http://io9.com/why-do-we-care-so-much-about-what-female-superheroes-we-1573674640
It’s no secret that female characters are portrayed in a different way than their male counterparts are in comic art. But in a medium where superhero costumes are already so silly, why do we care so much about how our lady heroes dress?
I’m going to preface this week’s column by saying I’m going to express what I realize is a very unpopular opinion.
I hate Superman.
I don’t mean that I hate one of the movies, or one of the TV shows, or a particular run of the comic. I hate the character of Superman, because I find him boring.
For me to be interested in a superhero, the hero has to be flawed in some way. Iron Man has been my favorite hero for some time because of how deeply troubled Tony Stark is, from the narcissism and egomania that get him into tough spots, to the self-destructive tendencies that emerge when he’s forced to face the fact that he isn’t perfect. To be the hero he wants to be, he must grapple with a dark streak inside himself, and watching that internal battle is a thousand times more compelling to me than any external battle Iron Man engages in with an antagonist. And even when I am watching him take on a villain, Iron Man doesn’t really prevail because of the powers of his suit. Everything hinges on the man inside the suit using his advantages to the best of his ability, and that ability is sometimes compromised by the man himself. At the end of the day, Iron Man doesn’t even matter as much as Tony Stark, whose flaws have given him a complexity that makes him matter a great deal to me.
Superman, on the other hand, is basically perfect. Sure, there’s a type of rock that makes him physically weak, but to me that’s about as interesting a flaw for a hero as a gluten allergy. But even putting aside his ridiculous physical attributes, Superman continues to be about perfection. His biggest problem is that no one could possibly understand his infallible and unwavering goodness, and that he’s so benevolent he can’t help himself from dedicating his life to protecting the human race. He may brood alone in the Fortress of Solitude, but when all of a character’s contemplation stems from how hard it is to deal with being so darn unflawed, there’s neither complexity to that contemplation nor capacity for change. And while Tony Stark is sometimes Iron Man, with Superman it feels much more like Superman is sometimes Clark Kent. Stark is a person who is humanized by his flaws, but Superman is an alien who sometimes masquerades as a normal person. If Superman will always be Superman, and Superman will never be wrong, I don’t care about watching him fight villains because his external conflicts are no more interesting than that of any other hero, and almost any other hero will have an internal conflict to bring to the table as well.
But why is it that flaws and the internal conflict stemming from them are what make a hero interesting in the first place? Because those are the things that move characters from people I can sympathize with to people I can empathize with. For a long time, I wasn’t a fan of Captain America because he struck me as another hero who is little more than the embodiment of good poured into a red, white, and blue costume. But once Captain America was brought to present day and had to contend with being a man out of time, I was completely engrossed. Trying to find a place in a world that has so greatly surpassed the core beliefs around which his whole identity had been built is an internal conflict rich enough to make me care for Steve Rogers, and more importantly, it invites me to put myself in his shoes by making him vulnerable in a relatable way. I can imagine how he feels because his emotional struggles are universal even if his specific circumstances aren’t, but I can’t say the same about Superman since he has little to no emotion to struggle with.
At this point, I suppose it’s only fair for me to point out there’s technically one incarnation of Superman that I do like, but it’s one so markedly different from any other representation I’ve seen that I honestly don’t think of it as the same character. Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son imagining a world in which Superman fell to Earth in Soviet Russia rather than the U.S. manages to put aside the hero’s perfection by making Superman a tool in a society he wants to actually belong to. Instead of willfully holding himself apart from humanity, Red Son features a Superman who recognizes he’s a cog in a machine and yearns to be something more. Reading Red Son was the first and only time I’ve seen a Superman with that kind of emotional depth and realism, which makes it the first and only time I’ve ever felt I could relate enough to what Superman was feeling to care about him.
The problem with the superhero movie as currently practiced by Disney/Marvel (the interlocking “universe” series) and Sony/Marvel (“The Amazing Spider Man” and “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”) and DC (whose recent “Man of Steel” aped that Marvel feeling and is busy building its own version of Marvel’s feature film universe) has nothing to do with the genre’s component parts, and everything to do with execution.
