One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Part Two - Overshadowing the Amazon Princess

So then I read Wonder Woman 226, and the satisfaction and inspiration I found in the previous issue took a bit of a down turn.

There are many ways I could, if I wanted to, spin this issue to a positive end. In its pages, the relationship between Diana and Kal, Wonder Woman and Superman, is explored through a series of poignant vignettes, depicting key scenes in their lives and in their relationship. The lean is definitely towards Diana, the stories within are mostly specific to important happenings within her own narrative, and Superman’s part in being her friend during those times.

In a strange way, this issue should appeal to some of my most emotive academic and personal interests. Metaphorically at least, the story explodes the idea of the individual as a singular entity, by constantly referring back to the way we, as individuals, and Diana, as an Ambassador/Heroine/Woman, are defined by the people we let into our lives, those other individuals who share our experiences. No matter how we try to draw lines between ourselves and the other people in our lives, we find ourselves irrevocably involved in them, and them in us. We experience joy, sorrow, love, but we do so with other people there to share them, inspire them, nurture them, be our focus. This issue demonstrates that quite beautifully, showing Diana in some of her happiest and tragic moments, and the way Kal has been there in one way or another to give them audience, an ear, a shoulder, a smile.

Another academic interest in this issue comes from the metaphor it provides concerning the binary opposition of man/woman. By interweaving the lives of Diana and Kal, or perhaps more Kal into Diana’s, the issue serves as an example of man and woman as categories which define, reify and yet also undermine one another. Indeed, there are many ways this issue explodes and problematises the dichotomies of man/woman, inside/outside, that the likes of Eve Sedgwick and Ed Cohen have done such good work discussing academically, though I won’t go into them here.

Yet, in all of this, I still can’t seem to move past some of the wider implications of the issue. This was to serve as the final issue of Wonder Woman. Not the ending (as purposefully explained in the previous issue) but an ending at least. Yet for some reason, the possibilities that fact implied for the subject matter were abandoned in favour of an instalment in the wider storyline of Infinite Crisis playing out across the DCU.

The choice to review the relationship between Superman and Wonder Woman seems to gain its impetus from the fact that their friendship had recently suffered much difficulty within the text. While the most striking part of that conflict (their fight in issue 219) did indeed occur within the pages of Wonder Woman, the drama of their crumbled relationship actually occurred elsewhere; in the preceding chapters of the Sacrifice arc (where Diana and Kal first came to blows and also odds), and in the pages of Infinite Crisis itself. What’s more, while issue 226’ review served as a kind of prompt to all those of us who were either unaware of or had forgotten about the importance of that relationship, the resolution of their conflict also occurred in the pages of Infinite Crisis, rather than in Diana’s title itself.

As such the issue suggests for me a sense of unfulfillment, an instalment in a wider narrative (a metanarrative perhaps?) that, while having an important effect on Diana’s story, was not, in fact, her story. This is not a story of ‘Wonder Woman’, but rather about something else, and seems to have missed the opportunity to bear any relationship to the very first issue for a sense of closure, or indeed any particular thematic points from previous issues. It practically ignores the supporting cast of recent years, as well as any of the other threads left over from Rucka’s run (such as the Ares/Circe/Lyta situation, Vanessa Kapatelis, Leslie’s relationship with Ferdinand, or her conflict with Veronica Cale etc) and instead attempts a reinterpretation of history. Its strange, for an issue that does in fact recall a series of events from previous Wonder Woman issues, it seems to bear very little resemblance to any of them, or to provide them with much more meaning, the vignettes so overshadowed by the wider implications of the text and its relationship to Infinite Crisis.

Much worse, the continuity is wrong. I am in one mind about the two implications of that particular problem. On the one hand, if these continuity glitches were a mistake, they evidence an editorial laziness not quite acceptable for the final issue of any title, let alone one of DC’s flagship characters. Secondly, if these glitches were in fact deliberate revisions, part of DC’s attempt to establish a new continuity to its ‘New Earth’ in the wake of Infinite Crisis, then this is simply more fuel to the already raging fire that this issue was not the final issue of Wonder Woman, but a chapter in a different story altogether, and speaks ill sentiment of editorial appreciation for Diana as a character.

