I’m reading a book on Mannerism
As I was saying, here’s Alberti, warning us that, even though good istoria painting should exhibit variety and seem alive with motion, you shouldn’t go all Escher Girl boobs + butt Full-Monty-and-then-some:
There are those who express too animated movements, making the chest and the small of the back visible at once in the same figure, an impossible and inappropriate thing; they think themselves deserving of praise because they hear that those images seem alive that violently move each member; and for this reason they make figures that seem to be fencers and actors, with none of the dignity of painting, whence not only are they without grace and sweetness, but even more they show the ingegno of the artist to be too fervent and furious [troppo fervente et furioso].
On the other hand, here’s a quote from Pietro Aretino, praising Vasari’s cartoon of “The Fall of Manna In The Desert”:
The naked man who bends down to show both sides of his body by virtue of its qualities of graceful power and powerful ease draws the eyes like a magnet, and mine were held until so dazzled that they had to turn elsewhere.
There’s no accounting for taste.
While we’re on the subject, might as well mention a BBC piece on a fantasy author whose hobby is photographically re-enacting bad covers. Everyone should have a hobby.
I approve all parody nonsense, but the Mannerist connection does complicate the critique. The BBC gives the simple version, quoting from the HI: ‘if Hawkeye can replace the female character without “looking silly or stupid, then it’s acceptable and probably non-sexist. If [he] can’t, then just forget about it.”‘
The problem, on the one hand, is that Hawkeye swapped into any Mannerist (i.e. violently non-naturalistic, exaggerated, grotesque, contorted) work of art is going to look silly and stupid, if only because it will be incongruous, and especially so if the art is done as crudely as these parodies are. (Goodbye, Mannerist virtuosity and all that!)
The Long-Necked Hawk! (Well, I’m never getting that half hour back again!)
Mannerism has an only accidental relationship to sexism.
On the other hand, it would be silly for these comics and cover artists whose work is being mocked to plead Mannerist sophistication and virtuosity, by way of extenuating their artistic circumstances. Truth is, they are mostly extenuating their subjects’ waists. Plus boob jobs. (Who are we kidding?)
And, by the way, even establishing the presence of the Male Gaze isn’t enough: if the Hawkeye versions were done more competently (for a Tom of Finland value of ‘competence’) the results would just be plain vanilla fetish-y softcore gay pr0n. Not my cup of leather and latex, but not sexist, per se, so if you like that sort of thing, go nuts [warning: the goggles, they do nothing]! See Dan Savage, ad nauseum. Some things that nauseate some folks, or at least seem silly and stupid, seem sexy to other people. I don’t call anyone’s visual fetish ‘unacceptable!’ – not in a Lemongrabby way – so long as it involves consenting adults. I try not to. [UPDATE: sorry, this has been taken by some commenters as a plea for censorship. Quite the opposite. Since artists presumably consent, and drawings aren’t persons, even if they are of persons, pretty much everything goes, I say. I don’t think it should be impermissible to draw non-consenting adults. They aren’t people, just ink on the page, so they can’t be harmed.]
What’s wrong with the Male Gaze expressing itself, Manneristically, as a bunch of broke-back females? It makes the guys happy, apparently, and no actual females are harmed, right?
The harm, such as it is, seems to me ecological. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with a girly pin-up, as anatomically preposterous as you like it (that’s what I say, anyway.) But not everything should be such a thing, and when the pin-up aesthetic gets so omnipresent it’s like the fish that’s last to hear about all the water, it’s dumb.
The Hawkeye Initiative proceeds as if the problem is that pin-ups can be found. But the problem isn’t that pin-ups can be found, rather that pin-ups can’t be not found in places where it really ought to be possible to not find them. If, on counter-earth, heterosexual males find it nigh impossible to find action heroes depicted in anything but a Tom of Finland style, they will conclude that Tom of Finland is a bad artist – damn you, buttless chaps! – even though that’s not strictly the conclusion they should draw.
There’s also the specific problem that ‘more adult’ means a couple of different things – more realistic; more half-naked ladies. How embarrassing to get those two confused.
The mainstream is choked with pin-up stuff that doesn’t have a lot to say, even while it’s acting, energetically, like it’s got a lot to say.
Mannerism should be cleverly contrarian, not stupidly hegemonic. (Not that it’s up there with income inequality, as threats to social justice go.)
I’ll conclude with E. Gombrich on Parmigianino’s Long-Necked Madonna:
I can well imagine that some may find [Parmigianino’s] Madonna almost offensive because of the affectation and sophistication with which a sacred object is treated. There is nothing in it of the ease and simplicity with which Raphael had treated that ancient theme. The picture is called the ‘Madonna with the long neck’ because the painter, in his eagerness to make the Holy Virgin look graceful and elegant, has given her a neck like that of a swan. He has stretched and lengthened the proportions of the human body in a strangely capricious way. The hand of the Virgin with its long delicate fingers, the long leg of the angel in the foreground, the lean, haggard prophet with a scroll of parchment – we see them all as through a distorting mirror. And yet there can be no doubt that the artist achieved this effect through neither ignorance nor indifference. He has taken care to show us that he liked these unnaturally elongated forms, for, to make doubly sure of his effect, he placed an oddly shaped high column of equally unusual proportions in the background of the painting. As for the arrangement of the picture, he also showed us that he did not believe in conventional harmonies. Instead of distributing his figures in equal pairs on both sides of the Madonna, he crammed a jostling crowd of angels into a narrow corner, and left the other side wide open to show the tall figure of the prophet, so reduced in size through the distance that he hardly reaches the Madonna’s knee. There can be no doubt, then, that if this be madness there is method in it. The painter wanted to be unorthodox. He wanted to show that the classical solution of perfect harmony is not the only solution conceivable; that natural simplicity is one way of achieving beauty, but that there are less direct ways of getting interesting effects for sophisticated lovers of art. Whether we like or dislike the road he took, we must admit that he was consistent. Indeed, Parmigianino and all the artists of his time who deliberately sought to create something new and unexpected, even at the expense of the ‘natural’ beauty established by the great masters, were perhaps the first ‘modern’ artists. We shall see, indeed, that what is now called ‘modern’ art may have had its roots in a similar urge to avoid the obvious and achieve effects which differ from conventional natural beauty.
