Objectified != Idealized
Another post on feminism and comics, and I'm going to hope again I don't go off the rails, put my foot in my mouth and totally get things wrong...
Something I've noticed when the issue of objectification of women in comics has come up (and probably can be applied to other forms of media too), someone will defend the status quo by pointing to the design of male heroes. Sure, heroines may have this and this and this, but look at how men are drawn! But this assumes that all things are equal, and idealization is the same as objectification.
Idealization may create unrealistic standards for men, but it isn't the same as objectification. If anything, it's only one step in the process. Objectification reduces and renders someone a "thing," that is, nothing more than a subject of a "masuline" gaze. The figure is there for the reader/viewer's pleasure, and anything else is just trappings. Lacan, quoted by Slavoj Zizek in an essay entitled "Courtly Love, or Woman as Thing," notes that in courtly love tales, where the woman is made into an unattainable symbol or thing because of idealized customs, "The Lady is never characterized for any of her real concrete virtues...If she is described as wise, it is only because she embodies an immaterial wisdom or because she represents its functions more than she exercises them." The problem with trying to argue that male heroes suffer the same objectification as women is that, well, male heroes usually aren't there for visual pleasure of their form. Critics will say male heroes are objectified by having ideal figures of bulging muscles, hard abs, etc., but ask any heterosexual comic-reading guy if he likes looking at his favorite hero's idealized body, and you'll get your answer. The idealized form is coded as something to strive for, not necessarily there to be ogled at.
Laura Mulvey's omnipresent essay on "visual pleasure" (seriously, if you take an English or Cinema major, you will encounter this essay many times over) is probably a key reading to understanding objectification. Mulvey was taking a critical look at film, though I think her argument actually works just as well as comics. If not more considering that comics are more static and not fleeting like the moving pictures are (though that's probably a whole other long post...). Male heroes aren't geared for visual pleasure as women are, since the men are written to be the active narrative agents, the problem and mystery solvers. Power Girl, despite her costume and being well-endowed can be argued to escape being totally objectified since she can be argued to rise above being there strictly for visual pleasure. However, women, notoriously in Refrigerator Scenarios, are either there for the development of male heroes or ancillary/damsel in distress/looked-at role. But take what she says defines the passive/female role is under the active/male gaze:
In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Woman displayed as sexual object is the leit-motif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to striptease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire.
Uniforms and poses are an examples of appearances that are "coded" for this kind of impact, from
Supergirl to
Wonder Woman to
Phantom Lady to Starfire. If you needed more proof, there's the famous post that designed the covers of male heroes as if they were
posed like women heroes. And comics, like film, present a "hermetically sealed world... indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic phantasy." This is why Frank Miller's
infamous "shameless" scene caused a controversy. Vale's specifically written and drawn to be look at (why else would she be walking around in her underwear, other than to allow Miller to write in an ass shot?), and oblivious to the audience's "masculine" gaze into her "private" space.
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jlg1) wrote,