What provides this issue with such a disappointing resonance was the way it fails to capitalise on the promise of the previous issue. As discussed in the first part of this thread, the previous issue was all about moving away from grand narratives down to personal ones, it was about changing the world heart by heart, it was about renewed faith in Diana’s story, her uniqueness, her personal touch. This issue, rather than providing us with a continuation of that theme, relegates the continuation of Diana’s story to only one or two pages at the end, using the rest of the issue to tie her up to Superman. Another disappointing aspect to that choice is that Superman is such a larger than life character, bringing with him so much of his own mythology, that his presence within the text doesn’t exactly overshadow Diana, but threatens to suggest that her story can only take place in the context of his own. For much of her comic book career since the 1940s, people have fallen back on describing the character of Wonder Woman as ‘Superman lite’, his star-spangled female counterpart, rather than acknowledging the idiosyncratic points that make her such a unique heroine. By choosing to have her share panel time with Superman in what was to be her final issue, the result is a reinstating of that old assumption, a kind of step back from trying to set Diana with a unique place in the DCU. Even the cover to the issue, shown above, represents Diana in a diminutive position with regards to Superman, his shadow and presence gaining their overpowering context from her rather demure physical pose. The context of Infinite Crisis also accentuates the idea that Diana's personal narrative is being disregarded in favour of another narrative, even within her own book.

And so, from going forward so brightly in the previous issue, where the importance of Diana’s personal narrative seemed so clear, this issue does a hell of a good job reminding us that Diana’s story is one that is subject to the whims of higher powers and wider happenings. It is the comic book version of a TV ‘clip show’, and had it been entered somewhere else, i.e. as a chapter in an annual, a special, or some other collection of stories, or indeed even as an earlier issue, it might have been a good clip show. But in the context of being the final issue? It is a whimper rather than the bang Rucka’s run had consistently proven itself to be, and I suspect more of a testament to bad editorial decision-making than his writing. Still, I couldn’t help but feel short changed, and would be very interested to hear Rucka’s thoughts on the matter.

And yours.

alex x

One Step Forward; Two Steps Back: Part One - Endings of the Amazon Princess

Back when I was at university, a bunch of us used to meet up in a café to conduct our seminars. One particular occasion we were chewing over postmodern philosophy a bit, trying to get our heads around it (or at least some of it). We were looking at the idea of ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, a suspicion of anything that seeks to instate itself as the ‘grand story’ of what is and isn’t legitimate knowledge, the engendering of a state of questioning awareness, and scepticism of theoretical certainties. It was like studying finesse, always just about graspable, but it just had to feel right. It was also the makings of something of a paradox. For those of you familiar, and those of you interested even if not, one of the greatest critiques always fired at postmodern philosophy is the idea that postmodernism itself runs the risk of becoming a metanarrative, the kind it seeks to critique; it runs the risk of becoming arbiter to correct and incorrect modes of thought. By recommending scepticism of the rules, is it instating a rule? And the way postmodernism seems to flout that criticism is in its evasive style, in being enigmatic, and in the process, more than a little bit vague. Postmodern philosophy does a lot to critique, but does very little to suggest, to replace, to reinstate. It tears down houses, like science, like metaphysics, and it doesn’t bother building you a new one. In that way it, perhaps, avoids being accused of being a metanarrative, but it does then leave you thinking you’re out in the cold. If there are no true ways of doing things, no grand story of how things are supposed to be, what are you left with? Pragmatically, what do you do with postmodernism? If postmodern theoretical work does manage to escape the accusation of being a metanarrative, what alternative does it represent? If we are to remain incredulous to attempts at creating foundations of thought, what are we left with? If we’ve learned to question everything, if we’ve got the tools to cast down our most certain ideas, how do we move forward? And most importantly, how do we change the world?

The latter question bugged the hell out of me. I wanted to change the world. I still do, in all the idiosyncratic ways people do. I want people to be happier, and I want to celebrate difference without reifying it. I want to open things up, and get rid of a lot of other things altogether. I want to get rid of pineapple on pizza…(sorry Timmy), how does my incredulity, my critical finesse, my distrust of statements of truth help me change the world? How do I change the world if not by making up rules, by being certain and setting up foundations of thought and sanctioned forms of knowledge? The answer is lying in the pages of number 225, volume two, of Wonder Woman. The answer, is incrementally.



Throughout the issue, Athena takes us on a journey from the grand to the personal, she speaks to us of the crumbling of the Gods, and the endurance of Diana, not simply as their champion, but as her own. For those of you taking note, Athena’s appearances during Rucka’s run often portrayed her as playing chess with the characters of the storylines, pitting them against each other and manoeuvring them towards her endgame. The game of chess, as it begins, is open-ended. It has rules, but it also has a multitude of outcomes, dependent on the players. And as they are moved across the board, those outcomes become few, they become streamlined, and inevitability comes into play (the parallel between that process and the solidifying of discourses in the social world only just occurred to me). Athena plays the game of fate with the people on Earth, including Diana.