{ 61 comments }
Alan Bostick 03.02.13 at 4:12 pm
One of the angels in Parmigianino’s original is showing quite a lot of leg. I think that Captain America (or better yet, the Hulk) should be flashing his gams.
John Holbo 03.02.13 at 4:36 pm
A fair criticism.
SusanC 03.02.13 at 4:59 pm
I don’t think there’s anything objectionable about breaking away from linear perspective and putting multiple viewpoints in the same image (e.g. see Levi-Strauss’s Split representation in the art of Asia and America, the cubism of Picasso, Peter Lanyon’s Porthleven etc.). The main problem with the comics that Escher Girls mocks is that they just use these effects to leer at the female characters. And as you say, the problem is ecological. The problem isn’t that porno comics exist, but that so many of the mainstream US titles verge on porno.
Rich Puchalsky 03.02.13 at 5:40 pm
” I don’t call anyone’s visual fetish ‘unacceptable!’ – not in a Lemongrabby way – so long as it involves consenting adults.”
Maybe the problem is that I don’t know what “Lemongrabby” is, but how can a drawing not involve consenting adults? I guess the artist could be forced to draw, or underage, or something, but I don’t think that’s what you mean.
I harp on this because it complicates your assumption that the harm done by drawings is ecological, not social. There’s a whole lot of people who want to suppress drawings that they think encourage bad societal ideas.
Niall McAuley 03.02.13 at 6:02 pm
I remember reading in the Collins Encyclopedia of 1960, or thereabouts, about the dangers of depraved comic book illustrations, and the Code which protected young people like myself in which publishers agreed that no-one should appear in a costume skimpier than a decent bathing costume acceptable on any US beach.
I’m not sure they considered the problem of a character in such a costume who bends over, grabs their ankles and waggles the majority of the costume in the direction of the artist.
K 03.02.13 at 6:12 pm
“The Hawkeye Initiative proceeds as if the problem is that pin-ups can be found. But the problem isn’t that pin-ups can be found, rather that pin-ups can’t be not found in places where it really ought to be possible to not find them.”
I don’t think this is quite it.* The problem the Hawkeye Initiative is responding too is that, as a result of the ecological issue you point out, these types of portrayals of women are so common in mainstream graphic novel art that they have been normalized. They do not strike the eye of many readers and artists as stylized/distorted, but rather as plausible (if idealized) poses. The point of the HI is to make the distortion visible again by applying it to males, cases where it is not typically applied and where the eye is not accustomed to seeing it. By doing this, the project dramatizes how distorted (“ridiculous”) the drawing style is.
As a side note on the first quoted sentence, I think the HI folks would also specifically say they have no problem with sexy portrayals (“pin-ups”). The problem is that the Escher girl STYLE of pin-up is one that prioritizes sexual availability even when the result is showing the character in poses that would be extremely awkward and vulnerable in a real-life analog of many of the situations they’re portrayed in. Again because of the commonality of this type of images, a lot of readers and artists don’t seem able to see that (there’s a lot of insisting that these are simply “powerful women, comfortable with their sexuality!”) unless the pose is redrawn using a male, where, again, the pose hasn’t become normalized in the viewer’s eye, and the way in which the pose renders the character sexualized at the expense of power and capability is more obvious.
(*I mean yes, this is a problem – as I say, it’s the background condition that makes possible the problems I’ve described here – but it’s more like background to the specific problems HI is responding to. If pin-ups could be found, but they were all portrayed in ways that were sexy *but genuinely powerful*, I think the folks behind HI would have little to work with.)
CRW 03.02.13 at 6:32 pm
#4 There is a difference between criticism and censorship/suppression. The defense of freedom of expression should also include defense of the criticism of that expression. I guess you could say that criticizing an expression means that you would like it to be suppressed, but even saying you would like it to be suppressed isn’t actual suppression. And should be protected under “free speech.”
Rich Puchalsky 03.02.13 at 6:56 pm
There are U.S. laws against drawings that depict non-consenting non-adults, laws under which people have been sent to prison, so the question of suppression isn’t entirely theoretical. But Holbo isn’t an appointed censor, and no one really cares what any of us think, so we have the freedom of futility — our opinions will not become actions. What I’m really getting at is that I don’t understand the distinction that Holbo is making. Visual fetishes are OK, except for those that really squick him out? That’s not really the basis for advanced visual criticism. If on the hand he means that some drawings are bad because they make people have bad ideas, or create a hostile environment for people, he has to give up on the ecological reasoning at least in part.
bob mcmanus 03.02.13 at 9:07 pm
There’s also the specific problem that ‘more adult’ means a couple of different things – more realistic
Oh really? Which is more mature, Norman Rockwell or Soviet Realism? How should I feel about Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Egon Schiele?
It is this kind of slip that leads me to conclude “neo-liberal.”
bob mcmanus 03.02.13 at 9:29 pm
Less snarky, I do have an amateur’s interest in a possible aesthetic dimension to the totalizing neo-liberal hegemony since the sixties, for instance, in the decline of mainstream and underground experimental films; the decline of non-classic visual techniques; Bordwell’s “intensified continuity;” the rise in extended and overlapping narrative (“long arcs”) as opposed to episodic tv series*; and golly, Spidey moving from building to building just looks so real.
*Very Dickens and Balzac, aren’t “The Wire” and “Breaking Bad?” A “neo-liberalism” might bring with it a kind of “neo-Victorianism” with new forms of sensual/sexual repression and aesthetic Bowdlerism. Put out that cigarette.
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 12:57 am
Rich P,
This should explain who Lemongrab is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07So_lJQyqw&hl=en-GB&gl=SG
As to consent, I took the Dan Savage-y point to be obvious enough I didn’t unpack it. Since it’s hard to involve non-consenting adults in picture-making, since the people drawing usually consent, and the drawings aren’t persons, I think the proper attitude is anything goes. The law may disagree, but this is the correct result.
Bob McManus, not to worry about the snark. I actually don’t understand what the hell you are talking about, so I’m not bothered. If you care to explain why you think I am on the hook for a decision between Norman Rockwell and Soviet Realism (where the hell did that come from?), I may be willing to reconsider.
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 1:08 am
“The problem is that the Escher girl STYLE of pin-up is one that prioritizes sexual availability even when the result is showing the character in poses that would be extremely awkward and vulnerable in a real-life analog of many of the situations they’re portrayed in.”
