Can Wonder Woman Be a Superdick? (Part 2)

So for those who don’t remember…more than a year ago I had written a series of posts about gender in comics. The basic argument is that a character like Superman is a male power fantasy. That fits in with Freud and the Oedipal conflict. Clark Kent can be seen as the “child” who imagines himself supplanting the Father/lawgiver/god. You can also take this one step away from Freud and argue (via the theories of Eve Sedgwick) that what we’re talking about here is not, or not solely, an internal psychological desire, but rather a cultural/social formulation. Men turn away from femininity in order to identify with patriarchal power; or, to see it another way, to be patriarchal requires the denigration or hiding of weakness.

That’s the closet; Clark Kent is living a lie, pretending to be powerful in order to be powerful, when his truth is actually a weak, wimpy child. And, again, the closet is powered by male-male desires and fantasies, making it homoerotic (though, as I argue at some length, it’s actually a straight person’s homoerotic fantasy — we’re talking about how straight men bond or interact with the patriarchy in particular, and arguing that that interaction is structured by ideas about, and within, gayness.)

I then talked about how the early Marvel titles messed with this formula. Characters like Spider-Man and the Thing were much more ambivalent about power; the superdick in them often becomes a devouring ogre (see The Hulk). You also see this in some super-hero satire, like Chris Ware’s Superman character. I argued, though, that the basic binary remains; these stories don’t reject the superdick. Weakness is still sneered at; it’s just that the anxiety around the superdick is greater. You want it but when you have it you don’t want it, and then when you don’t have it you want it again. I also noted that the fascination with power and the denigration of weakness ends up making superhero stories essentially sadistic (as opposed to horror, which works in a more masochistic mode.) This also makes it very difficult for superhero comics to create anti-status quo storylines. However anxiously, the law is always worshipped.

I then went on to talk about the way this relates to Wonder Woman. In particular, I argued that the anxiety and bifurcation of male identity doesn’t really work for Wonder Woman. Female identity is not seen as doubled in the same way; women are not split between patriarchal power and weakness. That’s because female identity is simply identified with weakness. Male writers of Wonder Woman like Kanigher and Martin Pasko tended to create narratives which were about robbing Wonder Woman of her power. There was anxiety around WW’s superdickishness, but much less so around her weakness. As long as she wasn’t in control, everybody was happy. You often got the sense from the books that nobody could figure out what Wonder Woman was doing with superpowers in the first place.

Of course, Wonder Woman had superpowers in the first place because William Marston gave them to her. Which is where we left off, and where I’m going to try and pick up now.
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One of the things I’ve mentioned a number of times in various Wonder Woman posts is that her secret identity doesn’t really work right. It’s a gender problem; superhero identities, as I indicated above, are supposed to be split along the frightened child/superdick Oedipal fissure.

Typically, superhero origins work like this; little Melvin Microbits is toddling along minding his microstuff when suddenly — transformative trauma! He is castrated by a radioactive giant tubular marine mammal! Quickly, miraculously, he grows a thing bigger than his dad ever had and decides to serve the Law as — Walrus-Man!

Or that’s the general idea, anyway. Batman’s maybe the most paradigmatic example (small boy, dad shot, takes dad’s place while still also remaining traumatized child.) It works for Superman too, though (baby, father dies, takes dad’s place while still also remaining puny child). And for Spiderman (young man, father-figure dies, takes dad’s place while still also remaining traumatized child.) There are some variations, like Green Lantern (young man, father-figure dies, takes dad’s place while still remaining asshole); or the Hulk (wimpy guy, traumatized, takes dad’s place while still also remaining wimpy guy.) But the general outlines remain discernible. It’s a meme.

But Wonder Woman’s origin doesn’t work like that. She’s born (or magically fashioned, actually) with super-powers. Her secret identity, Diana Prince, isn’t the “real” trace of the traumatized child she was and remains. It’s just an act.

And it’s an act, moreoever, undertaken to pander to the needs of her man, as we see in Sensation Comics #1.

That’s a deeply odd sequence. Wonder Woman trades places with a nurse who looks exactly like her and has the same name. Moreover, the nurse has the same problem; she needs to find a way to get to the man she loves. The two switch places, but they’re able to do it only because they were already in each other’s places to begin with.

