesian is everything wrong with the feminist woman, and she is going to die screaming like the craven little whore that she is if you let her come to USU. I will write my manifesto in her spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America."

It's my position that one can only correctly identify such extreme positions of anti-feminine bile by situating them with a greater corpus of overall animus, an animus often directed at anyone, of any sex, who challenges a given fanatic's opinions. Obviously, Sarkeesian's possible "lie of omission" is not as great a sin as someone who breaks the law and issues a death-threat.  Yet it should be evident that I am clearly not aligning myself with the "winning side" simply because I want Anita Sarkeesian to abandon a false polarization-- no matter how much that might vitiate her crusade.

In closing I should note that my approach with respect to aggrieved threat-makers is roughly the same as my approach with respect to aggrieved feminists claim that any and all representations that seem to diminish female characters are *de facto* indicators of male hostility against women.  First one must establish a corpus that takes in all relevant behavior, as I do in ABJECTION APOLOGIA,  being careful to note whether or not male characters are also subject to similar diminutions. Only then can one fairly state that any particular depiction does or does not present evidence for misogynistic tendencies.

ABJECTION APOLOGIA PT. 2

In PART 1 I said:

I suggest that Heidi's principal rhetotical point in displaying these NSFW photos is not properly an illustration of sexualization in all its multifarious forms, but to portray a particular state of sexual abjection. This state is more or less identical with Ms. McDonald's estimation of the status of all or most sexualization for female comics-characters, who are not infrequently the victims of "boob-windows, brokebacks, etc."  Abjection is, I submit, just one aspect of sexualization as it has been depicted in art and literature.

First I should specify that I am not using "abjection" after the manner of the structuralist-- or maybe post-structuralist-- author Julia Kristeva. I have read commentary on Kristeva's work, but not her actual work. Wikipedia asserts that in Kristeva's system "abjection" connotes something that is repellent but conceals some aspect of nature or culture that should be acknowledged, asserting that Kristeva "developed the idea of the abject as that which is rejected by/disturbs social reason - the communal consensus that underpins a social order.:"

Clearly this is not in line with the highly politicized descriptions cited by Heidi McDonald. Here's an example of one-sided politicization from Amanda Marcotte's SLATE essay:

But really what it comes down to is who is in control of the butts in question. With Spider-Woman, we're looking at yet another example of a man imposing his ideas about the female body and female sexuality onto a character, creating an image that feels like she's reduced to the ass in question. But "Anaconda" is a video with a woman in charge of her own image. She's shaking her thing because she wants to and she's looking directly into the camera and rapping, too, making it impossible to reduce her to a single body part.

This is the position asserted by nearly all contemporary commentary on sexuality: if a man "imposes his ideas" about female sexuality on women-- even fictional women-- this is meant to reduce real women to a state of abjection in the sense of the dictionary definition: that of degradation, of "a low or downcast state" (Merriam-Webster).  A woman performing the same activity, however, is granted the privilege of being "in charge of her own image."

In Part 1 of ABJECTION APOLOGIA, I've asserted that the detractors of all things male have oversimplified the issue of abjection, overlooking the many ways in which male bodies are also placed in postures of helplessness or neutralization. I've specified that not all of these were necessarily of a sexual nature, though some do carry that valence.  What such depictions of both male and female degradation have in common is the threat of violence, of being simply killed rather than being sexually violated or even put on display.

What I also find fascinating is that while Heidi McDonald and others are unceasingly vigilant with regard to scenes of feminine degradation, one hardly ever reads anyone speaking of scenes of feminine empowerment that are the precise obverse of the supposed degradation scenes. Marcotte's politicized opposition is not an example of this, however, since the author chooses to view the Manara piece as intrinsically degrading to women, purely because a man drew it.

McDonald too has loaded her argument in a politicized fashion, claiming that detractors are "copletely ignring [sic] how boob-windows, brokebacks, boob socks and more are not the same thing as a man with a good physique in a dynamic pose."

I for one have no problem with admitting that a lot of superheroine costumes show more skin than superhero ones, though I've also noted that many ideological types willfully overlook any examples that run counter to their ideological certainties. Yet, even if I gave McDonald the ideological victory on the issue of "who's more skimpily clothed," I would find it egregious not only that she ignores the history of abjection in male heroic postures-- described more fully in Part 1-- but also for ignoring the sexual elements present in depicting heroes of either sex "in dynamic poses." Is McDonald's point covalent with Marcotte's, that dynamism is of no importance when it is propounded by male artists?

I for one can see some sexual appeal in abject postures for either sex. But I see an even greater potential in dynamic postures as well-- and I see no reason to assume that most heterosexual comics-readers are more attracted to the former than to the latter.

For example, the character of Phoenix seemed to captivate a fair number of male readers, and she didn't even need to expose much skin to do so.

Storm has in my opinion has also proved a perennial favorite, whether or not she sports a costume that exposes much skin:

 
I could cite many other examples. I suppose that an ideological critic would assume that any such examples would be automatically disproved by the prominence of the "Bad Girl" craze of the 1990s. I would say, rather, that dynamism and scanty costuming are both independent sources of stimulation. Thus the presence of the latter does not necessarily take away from the former, as in this X-MEN cover, where Storm is showing a bit more skin:

The obvious conclusion should be that while there is not much doubt that many male readers do like scanty superheroine costumes, it does not follow that this is the ONLY aspect that they like, nor that exposure of skin or the focus upon feminine attributes are in themselves sources of abjection.  But I've already mounted the argument for the empowering associations of body display elsewhere, so I refer the interested reader to those essays from here on.

DESPERATELY BUSIEK-ING DIALOGUE

"You’ll never get to universal agreement — as is the case with subjective matters — but that’s not a reason not to try for better understanding than what we’ve got now."

