I have been reading a lot about Wonder Woman recently. Actually, I have been reading a lot about Darna recently, but it is very difficult to theorise Darna without turning to theories about Wonder Woman because, as readers of this blog are no doubt aware, the Wonder Woman comics can often seem to be to the study of superhero comics as gravity is to physics; they were there (almost) from the beginning of the genre, they have been at the center of many important debates, and, despite being the subject of work by some of our best minds, one has the sense that we have barely scratched the surface of all there is to be said about them.
I would like to center this discussion on an incarnation of Wonder Woman who exists only in a single image (discussed in two separate posts), created by one Aaron Diaz, proprietor of the webcomic Dresden Codak and blog Indistinguishable from Magic. This incarnation of Wonder Woman is noteworthy, I believe, because Diaz is highly engaged in issues of gender representation in popular culture and one finds in his work a palpable feminist agenda (I should probably add, in the interest of full disclosure, that I am a long-time fan and supporter of Diaz’s work). While, in my argument below, I read Diaz’s work as a compelling intervention, I nonetheless believe that his Wonder Woman creates problems with regard to gender even as she solves others, thereby opening up interesting questions with regard to female superherodom.
Diaz’s Wonder Woman was created in direct response to DC’s New 52, but also provided an opportunity for him to address some long-standing characters who he finds to have historically suffered from poor design. He chose Wonder Woman on the grounds that ‘[a]lthough a feminist pop icon, her origins are too tied up with creator William Marston’s obsession with bondage. Because of this (and an all-too-frequent parade of poor or sexist writing), she’s never had a solid, progressive design.’ As other contributors to this blog have shown, the (to put it mildly) recurring bondage theme Marston’s Wonder Woman comics need not be read as anti-feminist. Diaz is not entirely incorrect, however; as many have argued, Wonder Woman’s apparent status as em(super)powered woman and feminist icon has historically been undercut by images of her as erotic spectacle (these links are work safe this one is not). One may not agree with his dismissal of the Marston/Peter run, but can at least understand his desire to reinvent Wonder Woman in light of the New 52 and other incarnations.
Diaz does not dispose of Wonder Woman’s swimsuit, but covers it with a ‘more conservative’ mid-thigh Greek-style dress, thereby moving away from the overtly sexualised Wonder Women. Diaz’s Wonder Woman is, in accordance with her origin story, made from clay. Where, in other incarnations of the character, this statue then became flesh, Diaz’s Wonder Woman remains a ‘statue come to life.’ Diaz thus draws a link between sculpture and superhero comics as two mediums which have historically fixated on bodily perfection. Because she is made from hardened clay, Diaz’s Wonder Woman resonates with the ‘metalisation’ of the male body one encounters in films during the 1980s when, in light of the AIDS crisis, cinema sought to enforce masculine bodily boundaries. This tradition certainly continues in superhero comics today, where characters such as Colossus play out the fantasy of impenetrable metallic bodies.
Diaz also replaces Wonder Woman’s lasso with a sword ‘that contains the lightning of Zeus.’ Given that Wonder Woman’s lasso is, as Berlatsky contends, ‘a vagina as surely as James Bond’s gun is a phallus’, Diaz thus symbolically makes Wonder Woman a man or, at least, equips her with the idealised hyper-male attributes of an impenetrable body and impressive phallus. The powers of her lasso are transferred to a shield ‘containing the wisdom of Athena (which, when using its reflection, can reveal a person’s inner self and compel them to tell the truth)’. Where the lasso contains her enemies, the shield repels them, further enforcing the impenetrability of Wonder Woman’s metallised body.
Clearly, Diaz’s work is motivated by a strong feminist agenda. His Wonder Woman is deliberately drawn against the eroticisation of the female superbody. She also continues the appropriation of (super)male attributes begun in her inception; she not only possesses the strength and invulnerability of Superman, but has been given the hardened body and phallus traditionally reserved for other male superheroes. One might ask, however, if the accruing of (super)male signifiers is truly a step-forward, or if it requires the evacuation of that which makes Wonder Woman such a powerful feminist icon? One might argue that the appropriation of the phallus serves, ultimately, only to reiterate its primacy. The loss of the lasso (which ends violence) in favour of a sword (which is a tool of violence) removes her capacity for pacifism. Has Diaz’s Wonder Woman been denied the opportunity to create alternative, feminised forms of power? If Wonder Woman is, effectively, transformed into a man, what becomes of her pacifism, her feminism, and her queerness? Is the equipping of female characters with a phallus an effective answer to the male gaze?