Specifically, the problem is the visual and rhythmic sameness of the films’ execution.
via Things crashing into other things: or, my superhero movie problem by Matt Zoller Seitz. Read the whole thing. My favorite quote:
What do “Little Big Man,” “The Wild Bunch,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Silverado,” “Unforgiven” and “Open Range” have in common besides horses and ten-gallon hats? Almost nothing. What do modern superhero movies have in common? Entirely too much. Once in a great while you get an outlier like “Hellboy” or “Watchmen” or “Kick-Ass.” There’s a reason why anybody seeking to counter gripes of superhero film sameness brings up “Hellboy” or “Watchmen” and “Kick-Ass”: because most superhero movies are not “Hellboy” or “Watchmen” or “Kick-Ass.” They’re “Thing Crashing Into Other Thing 3.”
Last week we ran part 1 of my ComicMix conversation with J. August Richards. Part two will print next Tuesday, on the same day as the season finale of Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD.
Yeah, that’s a fucked-up misleading title, eh?
Well, ask anyone over at Bleeding Cool. I can be a dick sometimes and try as I might, just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in…to being a dick.
So, that happened.
So in the meantime I will answer more Milestone questions and deal with one bold statement, from Steve Chaput and Ryan Dean respectfully.
Please keep in mind these Milestone articles do not run sequentially (like some two part interviews), some questions may require a few sentences and others may require entire articles.
I’m looking at you Doctor.
Ryan asks:
Last time we saw animated versions of Milestone characters was in the great Young Justice series. What are the chances of seeing them pop up in any of the upcoming DC animated features or the DC Nation shorts?
Ryan, I can’t say when but I can say I’m pretty certain that will happen. More than one conversation about Milestone animated has happened. DC Animation is just kicking ass and taking names. The stuff that comes out of that studio just gets better and better. Not too long ago when it came to live action movies, Marvel was DC’s bitch.
Now? Errr, no.
Today Marvel, maybe not by much, makes the best superhero movies. Possibly they are making the best superhero movies ever made.
Animation? They still be DC’s bitch.
I recently saw the Avengers Confidential: Black Widow and Punisher animated movie. I felt I was the one being punished. It was, in my opinion, god-awful. If you’re not sure what that means in this case, it means almighty God said it was awful.
Steve really didn’t have a question but he had quite the point of view:
I’m with Paul Smith on this one. It just seems to me that it DC, for whatever reason, that is holding things back. I think any other company (Image, Dark Horse, IDW, etc.) would love to have the Milestone characters published under their banner. This would totally separate them from the DCU and the Milestone books could either start over fresh or take up where they left off when the initial titles were ended.
You can’t tell me, either, that there aren’t number directors, producers and actors that would not love to bring Icon & Rocket or Static to the big screen. Personally, I’d love to see Hardware in 3-D action.
Steve, I answered Paul’s question in detail last week. Perhaps you’ve read it, if not please do. It addresses all of your observations. Because those observations are widespread and considered by many a certainty, I’d like to use your post to underscore a point if I may.
With all due respect, what something seems to some seems entirely different to others. Many people see Ted Cruz and Allen West as reasonable public servants who will only make this country better.
I don’t see that.
I see two men who will stop at nothing to roll back civil rights, discard the poor like trash and take away health care from those who most need it.
I see them this way because of what they have done and said. I see them this way because of what I read and witness with my own eyes via media news outlets.
From what I see, these men seem to be at war against anyone that does not think like them. In the case of Mr. West, I see a self-hating Negro giving racists everywhere another reason to believe black people are indeed the shiftless, lazy coons they always thought they were.
But…
I could be wrong. It’s possible what I’ve heard and the context in which I heard it were not how they were intended to be. Perhaps if I met them my opinion would change. I’m not above making judgments only to be proven wrong.
As an example, Ed Catto is a friend of mine who also just happens to be one of the people behind the return of what is to me my favorite thing ever, Captain Action.
Not the greatest toy ever; the greatest thing ever. Ed is not nor did he become a friend because of his Captain Action connection. I don’t do that.
A year or so ago before he and I became friends, I spotted something on his Captain Action Facebook page which to me seemed racist.
