Yesterday, Chris Gavaler wrote about female superheroes, arguing that they’ve been around for a while, that people of all genders love them, and that it’s about time we got to see a film dedicated to watching female superheroes hit things. Chris cited a study by Kaysee Baker and Arthur Raney that showed that, in superhero cartoons, women and men behaved just about the same — they hit things, they saved people, and so forth. Baker and Raney found this a little disturbing; they were worried that heroes of either gender had to be more masculine and aggressive to be heroic. To which Chris responds, well, who says that aggression has to be masculine? “Because if aggression is now gender-neutral, how can being aggressive also be “more masculine”?”
Chris has a point — and that point is a neat summation of empowerment feminism, which is the feminist perspective which says that women should be able to do everything men do, especially if that “everything men do” includes holding and wielding power. The lean in movement is empowerment feminism, and so (as Chris shows) is the enthusiasm for female superhero movies and the desire to see Hawkgirl bash in some baddie with her mace. America is really into power (we’re a superpower, after all) and so it’s not a surprise that empowerment feminism is generally speaking the most popular manifestation of feminism.
It’s so popular, in fact, that it can be easy to forget that it doesn’t necessarily appeal to everyone all the time. But here, at least, is one dissenting voice.
[Wonder Woman’s] creator had…seen straight into my heart and understood the secret fears of violence hidden there. No longer did I have to pretend to like the “Pow!” and “Crunch!” style of Captain Marvel or the Green Hornet. No longer did I have nightmares after reading ghoulish comics filled with torture and mayhem, comics made all the more horrifying by their real-life setting in World War II…. Here was a heroic person who might conquer with force, but only a force that was tempered by love and justice.
That’s Gloria Steinem, describing her relief at discovering the original Marston/Peter Wonder Woman comics, in which, as she intimates, there weren’t a ton of fisticuffs and violence. Instead, Wonder Woman tied the bad guys up with her rope of love — and was tied up by them. Loving submission and bondage games, yes; bashing people’s heads in with maces, not so much.
Chris rightly points out that there isn’t anything essentially masculine about violence; there are plenty of women throughout history who have enjoyed hurting other folks. And yet, at the same time, you don’t just get out from under millenia of culture by having Scarlet Johansson kick somebody. Violence and aggression and war have traditionally been encoded male. Lots of feminists, from Steinem to Virginia Woolf to William Marston, have pointed out that masculinity is wrapped up in an ethos of force and violence — that being a man means, in many respects, being violent. And while one reaction to that can be, with empowerment feminism, to point out that women can be violent too, another approach is to say that the non-violence which has traditionally been associated with women is not an aberration or a failing, but a resource. Women do not have to be embarrassed or ashamed that they don’t like Captain Marvel hitting people; rather, they can point out that hitting people is possibly not such a great way to solve problems, and that equating goodness manliness and heroism with hitting people is, perhaps, a failure of imagination which can, under the right circumstances, get people needlessly killed.
Along those lines, one of the things that I most enjoy about the new Ms. Marvel series by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona is how uninterested it is in uber-violence. Three issues in, and our teen protagonist, Kamala Khan, has encountered exactly zero supervillains. After she gains her shape-shifting powers, the first thing she does is to turn her hand giant (embiggen!) and fish a damsel in distress out of a lake. The damsell in question fell in the lake after her boyfriend knocked her in — not in the process of a sexual assault, as you’d think if you’d read too many superhero comics, but simply out of stupidity and drunken horsing around. This is a world in which heroes exist and heroism matters, but it’s not a world in which that heroism is necessarily linked to violence.
In issue #3, Kamala does have her first fight. She sees her friend/sweetie-in-waiting Bruno getting held up at the convenience store where she works, and (after trying to call for help and discovering her cell phone is out of batteries) she transforms into Ms. Marvel and starts swinging with her giant embiggened fist.