So a couple of points about this.

— In my first essay about WW and superdickery I speculated on the place that female/female relationships had in enforcing femininity. That is, male/male relationships (between, say, Spiderman and Uncle Ben) are often part of Oedipal drama; they’re a spur to becoming more manly, as well as a taunt for not being manly enough.

Female/female relationships, though, often seem much less fraught. In some circumstances — as with the Amazons — sisterhood can be an alternative to, or a challenge to patriarchy. But female bonds can also enforce femininity, and reinforce (subordinate?) relationships with men.

This is basically the argument of Sharon Marcus in her book Between Women. Marcus claims that close, even eroticized friendships between women were seen as an essential part of being a women in the Victorian period. Thus, close female friendships didn’t make women homosexual — it made them more heterosexual.

Marston was significantly more aware of lesbian possibilities than many Victorians were; he had a long-standing polyamorous relationship with two bisexual women. Still, I think Marcus’ analysis perhaps makes it clear why we need this bizarre scene of doubling before WW can have her sort-of-tryst with Steve. Just as male/male relationships for theorist Eve Sedgwick enforce the agonized Oedipal doubling, so female/female relationships for Marston create a stable, domesticated femininity. WW needs Diana to teach her how to be a woman.

— I’ve sort of made this point already, but…the scenario here is not, at first glance, an especially empowering vision. Marston seems to be going out of his way to disempower his heroine from the get-go. Moreover, he’s disempowering her in the name of servitude to men! WW casts off her superpowers so she can wait on Steve hand and foot. As I noted in the first part of the essay, male superheroes are constantly striving and failing to be powerful (men). The feminine, though, doesn’t need to strive; it can just be. And that’s what happens here. WW chucks her goddessness so she can go change her guy’s bedpans. Not much of a feminist message.
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There are maybe other, less invidious ways to look at this though. Here’s comics critic Chris Boesel, with a different take on WW’s decision to become Diana Prince.

First the Why. Why does the god (the teacher) give herself (the eternal, the truth) to be known by the creature (the learner)? It must be for love — not by any necessity, but a free self-giving for the sake of the possibility of the relation itself. And love has a twofold dimension here. It is not only the god’slove for the creature that the god… [gives herself]; it is also for the sake of love, so that the creature might love the god, that the god and the creature might be joined in a relation of “love’s understanding.”

Okay, that’s my little joke. Boesel isn’t a comics critic; he’s a theologian. And despite the serendipitous use of the female pronouns there, he’s not talking about Wonder Woman. He’s talking about Kierkegaard’s ideas about the incarnation of Christ.

The essay is called “The Apophasis of Divine Freedom,” and it appears in a volume edited by Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller called Apophatic Bodies. For those, like me, not familiar with the terminology, apophatic theology means negative theology — the practice of describing God by talking about what he (or she, or ze) is not.

I’m going to quote a little more from Boesel, since it seems apropos to WW’s decision to shuck off her goddesshood for love. Again, Boesel is paraphrasing and sometimes quoting Kierkegaard here.

Second, the How. How is the god to create the “equality,” or “unity,” necessary in order to “make himself understood” without “destroy[ing] that which is different,” that is, the creature as creature? How does the god give herself to be known by the creature in and for love without obliterating the beloved?

Climacus [that’s Kierkegaard’s pen-name] rejects both the possibility of an “ascent,” an exaltation of the beloved creature to the heights of heaven…and of a divine “appearing” in overpowering, sacred splendor,” on the grounds that they would violate the integrity of the creature’s existence, as creature.

The “unity” of “love’s understanding,” then, must be “attempted by a descent.” And a descent, by the god, to the level of “the lowliest” of all…. Therefore, “in love [the god] wants to be the equal of the most lowly of the lowly,” and so comes to the creature “in the form of the servant.” This “form,” however, “is not something put on like the king’s plebian cloak, which just by flapping open would betray the king…but is [the god’s] true form.” The god does not deceive, but in the “omnipotence of love,” remains truly god while fully embodied as a particular human creature, just like any other human, even the lowliest of the low.