You could not tell me it wasn’t.
I then proceeded to say so on his page and ended up making a complete and utter fool of myself. It was in no way racist and I feel like shit each and every time I think of what I did.
Let me be very, very, very clear. My examples were meant to communicate the earnestness in which I write this. I am in no way suggesting your statement has any semblance whatsoever to the instances I set forth.
They do not.
Your assertion that DC is holding back Milestone suggests there is intent there to do such a thing.
There is not.
I give details on the what, when, how and why I think that in my last article.
I’m confident that Ted Cruz and Allen West are what they appear to be. Having said that I will concede I may be wrong. I don’t know them; I certainly was not privy to the genesis of an idea, which by the time it reached me may have became something different.
I wasn’t there.
Steve, I’m using your post to say as loudly and as clearly to as many people as I can, DC Comics has no organized agenda to hold Milestone back. I know this my friend as well as I know my own name.
I was there dude, really, I was.
Now you were spot on when you surmised directors, producers and actors would love to bring Icon & Rocket or Static to the big screen. In fact, a film about Milestone
In a meeting at Warner Bros Studios, Chris Rock was mentioned as the actor chosen to play me. DC suggested that role go to Bernie Mac or no one.
That meeting was yesterday. Give that a sec.
Movies based on comic books have had to fight a practically never-ending battle for respectability but, for now at least, it seems that they’ve won. Superheroes are hot commodities at the box office and studios have embraced the idea that making them more like their source material is preferable to making movies that anger the core fanbase for an attempt to appeal to the mainstream. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is what happens when that faithfulness goes too far and instead of making a simple movie filmmakers try and cram in all of the ancillary subplots of an ongoing series with none of the capacity to pay any of those threads off.
To the best of my knowledge, it was only done once before, and that was in 1912, when audiences were treated to a simultaneous telling of one story in two media, film and print. What Happened to Mary (a statement, not a question) was a serialized movie, the kind that was shown in sections, or chapters, stretched over many weeks, the better to lure customers back to find out what happened next. While what was happening to Mary was appearing on local screens, the a prose version of the same story was running, serialized, in McClure’s Magazine.
Voila! Synergy, 102 years ago!
My Mary information is sketchy at best, and so I don’t know if the stunt did whatever its perpetrators wanted it to do. Was it successful? (A question, not a statement.) I can’t say, but I’d guess not, if only because it doesn’t seem to have been repeated, anywhere, any time.
Until now, that is. The increasingly vast, Disney-nurtured entertainment enterprise that is Marvel, has given us both Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which has earned $476 million so far, and it is a long way from the finish line, and an episode in the television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that tells another part of the same story. They did it right: you can see either the movie or the video alone, without even knowing of the existence of the other, and get full value. But see them both and you experience a much fuller version of the story.
The job must have required some thought and effort and the professional yarn spinner in me would like to know exactly what the procedure was. Outlines? Flow charts? Computer programs? What? Or, oh my gosh, did the writers keep it all in their heads? Or did the glitches get edited out post-production?
Some mixture of all the above?
The only complaint I have applies only to the movie and its a complaint I’ve offered before. Hey, guys, ever hear that less is more? There are so many explosions and other noisy events, and the climactic battles goes on for so long, that sitting there in the dark theater I grew a little weary. Bang bang and more bang, beyond whatever narrative use could be gotten from all that flash and clash
I wonder: do the creators of superhero movies feel that the explosions are what the audience expects in an era where the ka-blooies of video games may be helping to shape our sensibilities? Do they think that the folk in the seats expect rackety pyrotechnics in massive doses? Or even demand them? And if so, are they right? I hope not.
The noise level on the S.H.I.E.L.D. episode was quite reasonable, possibly because television drama has a more modest gunpowder budget than motion pictures. Score one for the tube.
So, was the experiment a success? For me, it was, and I’d be happy too see something like it again. Only maybe a little more quiet?
I very much enjoyed Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I enjoyed it so much that I want to discuss the plot in a way that will quickly get in to spoiler territory. If this bothers you please leave now and come back later. (more…)
Today, Marvel presents a fuller look at beautifully rendered interior pages from ORIGINAL SIN #1 – the 8-part blockbuster event from writer Jason Aaron and artist Mike Deodato.