So speaks Kurt Busiek in the aforementioned BEAT thread, who claims that he advocates "better understanding." I don't think that he will achieve this lofty goal by the strategy of imputing straw-man positions to his opponents. However, I will admit that the poster named "Jim" invited such a response. Whenever a participant in an argument resorts to psychologizing his opponent, this strategy also fails to address the argument in a pure fashion, and can also be fairly dismissed as a species-member of the Straw Man Group.

Jim said to McDonald:

You’ve been posting about this for almost a month now, and I don’t mean this as a troll comment, but seriously, is your self-esteem as a woman actually undermined in some way by a drawing on the cover of a comic book?

This is not IMO a proper way to conduct a debate, any more than when Busiek attempts to paint both the poster Jim and myself as "good old boys" who don't want the status quo changed. Whatever faults my own arguments may have, I don't try to psycho-analyze my opponents. I've written that I think "Chicken Colin" acted like a coward-- first, for having written scathingly, and falsely, of my positions, and failing to debate me on his assertions, and later for hiding behind the skirts of Julian Darius, who decided that he would not permit me to comment on the Chicken's subsequent Sequart posts. I find both of these actions reprehensible. But I don't try to invent psychoanalytic reasons for these demonstrations of cowardly behavior, as Jim invents a facile psychoanalytic motive of "lack of self-esteem" to explain McDonald's fixation on the Manara "Spider-Woman" cover. (Later in the thread, Jim said that his imputation was meant as a joke, but it didn't come off that way in the original post.)

I flatter myself that even when I disagree with an opponent, my first resort is to analyze any statement as a philosophical proposition, in order to determine whether or not it proves valid in the light of my own knowledge and experiences.

Busiek's proposition in this BEAT-post is largely of a piece with the principle of absolute equity McDonald has expressed many times before. In GENDER, BEND HER I refuted this principle on these terms:

This ethic passes an unsubstantiated judgment upon all previous incarnations of Bond fiction: said judgment being that, because they were originally fictions designed principally with male buyers in mind, new iterations must and should be corrected to become more “female-friendly.” But this correction hinges on two presumptions: (1) that male-oriented fiction has no integrity in itself, but must be corrected in some fashion, and (2) that the Bond mythos did not already a healthy, though numerically smaller, female fandom even prior to feminist revisions.

Or, to cite a more concise response from this mini-essay:

Fiction is a place where fantasy reigns, and as I said in the [earlier] essay, it's simply a lot harder to sell hyper-sexualized fantasies to women than to men.

Busiek, like McDonald, does not recognize any challenges to the principle of absolute equity between fictional males and females, however, as his response to Jim in the post makes clear:

It’s that women being sexualized in comics is overwhelmingly the standard, while men being sexualized isn’t. If both were treated in appropriate ways depending on the character and story — so you had sexualized men where appropriate, and women were sexualized when appropriate but not reflexively, as they are now.

Though Busiek claim to advocate greater "understanding," it's clear from his posts that he has no interest in any explanations as to how the "standard" came about. It's not equitable, so it's wrong, and anyone who cares to explore the dynamics of the gender situation is on the same level as corporate stinkheads trying to prevent real-life women from earning equal pay.

Of course, I will admit that even if Busiek is an unlikely candidate to bridge the disagreements between the opposing sides, I'm not likely to win any prizes in that department either.  I have no idea if such a rapprochement is even feasible, for there's a sense in which people just like to bitch about these subjects.

HIDE AND BUSIEK

Yes, I think the pun still works even if you pronounce the name "Byoo-sik." So there.

Before getting into Kurt Busiek's response to my comments on this now closed BEAT thread, I'll make a general statement: I don't think that any of the complaints from McDonald or anyone else have ever been concerned with the most basic level of "sexualization," which in this essay I termed "glamor." I think the fuss is now, and has always been, about the two more extreme forms of sexualization: "titillation" and "pornification."  The NSFW photos McDonald prints on the BEAT thread fall into the third category. It's debatable as to whether the "boob windows, brokeback [position]s, boob socks and more" fall into the secondary or tertiary category.

My post is directed at McDonald's complaint of a lack of equity in terms of sexualization of males and females. I wondered how one might be accomplish the hypothetical state of total equity, since equity is what most of these critics claim that they want. I wrote:

For sake of argument, let’s say a comics company wanted to have an absolutely level playing-field, but still wanted to be able to depict its characters in a sexual manner. What would be the solution? I for one think it would be both immoral and futile to ask straight cartoonists to attempt to sexualize male characters. With rare exceptions, they simply wouldn’t have the mindset.
Could the company create a level field simply by employing 50% straight artists and 50% gay artists? But then, the gay artists chosen would have to be something along the line of P. Craig Russell, who can draw women competently but IMO generally doesn’t sexualize them as he does his male characters.

Kurt Busiek replied:

>> I for one think it would be both immoral and futile to ask straight cartoonists to attempt to sexualize male characters.>>
Straight cartoonists are all male, after all.
And it’s immoral and futile to ask Olivier Coipel to draw sexy men, but moral and effective to ask Amanda Conner to draw sexy women.
I think, perhaps, that cartoonists, both male and female, straight and gay, should be able to draw what the story needs. If the story needs a sexy guy, it shouldn’t be immoral (immoral?!) to ask for that to be drawn in a story. A sexy woman, same deal. But the idea that straight men simply can’t draw sexy men, and that it’s actually _immoral_ to ask them to do so, is a pretty weird concept.
But then, perhaps to some eyes, sexy women are just and normal and the default setting, while sexy men are weird and unpleasant and squicky. To the point that morality demands that men not have to draw such things.
This is called gender bias, though, and it’s not really a compelling argument.
kdb

First, I'll address Busiek's only valid point. A touch, a touch, I do confess it, but yes, not all "straight cartoonists" are male.  However, if one is dealing with straight female cartoonists, then there would be no issue of compulsion with respect to those hetero female cartoonists.  It would be entirely natural for them to sexualize males, even as it would be entirely natural for a gay male artist-- as per my example of P. Craig Russell-- to sexualize males.

