Superheroines
Jan. 3rd, 2015 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI made a new year's resolution to write 1000 words per day, just to get started doing any writing at all again. So far I've made them by complaining about Big Finish Audios, but to listen to more of those I'd have to change devices, so, I need some topics to ramble on about.
Today: Designing female superheroes.
... I know the word in the subject line also applies, but I don't know if that should be like Doctoress, as in words we don't use and really don't need any more. Like, Policeman and Policewoman seem to be mostly Police Officer or just Police. Like, you don't say a bunch of policemen, you say police. But it's not really singular? It is a verb though, so you police a population. Do you superhero? Can you go out and superhero a population? It's more superheroics though. And vigilantism.
Superheroes have some built in problems. Like, they are an individual solution to systemic problems. Except usually they're about denying there are any systemic problems, there's just individuals. Like someone was saying that Batman doesn't fight crime, he fights criminals. Only through the Wayne Foundation I think he fights crime too? I always got that impression, that he tries to help people, not just punch them. But the focus on the stories is epically on the actual punching. Crime is a thing that individual people do because they're too messed up to do anything else, and vigilante justice always hits only the very violent individuals the police somehow can't catch. It's a problematic world view and a half.
So then you get women, being superheroes, and the first systemic problem they're going to face is sexism, patriarchy and oppressive gendered structures.
Stories tend to deal with this by punching things a lot.
Usually while wearing skintights or a bathing costume.
I was thinking while reading about the new Agent Carter series, the other thing fiction strongly tends to do is frame feminism and the patriarchy it fights as yesterday's problems. You wouldn't get the modern day Sharon Carter complaining her job is all to be cute next door neighbour nurse lady, or Maria Hill pointing out she got ignored at promotion time in favour of the white guy. But it's cool to show that the 40s were sexist, since the whole subtext is that that, over there, that's sexism. The really overt stuff, from back before before. See how horrible the past was! Glory in your new liberation!
And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Agent Carter does this by being super tough, beating the boys at their own game, standing on her own two feet, and above all being an exceptional individual. It would make all the sense for her to gather up all the similarly disregarded women, the ones who came back after the war to find their work disregarded, or the ones who got their jobs replaced by any guy who walked in. I saw a gif of her hearing about that exact problem. But I'm guessing that she won't, despite the logic, form SHIELD from those segments of society that find themselves locked out again when the war winds down. It won't be about working together and unified action and changing the rules. It'll be about how Agent Carter is just so cool the rules bow before her. Because that's the power fantasy that denies the relevance of systemic problems and promotes as a solution only trying harder.
Steve's Commandos were a racially integrated unit when that weren't even legal, far as I know. That should be the model for SHIELD. For all the decades the old white guy agencies were recruiting from that tiny segment, SHIELD should be a beacon of diversity, where the women and black and asian people that had all that training and experience in the war could find somewhere to really work.
Superhero teams make more sense as a lot of minorities. White guys don't need to be superheroes, their world works already. Batman needing to be a lone vigilante to fight crime doesn't make sense without making Gotham it's very own cesspit of organised crime, because mostly if rich white people get shot they're going to have every resource applied to avenging them. The one episode of Gotham on TV I watched that made the representative of that organised crime a black woman? That didn't strike me as a positive thing. Sure, a black woman having power is cool, but if they're going to put a race and gender on to those with so much power they never get prosecuted, lets face it, those people are not black.
... a superhero team that is all minorities might well be reacted to as a gang or supervillains. See: every protest ever. that's really depressing.
from that perspective superheroes are white men because everybody else would get shot by the police for trying.
... I think I saw a comic about the boys from Supernatural making that same point, about how they can only blag like they do because they're white. Brown guys would be so screwed if they tried it.
... see also Doctor Who, and 'act like you own the place, it works for me'.
So you can start by inventing a superhero, a woman, who can hit harder and fight faster and be all kinds of cooler than her male counterparts, but if she's just going to be herself alone then I think she's already screwed over by the existing system. Even if the text addresses sexism by having her walk in and prove to the guys how much better she is, it has framed her as needing to prove things to guys.
Which is why I love Wonder Woman, the way I read her, and hate beyond the telling of it some of the things done to her backstory recently.
Wonder Woman comes from a society of women. They have advanced technology, healing, mastery of the arts, and a well trained talent for war. They don't raise a fist before they extend their hand in friendship. Sure they can end a fight, but they don't begin them. They're a gathering of women who were all given a second chance in a goddess built shelter, brought there after dying at the hands of men, but they don't let it make them bitter. They don't need the outside world, they've built something better themselves.
Wonder Woman is an ambassador and an exemplar. She sees man's world, and it's just so sad how small they've made themselves. She's from a better way of life, and she's here to raise up women.
Undermining any of that? Deciding that Paradise is an illusion, or women can't really be peaceful, or that secretly her main power is not truth but war? It's evil, it's everything she's always fought against, and it's wrong.