On the moon, the dead body of Uatu, The Watcher is discovered. His home destroyed. Looted of its valuable alien technology. His death sends shockwaves through the superhero community. The Watcher has borne witness to every event, every skeleton and every secret history of the Marvel Universe. Secrets that are now in the possession of the killer.
The manhunt is on as the Avengers, the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and everyone in between desperately search for the Watcher’s killer – but with the killer in possession of all the skeletons in their closets, are they ready for their sins to be revealed?
As they unearth the motive behind The Watcher’s murder, they’ll uncover a shocking truth that will shake the Marvel Universe to its core. What did The Watcher see that made him a target? And it’s only a matter of time before more bodies start popping up…
Okay, let’s begin by looking at today’s Times. Bad news, there above the fold: A U.N. panel says climate change is getting worse. Melting ice caps, acidic coastal waters, sea life migration – all negatives caused by ecological woes that we noble humans are causing.
And did you see last week’s Vice on HBO, the story about how Greenland is literally melting?
As Bill Maher observed, in other nations conservatives and liberals disagree about how to deal with global warming, but neither side denies that the problem exists. Not true for us.
Seen Noah yet? Me either, but apparently some religious folk are upset because the filmmakers have taken liberties with the source material. Maybe somebody in a film seminar someplace will tell us how one could avoid taking liberties with that particular source material. I mean, there’s not a whole lot of source material to take liberties with and… hey, I’m not going to enter the debate about the literal truth of scripture — I’m old and I don’t need anyone else hating me — but two of every living creature? Every one? In one boat? At the very least, that needs some explaining, and since no such explanation is given in the source material, any such explanation would be taking liberties and… you can see the problem.
Why did Darren Aronofsky, who does not deny being an atheist, decide to direct this particular flick? Maybe if I see it, I’ll have a clue.
I wonder: could it have something to do with our American monomyth?
It’s possible you’ve heard about the superhero comic book series The 99. According to the Grand Comics Database, it ran for a total of 19 issues between 2007 and 2011, plus a six-issue mini-series crossover with the Justice League of America.
Despite its professional credits and its careful design, it was unsurprisingly clear that here in the United States a series about Muslim superheroes who derived their team name from the 99 names for Allah would be a tough sell. Even Superman and Batman couldn’t help. PBS did a documentary, and it was cover-featured in Newsweek – back when Newsweek actually had covers. President Barack Obama, a former comics reader himself, praised the series: “His comic books have captured the imaginations of so many young people with superheroes who embody the teachings and tolerance of Islam.”
The “he” in “his” referred to the series’ creator, Kuwaiti psychologist Naif Al-Mutawa. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Al-Mutawa wanted Muslim children to have Muslim heroes who selected a path different from the suicide bombers and jihadists.
Sadly, to no avail. It was a noble effort, one that was successful in places like Saudi Arabia – it even spawned a television series. But success can bite you on the ass, and the laws of Newtonian physics apply to politics as well as to apple trees.
The 99 is now the subject of a genuine Saudi Arabian fatwa, issued by grand mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh and his council because the comics and the television show are “evil work that needs to be shunned.” Good grief, I’ve worked on comics that received bad reviews, but nobody said they needed to be shunned.
For the record, a fatwa is defined by Merriam-Webster as a decree handed down by an Islamic religious leader. It is not a death sentence per se, although with organized religion one has to take into consideration how the zealots might react.
But what the fatwa does do is effectively end The 99’s commercial prospects. Unless the fatwa is lifted the teevee show, which is off-season, is unlikely to continue. The comic books face the same fate.
There really isn’t that much difference between a fatwa in Saudi Arabia and an undeclared boycott of The 99 in the United States due to its pro-Muslim content. Despite solid promotion here in the States and the aforementioned exposure from both PBS and President Obama, people simply did not sample the series to see if it was to their liking.
To those of us who vest our first amendment fantasies with a zealot’s enthusiasm, both actions are repulsive. I wish Dr. Al-Mutawa well, and I hope he’s got a great idea for a Wolverine mini-series.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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