roseembolism (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
roseembolism) wrote2009-04-20 06:06 pm
roseembolism) wrote2009-04-20 06:06 pm
Depiction of Women in Comics
The question arose recently on one of the lists I read, as what people think of the depiction of women in comics. These two images say it all, I think:
Here's our boy, NAMOR!
And here's Marvel's brand new all girl Superteam! The...umm...err...vixens. *sigh*
I think, all things being equal, that art depictions of men and women aren't equal in comics. The artwork tends to depict men as power objects, and women as sex objects. I also think things have actually gotten worse on the artwork front over the last couple of decades; when I showed my wife George Perez's Teen Titans, she was blown away by the effort of an artist that could actually hand draw women, albeit ones that had a strong element of cheesecake. Contrast that to the artists these days who are essentially tracing over porn images, or at the least are being heavily helped by image manipulation programs. this is not merely a matter of simply bad and lazy artwork; it's artwork created specifically to portray women as sex objects, using quite frankly, rediculous poses.
Don't think the poses are ridiculous? Heres an experiment: go stand before the mirror (or even better, your friends) and try on one of the poses of say, Photon, or Black Cat, orFirestar up there. How do you feel? Do you feel powerful, and confident? Or does your back hurt too much from thrusting out your ass and hips?
There are exceptions of course- if a comic is stylized to a sufficient degree, the exaggerated forms can give a deliberately cartoonish impression (say, Powers or the Timmverse) . But most "realistic" artwork is being done by artists who not only never seem to have never seen a living woman naked, but have a vested interest in focusing attention on them as sex objects.
On the other hand, if the writing is unrealistic for women in mainstream comics, that's probably because the writing on all characters is generally, bad, compounded by the fact that writers can get shuffled around on a whim. The violence melodrama and wish-fulfillment soap opera aspect of mainstream comics makes it hard to write realistic personalities, though at least the writers can look in the mirror and try to extrapolate from themselves when writing men. Women and GLBT characters tend to be written as either pseudo-macho men (pointing out the absurdity of dialogue that somehow gets a pass when men say it), or really horrible pastiches of what the writer THINKS non-men are like.
There are some exceptions of course; I liked Runaways (at least the five volumes I've read of it), and Freakangels has interesting, well rounded depictins in both art and personality. Finally, the web has some interesting examples of what can be done with female characters, such as:
Sidekick Girl: a comedy about a very competent and tough sidekick, assigned to babysit a popular and highly incompetent heroine, who pretty much has the stereotypical superheroine figure, and that's it.
Magellen: in a world with an abundance of supers, training facilities have been set up to make sure superbeings use their powers for good. The main character is an unpowered woman who is determined to pass the training, but there is a wide diversity of women- and an equally wide variety of body types. The dialogue is stiff, but it is an interesting comic.
Special School: an ensemble comedy about a school for supers, with a diversity of character types and sexual orientations.
Thunderstruck: while not called a supers comic, one sister can absorb and cast electricity, and the other is a super-athlete with a katana. If Elementals could be considered a supers comic, so can this one.
And well, those are just the superhero oriented webcomics. If I wanted to draw on the wider range of webcomics for good portrayals of women, I'd have tons to choose from: Questionable Content, Gunnerkrigg Court, Alpha Shade, Angel Moxie, Dead Winter, Nahast: Land of Strife, Juathurr, Digger, The Zombie Hunters, A Girl and Her Fed, Under Lock and Key, Girls with Slingshots, Templar Arizona, Girl Genius, Undertow, Fey Winds, Venus Envy, and the list goes on and on and on.
Honestly, if one wants to see good portrayals of female characters, the place to look isn't in mainstream comics, it's in webcomics.
Here's our boy, NAMOR!