What I find "immoral and futile," since Busiek patently misses the point, is this implied element of compulsion for the sake of equity.  Heidi McDonald may or may not really want to see more depictions of male sexual abjection; her actual sentiments are of secondary importance here. But the phrasing of her rhetorical point implies that if you have pornifed female characters in comic books, you ought to have pornified male characters-- and not just, as she says, men "with a good physique in a dynamic pose."

Now, in my scenario of a 50-50 split, I made allowance for 'rare exceptions" to the tendency wherein hetero males are generally stronger at depicting sexy women, while homosexual males would be generally stronger at depicting sexy men. (A similar distribution would of course pertain for female artists as well.) Busiek, puffed up by his desire to score a point rooted in facile sarcasm, names off Olivier Coipel and Amanda Connor as types who do not fit my schema-- happily ignoring that I have already allowed for exceptions to the rule.  He says:

I think, perhaps, that cartoonists, both male and female, straight and gay, should be able to draw what the story needs.

This is also facile thinking because the entire point of extreme forms of sexualization is that they are not "needed" in an absolute sense, unless one is producing literal pornography. With the advent of the Comics Code, comics-publishers often reprinted pre-Code works with substantial redrawing, to avoid being accused of pandering to the youth of America.  In some cases, even artists who controlled their own works sometimes ameliorated the sexier aspects. In one JOURNAL interview, underground artist Jack Jackson stated that in some editions of WHITE COMANCHE he covered up some female breasts because he wanted the story to be more available to younger readers.

Busiek propounds a bland code of the professional artist, who can supposedly draw sexy men and sexy women with equal facility. There are artists like that, as I have admitted. There are also artists like P. Craig Russell, who is not overly strong with female sexuality, and artists like John Romita Sr, who's not overly strong with male sexuality.

I for one want to see artists do what they're good at, not what someone claims that they must do to satisfy a politically correct agenda.

Busiek's final point about "gender bias" is of course predicated on a straw man that is duly torched by my advocacy of gay artists to draw whatever they want to draw.


BTW, since Heidi makes mention of J. Scott Campbell's possible limitations in the arena of sexualizing males with respect to a particular Spider-Man cover, I thought I might as well print this except from a Campbell fan-page to illustrate that maybe with Spider-Man, he wasn't really giving it his best shot.

FTR: QUICKIE BEAT-RESPONSE

To Heidi McDonald's question: "so three Sub-Mariner covers equal the entire Bad Girl era?", I said:

The whole "who's exposed more" question should never have been one of pure equity.  Equity is something to be observed in the workplace or the boardroom, but not in fiction.  Fiction is a place where fantasy reigns, and as I said in the essay, it's simply a lot harder to sell hyper-sexualized fantasies to women than to men.  I tend to think that this is because in general men are hornier bastards than women, but others' mileage may vary.

Equity should never have been the question because equity of this sort is not feasible.   There will probably always be more sexualized female characters in pop fiction than sexualized male characters-- but that doesn't mean that the latter don't occur at all, or that one can sluff off all the chiseled chins and buff bodies as manifestations of "idealization."

Also, one of the three covers is actually neutral on Subby's hottitude, which goes to my point about how certain artists just may not be tuned to produce this form of sexualization.

BREASTS, BLOOD AND JUSTICE PT. 2

Now, if the object of the humor was actually MacFarlane and his penchant for ribald attack humor, a simple 15-second cutaway—much like those on Family Guy—would have gotten across the point…and the humor. But no, it goes on for nearly two minutes—the point is to name and shame, say the word boobs and turn actresses into dehumanized objects yet again. I have a dream that someday women will be judged by the content of their character and not the content of their Maidenforms, but that day has not come for MacFarlane.-- Heidi MacDonald, "Why Seth MacFarlane is Not a Great Satirist."

I won't repeat my arguments against MacDonald and others who advocate her type of feminism, which I covered at length here  and here.  I will call attention to one phrase MacDonald used that has some irony now, when she claims that all MacFarlane had to do was to say the word "boobs" and that this would turn "actresses into dehumanized objects."

This trite assertion becomes ironic in light of the evolutionary theories outlined in JUG BOND.  Purely from the standpoint of distinguishing homo sapiens from all other animals, the genetic arrangement of adipose fat tissue within the female's breasts and buttocks is extraordinarily "humanizing." One can contrast the organs of a male human being with those of other male animals, but no one will find any single organic feature that compares in distinctiveness with the female breast. Further, the role of the breast has been that of promoting the human pair-bond, whether one wishes to conceive of that bond as having its roots in sexual deception or oxytocin-produced ecstasy.

Some feminist thinkers, however, do not take into account the role of the female tit in its evolutionary character; its ability both to encourage and to discourage sexual congress. For them the exposure of a boob is simply a means to make the (usually living) female to whom it is attached to an "it" rather than a "thou," to reference the terminology of Buber, discussed here.

I began the first part of this essay-series by noting that it was understandable that female viewers of an exploitation film-- such as 1993's ANGELFIST-- should experience a cognitive dissonance when seeing a female action-hero simultaneously fighting off nasty thugs but also exposing her tits to the implied male viewer of the movie. I understand the attitude so expressed, which I deem to be produced, at least in part, by a tendency for women to advocate societal modesty. It's a tendency that might prove to be universal-- or nearly so-- in human cultures in every time and clime, at least in comparison with a male tendency toward raunchiness and rule-breaking. But though the attitude is important for the maintenance of society in the real world, I still find it to be grossly out of place when assessing fictional constructs.

Though there are some heroic characters in fiction who may escape the limitation of being either "male" or "female"-- "Rebis" of Grant Morrison's DOOM PATROL is literally a transgendered being-- the great majority of heroes can be fairly defined as either male or female. In Part 1 of BBAJ, I demonstrated the prevalence of the "mostly unclothed hero" in a wide number of narratives starring male heroes, and observed that a lack of clothing did not carry the same taboo for males that it did for comparable female characters.