I guess I think that sexual availability is a hallmark of the pin-up genre, in all its forms. Can you think of anything we would call a pin-up that doesn’t make displaying its female subject as sexually available a pretty high priority? As to awkwardness: I totally agree that the figures are supposed to look awkward and thereby exposed to the male gaze. And therefore vulnerable. But that’s just a style of pin-up. I don’t have a problem with that (some people do, but I don’t). But I agree its pernicious, socially and artistically, when it’s omnipresent.
bob mcmanus 03.03.13 at 1:48 am
11:I will quote your words from the post again.
There’s also the specific problem that ‘more adult’ means a couple of different things – more realistic…
Now I suppose I could presume you don’t really mean it, and that you would have no problems with Frankenthaler, Kahlo, Goncharova. Or with radical moe, chibi, speed lines, facial and body distortions in anime. Because it is ontopic, one of the things I am studying is the tendency toward or resistance against “cinematic” or more realistic art in anime, where the lines are comfortably crossed, how the transgressions against “realistic” representation are perceived or understood.
I absolutely loathe the style of drawing highlighted in the post, but neither on “scientific” or “moral” grounds. I don’t expect, no not even desire, cartoons and animation to obey the laws of physics, biology, or anatomy on screen. Wile Coyote can hang suspended over the abyss for as long as it makes me laugh.
And the “realistic” aesthetic does connect to liberal capitalism and the rise of science, for example 1825-75. Even Monet was trying to represent more accurately. Try Hobsbawm.
And I won’t get into Bordwell and classic film style, that isn’t realism but wants to define realism. All actions have causes, for instance.
Rich Puchalsky 03.03.13 at 1:55 am
I didn’t take it to be a call for censorship, but I had a difficult time unpacking “I don’t call anyone’s visual fetish ‘unacceptable!’ […] so long as it involves consenting adults” into the assumption that everyone thinks the same way that Dan Savage presumably does. Especially since it seemed like you might be contrasting plain old Tom of Finland gay porn — which is where the Dan Savage reference might be coming from — with drawings that depicted something else.
But OK, now that that’s cleared up, I disagree with your main premise. “The harm, such as it is, seems to me ecological. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with a girly pin-up, as anatomically preposterous as you like it (that’s what I say, anyway.) But not everything should be such a thing, and when the pin-up aesthetic gets so omnipresent it’s like the fish that’s last to hear about all the water, it’s dumb.” That criticism has nothing to do with the art as such, only with the prevalence of the art.
But this appears to me to be straightforwardly bad art. The three qualities that I think usually go into good visual art in some proportion are skill, thought, and vision — something can be good art in some sense if it’s simply well executed, it can be if the artist obviously was trying to follow some artistic theory that makes it interesting, or the artist can have a personal vision / style in which they see / depict things in a different way than most people do. These (the commercial comic books being parodied) have none of the three.
So the problem with it really has little to do with omnipresence. They aren’t skilled drawings, they aren’t thoughtful, and they aren’t new (c.f. Mannerism, or really, how many adolescent boys crudely draw girls). If hardly anyone was drawing them, but you saw one in an artist’s notebook, you’d think “Eh, this isn’t very good.” You can describe it with an adjective like “ecological” because it’s widely prevalent, but it still would be a problem for an individual artist.
bob mcmanus 03.03.13 at 1:59 am
As far as the “Neo-Victorianism” goes, note that comment 1 complains about showing too much leg. Maybe we should be covering dining room tables again.
Watched that commie rat Miklos Jancso’s Red Psalm 1972 this week. Here’s a quote from Raymond Durgnat’s analysis
As I was watching the movie, I couldn’t help think, oh the very proper feminists and the gallant male champions won’t approve of those girls taking their tops off. Oh my.
There was much more nudity in movies of the 70s. We pretend to have different purposes, a different rhetoric for protecting the virtue of young maidens, but the result is the same, and feels like repression and…dare I say it, reconfigured patriarchy.
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 2:25 am
“Now I suppose I could presume you don’t really mean it, and that you would have no problems with Frankenthaler, Kahlo, Goncharova. Or with radical moe, chibi, speed lines, facial and body distortions in anime.”
I’m still drawing a total blank, Bob. I think I really meant it. I just don’t see why really meaning it would cause me, presumptively, to have problems with this stuff. Where is the tension saying that everything goes, pretty much, and allowing speed lines? Shouldn’t my laissez faire attitude militate in favor of permitting speed lines, rather than forbidding them?
Re: ‘adult’.
If I say that so-and-so is developing a taste for more ‘adult’ material, that may mean that he has started reading Proust, or that he has started watching pr0n. You don’t go to the ‘adult book store’ to buy serious literary fiction. ‘Adult’ is a euphemism for naked ladies in this context. I have no problem with Proust or with pr0n. You should follow your bliss. But one problem with comics is that they have declared themselves ‘more adult’, while confusing the two. Confusion is not good.
Now, what the hell does all this have to do with Norman Rockwell vs. Soviet realism? For the record, I’m more of a Norman Rockwell man, if I have to pick between the two. But Soviet realism has its kitsch appeal.
“note that comment 1 complains about showing too much leg. Maybe we should be covering dining room tables again.”
Note that comment 1 is also joking. Likewise, I have no objection to people demanding a return to covered dining room table legs – so long as they are only joking.
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 2:44 am
“But this appears to me to be straightforwardly bad art.”
I don’t agree. Or rather, I think that the presence of the good features you list – skill, thought, and vision – are likewise a function of ecology. If there were only one bold, eccentric, R. Crumb-ish artist producing broke-back beauties (instead of the big-legged ladies he actually favors) then they would be better art, probably. Even if they were done somewhat crudely.
Maybe we can sort it better this way. I really don’t like the Liefeld-y sorts of broke-back females that are mostly getting mocked at HI. That is 90’s badness that has zero appeal for me. Less than zero. I find it repulsive, mostly. But I like old Elvgren pin-up art, and Vargas stuff. I like certain sorts of sexy cheesecakey cartoonish-ness that is just as anatomically inaccurate, in absolute terms. So I can’t pretend it’s the fact of anatomical inaccuracy that is bothering me, re: the Liefeld-y, bad 90’s comics art stuff. I agree that Liefeld is crude. But sometimes I like anatomically inaccurate, crude art. So that isn’t it either. But maybe you and I disagree about this. That is, maybe you think all pin-up style art – whether crude or elegantly airbrushed – is pretty much bad art that you don’t much care for (even if you don’t want to censor it).
