Recovering Ideals (1)

I’d like to expound on the DC Comics Universe of my childhood. I realize that we all have different perspectives and that reality as any one of us sees it is not necessarily reality as it is.  At the age of ten, my friends and I were idealistic. Police and soldiers were good people who protected us and only used violence when justified. Authority figures were also good and acted in our best interests. We read DC Comics, especially Superman but also Batman and Wonder Woman. Back then, heroes were heroes, and we believed in “truth, justice, and the American way.”

We were children of the Silver Age of Comics. For capes, my friends and I wore towels either tucked into our tee shirts or carefully safety-pinned around our necks, and we argued about who got to be the real Superman. Well, yeah, sometimes we squabbled or even fought, but we were good kids. My best friend and I volunteered to be traffic safety crossing guards (the diagonal belt and badge were cool), and our group in general befriended and stuck up for the little guys and the outcasts. One of our friends was so overweight he looked round, but we never made fun of him. We defended him when others picked on him. We had empathy and conscience, and our pre-adolescent society was one of inclusion and safety.

Then came junior high school, high school, and increasing social pressure with its trademark betrayals and altered values. We became overshadowed by an awareness of racism, riots, the protests against the war in Viet Nam, abuses of power by our government, and the Kent State shootings. Resistance to the status quo became the new coin of the social realm. Some of my friends’ parents started getting divorces. With this greater awareness and disillusionment, we lost a good many of our childhood ideals.

Even now, society tends toward the sarcastic and the cynical. We’ve been let down so many times that our first reaction is often skepticism when we are confronted by something good. I have noticed a trend in which people discard ideals on the basis of other people failing to live up to them. Very recently, I have had to remind myself that the ideal society of my youth never really existed, but that isn’t the whole story. I knew people, including my own parents, who truly lived by their ideals, and there were enough of them that they made the world better. The value in an ideal is that when people reach for it, society is better off. When a good ideal is discarded, too many people stop trying.

Getting back to my DC aspirations of the Silver Age, I recently purchased and read a graphic novel that brought all of it back. The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes by Paul Dini and Alex Ross does a masterful job of combining the historical ideals of perhaps the most iconic superheroes in comic book history with a modern awareness that the world we live in is indeed a very flawed place. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel are featured in narratives which apply their virtues to real world problems with understandably mixed results. What I like about these stories is that they use fictional characters to focus our attention on the potential hero within each of us and that they do this without being heavy-handed.

This is one of my favorite graphic novels, right up there with Kingdom Come and Marvels (my opinion, of course). And guess who the illustrator for both of those was? The panels are visually satisfying, the writing for the most part substantial, and the stories entertaining. In upcoming posts, I will examine some of the individual stories in this impressive collection.

Oh, and fifty-three years later, my buddies and I are still close.

Graphic Mythology: Wonder Woman Revisited

It has been over six months since I have discussed this character from comics/graphic novels, and I have had sufficient time to reflect on comments made by my readers back then. A mainstay of DC Comics, Wonder Woman is truly iconic and immediately recognizable. In trying to come to grips with her true significance, I have found the task more difficult than I originally imagined.

Wonder Woman by Alex Ross

Her history is nuanced in that she has been given very admirable qualities along with what I consider some serious flaws. All of this, of course, indicates the mindsets of her original and subsequent creators. First conceived by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist with fetishes for bondage and spanking, she was often used to portray and legitimize his obsessions. Since then, I would have to say that her various representations have covered the range from heroic dignity to sexual exploitation. All image credits go to DC Comics.

Were she, in all her manifestations, a real woman, I would say that she has a history of repeated abuse. She has been spanked and debased, allegedly playfully.

She has been bound repeatedly. The following image particularly concerns me because it represents a real danger of asphyxiation for anyone foolish enough to participate in imitating it.

She has been physically assaulted as a matter of routine, although one could argue that this is an expected consequence of being a superhero who combats villains. Some of the more recent imagery, however, makes me wince despite the fact that the associated story lines attempt to justify it in context, especially in the case of superheroes fighting one another. By the way, I have noticed some disturbing comments on-line which indicate unquestioning approval of the violence portrayed in some of the following  pictures. I know, I know… there are plenty of frames which show her dishing it out as well as taking it, but these  images collectively show an underlying motive which I will address a little later in this post.

To date, she has not been sexually assaulted in any DC issues (although a story involving this very topic was once in the planning stages by one of their writers), but what do  illustrations such as the following suggest nonetheless? Visuals can easily overpower accompanying words.

It is in no way inaccurate to say that all of the imagery to which I have objected was designed to arouse male readers. So, in a sense, those entrusted with the representation of this female character have repeatedly pimped her out for several decades. The use of feminist rhetoric to prop up this kind of imagery strikes me as rather flimsy.

Artist: Alex Ross

A woman’s body is not a piece of candy. It sweats, bleeds, and eliminates. It suffers through sickness and injury. It gets pregnant and gives birth. But much of the imagery I have included in this post is the candy, a sugar-coated version of violence and exploitation which lessens the severity of such treatment in the minds of less discriminating readers by not adequately showing its consequences. We live in a society which has a widespread problem with the negative acculturation of boys and young men, and I see this as a driving factor in the rape culture which plagues college campuses and other settings as well.