Nevertheless, because both male and female characters are fictional, one cannot accurately speak of either one being reduced to "dehumanized objects" simply by the lack of apparel. Fictional characters are objects only in comparison with living human beings. The most one can say is that in society some characters create more of an impression of being "it-objects," while others create more of an impression of being "thou-objects"-- though such judgments will always be rooted in the vagaries of taste.

But in terms of pure logic, there is no reason to assume that a female character's lack of clothing is any more "dehumanizing" than a man's. Characters like Tarzan and Hercules are seen as figures of power precisely because they can defy the norms of society, very nearly walking around in their birthday suits.  So it is within the bounds of possibility that one may view disrobed female characters in the same way.  Rather than seeing them as commodities divested of clothing to please male viewers, it's possible to see them as beings whose bodies are so awe-inspiring that the open display of those bodies gives them a godlike formidability.

One cannot decisively prove, of course, that male viewers view Lara Croft more as a figure of awe than as a dehumanized object. But the converse cannot be proven either; it's merely an assumption that has deeper roots in political ideology than in literary analysis. To neutralize either heroes and heroines of their sexual assets puts a new spin on the notion of "men without chests."

GENDERIZATION GAP PT. 2

MAGGIE: "We are the masters of our own dreams and fantasies..."

PENNY: "Maggie's right. There is no such thing as the dream police. So you can think all the dirty, sick, evil thoughts you desire..."

HOPEY: "Acting on them is another aminal."

--- Jaime Hernandez, PENNY CENTURY #6  (1999) 

On 4/15/14, Heidi MacDonald posted a closed-to-comments essay on THE BEAT entitled, "What is it like to be a man in comics?"  The essay responded to the experiences of Janelle Asselin, who critiqued the cover art of the forthcoming TEEN TITANS #1, and who also received assorted rape-threats in response to her observations. In part 1 of my response I noted that Asselin made her points "cogently enough," though I disagreed with some of them. Though Asselin didn't address only matters pertaining to genderization, there's no question that she gives special attention to the representation of the female character Wonder Girl:

Let's start with the elephant in the room: Wonder Girl's rack. Perhaps I'm alone in having an issue with an underaged teen girl being drawn with breasts the size of her head (seriously, line that stuff up, each breast is the same size as her face) popping out of her top. Anatomy-wise, there are other issues -- her thigh is bigger around than her waist, for one -- but let's be real. The worst part of this image, by far, are her breasts. The problem is not that she's a teen girl with large breasts, because those certainly exist. The main problem is that this is not the natural chest of a large-breasted woman. Those are implants. On a teenaged superheroine. Natural breasts don't have that round shape (sorry, boys).

Asselin's deprecatory take on artist Rocafort's depiction of breasts resulted in the huge quantity of comments on her thread, getting close to 600 as I post this; it's plain even from a perfunctory look at those comments that next to no respondents cared about Asselin's observations about anything else about the cover.

Now, Asselin's comments about male breast-fantasies in comics are pretty much of a piece with hundreds of others before her column, so I have no clue as to why anyone would react so vehemently to them, as Heidi MacDonald details:

This is MEN’S PROBLEM. I know most internet trolls are teenaged boys who don’t know any better, but this is MAN’S THING. This is something you men need to figure out and condemn and deal with. There should be MAN RULES about it, like how you’re not supposed to go into the urinal next to another guy, that kind of thing. Belittling, embarrassing, threatening and shaming women should not be some kind of masculine rite of passage. It should be the opposite of being a real man.

 There's a partial truth in this, but keep in mind what MacDonald says a few paragraphs down:

In closing, I would like to salute the bravery and professionalism of Janelle Asselin. She put her opinions out there knowing what kind of response she would get and she still did it, in hopes of perhaps getting people to think and to shed light on matters that are not discussed enough. Just because these things are hidden does not mean that men do not have this problem.

I don't doubt that Janelle Asselin called things like she saw them. Yet the phrase "knowing what kind of response she would get" sticks in my mind.  I don't entirely concur with MacDonald's picture of Asselin as a selfless crusader, precisely because the paragraph I reprint above is set up to "poke the bear" as much as possible. Worse, it takes the position that fidelity to the real proportions of the human body is the only possible good in comic-book art, and that deviations from said proportions are ipso facto bad art.

I don't condone, any more than I understand, why even ignorant teenaged boys would use Asselin's comments-- which to me are nothing new-- as a excuse to attempt shaming a female writer. I also freely admit that this probably happens more when males object to writings attributed to females, though I have seen-- and experienced-- some instances in which male posters attempt to degrade their fellow males in terms of sexual references.

However, MacDonald's comment about "what it's like to be a man" seems rather self-serving, especially from the essayist who penned these golden words in 1-31-08, and cited here:

The question is how much the artwork resembles Superheroines Demise. Because if it looks like that, there may be some kind of ulterior motive....So next time you claim your interest in superheroes is completely innocent and devoid of fetishistic aspects, well…you’re going to have to PROVE it!

In my opinion, MacDonald takes a pretty long step to get from "dumb teenagers taking advantage of the Internet's anonymity" to a "masculine rite of passage."  Freud famously observed that men often told degrading jokes about women in all-male groups, but some studies suggest that this trait appears in both genders:

Mitchell's research and similar studies clearly show that men and women both know and appreciate jokes of an aggressive or sexual nature... but their jokes do not serve the same psychological or interpersonal functions.

Though the rape-threats printed by Asselin aren't jokes as such, I think it likely that if any of the threat-makers were called to account for those threats, those posters would probably justify their remarks as a nasty species of humor. I strongly doubt that any of them would defend their statements based on the right of men to rape women, whether as a right of passage or for any other reason. The exception to this generalization would in my opinion be anyone who had actually committed rape, which does invoke the sort of elaborate explanation MacDonald claims.

Let me return to the quote with which I opened this essay. It's a quote with which I agree; that stories in all media should be allowed, in the right circumstances, to indulge in "evil thoughts," be they stupid rape-jokes or Superheroines Demise.  In a curious reversal, though, Fantagraphics, the company that published PENNY CENTURY has never advocated overall freedom from the "dream police." The editors and writers of THE COMICS JOURNAL only advocated that freedom for an elite cadre of "quality authors," while all others were condemned as seducers of the innocent.

