I wrote a little about the Azzarello Amazons in the latest Wonder Woman series, or at least on the description of the them I heard second-hand. For those not in the know, Azzarello has the Amazons be lying, murdering, borderline rapists. I thought this was a pretty awful desecration of Marston.
There were a couple of interesting comments on the post. John argued:
What you’ve just described as a “misogynist horror fever dream” is about two pages of the arc so far — two pages depicting the Amazons as the source of disappeared ships on the Bermuda Triangle. They have sex — depicted as primarily consensual — with men, then kill them. They sell any male children they bear (to Hesphaestus, who as it turns out is not cruel to them.)
I read it as part of Azzarello’s generally nasty outlook on life and specifically nasty outlook on Greek myths. Because it’s of a piece with reimagining Hades as a creepy child with melted candlewax for a head, and Poseidon as a hideous fish-beast, etc, and portraying every single god shown so far as a monster or a dick, I didn’t read it as specifically anti-woman. It’s just Azzarello’s cynicism.
Charles Reece also weighed in, arguing among other things:
(1) I don’t see it as necessarily suggesting that’s the way things would be in reality (e.g., “a society of women living together must be perverted, violent, evil, and anti-men”), but as a possible way of getting to people to deal with fears that already exist. Such fiction doesn’t have to be Birth of a Nation. (2) It’s also a way of questioning whether the majority power is inherently wrapped up in the qualities of those holding the power, or if there’s something about hegemony that tends to erase the differences in groups once they’ve achieved that status. That is, are these women acting like men, or are they acting like a group with absolute power? I suspect that your reaction to White Man’s Burden would be that the film is a racist vision of blacks, rather than an attempt to get whites and blacks to see things from an inverted viewpoint (I’m not saying the movie is worth a shit, of course).
So now I’ve read a few issues of the series (5, 6, and 7, I believe). I thought I’d go back to this.
Here’s the sequence in question, narrated by Hephaestus, the god of forging things.
As Charles intimates, if you read through this, you see that Azzarello and Chiang aren’t just making evil Amazons. Rather, they’re using the evil Amazons to flip the history of gender oppression. Throughout history, women have overwhelmingly been the victims of sexual violence…and when men have suffered sexual violence it has also been overwhelmingly (not always, but overwhelmingly) at the hands of men. So here, instead, it is men who are sexually used, and women who do the using. Similarly, throughout history, it has been girl children who have been the victims of infanticide and exposure, and girl children who have been treated as unwanted byproducts. Here, though, in accord I believe with Greek legends, it is boys who are cast off.
Charles argues that this is a means of getting us to think about power dynamics; it’s showing us that the issue is not male/female, but group-in-power/group-out-of-power. If you give people power, they will become exploiters. That’s a universal truth, supposedly Azzarello is knocking the stuffing out of Marston/Peter’s women-veneration (a women-veneration that even Gloria Steinem found troubling, incidentally). Through that stuffing-knocking, he shows that hegemony is not fixed, but fungible.
This is, in short, another example of the ever-popular sci-fi metaphorical approach to issues of discrimination. Rather than looking at how race or class or gender effects the characters, you simply map these effects onto a different set of relationships. This creates new insights (everybody would be oppressors if they could!) while also adding the thrill of novelty (women perpetuating sexual violence! how cool is that?) Powerful messages and cheap thrills; what more could you want from your superhero comics?
I think, in response, it’s worth considering the opening of Shulamith Firestone’s radical feminist classic, The Dialectic of Sex.
Sex class is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear as a superficial inequality, one that can be solved by merely a few reforms, or perhaps by the full integration of women into the labor force. But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child — “That? Why you can’t change that! You must be out of your mind!” — is the closest to the truth. We are talking about something every bit as deep as that. This gut reaction — the assumption that, even when they don’t know it, feminists are talking about changing a fundamental biological condition — is an honest one.
In her conclusion, she says, “Nature produced the fundamental inequality — half the human race must bear and rear the children of all of them — which was later consolidated, institutionalized, in the interests of men.”