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 2:59 am
It just occurred to me that Bob McManus may be assuming (wrongly, and against all reasonableness) that I am prudishly declaring that the presence of naked ladies precludes ‘seriousness’. Rather, I am saying that just pr0ning up the place doesn’t automatically make you some kind of Proust, even though it does automatically make you more adult (for a certain value of ‘adult’).
bob mcmanus 03.03.13 at 3:13 am
Crikey I will quote your words back at you again for one last time. Your words. Read your post again, find them, and quote your words back at me the next time you respond.
There’s also the specific problem that ‘more adult’ means a couple of different things – more realistic…
…John Holbo said this thing here above in the post.
Now did you or did you not say, or mean, ‘that “more adult” means…more realistic.’ Because that is, along with your and the general complaint, that the styles in the post are anatomically impossible, is why I got the impression you favored representational realism in art.
PS:If you use Parmigiano and mannerism, a more useful comparison is probably the bishonen style, which uses the same name for bishonen females. Famous examples are the leads in Trigun and Cowboy Bebop. An elongated style, very tall, very thin, with usually a little too much neck and fingers.
bob mcmanus 03.03.13 at 3:29 am
Just googled, and yup, though not as extreme, there are quite a few “brokeback women” in Peter Paul Rubens.
I don’t think you want mannerism here. I find the Escher girls (and the absurdly muscled guys) Rubenesque. It is a celebration of excessive flesh.
Not that I know Mannerism, you are reading the book, but I always considered El Greco as about the mortification or transcendence of flesh.
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 3:42 am
Sorry, Bob, you are somehow getting turned around regarding how linguistic ambiguity works. It’s perfectly true that ”more adult’ means … more realistic.’ Often people say ‘more adult’ when they mean ‘it’s more realistic, in certain ways’. Obviously sometimes they mean something else by ‘more adult’. So ‘more adult’ does not IMPLY ‘more realistic’, yet that is one of its meanings. Likewise, it’s perfectly true that ‘bank’ means financial institution and ‘duck’ means a kind of waterfowl. In a context in which I am positively emphasizing that there is more than one meaning for ‘more adult’, you shouldn’t have read me as denying that it can have more than one meaning.
Even setting that aside, I’m just not getting why you thought my laissez faire attitude implied its own opposite. How could you read a post about how Mannerism is presumptively fine as saying that only realism is fine?
But never mind. Yes, Cowboy Bebop. My daughter is reading “Bride of the Water God” right now, and those are some seriously elongated figures. (Eh, is she old enough to be reading that stuff? Issues, issues.)
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 3:48 am
Re: Mannerism. I’m with Gombrich, in the following sense. We think of it as a minor style but I think we should be thinking of painters like Parmigianino as the thin edge of a much bigger, modern wedge. El Greco is Mannerism, in a sense. Modernism is Mannerism. But that’s more than will fit in a comment box.
Some of the Escher girls are fleshy. But some of them are alarmingly anorexic, so Rubensesque will be hit and miss.
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 3:57 am
Why I feel squicky about letting my daughter read stuff that can correctly be described as ‘bishonen style’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYVycPOh-Ec
Issues, issues, issues. By association.
Nevertheless, there’s nothing wrong with drawing really, really, really long fingers and generally angelic figures. And the appeal for pre-teen girls is, precisely, that the males seem kind of asexual. It’s Bieber with bird bones, which is, admittedly, more elegant than plain old Justin Bieber.
bob mcmanus 03.03.13 at 3:59 am
Now this is some kinda neck
It’s perfectly true that â€more adult’ means … more realistic.’
I strongly disagree.
The problem, on the one hand, is that Hawkeye swapped into any Mannerist (i.e. violently non-naturalistic, exaggerated, grotesque, contorted) work of art is going to look silly and stupid, if only because it will be incongruous,
I strongly disagree. Action-heroes and action-scenes “violently non-naturalistic, exaggerated, grotesque, contorted” are a staple of anime. Again, try the fight scene in episode 1 of Cowboy Bebop, which I think is available on youtube. Or any number of shootouts in Trigun.
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 4:07 am
“I strongly disagree.”
You disagree that people ever say ‘he’s getting interested in more adult fiction’ to mean he is getting interested in books that deal with more mature, adult themes, in a realistic manner?
“I strongly disagree. Action-heroes and action-scenes “violently non-naturalistic, exaggerated, grotesque, contorted†are a staple of anime.”
I think a bishonen style Avengers comic or cartoon would be a hoot. (What would the Hulk look like?) If you take a figure who is strongly associated with one sort of art (one style of Mannerism) and you swap that figure into a different style of Mannerism, you are going to produce comic incongruity. There’s nothing inherently funny about Impressionism, for example, but this is funny.
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/01/avengers-art-variants/
bob mcmanus 03.03.13 at 4:10 am
Yeah
Check out the beginning leg kicks at about 6:05.
There are of course technical reasons they elongate or distort in fast action scenes.
I am still getting the impression that you have “issues” with non-realistic representations.
For kids only?
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 4:15 am
“I am still getting the impression that you have “issues†with non-realistic representations. For kids only?”
Yes. They are not consenting adults. (See above.)
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 4:25 am
Sorry, that was inaccurate. I have no problem with non-realistic representational styles for kids. I think Bugs Bunny is fine, and Mickey Mouse, and Pat the Bunny and Dr. Seuss and all that. It’s quite normal to have non-realistic representations for kids. I have concerns about age-appropriate sexual themes in some of the bishonen stuff. But it doesn’t make it worse that they have freakishly long fingers. I have no problem whatsoever with freakishly long fingers (and I am genuinely puzzled as to why you think I do.)
Possibly you will be able to sympathize with Hitler’s complaint about the live-action Cowboy Bebop casting in this video.
bob mcmanus 03.03.13 at 4:28 am
I think a bishonen style Avengers comic or cartoon would be a hoot.
Well, now we are getting into a more interesting cultural question, about why (some) Americans prefer overmuscled or fleshed-up action heroes and the Japanese prefer thinner and taller, or fireplug types like Dragon Ball. And whether the Hulk is more “realistic” than Vash.