Janelle Asselin's complaints about "an underaged teen girl being drawn with breasts the size of her head" may be entirely sincere, but they are also in the JOURNAL's tradition of bear-poking. Unlike MacDonald, I don't think Asselin's comments "shed light on matters that are not discussed enough;" I think they're no more than preaching to the choir, though a bit more cogently than some of the critics I've assailed here.  No one but the members of that choir are going to care about Asselin's carping at unnatural breasts on a teenaged girl, and the result, as seen in the comments-thread, is a farrago of sniping and two-bit comments. Of the comments I read, many evinced a familiarity with the topic, so Asselin's original essay brings no fresh insights to the matter. It's just the same old song, and I don't think the tune would have been any different if Rochafort had been a more exacting artist.

The "evil thought" of picturing females with breasts bigger than their heads may well be a male thing that women will never get. But one answer to MacDonald's question about "what it's like to be a man in comics" might be not taking seriously the comments of those who make much of such petty evils. Dumbasses who make rape-threats, even those with no teeth in them, are, as MacDonald says, "fucked up." But the freedom to indulge in fantasies, even stupid ones, is a freedom that all men and all women deserve, in comics or in any other bailiwick.

GENDERIZATION GAP PT. 1

Q: What time is it?

A: Time for another "gender politics" story!

The newest source of gender-related kerfluffle showed up on April 11, with this column by Janelle Asselin analyzing the cover of the newest incarnation of DC's TEEN TITANS:

I have to admit that Asselin makes her points cogently enough, and even though I disagree with some of them, I wouldn't have thought her essay particularly inflammatory. 

At the same time, I'm not as amazed as Heidi McDonald was a couple of days later:

Anyway the original column has racked up more than 500 comments. Which is crazy. I know there is mad hate for the Teen Titans Go! cartoon among DC comics fans, and, seemingly, frantic hostility in regard to anything that strays from the core demographic. I know I make fun of Bombshells and Giant Tits Teen and all that, but I guess playing to the base is what works in the DCU, no matter what the size of that base is.

First, I don't know why Heidi should be so surprised at the quantity of comments. It's clear to me that the sexual issues Asselin raised, rather than either the specific cover, the Teen Titans franchise or its "Go" spin-off are the things getting the CBR posters hot and bothered, so to speak. Yes, some posters didn't like TEEN TITANS GO, but I can't imagine why Heidi thought this was the dominating topic on this response-thread. Often the posters are talking about the same sort of issues Heidi raises all the time, as with, "Should a teenaged girl be shown as having huge boobs?"

A further note: Heidi automatically closed her own BEAT column on this subject to comments. Doesn't that argue that she was leery of having her thread explode into a firestorm of similar opinionated posts?

More later.

A TOPIC IS BEING BEAT-ED

The following is a reprint of my post on the BEAT regarding those ole debbils elitism and exceptionalism.  I may further develop these thoughts on the status of comics criticism later on.

____________________________

Larry Vossler said:

"As a recent “writer” for comics, the biggest problem is not the message (that is a problem no doubt) but who is reading the message and how it can be seen. While TCJ, CB, Factual, and HU have and continue to put out some great criticism, they’re mostly being viewed by the people who know about it. Instead of reaching to a bigger crowd in the States, the big two crowd, the message is mostly being spoken to the choir. And that choir is somewhat small compared to the mainstream comic crowd. And it’s that crowd that criticism should be aiming to get their attention. So it can A. expand their horizon B. Introduce new great works from other countries and from here C. To make them think differently when reading comic and apply that to their superhero comics and maybe in the process enhance the superhero genre."

I would agree but IMO the only way one can do so is with a synoptic approach; one that sincerely sees positive things in the superhero genre that are not "different in kind" from the positive things in the indie corpus of works.  In other words, it would have to be an attitude 180 degrees from the one expressed by Gary Groth when he recently explained that Fantagraphics did not publish its X-MEN COMPANION book because the publishers had a deep abiding love for the X-Men.  This bottom-line insincerity-- "we'll bring 'em in with appeals to the mainstream in order to introduce them to the good stuff"-- has had at best a checkered record, and not only with Fantagraphics.

How might a synoptic approach be synthesized?  Well, first it would help to know something about a few of academic criticism's efforts in that respect.  Of course I can quote Frye and Fiedler all the livelong day and it won't mean anything: critics have to make their own discoveries to form their own syntheses.  But the WILL to make such connections has to be there.

Noah said in response to Larry:

"Larry, I don’t really see HU’s mission as trying to get people to stop reading mainstream comics, or to tell them those comics are bad. We just had a long appreciation of Dan Slott’s run on She-Hulk, actually."

I can see how this would seem an adequate answer to the problem Larry raises but it really is not sufficient, any more than when TCJ's editors used to answer accusations of anti-mainstream sentiments by citing lots of positive mainstream reviews.  As long as the dominant attitude is one of elitism and exceptionalism-- that a given reviewer pays attention only to SHE-HULK or WONDER WOMAN when they reach some exceptional heights-- then that reviewer and his cronies will continue to project the aura of the aforementioned "self-jerk circle."

My argument should not interpreted as some sort of anti-exceptionalism: an apologia for bad work.  There is however a middle ground for which critics like Fiedler might be instructive-- and I'll leave it at that, as the vision of Tumblr afficianados trying to pore over LOVE AND DEATH IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL seems improbable even to me.  That sentiment about covers my pessimism about the possibility of the current indie creators-- or the mainstream ones, for that matter-- mustering enough chutzpah to write organized criticism.