By issue 225, Athena’s chessboard is nowhere to be seen. She tells us that this is an end to the story, as it has been written from the beginning. The board is not gone because this is the end, nor is it gone because she has achieved her endgame. The board is gone because Athena’s quite possibly had a change of heart. For now she speaks to us of endings, plural. She’s done playing the game of fate, and with it goes the idea of a grand play in which all the cast have played a part. The Gods, as she informs us, are withdrawing from the stage, taking with it the certainty, finality, foundation they represent. She goes us a step further, she undermines the Gods to the reader, reducing them down to characteristics of pettiness and vanity. And in so doing, Athena encourages us to challenge what they represent, she gives us the encouragement to be incredulous, to critique, to question, by exposing their flaws. And then there is Diana.

Athena speaks of Diana with a curious turn of reverence, using the kind of devotion and deference in her exposition we would expect Diana herself to use in referring to the Gods. Athena is worshipping Diana, not as a God, but as a representative of humanity, as a champion of the personal and the individual. Athena, lovingly perhaps, speaks of Diana’s own strengths and flaws, hinting at her tragic complexity. Just as she speaks of the retreat of the Gods, she juxtaposes it with the endurance of Diana. And why is it that Diana will endure? Because, she contains within her the gifts of her Gods, without actually being one. Diana is a part of the grand story and ancient tradition, but she is not it. She will not stagnate, because she will always grow. She contains the ability to change and adapt that the Gods do not.

In the final pages, Athena speaks to us of change, and the great task of trying to change the world we live in. How, she asks, do we measure the success of a mission that seeks to change the cast of humanity’s heart? How do we change the world when it is so set in its certainties, in its foundations, in its Gods, in its metanarratives of what is and isn’t the right way of doing things? Incrementally. Bit by bit, piece-by-piece, person by person. Diana returns from her meeting with the Gods to be greeted by her friends and her supporters. Each has travelled far to see her, to offer support. She addresses each one, not as a mass, but individually, requesting names, asking them where they’re from. She does so because it’s the only way to do it, heart by heart. She’s going to change the world, and she’s going to do it by paying attention to each and every narrative of the people she meets. And she’s going to change with it in a way the grand stories never get to do.


In that single issue of Wonder Woman there seems to be that inspiration for my answer to the postmodern conundrum. I can’t hope to defend such a philosophical and theoretical framework against its critics. I’m not even going to try too hard. But I can change the world a little bit by sharing the things I feel I’ve learned, the questioning part of me, the critique, the incredulity to certainty. And by being comfortable with the uncertainty it has engendered (as I’ve mentioned before) and open to the conversations always already implied in my movements in the world, I stand the chance of learning to change as well as be changed.

alex x

Wonder Woman's Greatest Stories: comfortable with multiplicity

Ok,

I've been having a look at some of the reactions to the news that DC are releasing a Wonder Woman's Greatest Stories volume, particularly this one, and I can't help wondering why it is we're worrying so much.

Of all the heroes, or perhaps more specifically of DC's big three, Wonder Woman is constantly argued as the hardest to define, the one thats harder to find a voice for. From that kind of argument we get all the others, the constant disagreements about Pre and Post-crisis Wonder Women, invisible planes, the age of Steve Trevor, the disputes concerning Perez' run. I know where I fall with the discussions, I know where my pereferences are. That doesn't change the fact that, even though there are a number of interpretations of Diana I'm not a fan of (Byrne's run being particularly unfavoured for me), what I can't help loving is the way that there have been so many. I'm sorry, I know this probably doesn't help the argument, but I genuinely like that there are so many conflicting aspects to the Wonder Woman story, and I like it even more when they are expressed as part of the character, rather than explained away by writers ignoring each other and retconning things out of existence.

As I've discussed before, Diana's identity has always been something of a fiction. She was made from clay, she was invented and crafted in a really explicit way. Even from the outset, waaay back with Marston, she was depicted as straddling two cultures, she was characterised in terms of what were, at the time, problematic issues concerning gender differences, and Marston played up the conflicts between masculinity and femininity, patriarchy and his own interpretation of feminism. And from him and onwards, those kinds of issues have always been present, Diana has always been a part of some political battle, has engendered contradiction and conflict in her storylines. Is it really any wonder, with that in mind, that we find ourselves wondering just what the best Wonder Woman stories should be? It seems, when it comes to Diana, this isn't just a matter of taste, its an argument that stems from the fact that Diana has always been something of a mystery, hard to pin down, always skirting different boundaries, sometimes breaking them. Interpretations with Wonder Woman have tended to be radically different from each other, and I can't help thinking that suits her just fine.