You disagree that people ever say ‘he’s getting interested in more adult fiction’ to mean he is getting interested in books that deal with more mature, adult themes, in a realistic manner?
Well, they say it, but they are very very and importantly wrong, partly about the “realistic manner,” whatever that means. Naturalistic? Cinematic? Remember, I used to be a Joyce freak.
And partly about “mature, adult themes” which usually means masculinist. Is the asexuality of bishonen-style something she needs to grow out of? I have no problem with androgyny.
Enough. Petite soeur Yoshino-chan is about to have heart-surgery, and her grande soeur Rei-sama didn’t even know. I gotta go cry.
John Holbo 03.03.13 at 4:49 am
“Well, they say it, but they are very very and importantly wrong, partly about the “realistic manner,†whatever that means.”
I think you are, once again, confused concerning some linguistic basics. ‘Realism’ is a fraught term. We can’t define it. But people at least semi-competently use lots of words they can’t define. I can’t define ‘the taste of coffee’, for example. But I know it when I taste it. (Don’t commit the Socratic fallacy of thinking that if you can’t define something, you can’t know what it is, in a practical sense.) The fact that we can’t define ‘realism’, satisfactorily, doesn’t prove it means nothing. The term is also clearly ambiguous – cinematic? Naturalism? Thus, when people say ‘he’s getting interested in more adult fiction’ and mean, thereby, ‘he’s getting interested in books that deal with mature themes more realistically’ they don’t just mean one thing but a couple things. But don’t infer from the fact that people are probably talking about a couple things at once, that they aren’t talking about anything. And obviously a lot of adult fiction – e.g. Joyce stuff – is not realistic. But that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t follow from the fact that some ‘adult fiction’ is not realistic that no adult fiction is distinguished by its realism, in any sense. (And, for good measure, it doesn’t follow from the fact that Joyce stuff is adult and non-realistic, and pr0n is adult and non-realistic, that therefore Joyce is pr0n, or vice versa.)
“Is the asexuality of bishonen-style something she needs to grow out of?”
Obviously what I was saying is that something that looks to me a bit problematic – because it might be associated with misogyny – appeals to my daughter because it seems asexual. Which makes it less problematic. But I don’t want her to grow out of asexuality into misogyny. As I keep emphasizing – your dark hints to the contrary notwithstanding – I’m quite laissez faire about this stuff. The best approach is to let her read what she likes and then talk to her about it.
Rich Puchalsky 03.03.13 at 5:00 am
I don’t think that all pin-up art is bad art by definition because pin-ups are bad, but art that obviously appeals to sexuality has a particular place in our culture: it gets churned out, not worked on. Not sure about Vargas (who I’ve never liked) but Tom of Finland’s work probably benefitted from being subcultural. His wiki page points out that as controls on porn were reduced, the market for the beefcake magazines that he’d published in collapsed. He might not have been able to define his style if there had already been an thriving industry to subsume his work. Calling this simply “ecological” seems to me to be using less information than we have about how new art styles appear, become fashionable, and then become passé — I don’t think that his art could have appeared in the same way if it was already omnipresent.
How about Ryusuke Hamamoto’s beginning of a piece on Alan Moore as a manga schoolgirl? ( I found the page of her turning her emo frown into a smile as she finds Glycon in her locker, not the page of her hanging out with schoolgirl Grant Morrison.) That beginning has artistic crudity, in-theory sexuality (at least, that’s what all the short skirts in those kind of comics are supposed to be about), the omnipresent manga schoolgirl cliches, and so on. But I was sad that it apparently never was finished.
Lawrence Stuart 03.03.13 at 6:03 pm
Perhaps invoking mimesis, rather than ‘realism,’ is a useful way of approaching the question here. Because the Hawkeye Initiative etc. operate, I think, on the distinction between good mimesis/bad mimesis.
The difference between good mimesis and bad mimesis is not defined necessarily by ‘realism,’ or the lack thereof, but by misogyny, or something similar. In other words, bad mimesis is is defined by the relation of the image to a set of ideas: ideas about sexuality, power relations between the sexes, etc., etc. Good mimesis is subordinate to right thinking about these ideas. Bad mimesis transgresses these ideas.
Hence perhaps the unease with this sort of judgement: it is an instance of the old battle between mythos and logos. Your Mannerists are defenders of art’s independence from the oversight of logos. They fervently and furiously manifest the rules of representation as the proper domain of art itself. Mimesis be damned, art is the paradigmatic expression of the full power of human creativity. Ideas do not define ‘good’ art.
Theophylact 03.03.13 at 11:39 pm
Kate Beaton’s Strong Female Characters deals with this nicely.
John Holbo 03.04.13 at 1:36 am
Yes, the Strong Female Characters fallacy is what I am getting at regarding the ambiguity in ‘adult’. Re: mimesis. Yes, probably a better word, if it helps avoid irrelevant haggling about realism.
I suppose one point I’m making, which probably a lot of people will disagree with, is that I don’t think these broke-back images themselves are inherently misogynistic. They are inherently fetishistic, re: female beauty and ideals. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with finding it sexy to be able to see boobs and butt at the same time. Yes, it’s anatomically ridiculous. But, so far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with finding something anatomically ridiculous to be attractive. By contrast, there is something morally wrong with sexism in society. I think you should maybe feel a bit embarrassed if Liefeldian females turn you on. That’s bad art, dude! But, then again, I would recommend not feeling guilty about it, in a moral sense. I don’t think you should feel guilty if you have a foot fetish either (obviously Liefeld won’t help you with that. He can’t draw feet!) People have their little ways and they will probably be happier if they can indulge them, privately, with fellow consenting adults, if possible, rather than feeling they have to repress them. Don’t get me wrong: the comics culture in which these images are produced and consumed is sexist, and the images are hardly helping that – quite the opposite. But the harm in it should not be regarded as inherent in this type of image, rather in their omnipresence and the way they interact with other aspects of society and culture.