ADDENDUM:

Adding in a second observation I made as the discussion, as always, tailed off into nothing much:

Osvaldo said:
“All this mainstream vs. “indie elitism ” talk seems so strange to me, if only because, until my recent interest in online criticism most of my critical reading on the topic of comics was in a variety of academic journals, surveys and anthologies, which seem to be just as likely to talk about The Falcon as Fun Home as Superman as Maus as Scrooge McDuck – though that is anecdotal experience and not based on any kind of rigorous examination of what’s been printed and the attitudes expressed.”


Correct, Osvaldo. It’s not that there are no elitists in academia, but the line between the popular and the literary/would-be-literary is not as firm as it used to be. It’s amazing to me that so many comics-critics have chosen to act as if they lived back in the 1930s, and ignore all the meritorious work that’s been done analyzing pop culture, from Robert Warshow to Gaylyn Studlar.

CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, MEET VIOLATION STATION PART II

I read USES [OF ENCHANTMENT] many years ago and thought it was a fair premise, albeit marked by a certain utilitarianism. While I would never deny that readers may internalize the subject matter of fiction so as to give the subject some personally-proactive theme, it's certainly not the principal quality of fiction, nor do I think most readers, children or adults, are thinking to themselves, even unconsciously, "How can I 'use' this?" Much of the charm of fiction, be it 'fantastic' or 'realistic,' resides in the way those elements most similar to everyday experience can be inverted, transvalued, or reinterpreted in assorted ways.-- me, BETTLEHEIM, BETTELHEIM, BETTELHEIM!

Mark Millar's remarks about rape, superficial though they were, stirred up what amounted to a pretty small hornet's nest, given that the swarm already seems to be settling down, to judge from the one or two comics news-sites I visit. 

Regarding Millar's original remarks, the only thing I had to add is that while he was correct to say that the act of rape could be used in fiction simply to denote "badness," he was incorrect to say that the act had no difference from (to use his example) a bad guy's decapitating a victim.  Various online critics, such as the one I cited in Part One, attacked Millar for not privileging the use of rape to connote the need for social and cultural reform.  This misses the point as to the universal-- i.e., non-political-- ways in which sex and violence overlap and yet remain distinct.  My own view, not reducible to pure utilitarian terms yet not irrelevant to those concerns, was expressed in the essays entitled VIOLENCE *AIN'T* NUTHIN' BUT SEX MISSPELLED:

While there are ways in which sexual partners can attempt to "assault" one another-- ways which include, but are not confined to, rape-- sex is dominantly isothymic, in that sex usually requires some modicum of cooperation. Violence, then, dominantly conforms to Fukuyma's megalothymic mode insofar as it usually involves a struggle of at least two opponents in which one will prove superior to the other, though in rare cases fighters may simply spar with no intent of proving thymotic superiority.

I want to make clear, too, that my objections to a utilitarian reading of violence are not confined to the arguments of those who don't like violence in certain contexts.  My quotation re: Bettleheim  shows that I'm equally opposed to the views of an author who saw violence in a positive light, because he too professed a narrow utilitarianism that overlooked the broader context of fiction: 

Much of the charm of fiction, be it 'fantastic' or 'realistic,' resides in the way those elements most similar to everyday experience can be inverted, transvalued, or reinterpreted in assorted ways.

The battle of these two equally utilitarian viewpoints is highlighted in THE BEAT's new cause celebre, two posts-- one closed to comments, one designed to exclude them from the first-- on the subject of Avatar Comics' use of torture-porn comic book covers.

Here's the first, in which author Heidi McDonald vents her spleen against Avatar for marketing "torture porn."  From her opening remarks she's apparently not the first to do so, but her politicized views are made clear at the conclusion of what is a pretty civil thread overall, replete with many thoughtful remarks about the nature of the horror genre:

...I’ll leave you with this: why does so much “horror” involve sadistic misogyny against women? And are you okay with that?

I've already refuted similar McDonald views here, so I'll confine myself to mentioning that she never responds to one poster's claim that Avatar tortures quite a few male characters as well.  Heidi then offers a summation of the controversy on her newsblog and elsewhere, with a pertinent link to an essay by Warren Ellis.

Ellis' defense of violent stories frames its argument in equally utilitarian principles, not unlike Bruno Bettelheim's defense of violent fairy tales. 

The function of fiction is being lost in the conversation on violence. My book editor, Sean McDonald, thinks of it as “radical empathy.” Fiction, like any other form of art, is there to consider aspects of the real world in the ways that simple objective views can’t — from the inside. We cannot Other characters when we are seeing the world from the inside of their skulls. This is the great success of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter, both in print and as so richly embodied by Mads Mikkelsen in the Hannibal television series: For every three scary, strange things we discover about him, there is one thing that we can relate to. The Other is revealed as a damaged or alienated human, and we learn something about the roots of violence and the traps of horror.

I don't disagree that violence in fiction CAN be used for this "conversation on violence."  My objection is that Ellis-- and the book editor he quotes-- are extending this potential use of violence further than it deserves to be extended.  Basically, Ellis simply attempts to turn the "desensitization" view of violence on its head: instead of making readers/viewers less sensitive to violence, violent fiction makes them more empathetic.


The truth is that violence can have either effect, and that the effect on the audience can be totally at odds with respect to the intent of the author.   In the terminology of Hume, the only "is" one can state with certainty is that most if not all human cultures are fascinated with fictional violence.  To impose any "ought" upon it, as Ellis does above, is mere wishful thinking, as is his claim toward the essay's conclusion that "fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters."  Camille Paglia is more forthright in this famous quote from SEXUAL PERSONAE, which grounds human behavior as a ongoing struggle between a fantasy principle and a reality principle:

We may have to accept an ethical cleavage between art and reality, tolerating horrors, rapes, and mutilations in art that we would not tolerate in society. For art is our message from the beyond, telling us what nature is up to.

SEX, SETH, AND SATIRE PT. 1

Once again the spectre of sexual objectification rises up to disturb the innocent souls of Hollywood. It's been a week since Seth MacFarlane hosted the Oscars with these partial lyrics to "the Boob Song."