Sort of. The robber is Bruno’s brother, and he’d already given up on the theft before Kamala barged in. She easily defeats him, crushing him in with that fist (“you’re squeezing really hard!”)…but not before she does far more property damage than he ever could have managed by himself. And then, after she lets him go (he’s promised to apologize and never come back) he accidentally shoots her. The last image of the comic is of Ms. Marvel sitting on the ground, her giant hand extended out in front of her, looking shocked and confused, an iconic hero reduced to a confused adolescent girl, as the guy she was saving freaks out and the “villain” sits off to the side looking at the gun in his hand in horror.
My suspicion is that Ms. Marvel is going to discover that her rubbery hide is effectively bullet proof, and hopefully all will end more or less well. But it’s rather nice to have a superhero story where violence ends up being, not a solution, but a complication.
Ms. Marvel, in other words, critiques super-hero violence — and the reason it’s able to do that is absolutely in part because the series is not just a superhero story, but a girl YA coming of age story. The narrative is interested in Kamala having adventures, definitely, but it’s also interested in her figuring out who she is, which means (among other things) working out her relationship with her (shape shifting, sometimes adult Caucasian va-va-voom superhero, sometimes adolescent Muslim girl) body and discovering that her annoying good geeky friend is in love with her. Lee and Ditko couldn’t figure out how to make Spider-Man a man except through violence and trauma and more violence. G. Willow Wilson, though, is drawing on a narrative tradition quite different from boys’ adventure, which means that for her, growing up doesn’t need to mean watching your dad die and beating up his killer.
Ms. Marvel has been exceedingly popular (it keeps selling out at my local comics store) — but, given the low sales of even really popular comics, it seems unlikely that it will be turned into a superhero movie any time soon. Still,it’s worth noting, perhaps, that other superhero stories about women on the big screen — the Hunger Games, say, or Twilight (where Bella gets to be a superhero by the end) are significantly more ambivalent about violence, its effects, and its efficacy than the standard Marvel/DC superhero/supervillain thump-fests tend to be. Maybe that’s because they’re working to appeal to women (and for that matter men) like Gloria Steinem, for whom narratives of violence are alienating rather than empowering.
I strongly agree, Noah. On the first day of my current Superheroes class, I asked my students to list traits of the character type: intelligent, driven, moral, etc. I then asked them why no one wrote down “violent.” It’s by far the most common element of the genre and yet the narratives, by emphasizing the idea of “justified violence,” obscure the otherwise negative connotation.
Huh; that’s interesting. I’m supposed to speak to a class on superheroes shortly; maybe that would be an exercise to try….
First, I’d suggest egalitarian or liberal feminism for what Chris seemed to be promoting. Empowerment doesn’t really fit the view that women and men should have the equal chances to succeed or fail regardless of ideological system. Is an equal number of women and men as low-paid janitors accurately called “empowered”?
Second, while I’m not sure having a great overwhelming power to stretch and constrain or manipulate others against their will is properly called violence (although it fits the more metaphorical usage prominent these days), it does seem to rest on the prevention of literal violence in a superhero or vigilante heroic story by possessing overwhelming power. The hero doesn’t have to resort to physical violence, because the antagonist doesn’t have enough power to resist or attempt any sort of escape. The irrelevance of violence to the problem is apparent if you consider a similarly powered villain: is Mr. Freeze (I forget the Marvel equivalent, maybe Paste Pot Pete) less dangerous or less a villain because he only restrains people? He’s less violent (in the literal sense) than a Bullseye, but he seems more powerful and more dangerous because of the ability to imprison an entire city. Even when Ms. Marvel gains better control over her powers and is able to stop average bank robbers etc. without a shot being fired, I’m not sure that’s any less of a dangerous idea to civilized society than having a vigilante like the Punisher running around. Is she less of a potentially fascistic force than the latter just because she possesses such great power that she doesn’t need to use guns to enforce her vigilante will on others? At least the current incarnation of the Black Widow somewhat problematizes her violence by depicting it as a trans-state organizationally sanctioned para-military operation.