Superman is a man from an alien culture, raised amongst humans. He's a farm boy reporter, bringing small town values of compassion and connection to the big city. He's supposed to be the best humanity has to offer, and the advanced society that sent him here is often shown to have feet of clay. He's the assimilated immigrant, absolutely sure their new land is the best.
Wonder Woman? Knows her way is better.
I'm only surprised she doesn't get knocked down by dominant culture more often.
Wonder Woman is a title held by the best Paradise Island has to offer. The woman usually associated with that title is Diana, though others have held it sometimes. She comes to man's world as a young woman, but she has become the middle or slightly older generation of a multi generation legacy of women. She's trying to live up to the example of her mother, and her sister Donna and young fan/apprentice Cassie are trying to live up to Diana's example. (Yes those two have had their backstory redone and redone and redone. That's another symptom. People can't just have power because their mother, their sister, their hero they work to impress. That somehow wasn't enough story. So they get reshuffled into something that seems also unsatisfying. Cassie was written as a daughter of Zeus before Diana was; she was given a power more like Ares. The gradual encroachment of men's power and kind of violence into a feminine legacy must have seemed like an improvement to someone.)
I hate how they flatten out the legacies. I hate how everyone's the same age now. I don't think it's shallow to dislike the way everyone is younger than me. It's like writing off everyone over 30. Granted, an actual majority of the world is younger than me, but they'll mostly get to be older eventually. Don't they need dreams for those days too?
I love the Bats and Arrows too, but their legacy was so focused on men that Birds of Prey sort of crystallised around a question: when these women step out from those shadows, who are they? They were someone's daughter, apprentice, lover, and then that ended, and they figured out who they were now. Which took some doing. And they did it surrounded by and working with other women. I really loved that.
But I also loved when Wonder Woman or Black Canary led the Justice League. Not some splinter team or second string, the actual flagship team of their universe. Leading the most powerful people on the planet.
I guess if I'm going to invent or design a female superhero, for one thing I'll make them in a set so they've got other powerful women to relate to, and for another what I'll really be trying to do is remake or rescue existing supers. Because what I really want for those women has, sometimes, happened. Paradise Island and Amazons and a competition to find the best and Wonder Woman comes to man's world, trying to live up to her mother, and inspires women everywhere, including two more Wonder Girls. Batgirl takes up the mantle of her own will, and so does Batgirl and Batgirl after her. Black Canary and her daughter Black Canary. Oracle. Power Girl. Fire and Ice. They've all had their moments where they were exactly what I wanted, needed, them to be.
I'd want to take all the best bits of that, and then, somehow, I'd want to make sure they never got screwed over again.
... to invent lady superheroes the way I want them, I would have to combat systemic sexism in the media.
... which inventing them right would be only a small step towards doing.
Today: Designing female superheroes.
... I know the word in the subject line also applies, but I don't know if that should be like Doctoress, as in words we don't use and really don't need any more. Like, Policeman and Policewoman seem to be mostly Police Officer or just Police. Like, you don't say a bunch of policemen, you say police. But it's not really singular? It is a verb though, so you police a population. Do you superhero? Can you go out and superhero a population? It's more superheroics though. And vigilantism.
Superheroes have some built in problems. Like, they are an individual solution to systemic problems. Except usually they're about denying there are any systemic problems, there's just individuals. Like someone was saying that Batman doesn't fight crime, he fights criminals. Only through the Wayne Foundation I think he fights crime too? I always got that impression, that he tries to help people, not just punch them. But the focus on the stories is epically on the actual punching. Crime is a thing that individual people do because they're too messed up to do anything else, and vigilante justice always hits only the very violent individuals the police somehow can't catch. It's a problematic world view and a half.
So then you get women, being superheroes, and the first systemic problem they're going to face is sexism, patriarchy and oppressive gendered structures.
Stories tend to deal with this by punching things a lot.
Usually while wearing skintights or a bathing costume.
I was thinking while reading about the new Agent Carter series, the other thing fiction strongly tends to do is frame feminism and the patriarchy it fights as yesterday's problems. You wouldn't get the modern day Sharon Carter complaining her job is all to be cute next door neighbour nurse lady, or Maria Hill pointing out she got ignored at promotion time in favour of the white guy. But it's cool to show that the 40s were sexist, since the whole subtext is that that, over there, that's sexism. The really overt stuff, from back before before. See how horrible the past was! Glory in your new liberation!
And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Agent Carter does this by being super tough, beating the boys at their own game, standing on her own two feet, and above all being an exceptional individual. It would make all the sense for her to gather up all the similarly disregarded women, the ones who came back after the war to find their work disregarded, or the ones who got their jobs replaced by any guy who walked in. I saw a gif of her hearing about that exact problem. But I'm guessing that she won't, despite the logic, form SHIELD from those segments of society that find themselves locked out again when the war winds down. It won't be about working together and unified action and changing the rules. It'll be about how Agent Carter is just so cool the rules bow before her. Because that's the power fantasy that denies the relevance of systemic problems and promotes as a solution only trying harder.