The whole analysis by Boesell/Kierkegaard fits WW almost perfectly. As a goddess, WW can’t appear to (be apprehended by?) Steve. For him to love her, and for her to love him, she has to descend and become, not just human, but a servant. She even takes over the form of a “real” human being; her double, both her and not her. The moment when Steve knows her and doesn’t know her:

is emblematic; when she is Diana (which is her real name and also her alias) Steve can recognize and love her. The angel cannot be loved as an angel, but only as a servant. From this perspective, you might argue that gender is irrelevant or secondary. Marston’s not telling a story about what women should be, or how they need to be weak and servile to attract a man. Instead he’s telling a story about the encounter with the divine, and the paradoxical manner in which one, of whatever gender, can only love the transcendent through the particular.

The thing is, though, Marston is obsessed with gender…and especially, one could argue, with the relationship between gender and Godhead. The particular divinity WW is, the transcendence she represents, is female.

Moreover, the embodiment of that transcendence is female as well. Obviously, WW and Diana are both women. But the particular formal representation of that embodiment in the comic is also, I think, coded female. I’m thinking specifically of this passage from Irigary’s essay “The Sex That Is Not One.”

Woman “touches herself” all the time, and moreover no one can forbid her to do so, for her genitals are formed of two lips in continuous contact. Thus, within herself, she is already two — but not divisible into one(s) — that caress each other.

Also this:

Whence the mystery that woman represents in a culture claiming to count everything, to number everything by units, to inventory everything as individualities. She is neither one nor two. rigorously speaking, she cannot be identified either as one person or as two. She resists all adequate definition. Further, she has no ‘proper’ name.

Following Irigary’s formulation, when WW moves from transcendence to immanence, when she becomes embodied she does not merely split — she is not bifurcated within herself into two agonized and irreconcilable halves. Instead, she becomes two who remain one — neither one nor two.

The comic form itself literally embodies the indeterminacy. Comics are built around repetition of the same figure; on a given page, Peter will draw WW over and over again. The panel borders separate these images; each is each, identity in its place. But when WW needs to cast off her transcendence, the panel borders collapse, and suddenly two images of her occupy the same delimited space.

Once they are embodied together, Diana and Diana can touch — a self-caressing which opens the way for love — and not only of one another (or of one as another). Marcus noted that affection between women was seen as aiding, not hindering, love between men and women; similarly, Irigary sees women’s duality as opening into multiplicity.

So woman does not have a sex organ? She has at least two of them, but they are not identifiable as ones. Indeed, she has many more. Her sexuality, always at least double, goes even further: it is plural….woman has sex organs more or less everywhere.

Again, the sequence here embodies the movement from two to many. The duality of Diana and Diana is multiplied on one page as they talk from panel to panel, so that we see, not just the one Diana that is two, but doubled Diana’s multiplying profligately. And then, inevitably, in the sixth panel, the one Diana replaces the other Diana while the other Diana is replaced in the frame by Steve.

A female self-caressing self opening to love for another; that’s a metaphor for motherhood. And indeed, Diana, incarnated as a nurse, treats Steve with matriarchal affection.

“Be a good boy now and keep quiet.” Diana’s love of Steve isn’t (just) romantic love, and isn’t (just) divine love — it’s the love of a mother for a child.

Paradise Island is a matriarchal heaven, and if WW is a Christ figure — and I think she is — then she remains a female Christ figure. And what’s perhaps most interesting about that is how easily it fits into Boesel/Kierkegaard’s formulation. WW does not need to overawe Steve with her transcendent power, challenging him to become a superdick like her. Instead, she lowers herself to him, showing her transcendent power through the servitude of love. The transcendent matriarch becomes human precisely to change bedpans. That’s what divine love is. That’s the point.

In this context, too, Marston’s obsession with loving submission, his conviction that women are superior to men because they know how to submit, and his determination to show WW’s power by tying her up, starts to make more sense.

Submission is godlike, especially submission to Marston’s ultimate authority, Aphrodite, the god of love. Because, as Christ and Nietzsche and lots of superheroes agree, the alternative to worshipping love is worshipping power. Marston’s WW isn’t a bifurcated, tormented child striving for an unattainable transcendent Oedipal Uberfatherness. She is bifurcated, but the way Christ is bifurcated, between human and divine, or the way a mother is split between herself and the child that comes from her. Wonder Woman’s not a superdick, but the super sex-which-is-not-one, which opens like a wound, giving birth to love. She sets aside her power to become a servant of that love, and, as they say in the comics…to save us all!