Thats why I'm really looking forward to the volume, to see the eclectic mix of writing, and to marvel at just how much ground Wonder Woman as a character has covered.

alex x

Wonder Woman vs Xena: What shouldn't have been

Just had a look at Beau Smith’s work for the Wonder Woman vs Xena cancelled book from a few years ago. (which is here)

Now, a few years ago I would have been pretty enthused about the idea of this book, though knowing company crossovers to be generally not the most fantastic work, and Dark Horse’s Xena not itself the best take either (what is it about the relationship between TV shows and their comic book franchises?), I would’ve had my reservations.

And, while I’m sure Smith had good intentions at heart, I’m pretty glad this version didn’t make it to the shelves.

Its not because it was going to be ‘be like one of the light hearted episodes of Xena that Sam Rami and the cast pulled off so very well’, as Smith intended. While I’d prefer a serious take myself, the light-hearted comedy routine would have been fun to read, and interesting given Diana’s character isn’t often written with humour in mind.

Its not even that the plot summary revolves around Ares wanting to watch a fight between Xena and Wonder Woman because he’s bored and ‘Wonder Woman ain’t bad to look at.’ Ares was always presented as something of a sleaze in that show, so I’d say its unfortunate, but vaguely in character.

And, my friends, its not even because the plot features a town called Testosterone lead by a male chauvinist pig called Bolos.

Its because, forgive me for assuming too much, I’m getting the impression that Ares and Bolos wouldn’t have been the only sleazes the gaze of this text seemed to be directed towards. I know I know, maybe I’m being too harsh, and after my rage at ‘War Games’ I am trying to write less angrily. But come on; ‘Warrior Princess-Wet Tunic-Mud Battle-To The Death-Pay-Per-View-Extravaganza’?!! I honestly can’t quite tell if this is supposed to be ironic or not. Either way, its rather telling that Smith’s plot summary makes no mention of the characterisation of Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, Xena or Gabrielle, other than to point out that Ares views them similarly, and instead focuses on the chauvinism of the other characters in the storyline.

I guess what disappoints here is the fact that, were a writer to consider playing it seriously, there could be a lot to play with in this kind of crossover. The linkage between the Amazons from the Xenaverse and the Themysciran Amazons could have been interesting, as could the meeting of the two pantheons, let alone the interplay between characters like Xena and Diana, Gabrielle and Cassie, Artemis and Amarice, Circe with Callisto or Alti…We’ve also got two different interpretations of Hercules going on here, which may have been fun to generate conflict with. Then there are wider themes, such as the likeness between Diana and Gabrielle’s missions for peace, and how they reconcile the need for violence. Xena’s quest for redemption and dark past shed interesting light on the privilege Diana comes at her own mission from. Cassie’s relationship with Ares also provides a nice link between herself and Xena, and perhaps the appropriateness of the two protégé’s to their mentors could be something to knock around.

In any case, I can’t say I feel too inspired by Smith’s ‘story-that-could-have-been’. Swapping Diana and Xena’s costumes because its ‘too good not to happen’? Referring to the rampage of a warrior princess and her sidekick as a ‘bad time of the month to get in their way’? Methinks that chauvinist tone is just a little too convincing, and not nearly enough amusing.

Any thoughts?

Alex x

Batgirl begins...

...again. The second annual Batgirl meme is up. take a look here .

alex x

The Sandman: A Game Of You; transitions, permanence and identity

Prompted by a discussion on this blog, I decided to take a second look the other night at The Sandman: A Game Of You, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman instalment dealing with issues of gender and identity.

Towards the end of the tale a drag queen** called Wanda is killed as her apartment building falls during a storm while she is looking after the sleeping form of her friend Barbie. Barbie attends her funeral, where a family friend is keen to impress the idea that Wanda is to be remembered as ‘Alvin’, not Wanda; ‘his’ ‘true’* identity. ‘His’ family never approved of ‘his’ transgendered behaviour, and as a result honours the memory they see fit.

They do so by carving the name ‘Alvin’ into her/his headstone, an act of defiance against the Wanda identity. In retaliation, and once the ceremony is over, Barbie writes the name ‘Wanda’ in lipstick over the headstone, though we know the likelihood of it remaining there is small.

In the discussion that inspired this post, Alabaster insightfully points out how this opposition between Alvin and Wanda fits into the ‘private vs public pain’ idea I discuss earlier in this blog(not sure how to link to the discussion, scroll down to my 'public vs private pain' post and call up the comments). Alvin is the public persona, the male, the socially acceptable character, whose loss is something the family mourn. The woman ‘he’ had become, Wanda, is seen as a contravention of that image. Wanda is the woman Alvin’s family did not lose, because they never accepted her in the first place. The suffering of Wanda is not something to be grieved for, it is the private pain that will never be known to those in attendance at the funeral, they will only remember the Alvin that was publicly known before.