Third, I think studies of aggression have shown that there’s a roughly equivalent aggressive tendency across genders, but it’s manifested in gender-specific ways. (Doesn’t have to be in fictional settings, of course.)
Well, as I say, there’s just not a whole lot of violence in Ms. Marvel in general, and the first case of actual violence is presented such that her use of force actually is pointless and makes things worse. So…pointing out that she’s using violence and it’s dangerous is something that *the comic itself does*. You appear to think that my point is that stretching isn’t violence; actually, though, what I’m saying is that the comic sees violence as a problem, which distinguishes it from many superhero stories.
I don’t think egalitarian feminism is exactly right. These sorts of feminist arguments almost always focus on women being equal to men *in power*. I think I say that in the piece. It’s not just, men and women should be treated equally, it’s, women should be in the boardroom and should be superheroes. Empowerment is very important to pop feminism. The fact that janitors aren’t usually discussed is actually pretty important; empowerment feminism often has difficulty dealing with class issues.
G. Willow Wilson just responded to the piece on twitter, and said that she’s actually thought a lot about violence in the series and how to handle it. Which is pretty cool.
Oh, re: violence in WW. Restraining someone is with magic is obviously violent. At the same time, you can pretty much read the whole thing as BDSM play. So ambiguous and ambivalent, but I think the argument that it is at least problematizing violence in certain ways is sound.
“Ms. Marvel has been exceedingly popular (it keeps selling out at my local comics store)”
Some reports say that it is a top selling digital comic. Women avoiding comic stores…? You should try that as well some day.
I’m happy to support my local comic store. It’s very nice; kid friendly too, so my son likes to go.
@ Charles Reece
Two points.
First: At risk of wandering far off topic, I would argue that the glorification of power in general and of authority in particular (“fascistic”) need to be considered separately. Comic book heroes apprehending criminals, whether it’s Superman punching them or Wonder Woman tying them up, generally exercise a power that is purely INDIVIDUAL and NEGATIVE. The hero can do whatever he (let’s say it’s a he) wants. If anybody’s doing something he doesn’t like, he can stop him. Fortunately, he’s a good guy. This is not exactly the fascist ideal, but the ideal of what we now call libertarianism. (Yes, libertarians claim to be against violating the liberty of others, but let’s be honest here.)
The authoritarian ideal is the positive power to not only stop people in their tracks or even to lock them up, but to make them DO things. Superhero stories begin to go in that direction when they introduce love interests or young sidekicks, who periodically have to learn the wisdom of doing as father says (or mother, as in the case of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, but the subversiveness of the gender role reversal in that one vitiates whatever authoritarian subtext there might be). All the way on the other end of the continuum, there is something like Frank Miller’s thoroughly fascist 300, or – to name examples that reached a bigger audience – movies like Die Hard, Independence Day, and Armageddon, where uppity ex-wives and sullen kids need to learn proper reverence for their husbands and fathers. (Of course, Armageddon is PRO patriarchal family while at the same time explicitly ANTI government, but that’s yet another discussion.)
Second: You make the point that physical violence is not the only kind of coercive power. True, but then, physical violence has qualities all of its own. Accepting for the sake of argument that comic books and other forms of entertainment do have a significant effect on people’s behavior, a skeptical attitude toward violence might not make people less submissive to authority, but it might make them less inclined to shoot somebody, which would by itself be a useful service to society, particularly to a society as violent as America (as developed countries go).
“Lots of feminists, from Steinem to Virginia Woolf to William Marston, have pointed out that masculinity is wrapped up in an ethos of force and violence — that being a man means, in many respects, being violent. And while one reaction to that can be, with empowerment feminism, to point out that women can be violent too, another approach is to say that the non-violence which has traditionally been associated with women is not an aberration or a failing, but a resource. Women do not have to be embarrassed or ashamed that they don’t like Captain Marvel hitting people; rather, they can point out that hitting people is possibly not such a great way to solve problems, and that equating goodness manliness and heroism with hitting people is, perhaps, a failure of imagination which can, under the right circumstances, get people needlessly killed.”