It’s a bit too simple, but I guess my philosophy is that there’s nothing wrong with ‘objectifying’ women – depicting women as subject to the Male Gaze, in the way they obviously are in these pictures – some of the time. But if that’s all anyone does (or any men do), then that amounts to a harm to women, an undue burden on them since it is nothing they signed up for, but it’s something they then have to struggle against. I don’t say it should be illegal, but creating an unhappy social environment for women is something those responsible should be ashamed of, whereas just liking to look at anatomically distorted naked ladies sometimes is nothing to be ashamed of. Pin-ups have their place, so long as it isn’t everyplace.
John Holbo 03.04.13 at 2:03 am
“I don’t say it should be illegal, but creating an unhappy social environment for women is something those responsible should be ashamed of”
Just to clarify: there are some ways of creating unhappy social environments for women that are, and should be, illegal (not just shameful). My point is just that making it illegal to make pin-up art would be problematic, on free expression grounds.
Chingona 03.04.13 at 2:05 am
Apart from your obscure desire to see men (that’s who you’re speaking about earlier, I presume, when you talk about “people” and “their little ways”) “ashamed” for harming women by furthering their oppression, how would you propose that this “unhappy social environment” be made less unhappy, assuming, incorrectly but for the sake of your philosophy, that all men everywhere and at all times disagree and wish to make and view objectifying pictures of women to the exclusion of all others?
You seem also to be unhappy that the impetus for HI art is emanating from the wrong instincts, which seems odd, given your strong feelings about censorship.
If would follow, then, that the solution to your finding exaggerated and grotesque male nudes odd would be for HI to produce a hell of a lot more of them, and on a grander scale. That way they’d be less incongruous and more commonplace, and men wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable looking at them; you might say that we’d all become immune to their peculiarities and unnatural form. After all, women have their little ways that require means and methods of indulgence, don’t they.
John Holbo 03.04.13 at 2:19 am
“Apart from your obscure desire to see men (that’s who you’re speaking about earlier, I presume, when you talk about “people†and “their little waysâ€) “ashamed†for harming women by furthering their oppression”
Hmmm, let’s start with just this. What’s ‘obscure’ about saying that people who harm other people, unjustly, should feel ashamed of doing so? That seems quite straightforward to me.
While I await your resolution of that mystery, I’ll move on to the next bit: “how would you propose that this “unhappy social environment†be made less unhappy, assuming, incorrectly but for the sake of your philosophy, that all men everywhere and at all times disagree and wish to make and view objectifying pictures of women to the exclusion of all others?”
If half of society finds it impossible to bring themselves to regard the other half as free and equal persons, deserving of moral respect, then my happy-crappy Millian philosophy of liberalism is pretty much in a state of collapse, I admit. We’ve got a serious problem on our hands.
More seriously, you are asking me to imagine how we could get to a liberal society – meaning one in which citizens regard each other as free and equal, and deserving of basic rights and liberties and basic moral respect – from a fundamentally illiberal society. I don’t have a good general answer to that. Certainly not a good liberal answer. It’s not clear that fastidious, liberal means – always respecting people’s freedom of expression, for example – is going to work in a society in which a critical mass of the people will use that freedom for illiberal ends. (Maybe I should reread Hegel on that whole Master-Slave thing.)
“the solution to your finding exaggerated and grotesque male nudes odd”
Here you’ve lost me again. It isn’t a problem that I find exaggerated and grotesque male nudes to look odd, so what problem am I supposed to be seeking a solution to?
John Holbo 03.04.13 at 2:25 am
One more clarification:
“men (that’s who you’re speaking about earlier, I presume, when you talk about “people†and “their little waysâ€)”
No, by ‘people’ I actually mean people. Women can have fetishes, too, after all. My ‘little ways’ idiom probably sounded a bit slighting, but I really didn’t mean it that way. People have their sexual tastes and preferences, and, ideally, they should be able to satisfy them, if they can find someone willing to indulge them.
Rich Puchalsky 03.04.13 at 2:54 am
“But if that’s all anyone does (or any men do), then that amounts to a harm to women, [..]”
A ha! I thought that there was a cryptonormative harm argument lurking there.
As there should be, pretty much. Out of all of the bad and locally omnipresent artistic tics in the world to parody, the comics universe has chosen this one (I think all the major examples have already been citied here: Strong Female Characters, Hawkeye Initiative, that guy who poses as women on book covers). I think It’s clear that it’s not because this is bad and omnipresent art, because there are too many other possible candidates that no one seems to care about. It’s because it’s sexist art that is both mainstream (in the sense that superhero comics are mainstream products that children can buy) and particularly objectifying (in the sense in which these drawings are labelled “broken-backed”: they don’t even give the dignity of an exaggerated but physically possible depiction). We’re back to “creating a hostile environment” territory — if a women goes into a comic book store, she sees this kind of art. That’s a different situation than the one in which people download whatever kind of fetishistic drawings they want.
Once that’s acknowledged the various issues can be disentangled somewhat more easily. I think the ecological explanation for bad art just doesn’t work, in general, and seems to be being called on here in order to navigate between “I understand why people don’t want these drawings around everywhere in comics” and “I don’t want to condemn whatever fetishistic drawings people want to look at because they have a fetish”.
John Holbo 03.04.13 at 3:23 am
Sorry about the crypto, Rich. It was supposed to be straight up normative from the get-go, but perhaps I wasn’t being clear.
“It’s because it’s sexist art”
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? It’s sexist art in the sense that – who are we kidding? – it’s produced and consumed by men who are, on average, sexist. The average fanboy could do with some feminist consciousness-raising, bless his nerd heart. But, in the abstract, just as someone can have a thing for redheads, or brunettes with little button noses, without necessarily being a sexist, so someone could – nay, can! – have a thing for weird anatomical distortions without being a sexist. (Again, this abstract consideration isn’t supposed to be an argument, let alone proof, that the people who make and consume this stuff aren’t, by and large, at least a bit sexist towards women. I’m not trying to deny the obvious here.) You say “they [these crazy poses] don’t even give the dignity of an exaggerated but physically possible depiction.” I don’t see why physical possibility is more dignified. Is that supposed to be an a priori truth? Why couldn’t we say that physical impossibility is actually more dignified, because no woman is going to think she could actually look that way, so she won’t feel pressured to try?
So, yes, mine is pretty much a ‘creating a hostile environment’ argument. It’s the hostile environment that causes the harm, not the art, per se. But I regard this conclusion as a feature, whereas you seem to think it is a bug. I think it’s a good thing to be able to navigate between “I understand why women feel a bit oppressed by this stuff – because they are” and “I don’t want to tell people not to like what they like – not if there’s some way I can let them just like it.” I want to say both things.