31 thoughts on “Can Wonder Woman Be a Superdick? (Part 2)

  1. To the surprise of nobody who has ever read my comments, I am totally on board with this concept. Christian/pagan feminized/queered/multiplied resurrection/arousal just delights me like a delicous cheese.

  2. ——————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:
    The only surprise will be if anyone *else* likes the concept.
    ——————-

    What’s not to like?

    ——————
    That’s a deeply odd sequence. Wonder Woman trades places with a nurse who looks exactly like her and has the same name. Moreover, the nurse has the same problem; she needs to find a way to get to the man she loves. The two switch places, but they’re able to do it only because they were already in each other’s places to begin with.
    ——————

    Or, are they supposed to be different aspects of the same person? “Sub-personalities,” as Jung would have it; or like the varied facets — each with different abilities — of someone with multiple personality syndrome?

    ——————
    …WW does not need to overawe Steve with her transcendent power, challenging him to become a superdick like her. Instead, she lowers herself to him, showing her transcendent power through the servitude of love…
    ——————

    And of course, submissiveness can itself be a form of power; as when the Hindu goddess Kali (my favorite deity!) was rampaging, threatening to destroy the universe, the other gods helpless to stop her. And rather than fighting her, Shiva calmed her wrath by lying before her, and letting her walk on him…

    (Though it’s worth noting, lest we make too much of Wonder Woman abasing herself, that in this story Steve Trevor is in a sickly (or injured) position of childlike dependency. So even as a nurse, WW is in a higher position of power over him. “Now, be a good boy…”)

    Speaking of “sub-personalities,” Kali herself has been depicted as the wrathful aspect of more mild-mannered goddesses:

    ——————-
    Kali’s most famous appearances in battle contexts are found in the Devl-mahatmya, In the third episode, which features Durga’s defeat of Sumbha and Nisumbha and their allies. Kali appears twice. Early in the battle the demons Canda and Munda approach Durga with readied weapons. Seeing them prepared to attack her, Durga becomes angry, her face becoming dark as ink. Suddenly the goddess Kali springs from her forehead. She is black, wears a garland of human heads and a tiger skin, and wields a skull-topped staff. She is gaunt, with sunken eyes, gaping mouth, and lolling tongue. She roars loudly and leaps into the battle, where she tears demons apart with her hands and crushes them in her jaws.

    She grasps the two demon generals and in one furious blow decapitates them both with her sword. Later in the battle Kali is summoned by Durga to help defeat the demon Raktabija. This demon has the ability to reproduce himself instantly whenever a drop of his blood falls to the ground. Having wounded Raktabija with a variety of weapons, Durga and her assistants, a fierce band of goddesses called the Matrkas find they have worsened their situation. As Raktabija bleeds more and more profusely from his wounds, the battlefield increasingly becomes filled with Raktabija duplicates. Kali defeats the demon by sucking the blood from his body and throwing the countless duplicate Raktabijas into her gaping mouth.

    In these two episodes Kali appears to represent Durga’s personified wrath, her embodied fury. Kali plays a similar role in her association with Parvati. In general, Parvati is a benign goddess, but from time to time she exhibits fierce aspects. When this occurs. Kali is sometimes described as being brought into being. In the Linga-purana Lord Shiva asks [his wife] Parvati to destroy the demon Daruka, who has been given the boon that he can only be killed by a female. Parvati then enters Lord Shiva’s body and transforms herself from the poison that is stored in Lord Shiva’s throat. She reappears as Kali, ferocious in appearance, and with the help of flesh eating pisacas (spirits) attacks and defeats Daruka and his hosts.
    ——————
    http://www.mantraonnet.com/kali-text-images.html

  3. I’m sick at home and working on my final project for school is where I am. I would’ve been over on TCJ.com yelling at the transphobic asshole who desecrated the Jeffrey Catherine Jones eulogy otherwise.