Firestone’s point is that the oppression of women is rooted deep in culture, based even upon biology — specifically on differences in relation to children and child-rearing. Firestone looks hopefully to new technologies of reproduction in the hope that they might change the relationship between men and women…and indeed, to some extent birth control has done that. But differences remain, and inequities remain — and those differences and inequities are not simply accidents, or random distributions of power which can be reshaped at a whim. They have long, long years of history behind them, and overturning them has taken equally long years of struggle.
Thus, simply reversing gendered oppression tends to make light of how deeply ingrained these issues of oppression are. The possibility of rape, for example, has a lot (not everything, but a lot) to do with our biological plumbing. Susan Brownmiller argues that “Man’s structural capacity to rape and woman’s corresponding structural vulnerability are as basic to the physiology of both our sexes as the primal act of sex itself.”
That’s perhaps extreme…but if you doubt that rape is not easily reversible, look again at those Azzarello/Chiang pages above. Charles would like the pages to show us that hegemony is not attached to particular bodies or histories; that power, rather than gender or past, is the ultimate truth. As I said, Azzarello and Chiang are reversing the tropes…but there are limits to how far they’re willing to go. Most notably, the men are not actually raped, because, presumably, Azzarello and Chiang can’t, or are reluctant to, figure out a way to violate men the way that men have historically and in great numbers violated women. Instead, they just assume that all the men in question would be happy to fuck random women at the drop of an anchor.
Moreover, look at the top two panels of the second page. In the first, we get to be in the position of the happy sailors, staring at some prime cheesecake (do the Amazons subscribe to Maxim, or are we supposed to believe that all women everywhere naturally adopt such poses?) In the second panel, we get a series of stupid jokes…because sexual assault is funny when women do it, get it? And, of course, on the remainder of the page the sex is significantly more explicit than the violence. Azzarello and Chiang are happy to show us women in the act, but the murder/castration is only suggested by some blades, and then by bodies falling into the water at a distance. The reader participates vicariously in the screwing, but gets to back off for the consequences.
Thus, the Amazons, even as they take the male position of oppressor, are still objects of a male narrative, and, indeed, of a male gaze. They are presented as sexual objects, and the bloodthirsty reversal is almost an afterthought…or, perhaps we should say, an excuse. Certainly, I don’t see any real commitment to thinking about power as a pragmatic, overarching truth. There’s no effort, for example, to use the switch to make men participate viscerally or emotionally in oppression, as you get in some rape-revenge narratives. Instead, I see pulp titillation, complete with snickering, coupled with dunderheaded pulp misogyny, which disavows the violence of the male fantasy by the simple expedient of blaming the whole thing on women. It feels fundamentally thoughtless and dishonest.
The rest of the context only tends to confirm this impression. Wonder Woman, who has newly discovered that Zeus is her father, wanders around obsessed with her patriarchal lineage. Other characters are constantly telling her how well she’ll fit in with the rest of the Gods — she’s her father’s daughter. She concocts an elaborate plan (with the unwitting help of her uncles) to humiliate her father’s wife, Hera — so much for Marston’s themes of feminist sisterhood. Admittedly, Wonder Woman does have a close female friendship…but it seems to be largely based on the fact that her friend is carrying a baby which is related to WW — again, the motivations seem to be all about patriarchs and their bloodlines.
I think all of this rather undercuts John’s claim that we’re just dealing with Azzarello’s cynicism. Azzarello is cynical…but it’s a cynicism of violence and male prerogative. What’s real in Azzarello’s world is power and patriarchy. Contra John, that’s an ideological position, not a neutral one; contra Charles, it has little to do with upending hegemony. Instead, it’s just the usual male genre bullshit, executed with just enough skill to be considered competent by the standards of contemporary mainstream comics. If it wasn’t about Wonder Woman, nobody would give a crap. As it is, Azzarello and Chiang are working on a character that someone else once actually invested some genius in, and so they get to bask in the wan glow of banal desecration. Good for them. No doubt Azzarello’s Comedian will be similarly daring. It’s a career, I guess.
Totally agree with you there. I mean just look at the third panel on the second page: Azzarello even admits that what he shows is a dream fantasy or man, while you could hardly describe a male group forcing intercourse on women with the same words. And then: “Beautiful women, offering themselves…” – That tells us, the equivalent to male rape, that is men force themselves on women, is women offering(!) themselves to men. How does that invert power structures?