Word. I believe firmly that women should have as much power and authority as men do, but I’m not a fan of the “women can be protagonists as long as they are just as bloodthirsty and ruthless as the men” attitude, and I don’t think that that kind of story is all that empowering for women (especially in the “women can be protagonists as long as they are just as bloodthirsty and ruthless as the men and also have huge tits and wear bikini tops as outerwear” subgenre, which shows up in a lot of men’s manga as well as superhero comics). I’m not particularly into traditionally feminine female characters, but I don’t like the idea that women become worth telling stories about only when they fall into a certain stereotyped male-power-fantasy character model. And I don’t like the corollary of that idea: that feminine qualities are not worth telling stories about and make someone unworthy of protagonist status.
One of the things I like about shoujo manga is that it is, to invent a word, femiphillic; feminine-coded traits (especially empathic ones like sensitivity, caring, nurturance, and helpfulness) are good, useful, and admirable, in members of both sexes (that last bit’s important: Western culture has accepted to an extent that it’s good for women to have some masculine-coded traits, but it’s much less positive about men having feminine-coded traits). There’s an entire subgenre of shoujo about supernaturally-gifted boys who save the world through, essentially, the power of nice: they care about people and want to help them, and their antagonists eventually succumb to the power of their overwhelming beneficence and redeem themselves. Even shoujo stories that have a lot of action and fighting usually have the power of nice as a subplot. I think this is in part because shoujo is very emotionally driven; it’s more likely to use violence to create physical and emotional pain than to give the reader a “we beat them good” ego boost.
It’s very rare to find non-violent male leads in American superheroes stories, which is why I like the Scarlet Pimpernel (1903). The guy has “muscles of steels,” but instead of knocking out his opponent with a punch, he sneaks him a snuff box of pepper. The SP even takes a brutal beating while in disguise instead of just smashing his enemies.
To a lesser extent, the hero of Unbreakable fits this category–he never throws a punch either; his power is the ability to absorb punches, and he gave up his football career because his wife is a physical therapist and wouldn’t have married someone who made his living in a violent sport.
Hey JRB! Great to have you comment here again. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that shoujo subgenre; does it have a name?
Nope, it’s just a thing I’ve noticed. “Slightly BL-tease-y fantasy with a mostly male cast” is probably the closest description; some widely popular examples of the type include Natsume’s Book of Friends, Silver Diamond, No. 6, The Betrayal Knows My Name, Loveless, maybe 07 Ghost. Goodness and kindness and defeating the baddies through the power of love is also a common trait in shoujo heroines, of course, especially in magical girls.
Aggression isn’t the new pink – it’s the old blue. Whereas pink is for brainwashed girls who haven’t realized that Barbie is evil and dresses are terrible, blue is fun for everyone.
I agree that much of pop feminism – which at the risk of coming off as a reactionary anti-feminist, I consider myopic and ultimately as narrow-minded as the mentality and values it tends to attack – is rather more focused on empowerment than egalitarianism. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it views egalitarianism through the metric of empowerment, and in turn empowerment by way of convergence of attributes and values. Perhaps convergence isn’t the right term; rather than urge for more boys to embrace “pink” in addition to more girls embracing “blue” and stressing the validity of both “pink” and “blue”, the effort of this kind of feminism seems restricted to the proposition that girls embrace “blue” and eschew tendencies toward “pink”.
I see girls-in-blue as a slow but necessary empowerment stage that leads to boys-in-pink and then ultimately anybody-in-any-color equality. Culture is a very slow wheel. It was socially acceptable for women to dress in traditionally masculine clothes long before it started to become socially acceptable for men to dress in traditionally feminine clothes. Girls playing sports has been “normal” for decades, while stay-at-home dads are a relatively recent social evolution. Violent superheroines are recent too, and while they would be depressing as an end point, they do cheer me in terms of marking movement of the larger cultural wheel.