...again. The second annual Batgirl meme is up. take a look here .
alex x
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
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.
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.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
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
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
Thursday, October 12, 2006
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)