This is really just an excuse for chauvinist sexual exploitation that tries to get away by looking really daring on gender roles, and just one more proof that Azzarello is one of the most overrated contemporary comic authors.
I feel ill. I couldn’t make it all the way through that BS.
If they really wanted to get into Greek myths, they’d have talked about the autochthonous Athenians. Not to mention that it’s a bit rich to go to Hephaistos to hear about raping and sexual violence, considering the damn autochthonous story of Erichthonius.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erichthonius_of_Athens
And…and…and…
Excuse me. I have to go snarl incoherently and draw some goddamn matriarchal FEMINIST crocs. Sometimes comics lacks the sense god gave a goat. ARRRGH.
What’s even more frustrating is that the last time DC deliberately desecrated WW, it was — not good, exactly, but at least committed. The Denny O’Neil/Mike Sekowsky run from the 70s was (briefly) energized by how much they disliked the character and how desperate they were to do something else (preferably something with lots of mod clothing.)
Azzarello and Chiang — I don’t feel like they even give a shit. They’re not spouting sexist crap because they’re committed to it; they’re just too lazy to think of anything else. Calling it hackwork is almost too kind.
Just to be clear, I haven’t read the book, but was arguing that an inversion fantasy could function differently from the way you were suggesting. I’m waiting for the collection.
Noah, are you still saying the men were raped? I assumed that the men victims were under a succubus spell. If not, it’s kind of offensive to suggest all men would willingly fuck strange naked women appearing in the middle of the night on a boat. Without the spell, it’s not rape. Or, maybe someone might argue that the victims here are in the same position as the teenage boy sleeping with his adult teacher, that her more developed understanding of life amounts to an abuse of his sexuality, despite the celebratory fantasy of getting to “nail a hot adult.” The Amazons know why they’re fucking the men, but the men don’t. I’m skeptical that knowledge differential is ever tantamount to rape, though. That would make many dishonest one-night-stands into a crime. So, I’m still saying that the men weren’t raped without a spell. It might’ve been more interesting if the Amazons captured the men, made them aware of being prisoners, and told them that they had better perform or else. That would’ve definitely been rape, and a way of getting around the problems of a functioning penis without mind control. I’m rambling …
Don’t buy the book, Charles. It’s no good at all. I’m pretty positive it will just bore you.
The sequence is deliberately referencing rape; that’s obviously the narrative they’re working within. However, the men are not actually raped (and there’s no indication of a spell). The lack of clarity is part of the general laziness on the creator’s part, I think — and as I said, the result is that it essentially turns rape into fantasy fun for which men aren’t responsible (see, they like it when it’s done to them! Why do women complain?)
I agree that the scenario could have been done in a way that was interesting, or even not sexist. Showing men being raped en masse would have been really extremely unusual for male genre literature, and probably quite uncomfortable. Some suggestion of awareness of the history of women’s oppression could have moved it towards rape/revenge, which is an exploitive genre, but not necessarily unfeminist (Marston’s origin story for the amazons is a rape/revenge story in a lot of ways.)
So, yeah, your point about inversion stories is well taken, and I was thinking about it while reading. The actual comic is just dumb, though. (And yep, still sexist.)
I’ll cancel my order, then. I was only going to read it because of the controversy.
Agreed. I think Azzarello first showed his hand with the “Zeus is your father” thing – “Yes, let’s take one of the only examples of female parthenogenesis in high culture OR pop culture and toss it out so we can make Wonder Woman a slightly dim-witted warrior-chick with Daddy issues. THAT’S a good idea!”
I suppose, given the fact that the most successful super-powered women of recent years must have some sort of “dark side” – whether because they are (partially) reformed villains, or because their power makes them emotionally unstable, or because they are carrying the burden of some prior betrayal or trauma (think Phoenix, Catwoman, Huntress, Batgirl-post-Moore, Black Canary-post-Grell, and fill in the blank), Azzarello could be seen as simply applying what he (and DC) hope will be a commercial formula; in other words, he’s trying to give Diana some psychic woundw and a “new past” that will bring her more into line with currently dominant female-super-hero conventions (without thinking too hard about complex issues like the history of gender oppression or the politics of his decisions). That is the most charitable reading I’m able to offer of his misguided approach.