And here's Marvel's brand new all girl Superteam! The...umm...err...vixens. *sigh*
I think, all things being equal, that art depictions of men and women aren't equal in comics. The artwork tends to depict men as power objects, and women as sex objects. I also think things have actually gotten worse on the artwork front over the last couple of decades; when I showed my wife George Perez's Teen Titans, she was blown away by the effort of an artist that could actually hand draw women, albeit ones that had a strong element of cheesecake. Contrast that to the artists these days who are essentially tracing over porn images, or at the least are being heavily helped by image manipulation programs. this is not merely a matter of simply bad and lazy artwork; it's artwork created specifically to portray women as sex objects, using quite frankly, rediculous poses.
Don't think the poses are ridiculous? Heres an experiment: go stand before the mirror (or even better, your friends) and try on one of the poses of say, Photon, or Black Cat, orFirestar up there. How do you feel? Do you feel powerful, and confident? Or does your back hurt too much from thrusting out your ass and hips?
There are exceptions of course- if a comic is stylized to a sufficient degree, the exaggerated forms can give a deliberately cartoonish impression (say, Powers or the Timmverse) . But most "realistic" artwork is being done by artists who not only never seem to have never seen a living woman naked, but have a vested interest in focusing attention on them as sex objects.
On the other hand, if the writing is unrealistic for women in mainstream comics, that's probably because the writing on all characters is generally, bad, compounded by the fact that writers can get shuffled around on a whim. The violence melodrama and wish-fulfillment soap opera aspect of mainstream comics makes it hard to write realistic personalities, though at least the writers can look in the mirror and try to extrapolate from themselves when writing men. Women and GLBT characters tend to be written as either pseudo-macho men (pointing out the absurdity of dialogue that somehow gets a pass when men say it), or really horrible pastiches of what the writer THINKS non-men are like.
There are some exceptions of course; I liked Runaways (at least the five volumes I've read of it), and Freakangels has interesting, well rounded depictins in both art and personality. Finally, the web has some interesting examples of what can be done with female characters, such as:
Sidekick Girl: a comedy about a very competent and tough sidekick, assigned to babysit a popular and highly incompetent heroine, who pretty much has the stereotypical superheroine figure, and that's it.
Magellen: in a world with an abundance of supers, training facilities have been set up to make sure superbeings use their powers for good. The main character is an unpowered woman who is determined to pass the training, but there is a wide diversity of women- and an equally wide variety of body types. The dialogue is stiff, but it is an interesting comic.
Special School: an ensemble comedy about a school for supers, with a diversity of character types and sexual orientations.
Thunderstruck: while not called a supers comic, one sister can absorb and cast electricity, and the other is a super-athlete with a katana. If Elementals could be considered a supers comic, so can this one.
And well, those are just the superhero oriented webcomics. If I wanted to draw on the wider range of webcomics for good portrayals of women, I'd have tons to choose from: Questionable Content, Gunnerkrigg Court, Alpha Shade, Angel Moxie, Dead Winter, Nahast: Land of Strife, Juathurr, Digger, The Zombie Hunters, A Girl and Her Fed, Under Lock and Key, Girls with Slingshots, Templar Arizona, Girl Genius, Undertow, Fey Winds, Venus Envy, and the list goes on and on and on.
Honestly, if one wants to see good portrayals of female characters, the place to look isn't in mainstream comics, it's in webcomics.
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And I strongly agree with the poses issue. The hardest thing is dealing with comics fanboys is convincing them that it's not just the body depictions, but the poses.
And I'll have to post more on that later.
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Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
As for the poses that seemingly cause so much angst, you're not going to prove the argument with incomplete, anecdatal stuff like this. Comparing an individual "action" shot with a single group "posed" shot certainly doesn't establish industry-wide bias. The distinction between "power symbols" and "sex symbols" is also probably misguided: power *is* sexy and vice versa. While it's obviously possible to be gratuitous, it should be the case that a strong female character will look different than a strong male character simply because... they're different genders.
If you've found webcomics that are more your speed than the production comics you know, glad to hear it.