To reiterate, in the battle over the representation of gender in comics, Diaz is inarguably one of the good guys, and his Wonder Woman addresses many of the problems which typically plague female characters in superhero comics. His answers, however, present certain problems which, I believe, highlight many of the flaws which surround the place for gender in the superhero genre – that, in order to avoid eroticisation or negative signifiers of femininity, Diaz’s Wonder Woman must cast aside the very things which make her a woman.
I find it highly questionable to argue that she’s lost “the very things which make her a woman” by appearing more clothed, less penetrable, and not as soft as once perceived — which seems more a complaint of her not appearing as a figure for male sexual interests.
Switching the yonic symbol lasso for the phallic symbol sword seems somewhat telling, at least, though…
I don’t think the two readings need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, defeminising Wonder Woman seems to be a fairly direct and effective route to not making her the subject of erotic spectacle. What I am interested in is if anything else is lost in the process?
That Greek dress/swimsuit costume design is bad-ass.
@ M – But then, “more clothed, less penetrable, and not as soft as once perceived” is also a male sexual interest.
A sword is plainly a tool used for killing. A hero whose main weapon is a clearly sharp sword made for stabbing, hacking, and slicing is obviously less of a symbol of life, compassion, or (some form of) pacifism than almost anyone holding almost anything not explicitly designed to kill humans. Just as obviously, Wonder Woman could be less sexualized (or less ridiculously dressed) than she is traditionally without having to carry around (or use) a sword, a gun, a rocket launcher, or other implement of destruction.
Beyond the sword, my biggest gripe would be the tunic thing covering the right side of WW’s chest. I know it’s supposed to invoke her Grecian origins, but it seems like it would only get in the way while doing anything athletic, and offer something extra for enemies to grab, without affording her any advantage whatsoever (except for having one breast’s outline mostly concealed, and not really holding her shoulder piece in place, if that’s what it’s doing). It’s kind of the inverse of giving your heroine high-heels. Or so it seems to me.
fwiw, Marston and Peter definitely saw Wonder Woman as erotic spectacle (for men and women). That was part of her femininity, for them, and part of her heroism. She was supposed to lead people to the matriarchal utopia through courage and erotic oomph, rather than through violence. Which is an unusual feminist vision, obviously—more like Twilight than Hunger Games.
This one looks more like Hunger Games. There’s the sword, of course, but there’s also the impervious clay skin, which in this case makes her look non-human; like a statue or an action figure rather than a person.
I wouldn’t say it’s unfeminist; there’s definitely a tradition of feminism (Katniss, Furiosa, etc.) about women being as tough and self-contained as men, or more tough than men. There are a lot of those images, though, and fewer of Marston/Peter’s brand of feminism, it seems like to me.
So…I don’t think she’s lost the things that make her a woman. She’s lost a lot of markers of femininity, but femininity isn’t the only way to be a woman by a long shot (Joanna Russ’ “Female Man” and Judith Halberstam’s “Female Masculinity” are probably the things to look at in that regard.) Playing down markers of what is usually seen as femininity in one way or the other is often how female heroes are presented as heroes, and that seems to be the case here.
There are other female heroes which don’t play down femininity besides Marston/Peter—Sailor Moon would be the obvious example.
I strongly dislike Diaz’s approach to redesigning characters and concepts from DC & Marvel, so I’m thrilled to see some critique leveled at them! That said, Diaz’s problem isn’t that he’s defeminized the character. It’s more like he’s failed to demasculinize his own pov. He addresses the loudest complaints about WW- that she’s a female Superman, that her outfit is ridiculous- but that’s not the same thing as thinking outside the male gaze.
I mean, notice how neither Diaz’s proposal nor the new 52 lets WW be a human woman with a positive relationship to a group of living women who represent a viable and emotionally healthy alternative to patriarchy. In other words, the thing that makes WW unique among fictional warrior women such as Xena, Sif, and Red Sonja? Not as important as differentiating her from Superman. (Which I’ve always felt was a chauvinistic way of framing it in the first place: why isn’t Superman the male Wonder Woman? I know the history, but nowadays WW makes more sense as the de facto leader and inspiration of the DC Universe. After all, “lead by example” is her heroic manifesto. Whereas Superman could easily be framed as more of a part-timer.)