Rich Puchalsky 03.04.13 at 5:05 am
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?”
No, not really. I think that we all agree that it’s sexist art, and that there’s really no question about that, though I’ll get back to that later. I understand that you want to say both things at once — I do too, really — so perhaps “navigate between them” was the wrong way of putting it. But I think that you’re saying both at once in the wrong way. Surely, since you’re a philosopher, I can disagree with you in that fashion, where the steps of the argument are important in addition to where you end up.
The problem for your analysis is that “this art is creating a hostile environment” and “the problem with this art is environmental” aren’t saying the same thing at all, at least if I’m understanding you. The problem with the art is not that it’s omnipresent. Let’s imagine someone who really likes this kind of art fetishistically. They download it all the time, display it in their room, etc. It’s omnipresent for them in their private environment. That doesn’t make the art bad. It means that it’s suited to its space.
Pin-ups, on the other hand, have a long history as hostile-work-space-creating things, because they’re put up in public. There are other kinds of art that are omnipresent in public. Ad styles, for instance — let’s assume one of the nonsexist ad styles so that it doesn’t become problematic for the same reason. The public omnipresence or otherwise isn’t what makes the art problematic in terms of harm: it’s a matter of content.
So you’re rejecting sexism as an intrinsic quality of the art, and saying that the problem is omnipresence, but that just doesn’t seem to me to work. Of course it’s sexist art: the whole point of the various parodies is that only women are drawn in this way, not men, and bringing in Mannerism only works if the art isn’t sexist. That sexism isn’t, from your perspective and mine, a problem if the art is basically intended to appeal directly to sexuality, in privacy — although some people would certainly disagree. But the whole problem is a problem of context, and making it into a problem of ecological rarity means that you’re bringing in a sort of dysfunctional aesthetic argument.
John Holbo 03.04.13 at 6:39 am
OK, yes, we can agree that this art is sexist in some sense – so that isn’t the question. The question is: in what sense(s)? Fair enough.
“Pin-ups, on the other hand, have a long history as hostile-work-space-creating things, because they’re put up in public.”
Thank you for mentioning this because I was relying on it, implicitly, and it should be made explicit. Guy hangs that on the wall and it becomes an uncomfortable space for women, for reasons too obvious to analyze. That’s, in fact, a part of the point of his hanging it on the wall. But this confirms my point: there’s nothing inherent in the art that makes it the case that you have to use it to make women uncomfortable – rather than enjoying it in the privacy of your own bedroom. So a formal criticism of the image – how the hell can we be seeing her butt and boobs at the same time? – is beside the point. If someone asks what is wrong with hanging this in the office, and you start critiquing anatomy, you have missed the mechanism of the harm.
And again: “Of course it’s sexist art: the whole point of the various parodies is that only women are drawn in this way, not men, and bringing in Mannerism only works if the art isn’t sexist.” I’m tempted to quote “Spinal Tap”: ‘Wotz wrong wiff being sexy?’ No, seriously. The fact that only the women are being presented this way doesn’t prove sexism – although, per above, I’m not obtusely denying that the producers and consumers are, by and large, sexists. What it goes to show is that the men are being shown as active and strong and the women are depicted as open to the Male Gaze and all that – we grant all this. (The fact that they are holding guns does not make them ‘strong characters’ and all that obviousness.) But the fact that the men are not pin-ups but the women are, does not make the comic worse than, say, a book of Elvgren pin-ups, in which there are all women and no men, and all the women are pin-ups. All it proves is that the men who buy these comics are basically buying them to look at pin-ups. The Male Gaze is fun for males. Which I say is ok, but there’s what I call an ecological balance problem.
Now you might say: but no good feminist is going to want to read a book in which all the females are just ludicrous sex objects and all the men are active. Because it will just be too annoying. I admit that I don’t want to get backed into a corner of hypothetically reconstructing the mind of the avid Liefeld fan, who is also a card-carrying feminist. (Honestly, I have no idea whether that is psychologically possible.) My point is, rather, that people’s sexual tastes, as expressed through their taste in sexy depictions, are not necessarily an index of their conduct, in public. Many people know how to separate the private from the public. People (men and women) are attracted to the bodies of other people – as objects. A strong taste for objectifying, especially when it comes to sex, does not seem to me indicative of a weak capacity for respecting other people, as free and equal persons. You can be a fetishist and a good liberal! Yay! This is an aspect of the Dan Savage code, in a way. Which I think is basically sound. As a result, I think that ‘art that subjects women to the Male Gaze is sexist’ is critical over-reach. It also makes men defensive, apparently telling them not just what they can do but what they can like and how they can feel. Not that men need to have their delicate sensibilities coddled, their persecution fantasies humored and indulged. We men are not a persecuted minority, living in the post-apocalyptic, p.c. world that feminists built after destroying Western Civilization until no stone stood on stone. (You and I can agree that men who whine about that sort of thing are extremely annoying.) Nevertheless, there’s no need to make men extra defensive about their taste in sexy images by saying something that is, in my opinion, technically not quite right.
Final note: reading the end of your comment, it occurs to me we may be using ‘sexism’ and ‘ecology’ a bit differently, and may not be disagreeing – or disagreeing less than it seems. For me, the idea that it’s ‘sexism’ to enjoy looking at pin-ups seems strange. That’s like saying it’s inherently ‘sexist’ to like redheads. You mean something like ‘it’s sexism if you are regarding the woman as an object’, I take it. I don’t think that’s a good use of ‘sexism’. You are creating a category of harmless sexism. I prefer to reserve ‘sexism’ for an attitude that is inherently pernicious, even if it isn’t terribly harmful if it just stays in your head.
Rich Puchalsky 03.04.13 at 1:14 pm
“Which I say is ok, but there’s what I call an ecological balance problem.”
I agree that there’s a problem, but I don’t think that it has anything to do with ecological balance. If someone put up a pin-up in a work environment that was in the most unusual, never-before-seen and original style, and it was a highly fetishistic depiction of sexuality, people would still have a reasonable reason for telling the person to take it down. One pin-up can do it: you don’t need to bring in a whole omnipresence of pin-ups. The problem with basing the argument on omnipresence is that there are a host of implicit aesthetic judgements based on omnipresence — as in, art that is everywhere is mostly bad, because if it’s everywhere there must be mostly not very good artists producing it — that’s implicitly doing some of the work of your argument when it shouldn’t be.