At the same time however, there are other dichotomies set up by the Alvin in stone/Wanda in lipstick idea that bear some commentary.

By inscribing the name ‘Alvin’ on the headstone, it appears concrete, natural, certain, while the transience of ‘Wanda’, written in lipstick, suggests fragility, instability, uncertainty, and also its status as a construction. But the metaphor runs perhaps more deeply than that. Gaiman seems to make a fine choice by using a headstone. Though it suggests its permanence, it undermines it as well. For what is a headstone before it is a headstone? Veritably, it is a blank tablet, tabula rasa, upon which we inscribe the messages of how we want to be remembered. The inscription on the stone is an act of defiance and also illusion. It is an attempt to make ‘Alvin’ a certainty, to create the illusion of his naturalness. But its still just an attempt, it’s a construction, it is an attempt to carve some kind of truth into a form that was, initially, a blank canvas. While the family want Alvin to be true, they do so with an act that inherently undermines their endeavour, by highlighting the way we attempt to inscribe permanence onto identity that is inherently fluid and undefined.

The choice of the lipstick, inevitably transient (we all understand how often it can need to be reapplied, Barbie does so to her lips in the space of just a few pages), used to write the name 'Wanda', is also a sort of social commentary on identity. Simply understood, as I saw it, it might seem to be a message saying that our attempts to change ourselves, our identities, despite their symbolic importance, is futile, that it must take place against a ‘natural’ form, such as the headstone suggests. But again the metaphor might run more deeply. Perhaps it is a commentary on the way that we suggest some forms of knowledge as legitimate, and others as unreliable. ‘Alvin’ as set in stone appears natural because it is a majority thought, it is the normative state of affairs, it is our reverence for the scientific and the biological. ‘Wanda’ in lipstick is the way that we often make bold statements against science, against notions of the ‘natural’, but how ultimately we live in a society that allows for a framework which undermines those statements, where the questioning of biology with the way we feel, or the questioning of science with a personal narrative, is seen as a poor way of phrasing the question, is an illegitimate claim. Gaiman is, quite possibly, passing comment on how we allow certain discourses the status of privilege while we let others seem questionable, when all of them are in fact as contingent as each other. Science and biology have been constructed to seem impenetrable, but they too share contingent foundations, they too are constructed discourses. While the lipstick could indeed wash away in the rain, a powerful enough sanding device would erase that ‘Alvin’ inscription from the headstone, and with the right tools carving another wouldn’t be too difficult. Whether we should be endeavouring for new inscriptions however, new ways of trying to enforce the legitimacy of our claims, I’m not sure.

Finally, and quite beautifully, we have an image of Wanda after death, now appearing as a ‘complete’ female, the image of femininity as Wanda had sought out, ‘like Glinda in the Oz movie’. Her perfection, the fact that she doesn’t look ‘artificial’ is commented on by Barbie, who dreams of her. Initially to me, that image seemed bleak, the suggestion being that only in death could we achieve the realisation of identity as we want it to be. The idea that the self-defining of gender was impossible in this life; that only in death would we ever be able to transcend biological gender (i.e. never). But I think that’s not the idea that Gaiman’s text should evoke, nor is it the one i think Gaiman actually cues us for. As has been mentioned, I think, throughout the Sandman run, Death is not a state of permanence, oblivion or end, but a metaphor for a change of state, from one thing to another. Perhaps, with his final image of Wanda, Gaiman is suggesting that change is in the making of it, that in order to have the identities we want, we must work towards a change of the state of affairs we have now. We must move to a point where personal narratives are just as important as the scientific biological ones; where we do not seek to make certain forms of knowledge as the legitimate ones, but render them all equal to one another. If we push for real changes of state (or State?) we enable the changes in ourselves.

I think that image is a far more optimistic one than I initially gave the text credit for presenting, and one I would much rather allow Gaiman the privilege of being responsible for, and Alabaster for prompting me to look for.

alex x




*I put these terms in quotations to problematise their supposed certainty. Wanda is described as Alvin, and as a ‘he’ even though it contravenes Wanda’s self-description, which is the one I would personally want to lend more credence to out of respect. I problematise the term ‘true’ to undermine its objectivity.

** Initially, my description of Wanda was as a transvestite. I was then promptly reminded by someone, Kate (to whom I'm grateful) how important it is to get terminology right when describing transgendered characters, and was informed (with second opinion also) that transvestite might not be the best term. I went back to the text, and on a second look, found that the official blurb on the back of my edition describes Wanda as a drag queen, while the introduction describes her as a 'would-be transsexual'. I am going with drag queen, if only to be true to the text, and because the 'would-be' prefix to transsexual just doesn't sit too well with me.