We saw your boobs
We saw your boobs
In the movie that we saw, we saw your boobs.
Meryl Streep, we saw your boobs in "Silkwood"
Naomi Watts' in "Mulholland Drive"
Angelina Jolie, we saw your boobs in "Gia"
They made us feel excited and alive.

Anne Hathaway, we saw your boobs in "Brokeback Mountain"
Halle Berry, we saw them in "Monster's Ball"
Nicole Kidman in "Eyes Wide Shut"
Marisa Tomei in "The Wrestler," but
We haven't seen Jennifer Lawrence's boobs at all.
We saw your boobs
We saw your boobs
In the movie that we saw, we saw your boobs.

On this BEAT post, entitled "Why Seth MacFarlane Is Not a Great Satirist," Heidi found the lyrics somewhat less than politically correct, saying:

Let’s take the most obvious example: “We Saw Your Boobs.” The set up is William Shatner as Captain Kirk slingshotting back in time to warn MacFarlane not to do the horrible tasteless things he’s about to do and thus earn the label of worst Oscar host ever. To show what’s about to happen. Shatner cuts to a video of MacFarlane singing a song called “We Saw Your Boobs” where he names actresses and the films in which they appeared sans shirt.

Now, if the object of the humor was actually MacFarlane and his penchant for ribald attack humor, a simple 15-second cutaway—much like those on Family Guy—would have gotten across the point…and the humor. But no, it goes on for nearly two minutes—the point is to name and shame, say the word boobs and turn actresses into dehumanized objects yet again. I have a dream that someday women will be judged by the content of their character and not the content of their Maidenforms, but that day has not come for MacFarlane. In his world, if you’re a woman and doggedly track down the worst terrorist the world has ever known, you’re not a hero—you’re just another woman who’s mad at being stood up on a date.
 

I have no idea where Heidi gets the "mad at being stood up on a date" thing from; it's not in MacFarlane's song and doesn't seem to reference any of the movies MacFarlane names. I assume the "terrorist" remark refers back to 2012 Oscar nominee ZERO DARK THIRTY.

Heidi's initial definition of "satire" is pretty close to my own, in that I think real satire includes some moral element.  Heidi says:

Satire is meant to take one thing and examine it through a humorous lens, usually in a critical way.
 

However, I certainly would not agree that it can or should only be directed at the people Heidi thinks should be critiqued:

 Now of course, there is often pop culture satire on Family Guy, but the humor is as much aimed at the helpless as at targets that need to be taken down a peg. It’s the mocking humor of the powerful, not social critique.
 

I wonder what Heidi would make of this typical scathing shot which Al Capp of LI'L ABNER fame took at the counterculture of his time.

Now, Capp may have regarded hippies as "targets that needed to be taken down a peg" if he genuinely did not like their worldview.  Does the fact that hippies were marginal in terms of real-world power mean that it's not satire when he attacks them, but that it is satire when Capp attacks General Bullmoose, he of the famed motto, "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the country?"

Though I agree with Heidi that some moral criticism is intrinsic to satire, the example of Capp indicates that satire's mode of criticism has nothing to do with whether the targets do or do not wield power in society.


All that said, I also disagreed with those who defended the Boob Song in terms of its being satire, whether of MacFarlane's image or Hollywood art movies, or whatever.  I also disagree with Heidi deeming MacFarlane as "not a great satirist" because I don't deem him to fite that category.  I said on the thread:

MacFarlane’s not a satirist at all. He’s a farceur; he makes his daily bread poking at any and all sensitive areas (unlike the SOUTH PARK posers).The object of his humor in the “boobs” skit was to point out that Oscar can nominate all the high-falutin’ flicks, can ignore pretty much every good comedy every made– and hetero guys will still primarily remember which hot chick showed her tatas in which flick. 

“Forget it, Jake. It’s hardwired sexual response.”
 

 Having said that, though, I decided to search the web to see whether or not Seth MacFarlane had ever *claimed* to be a satirist.  I did find an offical response from him that made such a claim, in response to a protest over one of those jabs at "the helpless," Down Syndrome victims, with an additional jab at a "powerful" figure, Sarah Palin, in the FAMILY GUY episode "Extra Large Medium."

The Times asked "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane for an interview regarding the matter. But he opted to send a statement via his publicist: "From its inception, 'Family Guy' has used biting satire as the foundation of its humor. The show is an "equal-opportunity offender."-- SHOW TRACKER.
 

Nevertheless, even now that I know that MacFarlane has on one occasion defined himself as a satirist, that doesn't alter my view.  FAMILY GUY may produce a "feminist episode" in which Peter Griffin's normal male chauvinism is replaced by a New Age feminine sensitivity.  But meaningful change is anathema to the broad farce of the show, and so Peter's newfound sensitivity vanishes in the face of a riotous appeal to male fetishism: a catfight between Peter's female boss and his wife Lois.

Now, even if I say that a comic routine is not meant to make a serious moral criticism, that isn't the same as divesting the routine of all meaning.  I won't dwell on the distinction here, but will only note that I examined the matter of non-moral meaning somewhat more in A MORAL FIXATION.

Next up: having disposed of Seth and satire, that other thing-- I forget its name-- will appear in Part 2.

ZERO TOLERANCE FOR THE ZERO SUM GAME

Interestingly, given my recent response to Julian Darius on the morality of the *zero sum game* conflict between male and female interests, the phrase reoccurs in a recent BEAT piece in which Heidi *seems* to express her zero tolerance for the aforesaid concept.  I, of course, posted as follows.

_______________


So if I understand Heidi correctly, there is no "zero sum game" for publishers if they were to expouse more female-friendly books, because whatever hardcore male audience they might lose would be replaced by a hardcore female audience (re: Salkowitz's assertion that "girl nerds can outperform boy nerds.")  If one assumes for sake of argument that this transformation could take place, then logically Heidi would be right--

For the publishers, that is. They would be doing either just as well or better.

But for the hardcore male audience that wanted to read half-naked Catwoman stories, that would be a "zero sum game" indeed.