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
Nobody is forcing Eric to substantiate this; to the extent that he mentioned a "discussion" in his LJ post, I made the assumption he wanted to continue that discussion here. The question certainly isn't whether bad and/or objectifying comic art exists: I'm sure both of us could excerpt examples of bad female (and male) comic art until our net connections capitulated under the strain. ^_-
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
As for sex objectification, it's not just something I came up with; even artists responsible have admitted "sex sells". But even going beyond that, one has to consider exactly why such pains are taken to contort female characters so that as many of theri sexual attributes are visible as possible.
I can get some more data and evidence, but it will have to wait until after work.
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
And the real problem here, is how many damn pictures does one have to produce to get people in the industry to recognize that the problem is endemic in comics? There's websites that have shown example after example after example after example after example, and people still handwave it away.
Who will fund a study that gives rigid statistical proof? And even assuming such a study, would the defenders of the entrenched misogyny and sexism in comics even acknowledge anything then? Past evidence says no, bit I'm interested in seeing what would be taken as proof.
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
Let me don my engineer's hat for a moment and ask you the following: supposing an admission of sexism could be extracted from the "comics industry", what sort of action do you want taken? Is it the art itself you want changed, or the treatment of the characters (or both)? For instance, what is your take on Jim Balent's Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose, which constantly stresses female empowerment and positive self image, gender and natural harmony, and religious tolerance? One could argue that comics like this subvert the silicone stereotype and act as a sort of fanboy trojan horse loaded with a socially-conscious payload. Or one could argue that such comics demean such a payload through their visual and thematic stylings.
I'm not sure what to do with/to sexists that doesn't impinge on artistic freedom as a whole. I'd be interested in hearing alternatives.
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
I thought there was an outside chance you might be serious until you pulled this one out.
slow, dramatic clapping
Well played, sir. As the poet said:
They see me trollin'
They hatin'
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
This is a very good time to disclose two important things:
1) I haven't been particularly keeping up on US comics for a few years (finished grad school and all), and...
2) I haven't been keeping up on Tarot since the mid-30's issues
This latter fact leads me to the ashamed admission that I *was* serious. Though I love ridin' nerdy, I do try not to troll the Net, especially the parts of it inside friends LJs. Thanks to Balent for undermining my intended thesis @_@ I'll have to remember this little fiasco for use in case I do want to get my troll on in the future.
The former fact, that I'm not so current on comics, is also related to the fact that what comics I have read have been heavily skewed towards the indie set, the Maxx's and other such things that are perhaps less skewed by any corporate predilections toward sexism. After a much-appreciated sanity check on the topic with
Finally, after getting away from my cube and rereading some previous posts, I seem to owe Eric an apology. My assumption that he wanted a full-bore Internet debate in his LJ is probably wrong, and I'm sorry if I sounded dogmatic or confrontational.
Re: Unrealistic art in comics -- film at 11
Frankly, it is far more of a problem with mainstream comics, which is why I feel its as much marketing as anything else. It's worth it to read some of the blogs devoted to the subject for additional information.
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Go here for an example of a really fit woman's ab muscles: it's Women's Health, very safe for work: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/get-rock-solid-abs
Ever since male comic artists discovered the female abdominal muscle in the early 90's, they gloss it by doing tiny Barbie waists with barely enough room for lower ribcages and organs, with a little modest bump of upper ab muscle-- they usually draw the division between the "sixpack". Lower abs, if drawn even the tiniest bit incorrectly, can look like a potbelly to drooling fanboys, so best not to risk it. Flat as Kansas, right to the crotch. Pubic bones? What are those?
It's tough for women to have ab muscles. We're supposed to retain fat, at least a little bit. It practically has to be your full-time job to train them if you want them visible. In order to do it, you need to work ALL the core muscles. Strong back, sides, AND front. These fembots with wasp waists are a joke.
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(Anonymous) 2010-02-01 03:49 am (UTC)(link)