Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA25498 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 28 May 2001 11:11:47 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745EB7@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Or the oversight of the instant response? Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 11:08:08 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Heroines in comic books have, on occasion managed to incorporate at least
some aspects of feminism, although in US & UK mainstream comics, the stories
are still largely being written by men. Good examples would by the
'Ms.Tree' comics of the 1980s (yes, mystery/detective stories- v.good too),
or the Dark Horse Comics characters 'Ghost', and, of course, 'Barb Wire'
(immortalised in film by Pamela Anderson no less). Other popular indie
comic books featuring a woman character are 'Shi' (a samurai/ninja type
story), and 'Jinx' (a noirish-thriller kind of story).
If you're looking for the anti-thesis of PC representations of women in
comic books, then look no further than pretty much the entire range of Image
Comics- an indication of which would be that Image produce swim-suit/beach
editions a bit like Sports Illustrated, so lots drawings of physiologically
impossible women in ultra skimpy bikinis. It's a real return to what was
called Good Girl Art (when was that... back in the 1950s I think), in the
era of Betty Page (revamped and reissued by Image incidentally), a "heroine"
who generally ended up with next to nothing on in her "adventures".
I've collected comics since I was a kid, but as I've got older I've become
more and more uncomfortable with how some comics represent women. One day
I'm going to write an article on it.
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Ryan, Angela
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2001 4:43 pm
> To: 'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'
> Subject: RE: Or the oversight of the instant response?
>
> Dear Wade
>
> Thank you for this fascinating anecdote: I am not sure which, of
> your alternatives, this tale is, either, but they are all fairly worrying,
> and at the same time interesting for my heroine research. Do you know if
> there is any truth in the serendipitous-accident anecdote about why Lara
> Croft's bosoms are that size? And could you translate Curse of the
> Bambino,
> please?
> (I suspect it's a sports thing, and will follow that ear-to-ear
> cognitive path, like the offside rule, and the Arsenal Box Formation -
> although The Full Monty did make that one metaphorically clear; but never
> let it be said I don't try)
> Yours sincerely
>
> Angela
>
> aryan@french.ucc.ie
> Dr A.M.T. Ryan agrégée de l'Université,
> Department of French,
> National University of Ireland, Cork,
> Ireland.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wade T.Smith [mailto:wade_smith@harvard.edu]
> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2001 2:22 PM
> To: memetics list
> Subject: Or the oversight of the instant response?
>
>
> Here's a snip from an interview with Samuel R. Delany, a personal
> favorite of mine. But I'm not sure what this little tale really _is_...?
> Is it an example of PC gone batty? A morality tale for paternalists? Or
> just one of those stories about how life really is a series of fuck
> ups...?
>
> - Wade
>
> Q: In the mid-seventies, you had a brief stint as a writer for Wonder
> Woman comic books. How did this come to pass?
>
> A: One of the glories of the late sixties comic book field was what were
> then called "relevant comics." In reaction to the freedom and daring of
> the then-burgeoning "underground comics," commercial comic books of the
> era began to take on far more mature themes and problems--social topics
> that had some punch: racism, child abuse, drugs, and what-have-you. The
> leading writer in this movement was Denny O'Neil and the leading artist,
> Neal Adams. It was an exciting moment in comics. The New York Times
> Magazine even devoted a Sunday cover article to them.
>
> Well, five or six years before that, Wonder Woman's writers had found
> themselves with the "Superman problem": Because she was so powerful, none
> of the villains could really offer any resistance, and Wonder Woman--nee
> Diana Prince--had been reduced, for several years, to Saving the Entire
> Earth from the Blue Meanies of Mars, or other equally mindless
> adventures. So, finally, the editors had done the only sane thing: Most
> of her super-powers had been taken away, and she was now just you
> ordinary black-belt karate expert and generally super-brave kick-ass
> heroine type--a sort of female Steven Seagal. She was still pretty damned
> heroic. Instead of the flag bra and blue bikini briefs, she wore a white
> karate gee with a black belt. Certainly it made it easier to come up with
> reasonable plots for her, and alone made it possible for the plots to
> have some relevance to the real world.
>
> Once the new relevant comics came along, they editors decided an area
> they wanted to tackle was women's problems. By that time Denny was
> editing Wonder Woman; he asked me to write a series of scripts for Wonder
> Woman that would touch on problems of actual women. (You might have
> thought, if they were really serious, they would have gotten a woman
> writer. But that, I suppose, was a bit too radical.) I came up with a
> six-issue story arc, each with a different villain: the first was a
> corrupt department store owner; the second was the head of a supermarket
> chain who tries to squash a women's food co-operative. Another villain
> was a college advisor who really felt a woman's place was in the home and
> who assumed if you were a bright woman, then something was probably wrong
> with you psychologically, and so forth. It worked up to a gang of male
> thugs trying to squash an abortion clinic staffed by women surgeons. And
> Wonder Woman was going to do battle with each of these and triumph.
>
> Well, we only through two issues--and the first was a matter of writing
> Wonder Woman out of the last adventure she was in and getting back into
> her Lower East Side Neighborhood, which is where Diana lived by then
> anyway.
>
> One day about six weeks after I had come on board, Gloria Steinem was
> being shown through the D.C. offices. Proudly they showed her the new
> Wonder Woman. Steinem hadn't looked at a Wonder Woman comic, however,
> since she was twelve. Immediately she exclaimed: "What happenned to her
> costume? How come she isn't deflecting bullets with her magic gold
> bracelets anymore and tying people up with her magic lasso?" Steinem
> didn't get a chance to read the story of course. But she complained
> bitterly: "Don't you realize how important the image of Wonder Woman was
> to young girls throughout the country?"
>
> She had a point, I admit.
>
> But, a day later, an edict came down from management to put Wonder Woman
> back in her American-flag falsies and blue bikini briefs and give her
> back all her super powers. Well, that's what happened--and she went back
> to Saving the Entire World from the Blue Meanies of Mars . . . There was
> no way I could work those in with the relatively realistic plot lines I
> had devised. So my stories were abandoned, and I was dumped as a
> writer--and Wonder Woman never did get a chance to fight for the rights
> of a women's abortion clinic.
>
> It's a case of the world being over-determined--and over-determined in
> some destructive ways. But Steinem had no idea of the stories her chance
> comments were used to scuttle.
>
> ===============================================================
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> ==============================================================This was
> distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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===============================This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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