There might even be a tiny fraction of female readers who liked half-naked Catwoman, for whatever reasons, but I think males would be preponderant (heh) in that regard.

I dunno, Heidi. I've seen a lot of readers-- even some who represent themselves as liberals-- who've said things like, "Let 'em go back to straight porn."

I'm curious to know if that's your position as well.  Either way, it still seems like a "zero sum game" again, even if you cloak it under "market demand."

Anyone here live in a small town?

I've heard it's hard to buy Hustler and Playboy these days.  Wonder why.

THE MYSTERY OF MASTERY PT. 3

'We’ll set aside for a moment the question of whether seeing women “bloodied and bruised” is sick as fuck or not. No, what’s really interesting about this site is how similar so much of the imagery is to actual comic books.'-- Heidi MacDonald, "The One with All the Comments," THE BEAT, 1-31-08.

'If the red slayer thinks he has slain,
'And the slain think themselves slain,
They know not well my subtle ways,
I keep and turn, and hold again'--"Brahma," R.W. Emerson.

So. Back to the main topic of the GROOVY AGE post "Superheroines Lose:" given the nature of pornography in all its manifestations, is it as "sick as fuck" for a given consumer to indulge in images of women, whether superheroic or otherwise, being physically abused/degraded?  Curt Purcell expresses some ambivalence:

Sometimes it worries me, the fantasy material that fascinates me most.  I'd like to think I'm nice and "normal" in real life, but when it comes to imagining and looking at make-believe stuff . . . well, you'll see.-- "Superheroines Lose."

Curt promises to explore the matter in more depth in a future post, BTW.

Like Curt, I'm not entirely sanguine about this particular kind of spectacle, sometimes simplified in fetish-culture as "m/f," meaning "male over female ".  Despite Heidi's blanket condemnation, I think it feasible that a majority of comic-book readers, and perhaps even a majority of men, are either repelled by or at least made queasy by images of women being abused.  Not to say that any male protective instinct toward women-- whether hardwired by nature or input by society-- cannot be overruled; obviously it can.  At the same time, however, the forced degradation of fictional figures of any gender cannot help but have a different tonality than any experience relating to real violence, be it Elizabethan bear-baiting or a fascination with serial killers.

In HERE COMES DAREDEVIL, THE MAN W/O IDENTITY,  I suggested a literary "law of identification" to complement Aristotle's real-world-oriented "law of identity:"

Because Daredevil is a construct whose sole purpose is to be identified with, whenever anyone does so, that person brings into being the only reality (or "truth" if one prefers that term) that Daredevil can possibly have.

Therefore, neither a foolish child nor a discriminating adult is in any way wrong to say "I'm Daredevil," as long as either of them has actually identified with the character. Both would be wrong to apply that identificatory process to the world of real phenomena, as the poster points out in his tut-tutting manner. But if the act of identification is real, one can say with complete accuracy, "I am Daredevil-- or David Copperfield-- or Captain Ahab-- or Freewheelin' Franklin Freekowski."

With this phenomenological law in mind, one may fairly ask, "How sure are we that the sick fucks who patronized the "Superheroines Lose" material are identifying only with the 'slayer,' and not with the 'slain?'"

At one point Curt Purcell suggests one item that might be viewed as such a proof.  He notes that in all the Japanese materials he surveyed, he found almost nothing that had the jokey tone one can find in less fetish-y forms of pornography.  That's a significant datum.  All forms of entertainment, "mainstream" or "specialized," use comedy as a leveling-mechanism between fictional characters-- particularly those of opposing gender.  Arguably comedic interchanges also bring about a leveling between the characters, who exist to be identified with, and the real-world customer, who is there to do the identifying.  Comedy can be a powerful reminder that "hey, guys, what you're seeing isn't phenomenologically real in the positivist sense" (or words to that effect).  In pornography, one may conjecture that a lack of comedic byplay might suggest that the identification is strictly one-way: the customer wants only to be the "red slayer," getting even with his bitch-boss or his wife or the girl who blew him off in high school.

However, simply because it's a logical conclusion, that doesn't make it correct.

I have encountered testimony from some patrons as to the "doubleness" of the identificatory process in related types of pornographic fiction: the experience of being both the slayer and the slain.  However, I don't advocate the belief that, because some people have made this testimony, this process must be true of all fetish-fiction, either in the "m/f" category or in others.  There's no survey one could ever devise that would show the truth of all human hearts, in this regard or in any other. All one can do is to state, "Some people have made Statement X.  Is Statement X corroborated by a Statement Y in any related venue?"


Well, one could point to the fact that in mainstream comic books, many patrons do have what are commonly called "favorite villains."  The villains, it will be remembered, are the characters who continually lose, at least in traditionally oriented superhero stories.  If a contingent of comics-fans-- call them Contingent R-- consider the Red Skull a great villain, does that mean that they admire the villain and secretly want to be Nazis?  Or does it mean that Contingent R, observing that the Skull gets pounded to a pulp every time he fights Captain America, is secretly getting off on the Skull's sufferings, as if they were Sade's readers enjoying the torments of Justine?  Or does Contingent R, while identifying with the villain in some fashion, appreciate him largely in the function of a fictional creation that makes the stories more visceral, simply because "Everybody Hates Nazis?"

Readers of this blog will probably guess which of these three views I would tend to champion. In addition, this example may show that humor, while useful, isn't especially necessary to encourage free-flowing identification.  There have been lame Red Skull stories that used him as nothing more than a stock opponent, and there have been superior Red Skull stories that gave him some consistency of character to explain why a figure of considerable talents turns into such a monster.  But hardly any of the good stories used humor to get across that identificatory message: at least in the thirty-plus years that I read the CAPTAIN AMERICA feature, I knew it as Marvel's most humor-challenged series, eclipsed only by the Silver-Age SILVER SURFER. 

So the identificatory process remains a mystery.

Though not necessarily the same as "the mystery of mastery."

More on which later.