Wonder Woman, Identity, Poststructuralism and Feminism

Originally the stuff I've written up below was part of a page-by-page analysis I was doing of the 'Wonder Woman' #170 issue, 'A Day in the Life', but then I figured this specific discussion is a topic all its own. I might one day do post the analysis (when its finished) for those interested in my 'Queering of Wonder Woman'. we'll see.

Lois: ‘You’re a real piece of work, you know that?’

Diana: ‘ “Piece of work”? Is that a “made from clay” joke?

In this delightful little exchange between Diana and Lois towards the end of the ‘Day in a Life’ issue, the pair begin to embark on a discussion about Diana’s contradictions, about her conflicting roles, and about how she maintains them. How fitting that they would do so by reminding us that Diana is indeed, a woman sculpted from clay.

When Hippolyta longed for a child, her Gods told her to go down to the beach, and to form the image of the child she wanted from the clay at the shore. She did so, probably sitting for hours and hours, carefully and lovingly crafting the form of a baby girl, her heart’s desire, a soul missing from her previous life. The Gods breathed life into the child, and blessed her with fantastic gifts. She was named Diana, and the rest, my friends, is DCU history.

As a woman of clay, Diana insights a playfulness concerning issues of identity. Indeed, the dramatic resonance of much of the storytelling in the Wonder Woman comics hinge on the conflicting and contradictory elements of the title heroine’s mission and personality. She comes as peacemaker, yet she wages war. She holds status as a political ambassador, yet acts as super heroine more often than not. She is the representative of Themyscira, once a city off the Aegean, now the island home of a lost civilisation of thousand-years-old Amazons, yet she wears clothes seemingly fashioned around the American flag. She is a princess and warrior born; yet she worked and sat right at home (albeit briefly) in ‘Taco Whiz’.

She is a woman made of clay, and Lois notes that she reminds one of ‘sculpted bronze’. She appears constructed in her perfection, she is a woman of impeccable and perhaps flawless beauty, so much so that she appears archetypical, an imago, so perfect as to seem unreal. Yet she lives and breathes, she bleeds and she suffers so openly and honestly, as to have collected a fierce band of close friends and protectors over the years.

Diana’s situation, while seemingly steeped in the fantastic, in the mythological, seems an appropriately allegory for the poststructural critique of identity, and the queering of sexuality receiving currency in certain academic circles today. Just as the scriptwriters of Kill Bill saw fit to look at Superman’s alter ego of Clark Kent as a critique of the human race, Diana’s story appears itself a mirroring of our own reality; a comment on the identities we hold dear.

The first point to be made is that, in being made of clay, Diana immediately calls attention to the idea of identity as a fiction. Increasingly poststructuralist literature is redrafting the way identity is looked at. Through various linguistic teachings, identity is being exposed to have been an intricately formed and discursively produced fiction. Certainty is being made undone as identities are being historically situated. In Queer Theory in particular, a genealogy of homosexuality has exposed the historical conditions that produced sexuality as a way of talking about who we are. It has looked at the conditions that have lead to the production of sexual subjectivities. And along with it goes a problematising of the foundations upon which we have come to make such firm statements. The binary distinctions between man and woman, hetero and homo, nature and nurture, are being called into question, and with them the constructs that proceed from their foundations; particularly an opening up of gender boundaries, of sexual diversity. We are looking at ourselves, but we are even more looking at the ways we came to identify specific phenomena as delineating identity, and we are slowly but surely recognising their contingency. (Of course such a project is not unanimous, nor without pitfall, but such a discussion is perhaps more appropriate elsewhere). And Diana, smiling benevolently from her position of improbable perfection, seems cheekily aware of it all. She knows that identity is something to be achieved, something maintained everyday, like the image of clay from which she was sculpted, and she even goes on to advise how she does so.

Through the rest of their discussion, Lois questions Diana on just how she manages to own all the contradictions that make up her personality. She evokes the same questions that perhaps have been plaguing us from the outset. Just how does she manage it? How does she appear to be so perfect, and yet at the same time blatantly flout such jarring contradictions as being a warrior devoted to teaching peace? How is she both ‘exotic’ and ‘down home’? How does she live in wealth, and then sit in poverty to care for the dying? Diana answers us by holding up her Lasso of Truth, that Golden Lariat that is both literal and metaphorical weapon, and suddenly, perhaps, all becomes clear.