Problem is, this is Wonder Woman we are talking about. Her traditional capacity to project a fantasy of female empowerment without being moody, screwed-up, and self-destructive is one of the things that makes her both distinctive and (at least potentially) valuable.
To the extent that there is any value to the character at all these days, that is.
Noah, I think you are right to suggest than on any other series, this kind of shtick would just be business-as-usual. Sexist and lame, but not likely to provoke controversy because it is so bog-standard. But applied to Diana, it’s a travesty.
Now watch the fanboys who never read the character before Azzarello took over leap in to explain why Azzarello’s work is great because it’s “more faithful” to the 2000-year-old fantasies of a male-dominated warrior culture (an argument this is both politically and historically dubious without giving the original myths their due).
Hey Ben! I was going to quote your book on dark female heroes…but somehow I didn’t manage to do it. So I’m glad you reprised it here!
You don’t need to wait to watch people defend it on those grounds incidentally; I’ve seen people doing it on various threads already.
One interesting thing is that I was reading the 1972 Ms. collection of Wonder Woman strips, and Steinem and co. talk with some enthusiasm about the possibility of Amazon cultures performing male infanticides as a historical event. Their evidence seems really weak…but it does show that there’s certainly the possibility of feminist interest in the fantasy of switching poles on gender oppression.
I’m sure Steinem will hate this version, though, if she ever reads it.
Heh, I said I thought I’d regret chiming in, and I get cited right off the bat…
I’m not sure you’ve really argued your case vis-a-vis my point — in fact, you kind of wind up agreeing with me in your comment north of here:
“Azzarello and Chiang … They’re not spouting sexist crap because they’re committed to it; they’re just too lazy to think of anything else.”
If you replace “lazy” with “nasty and cynical,” then you have my point precisely.
If these guys were committed to sexist crap, Wonder Woman’s intro in issue #1 would’ve been handled (drawn) very differently. But they’re not committed to it — it was just the most “shocking” and “dark” thing they could do with the Amazons, so they did it. It had all the thought behind it that turning Killer Croc into a black guy with a skin condition who eats corpses for the Joker did (in Azzarello’s Joker) — Azzarello isn’t committed to depicting black people as subhuman savages, but he did it anyway.
As that implies, I mostly blame Azzarello, who really is a hack insofar as he’s clearly got some chops and chooses not to really use them. I really like Chiang’s art.
Ahhh…okay, I think we actually do agree. I thought you were suggesting that cynicism was an excuse; i.e., he understands the gritty way the world really works and is just telling it like it is. But in fact, you’re saying that he’s just blandly cynical, which is mostly an excuse for not caring.
I know lots of people like Chiang’s drawing…I just don’t really see it. I mean, he clearly has some skills compared to the baseline of DC artists…but those Amazon pages are crappy because of him as much as because of Azzarello. He sexualizes them in standard ways, which is really quite dumb if you think about it for even a second. Possibly he was doing what they wanted him to do, I guess…but the result is not good art.
Nothing really to add here, but I have to say that DC always surprises me. No matter how low my expectations are, DC Comics is even worse than I could have imagined.
For now on, I’m going to assume that DC Comics is a leading cause of leprosy. So every time I hear that a DC comic didn’t cause leprosy, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Re, the artwork; I really hate those three little emotion lines above the guys head in the top left, second page, like it’s a cutesy comedy. The smirking there and in the second panel on that page is just repulsive.
The one detail I kind of like is the third page, top right, where the woman who just gave birth is clearly upset and not with the program. It makes the Amazons individuals in a way that the rest of the anecdote doesn’t seem to allow.
I still find the drawing boring though. Possibly because I’ve just been looking at Harry Peter’s work. What a bizarre, brilliant artist he was.
I actually rather like Chiang’s style, but it’s extremely ill-suited for the “grim n’ gritty” story that Azzarello wants to tell, and Chiang just doesn’t have the ingenuity to elevate the material. I think the “cutesy” stuff that annoys you so much would work really well in a DC Kids title.
I can see him doing something I’d like in other contexts; there are nice moments. Hephaestus is kind of a cute design for example, and so is Poseidon for that matter.
Probably he’d do better if he had more time too, would be my guess. Mainstream schedules are supposed to be brutal. I presume that’s part of the reason that you consistently see folks turn in their worst work for DC/Marvel….