    I’ll be sure to give this a good read when I’ve got the chance. In the meantime, I must work and listen to Stravinsky. Serialist composition solves all problems!

  4. So, Noah’s showing us how everyone reads these comics? Everyone except for Noah because he knows better?

  5. Noah – thanks! I’m hoping to stop coughing my guts up in time for the final test tomorrow… Otherwise, I’m going to have to go cough my guts up on to the test itself, which I’m sure my professor will appreciate.

  6. This was a fascinating essay, but I’m afraid my main takeaway from it was a desire to punch Irigary in the face with one of these sex organs I’ve got at the end of my arms.

  7. Lots to think about here Noah, although as soon as you mentioned Irigary and the female genitals dividing and multiplying, I couldn’t help but see the pink captions as vaginal references.
    I also noticed that Wonder woman’s nurse’s hat is more erect than the other Diana’s and as she sits by the bedside her side-view arm seems to be very penile. Perhaps the exchange is not quite so seamless or equitable and as the metaphoric cape flaps open she is exposed. Her interior tension remains encoded in Marston’s drawing. In the panel where she first appears at the bedside the obelisk outside of the window echoes her vertical posture. Superdickery?

  8. Hey Marguerite! Well, first of all, the artist is Harry Peter, not Marston; Marston probably had a fair amount of control over the art.

    I think the pink captions are almost surely deliberately chosen for their femininity.

    I hadn’t noticed the phallic monument out the window! It’s right above Steven’s head though; I have to see it as more linked to him than to WW. If that’s the case, it would be more about arousal-through-submission; less superdickery than submissive dickery.

    Is WW’s nurse hat phallic? It’s more an opening, isn’t it?

  9. “She sets aside her power to become a servant of that love, and, as they say in the comics…to saves us all!”

    At first, I had intended to reply to this in approved snark-o-voice, “If you believe submission is so important to the Marston WW cosmos, why did you choose to illustrate your point with an image that shows WW not submitting to any higher power– be it villainous torments or the kinky love-games of Aphrodite– but actually fighting against bondage by biting free of her gimp-getup?”

    However, though I would still say that (as well as making various other objections), I will say that your essay made me wonder:

    Does Marston’s main character REALLY follow her own preachments about submitting to higher powers? Or is it talk that doesn’t walk the walk?

    I’ll probably address that notion in an essay fairly soon. So thanks for giving me an idea, opposed to your concerns though it will be.

  10. She submits to Aphrodite fairly consistently, I’d say. And…it’s not clear to me that showing her tied up over and over, especially so elaborately as in a gimp mask, is exactly meant to demonstrate her unsubmissiveness. It’s B&D play, I think; resistance and submission aren’t necessarily opposed.

    But thanks for stopping by! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to read your response.

  11. In her latest incarnation, WW doesn’t use the Diana Prince identity any more.

    So, is it fair to call her ‘the super-heroine formerly known as Prince’?

  12. Rim shot!

    That diana prince identity has been on and off and on and off so many times it’s a wonder WW even knows who she is or isn’t anymore.

  13. Noah: Well, first of all, the artist is Harry Peter, not Marston; Marston probably had a fair amount of control over the art.
    Yes I’m an idiot, I was thinking about Marston’s unorthodox household. Indefensible.
    Noah: I think the pink captions are almost surely deliberately chosen for their femininity.
    Not so clear cut as you might think, because until the nineteen forties pink was for boys and blue for girls. Pink was considered the stronger color because of its proximity to red and blue thought of as soft gentle and feminine and related to the Virgin Mary. A horrible example of this color gender recognition is the pink badges that the Nazis forced on the homosexual in the concentration camps. It indicated they were men who loved men, not that they were effeminate.
    In the case of Wonder Woman, sadly, I don’t know who the colorist was, but I don’t think the use of pink for the captions was a signifier of femininity, rather one of empowerment. I still think the color is a vaginal shade of pink but clearly the issue of color and gender is complex.

  14. I’ve often wondered who the colorist was. The color in those old issues is often amazing. It’s possible Peter did it himself? I don’t know though; I haven’t seen it discussed anywhere….

  15. When you think about it, the secret identity allows WW to “top from the bottom.” She gets to take care of Steve, but from a certain point of view she’s in total control of him. Hey, I’m just trying to sound smart. Keep up the good work.