In a relatively recent retcon, Diana’s Lasso of Truth has been described as a conduit for the truth powers inherent to Diana herself. It channels her ability to derive the truth from things, from people. And with it, she answers our questions with seeming poststructural efficacy. She maintains these contradictions; she owns them, because they are the ‘truth’ of identity. She recognises identity is a fiction, and she knows that it doesn’t make sense, that she is made up of a whole mess of contradictory elements. But more than that, she recognises that that is part of what it is to have an identity at all, that is its glaring truth, and it is a truth she is reminded of by the symbol of the Lasso. In its fire none can lie, least of all her, not because deceit is impossible, but because there is no right and wrong to identity, because war and peace are both as relevant to her as each other.

Even more intricately, the choice of dichotomies consistently evoked throughout the ‘Day in a Life’ issue seem almost deliberately trying to suggest the theories about binarisms in language and identity that have given poststructuralism and Queer Theory their clout. It is not a subtle issue of Wonder Woman; it deliberately chooses completely alien situations, polarised, and rubs them up against one another, using Diana as the link. Diana at a talk show. Diana on the Moon. Diana teaching self-defence. Diana in her New York penthouse. Diana at the UN. Diana in a Bar. And part of what has made poststructuralism so successful, is its work on binarisms, and their deconstruction.

Theory discusses that our modernist modes of thought are built upon distinctions between polar opposites, like man/woman, hetero/homo, presence/absence, inside/outside. In each one there is a privileged half, and a diminutive one. One is always considered the lack of the other, or its inferior, its opposite. Yet without one, the other cannot exist, they are necessary to each other’s power. As such it is possible to say that man gains meaning from woman, and vice versa. A world built upon the notion that man is superior to woman, that he is a negation of her characteristics, is hopelessly flawed, or so theory says, for it assumes an opposition that is easily undermined. Their opposition is fictitious; they are hopelessly interconnected in the way the Yin Yang symbol suggests (the contrast between light and dark on the yin yang symbol is punctuated by the small dots of the opposite colour that each one contains, suggesting the necessity of their relationship, the forever dependence of them both). By exposing these binaries for their co-dependence, the idea is, possibly, to erase the notion of privilege in their relationship, and to encourage a recognition that our identities gain as much meaning from what we seek to oppose them to as what we like to keep within. We are made up of binaries, and while moving outside of them is difficult (or impossible?) an awareness of them, and their contingent opposition, helps us to lead lives aware of uncertainty, and allows us flexibility.

It is this power that Diana appears to invoke. In her constant awareness of her contradictions, in owning them, in acknowledging them as the truth of her (fictitious and constructed) identity (she acknowledges to Lois, ‘I’m not perfect’), she can better assume her roles in the world, open to change, to flux. She can live with herself, she can never forget.

Finally, and perhaps most wonderfully about this entire discussion, is the way it appears to evoke not only some of the issues of poststructuralism and identity, but also its critique, specifically a feminist critique.

In the end the discussion hinges upon Lois’ own insecurities about Diana’s friendship with Clark/Superman, with Diana attempting to reassure Lois by using her Lasso, by trying to convey her commitment to the truth. It seems at that moment Lois is becoming the ‘woman’ to be juxtaposed to Diana’s ‘Wonder Woman’. Lois is the voice of reason, perhaps, but importantly she is something of an anchor. She reminds us throughout, and more so here than elsewhere in the issue, that Diana’s project does not occur in isolation. The ideal of being able to prove and live with identity as contingent, fractious, and constructed, must take place in a world where, as Lois admits, its easier to ‘Deny. Deflect. Go Shopping. Break Something.’ Diana must still validate and justify herself to the world she lives in, to those who want identity to be a certainty, for whom it is a certainty. Diana’s acceptance comes easy for her; she has never existed another way, she has lived as a woman of clay from birth. But for Lois the world is not as easy that way. It is perhaps ironic that earlier in the issue Diana is described by Lois as ‘post feminist’. Is this a further playful hint at poststructuralism and identity? As long as its project has been underway, various Feminist critiques have opposed poststructuralism’s sudden undermining of identity and subjectivities, just as women have gained a position to unite around and assert their own. Lois is perhaps our Feminist (though not in a literal sense), reminding Diana that there is an entire world to which her ideas will be called to be accountable. Her argument about Clark/Superman is misdirection. For not in its content, but in its spirit, it is a reminder to Diana to still live in the world in which others move, to stay accountable, to remember that not all women exist as she does, and that their existences are just as legitimate, their ideologies just as important to the discussion.