Steve's Commandos were a racially integrated unit when that weren't even legal, far as I know. That should be the model for SHIELD. For all the decades the old white guy agencies were recruiting from that tiny segment, SHIELD should be a beacon of diversity, where the women and black and asian people that had all that training and experience in the war could find somewhere to really work.
Superhero teams make more sense as a lot of minorities. White guys don't need to be superheroes, their world works already. Batman needing to be a lone vigilante to fight crime doesn't make sense without making Gotham it's very own cesspit of organised crime, because mostly if rich white people get shot they're going to have every resource applied to avenging them. The one episode of Gotham on TV I watched that made the representative of that organised crime a black woman? That didn't strike me as a positive thing. Sure, a black woman having power is cool, but if they're going to put a race and gender on to those with so much power they never get prosecuted, lets face it, those people are not black.
... a superhero team that is all minorities might well be reacted to as a gang or supervillains. See: every protest ever. that's really depressing.
from that perspective superheroes are white men because everybody else would get shot by the police for trying.
... I think I saw a comic about the boys from Supernatural making that same point, about how they can only blag like they do because they're white. Brown guys would be so screwed if they tried it.
... see also Doctor Who, and 'act like you own the place, it works for me'.
So you can start by inventing a superhero, a woman, who can hit harder and fight faster and be all kinds of cooler than her male counterparts, but if she's just going to be herself alone then I think she's already screwed over by the existing system. Even if the text addresses sexism by having her walk in and prove to the guys how much better she is, it has framed her as needing to prove things to guys.
Which is why I love Wonder Woman, the way I read her, and hate beyond the telling of it some of the things done to her backstory recently.
Wonder Woman comes from a society of women. They have advanced technology, healing, mastery of the arts, and a well trained talent for war. They don't raise a fist before they extend their hand in friendship. Sure they can end a fight, but they don't begin them. They're a gathering of women who were all given a second chance in a goddess built shelter, brought there after dying at the hands of men, but they don't let it make them bitter. They don't need the outside world, they've built something better themselves.
Wonder Woman is an ambassador and an exemplar. She sees man's world, and it's just so sad how small they've made themselves. She's from a better way of life, and she's here to raise up women.
Undermining any of that? Deciding that Paradise is an illusion, or women can't really be peaceful, or that secretly her main power is not truth but war? It's evil, it's everything she's always fought against, and it's wrong.
Superman is a man from an alien culture, raised amongst humans. He's a farm boy reporter, bringing small town values of compassion and connection to the big city. He's supposed to be the best humanity has to offer, and the advanced society that sent him here is often shown to have feet of clay. He's the assimilated immigrant, absolutely sure their new land is the best.
Wonder Woman? Knows her way is better.
I'm only surprised she doesn't get knocked down by dominant culture more often.
Wonder Woman is a title held by the best Paradise Island has to offer. The woman usually associated with that title is Diana, though others have held it sometimes. She comes to man's world as a young woman, but she has become the middle or slightly older generation of a multi generation legacy of women. She's trying to live up to the example of her mother, and her sister Donna and young fan/apprentice Cassie are trying to live up to Diana's example. (Yes those two have had their backstory redone and redone and redone. That's another symptom. People can't just have power because their mother, their sister, their hero they work to impress. That somehow wasn't enough story. So they get reshuffled into something that seems also unsatisfying. Cassie was written as a daughter of Zeus before Diana was; she was given a power more like Ares. The gradual encroachment of men's power and kind of violence into a feminine legacy must have seemed like an improvement to someone.)
I hate how they flatten out the legacies. I hate how everyone's the same age now. I don't think it's shallow to dislike the way everyone is younger than me. It's like writing off everyone over 30. Granted, an actual majority of the world is younger than me, but they'll mostly get to be older eventually. Don't they need dreams for those days too?
I love the Bats and Arrows too, but their legacy was so focused on men that Birds of Prey sort of crystallised around a question: when these women step out from those shadows, who are they? They were someone's daughter, apprentice, lover, and then that ended, and they figured out who they were now. Which took some doing. And they did it surrounded by and working with other women. I really loved that.
But I also loved when Wonder Woman or Black Canary led the Justice League. Not some splinter team or second string, the actual flagship team of their universe. Leading the most powerful people on the planet.
I guess if I'm going to invent or design a female superhero, for one thing I'll make them in a set so they've got other powerful women to relate to, and for another what I'll really be trying to do is remake or rescue existing supers. Because what I really want for those women has, sometimes, happened. Paradise Island and Amazons and a competition to find the best and Wonder Woman comes to man's world, trying to live up to her mother, and inspires women everywhere, including two more Wonder Girls. Batgirl takes up the mantle of her own will, and so does Batgirl and Batgirl after her. Black Canary and her daughter Black Canary. Oracle. Power Girl. Fire and Ice. They've all had their moments where they were exactly what I wanted, needed, them to be.
I'd want to take all the best bits of that, and then, somehow, I'd want to make sure they never got screwed over again.
... to invent lady superheroes the way I want them, I would have to combat systemic sexism in the media.
... which inventing them right would be only a small step towards doing.