Artist: Alex Ross

I know I have said much of this before, but I don’t think that repetition of criticisms and warnings in this area is unjustified. In summary, I regard Wonder Woman as a character with a nuanced history of publication. As such, she has served as a lightning rod for discussions about feminism. Due to her importance in popular culture, I think she deserves better treatment than she often has received. I have included the panels by Alex Ross as evidence of how this can be done without mitigating the impact of this character. If anything, these examples have just the opposite effect.

Artist: Alex Ross

 

Graphic Mythology: Creative Responsibility

What I have to say this week applies not only to comics but to writing in general. A couple of weeks ago, I lamented negative portrayals of women and children in graphic novels and used early issues of Wonder Woman to exemplify my arguments. While it might seem irrelevant to get upset about something that is obviously dated and silly in retrospect, I deliberately used images that would seem tame or even harmless. To be honest, some of the more current  images are so graphic that I felt it would have been in bad taste to include them in my post. I contend that the points I made are valid, and using seemingly inoffensive examples might actually encourage readers to take a more careful look at how they and the rest of society think. Fantasy isn’t real, but it has real consequences, good and bad. Keep in mind that Wonder Woman is often uncritically regarded as a feminist icon because she is a superhero and because she is a woman. It is good to read thoughtfully and to choose one’s heroes carefully.

Color illustration from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki.

Our modern mythology in western society is embodied primarily in movies, comics, and popular fiction. The key here is writing. For something to be seen, it first must be written. Our culture in general and fantasy entertainment in particular are saturated with damaging portrayals of women. Those of us who write have the opportunity and the responsibility to help reverse this trend. Compelling characters and stories can have tremendous influence on the attitudes of many people. I am not suggesting we write propaganda at the expense of story quality. This takes too low a view of our respective readerships. These are people who can and will think for themselves, but they will choose from available options. Let’s offer them something better.

Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015), directed by J. J. Abrams.

It isn’t enough just to have lead characters who are female. This can lead us into an insipid numbers game which actually defeats our purpose and continues to feed the beast. We need to take a more qualitative look at what we are doing and why. The following comments are based on my own limited experience, so I would appreciate any additional insights you might care to contribute.

I have noticed some trends which have been lauded as steps in the right direction in fantasy writing. Most with which I am familiar simply involve the raising of awareness by describing unsettling societal issues and incorporating them into plot and character development. It is fairly easy to describe the mistreatment of women, somewhat harder to shed light on the internal suffering this causes them, and much more difficult to create solutions which can show us a way forward. For example, a plethora of female superheroes have been written with backstories of abuse and discrimination. If I can say anything about them as a group, it is that they are portrayed as damaged and often angry. Internal conflict is the base from which they combat evil, and they have a tendency to remain hurt, angry, and conflicted as they unsuccessfully try to exorcise their personal demons. In other words, they don’t often get better.

The challenge for fantasy writers, as I see it, is to begin with characters who are damaged and then make them believably whole. In doing this, care must be exercised to prevent the story from devolving into a predictable morality play. Some would argue that healthy characters aren’t as interesting, but I respectfully disagree. Would you rather have a conversation with a disturbed stranger or with one who is more balanced? Healthy characters can have as many, if not more, interesting facets to their personalities as those who are damaged. The trick, and it is not trivial, is to make them interesting in their damaged condition and then to make them even more interesting when they are whole. Then, of course, there is the type of female character who starts out from a good place and ends up in an even better one. These are relatively under-utilized roles in current fiction, and they represent considerable literary potential.

Folks (and especially guys), we don’t have to keep our female characters in chains. They can also be more fully clothed. Superheroines are good for more than ogling, DTR talks, catfights (and other girl-on-girl drama), sexual abuse, and even social statements. They and other female leads are deep wells with many unexplored possibilities. As in relationships with real women, we have only scratched the surface.

The Modern Pantheon: Introduction

Characters from Avengers: The Age of Ultron, directed by Joss Whedon

Since I like to create my own mythologies in the books that I write, I am fascinated by a modern pantheon that has really caught on in popular culture: the Disney Marvel franchise. For this next series of posts, I will limit my comments to what has been revealed in these movies up to this point in time. It would be foolish of me to reveal my woeful unfamiliarity with the actual graphic novels. The films are a bit of an anomaly for the superhero genre in that they feature outstanding writing, production, directing, acting, AND special effects. They work on several levels.

Characters from Thor, directed by Kenneth Branaugh

 What I would like to key on are some of the mythological elements in these productions, especially certain god-like characters. It could be argued that, while abnormally powerful, they are not portrayed as full-fledged spiritual beings, but this is not a foregone conclusion. Though they are somewhat “scientifically” explained, the Marvel characters I will mention in later posts are not unlike the members of the Greek pantheon. These gods were physical enough that they sometimes procreated with mortals to produce demigods. Nor is this concept of embodied spirituality foreign to Judaism and Christianity. In the book of Genesis, there is a description of Abraham entertaining angels, who actually ate the food he offered them. In the New Testament gospels, we can read of the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In these and other cases, the boundaries between the spiritual and the physical are described as rather fluid.