Item for the day – perspective
Item for the day – perspective
May 23As I’d mentioned before, When Fangirls Attack! continues to be a wealth of good reading, but it also from time to time highlights that online commentary can be a little narrow beam, if you follow my meaning.
Post Modern Barney took a stab at men who are raped in comics – or at least that was the title. It turned into a short list of male characters he could think of that had either been raped in jail, abused as a child (which is a pasty way of saying raped in childhood) and torrmented because Garth Ennis / Mark Millar think male on male rape is really, really funny. I half expected at this point that Dorian (site author) would deconstruct the list – there was certainly a lot to loook at. The use of child abuse as character definition, especially when applied retroactively to a character. Rape in prison – what’s it all mean? And why are Millar and Ennis such prats by times? To be sure, he does take a look at those topics, but not in much depth (and the Millar / Ennis bashing was sadly left to the comment discussion.
Instead. rather than digging in, he summed up that he thought that the rape of Red Sonja and Black Canary really upset him. He brought them up as perspective and it’s a good point – rape and women in comics is a different animal, in general, than rape and men in comics. I can’t comment on Red Sonja – I was never much for the high fantasy comics, though I recall reading Red Sonja and Conan as a kid.
I can comment on the Black Canary story and it’s here where I’d like to extend the use of perspective. I haven’t read that storyline in years, but I seem to recall that at the time, it made a few waves specifically because it was about Ollie/Green Arrow dealing with her rape. Say what you will about whether the story should have had her dealing with rape, but the fact remains that until relatively recently, comics didn’t deal with rape much at all, not directly. And what may have turned into a sad cliche in comics (male characters having to deal with the death/rape/abuse/transformation into a cosmic being of their significant otehrs), back then it was an untold story, and in its own way, just as important to tell.
For every woman that’s raped, there’s a weath of material, fictional and non, that covers what she’s dealing with, most of it in greater detail than any comic could hope to. And for every woman raped there’s many times that number of relatives, significant others, and even friends that have to come to grips with it to. I’m not saying that a comic is the best way to reach them, but I suspect that that storyline meant something to a whole lot of sons, brothers, boyfriends, and husbands – prior to that storyline, guys dealing with rape in fiction either did the “I can’t handle it, I’m out of here.” routine or sat quietly in the back, free of any internal dialogue on the matter.
I’m not trying to be all pro-male here. I just wanted to lay out a point, that the Black Canary / Green Arrow storyline wasn’t simply ignoring the woman in order to give preference to the man. Since then, depending on the writer, Black Canary has revisited this trauma in her life a number of times – sometimes in the curt manner Dorian noticed male characters deal with it, sometimes with more insight. One could argue that so long as the Black Canary character is active in the DC Universe, there will always be opportunities for us to examine that aspect of her past. And as time goes on, it may even come up again in Green Arrow’s books. But at the time someone made a call, and the decision was made to look at how those close to the victims of rape have to cope with it.
So, I’m not saying Dorian’s wrong, I just think it’s a little narrow focus, and there are better, more recent, lazy uses of this issue as a narrative device. The one he singled out, was remarkable for its time. If nothing else, I think the matter requires more than a single blog post to examine in any detail.
Plus I’m a big chicken – holy crap, is that guy hardcore about deleting comments. So, I’ve got a blog, I’ll just have my say here.
I’m really only a stickler for comment deletion when someone is being abusive to me or other commentators. I’m always open to respectful and reasoned disagreement. You do, in fact, make a good counter-point about Black Canary. I high-lighted that story because, even though it’s willingness to even talk about the issue was itself remarkable at the time, it unitentionally became the model for how rape stories are often handled in comics. I also wanted to specifically avoid talking about more recent examples because the two I thought of, Kate Bishop in Young Avengers and Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis, tend to still provoke more angry arguements than calm discussion, and the Black Canary storyline has some historical perspective to it now, as well as being fairly well known.
I was tempted to look at the assaults on male characters in more detail, but to be honest I wanted to avoid lending any possible weight to the “men have it bad too” arguements. In short, I chickend out too.
Hmm, yeah. I can see that, regarding the Bishop/Dibny issues causing more trouble than they’re worth as examples. The issue is so multifaceted that it’s a tough hair to split – you can’t talk about all aspects at once, but when you break it up, people tend to lose sight of the other angles.
LIFE IS HARD! Dammit.
I apologize for chickening out on posting to your comments – it was a great article and as you can see I wanted to join in, but I’m a blabber mouth, at work, and I never like to put in a big post and lose it to an itchy delete button. Next time I’ll wade in properly.
i jumped in those damn comments! without looking back! i’m the man without fear!
again, dorian, great post. and great follow-up by chris. even if he’s a chicken for not posting in the comments on dorian’s blog.
(insert gob bluth chicken dance here)