Female comics readers have repeatedly said that the problem with WW isn’t the core concept, it’s the constant reinventing and meddling done to make her more appealing to men. Diaz’s redesign doesn’t speak to what I loved about WW as a young girl, and I don’t have confidence it’d lead to stories that felt original and unique to WW or character development worth exploring. If I think of it as an Elseworlds proposal, the idea of a golem WW appeals to me. But good intentions aside, Diaz’s proposal isn’t much more than a variation on the status quo.
(Incidentally, I’m also irked by his Batman redesign changing Oracle’s encouraging and mentor-ly relationships with later Batgirls to bitterness and jealousy. Oh, and his X-Men redesign having Prof X be able-bodied and just pretending to be old & in a wheelchair for PR reasons. That’s doing it worse than canon, and it really, really annoys me that Diaz consistently presents his work as improvements.)
Uhh.. and sorry I’m a month late to this party, I guess! I’m just really excited to see people actually analyzing these- I thought I was doomed to a lifetime of biting my tongue whenever a new friend links it to me with “you like comics right? have you seen this? :D” attached.
I don’t think that a month out is at all late to the party (one thing I like about writing for blogs is that they are a vast improvement on the glacial pace of traditional academic channels). I am glad that my post resonated for you and I agree that one thing this redesign fails to preserve Wonder Woman’s connectedness to other women.
I like some of Diaz’ redesigns. His working class Superman, for example, I find to be a pleasant reinvention of a traditionally conservative archetype, with the potential to disrupt rather than preserve the hegemony. With that said, I wholeheartedly agree that his Oracle and Professor X really miss the mark. The idea of Profeasor X faking his disability is horribly cynical.
“The idea of Profeasor X faking his disability is horribly cynical.”
It’s kind of a cliche, right? Narratives where the surprise reveal is that the person in a wheelchair doesn’t really need the chair crop up all the time. Grant Morrison did it in Doom Patrol with the chief too; one of his few missteps with that series. There’s a stereotype that people with disabilities arent’ *really* disabled, and/or that having a disability is this secret advantage. It’s pernicious, and creators just don’t seem able to avoid it.
I saw a similar rhetoric in a (supposedly) motivational poster at my former workplace which showed a boy casting off his crutches and braking into a run under the title ‘If I can’t I must’. I did make the point to my employer that the image was offensive to our students who walk with assistance, and that the idea of exerting oneself in academic matters can not be appropriately compared to overcoming a physical disability, but the poster remained on display while I worked there and, probably, still is on display today.
Insert obligatory Guy Caballero reference here.
Oh, I like many of his aesthetic flourishes too! The original eyeless Superman drawing looks really cool, and I liked his Huntress costume. (Although the Kryptonian bit is basically one of the Heartless from Kingdom Hearts.) I wish Diaz had drawn Aquaman as well– I’d just want someone else to figure out the story and personality changes before handing the art duties off to Diaz.
But back on topic: what did you think of the “Open Letter to Aaron Diaz” thing that happened a little while ago? My gut reaction matches magnoliapearl’s, but I’m not a reader of Dresden Codak, so I haven’t seen that much of his work there. In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the one un-toga’d boob accidentally being very prominent in panels, since it’s both bright red and very, um, rounded.
I must admit I hadn’t heard about the open letter until I read your comment (for anyone who is interested, it can be found at http://magnoliapearl.tumblr.com/post/95746827414/an-open-letter-to-aaron-diaz). I agree with her argument that Diaz presents his female characters as erotic spectacle more than he would care to admit, and that he is hardly in a position to accuse others of misogyny. I do think that his work does better than most, however. The selection of images in the letter paints a bad picture of his work, but I am sure that one could put also together a collage of Kim being a hero in a way which does not simply mimic the heroism of male characters, and of her refuting stereotypes. Or maybe I just like Dresden Codak too much to sign on to her argument without some qualification. I agree with her conclusion that Diaz is well-intentioned but his work is far from perfect.
Hi Philip!
You’ve been “reading a lot about Darna recently.”
I’m glad about your interest in Darna who happens to be our “national superhero.” Darna is endearing. For more about Darna and her connection with Wonder Woman, you may want to read my blog, specifically the post “Heroes and Memories.” The post discusses a number of things mentioned in “Darna: The Filipino Wonder Woman.”
Thanks.