This particular aspect leaves me with an important issue to ponder. In providing a symbol for identity as contingent, does this mean Diana has possibly moved so far from her Feminist routes, into another theoretical political landscape altogether? If it is possible to identify a possible poststructural message in Diana’s politics, in the way she is presented, does that mean she is no longer the same Feminist symbol she has often been described to be? At various times, the Wonder Woman comic has been the sight of different Feminisms, sometimes radical, sometimes more liberal, at other times simply non-existent. I wonder if any at all, there is as strong a feminist message in Wonder Woman as I believe there has been before, and as strong as I believe there is a poststructural one? And more importantly, are the two necessarily mutually exclusive? It is characteristic of a text to provide multiple readings, I wonder what the alternatives are to my own. Any thoughts?


alex x

public vs private pain

The other day I was doing some reading on intersexuality that raised a thought with regards to the extent and expression of misogyny in comics. The notion specifically, concerned public vs private pain, and its mapping onto the male/female dichotomy.

There’s an idea in some work on intersexuality that when a doctor decides to undertake ‘gender-corrective’ surgery on a newborn infant, they do so on behalf of the transformation of pain from a public to a private sector. By and large, a greater number of these surgeries take place in order to turn a male infant into a female one, usually because the apparent construction of a simulated vagina is easier than the construction of a penis. The surgery again, in general terms, often takes place on males because the penis is deformed in some way; often size or the lack of it is the issue of deformity. Gods forbid a doctor let a male live his life with a socially unacceptable penis, he hacks it off, and makes a potentially visually convincing but nevertheless often physically unfeeling vagina in its place. The idea being that it will be easier for the individual to live life as a constructed female with a probably complicated and emotional sexual existence than as a male with some kind of ‘deficiency’. (more or less a summary of a discussion between Peter Hegarty and Cheryl Chase from a Queer Theory text).

Public/private comes into it, because the male pain is the public one, the one that is recognised by the doctors, which is worried about, the pain of contravening the sanctity of the perfect penis. The suffering of the female the doctor thusly creates is private, simply because it is seen as the answer to the public problem, because she is sent away to grow up and make sense of it herself. For all intents and purposes, physically that female may appear convincing in a visual sense, but the possible suffering she might feel at the complications to her sex and reproductive life as created by the surgery will be the spectre to the image. And as a society, lets face it, we’re still so incredibly discursively concerned with the sanctity of the male and the penis, and woefully disinterested in the pleasure and fulfilment of the female, that her suffering is likely to go unnoticed, especially along with the stigma against intersexed individuals. So her suffering is a private suffering because it is socially acceptable for her to suffer, because we have rendered a silence around the experiences of women in relation to men, as well as around intersexuality generally, and because, quite frankly, gender-corrective surgery is often undertaken without provision of mechanisms to discuss and cope with its results in later years. The suffering is private, because information becomes unavailable, because satisfaction with the doctor’s results are deemed an expectation.

And how, exactly, does this bring me to comics? Well, I was (finally) giving the Batman: War Games storyline a read the other day, to understand firsthand the contentions and outright frustrations with the treatment of Stephanie’s character. And as I read over that torture scene (complete with its gratuitous sexualisation of suffering), the thing that I couldn’t get out of my head was just how alone Stephanie was. Throughout the torture it is dark, her whereabouts, even the fact that she is in danger, are all unknown to the rest of the cast. And when she finally frees herself, she is alone. There is no rescue, her suffering occurs in the dark, in private. Having yet to read the third act, I found myself hoping that someone might find her, if only to give her comfort, to make her suffering an open affair, to provide some kind of in-story reaction to the horror of the torture. Then I thought over the previous issues, and Spoiler’s diary-entry-like monologues. Again she is a loner, her thoughts and fears are internal, are private. And in the very act of dying in the end (as I know she will do) her suffering is ultimately private, it is her death, no one else’s.

But what public pain is it that is being satisfied and transformed into her private one? Perhaps it is that pain of having a female Robin, some broken sanctity of male superiority? Or possibly it is Batman’s pain, being the central (and Public) character, in the form of his dissatisfaction with her, his preoccupation with Tim, being appeased. Perhaps it is the Public pain of what it means to have a strong female character in comics, or at least an interesting one, because Gods forbid we let them usurp their male counterparts? Perhaps that is the big public pain of all misogyny in comics that spurs on the private pains of so many female characters.

I wonder if it is possible to apply that conundrum to other misogynistic occurrences in comic books? Is Jade’s death, and subsequent empowering of Kyle a literal image of how the public pain of a female lantern is sublimated by killing her, and then returning the power to the male character?

I’m not trying to be too literal here, I know its not like this is some motivating force behind the writing of female characters in comics. But I wonder if it’s a useful way of looking at the facets of misogyny in comics? Any thoughts?

alex x