  16. Noah: I’ve often wondered who the colorist was.
    The colorist was probably directed by the editor, who would have made all those decisions and once the color guide was set it would have remained in place. Perhaps those decisions were made by Max Gaines who had a voice in designing her initial costume?

  17. I’m sure as sure can be that Marston made the color decisions. He hired Peter himself, paid him himself, and had almost total control over WW, to the extent that he vetoed other uses of her in DC books.

    It really could have been Peter himself….

  18. Veto? Hmm…were those appearances in Justice Society all by Marston/Peters? Possible, as JSA followed an anthology format.

  19. Also…Marston had kind of odd theories about color and emotion…I just can’t believe he’d let the color decisions be taken out of his hands.

  20. I know that there were at least a couple of times where folks tried to do something with her and Marston nixed it. As a result, I believe she didn’t really start appearing regularly in the JSA adventures till after Marston’s death. (Les Daniels talks about this in his WW book.)

  21. I love your analysis but aren’t you being overly harsh to the male archetypes while being excessively lovey-dovey with the vonderous voman archetype?

    I think the Batman Oedipus complex can serve as a negative example to kids, as a child who never outgrows his past victimization/trauma. While the Superman Oedipus complex is an example of a successful resolution of the issue because at least he is geared towards the future and hope?

    – Seafire

  22. Anywayz, taking my brand of crazy a few steps further

    Di obviously has her issues being the Loving Mother to Steve the @$$; And Supes is working tirelessly to create a brighter future but he is constantly being dragged down to reality by the old ball and chain Lois.

    The only possible resolution to this mess is of course that Kal and Di dump there respective lovers (and therefore their issues) and make a superbaby namely Hermaphrodite.

    After all, isn’t that what the resolution of the Oedipus Complex calls for, a well balanced personality, characterized by traits of both genders?

    Ciao!!! Ciao!!!

    Seafire

  23. Hey, I like it. Though my personal mode of analysis tends to avoid anything Freudian.

    “Hey Seafire! I have little patience for Batman or Superman…but obviously, mileage will vary…”

    I have no patience for Batman.

    But I love really early Superman — Siegel & Shuster before WWII. Happily beating up and turning in crooked CEOs and politicians. It’s such a pure, simple fantasy. “We are oppressed. We wish there was one decent man who had the power to catch the corrupt senator / arrest the abusive bosses / etc.”

    Freudian analysis is too complicated to be appropriate for this. Original Clark Kent was always powerful. He lucked into it and he promptly used it to help those who didn’t luck into it. Weakness was respected, and the only respectable use of power was to help the weak — very socialist, really.

    In the real world, it’s actually pretty common for the oppressed to be helped by a crusading newspaper reporter who draws attention to their plight and who’s causing it. In stories, this is even more of a trope. But of course, we all know that newspaper reporters can be suppressed by powerful people. A newspaper reporter with superpowers, though… he could really make a difference!

    I think this is what makes Superman such a lasting character. I think it would be a *smash hit* right now in the current post-2008-crash, 1%-have-all-the-power, abusive-CEOs economic environment.

    I have found very little Superman since then which manages to capture this, which I think of as the true spirit of Superman. More in radio and TV than in comics, but not much much at all in any medium.

    Superman is, bluntly, wasted against supervillains. Lex Luthor as corporate CEO is actually kind of appropriate, but Lex Luthor as evil scientist isn’t.

    It’s actually a bit like Wonder Woman in that subsequent writers — heck, even Siegel and Shuster in “World War II mode” — just keep getting it *wrong*. And yet it’s an even simpler basic premise than Wonder Woman, and it’s fighting against fewer common cultural tropes. But somehow it’s very hard to find a writer who will just write the original “friend of the worker” Superman. It happens intermittently, but not often.

  24. “it’s actually pretty common for the oppressed to be helped by a crusading newspaper reporter who draws attention to their plight and who’s causing it.”

    As a journalist, I would agree that this is what journalists like to think happens….

  25. Ha. That came out wrong…

    I should say, “If anyone at all helps the oppressed, which is uncommon, then it’s pretty common for that person to be a journalist or be acting as a journalist….”

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