I understand and agree with “A strong taste for objectifying, especially when it comes to sex, does not seem to me indicative of a weak capacity for respecting other people”. I was referring to it as a sexist art style, not saying that anyone who likes certain fetishistic styles must personally be a sexist. But really, the art style has characteristics that Mannerism doesn’t have. It depicts women in certain stylized poses, not men, and it does so in a way that appeals to sexism in the whole “strong man, woman acted on” way that you’ve already talked about. You can blur the distinction between this and Mannerism if you’re talking only about the aesthetic qualities of the art, but you can’t if you’re talking about social harm.
And finally, I don’t think that there’s really any way to believe this and not implicitly accept a sort of harmless sexism. Going back to good old Spinal Tap and their album Smell the Glove, yes, there are a whole lot of people of various gender identities and preferences who are going to find drawings of women in bondage sexy. And art of this kind often plays into societal sexism for its imagery. I don’t think that the art magically becomes any less sexist if someone is looking at it in private, as opposed to obnoxiously putting it on an album cover. But there’s a well-accepted distinction between the private sphere and the public one, and between what appeals to someone’s sexuality and how they behave in society.
John Holbo 03.04.13 at 11:23 pm
“One pin-up can do it: you don’t need to bring in a whole omnipresence of pin-ups.”
Well, I’m not so much concerned about omnipresence, per se, as environmental effects, so I’m happy to regard your counter-example as not one.
But you make a good point about harmless sexism. Probably, like implicit attitude tests, I should just say some of this stuff is sexist but potentially harmlessly so. And/or blamelessly so.
Saurs 03.04.13 at 11:28 pm
Let’s not bless his heart, for a start, and don’t let’s pretend, in a conversation between two men on the interwebs, that banal sexism is harmless because we think it so, we who are not the objects of that banal sexism.
This thread is fucking surreal.
Lawrence Stuart 03.05.13 at 3:52 am
re: 33 Theophylact
That “Strong Female Characters” thing is hilarious! Thanks for that link.
The thing about these brokeback images is that they parody so damn easily. The grotesquery in them is, oddly perhaps, completely banal. “Strong Female Characters” puts the lash to them. With a witty touch, of course.
The thing about “Hawkeye” is that it’s just rather plodding and self righteous.
John Holbo 03.05.13 at 2:12 pm
“Let’s not bless his heart, for a start, and don’t let’s pretend, in a conversation between two men on the interwebs, that banal sexism is harmless because we think it so, we who are not the objects of that banal sexism.”
I’m happy to bless his heart, even though it is full of sin. And I think you are confusing stipulations of harmlessness, for thought-experimental purposes, with assurances of harmlessness, in the real world, which would be most uncertain. But your average nerd has done worse things, so bless your heart, too, Saurs. (Why not?)
Rereading the thread: I was trying to say something much more complicated – and dubious – about sexism – than I initially realized I was trying to say. As a result, I was totally unclear about a lot, and surely wrong about at least some things.
Short version: I wanted to parse sexism, on the one hand, into a kind of ‘basic structure’ violation, in a Rawlsian sense. (My use of ‘ecology’ should be firmed up into a basic structure argument, if any sense is to be made of it.) On the other hand, it’s a matter of bad attitudes, and wrongful acts, in a more individual sense. These are related but distinct senses. But my attempt to use the HI cases to clarified the related distinctions muddied the water more than it clarified it.
Peter Erwin 03.05.13 at 5:32 pm
the cubism of Picasso …
Which reminds me of one of the wonderful visual jokes in Alan Moore’s Top Ten, where in a couple of panels you can see, hanging on the wall in a character’s apartment, a version of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon featuring the Fantastic Four. (Credit for the art undoubtedly belongs to Gene Ha.)
Rich Puchalsky 03.05.13 at 5:35 pm
What is your opinion, Saurs?
I was pretty clear, in my comments above, that the discussion so far didn’t have any representatives of three of the main types of responses: “I should be able to put pin-ups up wherever I want”, “police your desires, or at least feel guilty about them”, and “we will have the state police them for you” — and that it wasn’t a discussion that could be viewed in any way as representative of the range of opinion about drawings that involve sexism. I’d also expect some pushback from people who think that too much is being made of the whole public / private distinction — there have been a number of mentions of Dan Savage and Tom of Finland, but none yet of the archetypal Gay Pride march, something intended to call into question the whole attitude that what goes on in private is OK and showing your fetishes in public isn’t.
hipparchia 03.06.13 at 6:32 am
so, take all the movies and tv shows of today, all the white characters as they are and all the black characters replaced with with stepin fetchit. dude was a brilliant actor and made a ton of money http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0275297/bio so it’s not really racism, or if it is, it’s just harmless racism, right?
John Holbo 03.07.13 at 12:52 am
“so it’s not really racism, or if it is, it’s just harmless racism, right?”
I wouldn’t think so. Make your argument for that conclusion, hipparchia.
John Holbo 03.07.13 at 12:55 am
Just to be clear: my argument isn’t going to do it for you, by analogy, stepinfetchitfanboywise.
John Holbo 03.07.13 at 1:14 am
OK, on second thought, since I’ve admitted my argument was made as clearly as it should have been, probably I shouldn’t snark at people who misunderstand it.
Here’s the simple version. Suppose you took – oh, I dunno, “Thor”, the movie. And somehow, through CGI magic, you substituted old Stepinfetchit footage for every scene in which hunky whatshisname is playing the Norse God of Thunder. That is going to be some seriously incongruous mash-up viewing right there. (You might argue back: but the dude was a brilliant actor and made a ton of money, so probably the mash-up will look totally non-hilarious. I maintain this is not plausible.) Now: does the fact that it’s incongruous and funny prove Stepinfetchit is racist? No. Stepinfetchit is racist. But that’s not the proof.
So the fallacy is this, in a sense: you are reasoning that if I think there are any bad arguments that X is racist, I must think X is non-racist, ergo there aren’t any good arguments for X is racist. (I take it that’s the fallacy.)
wembley 03.07.13 at 2:25 am
“This thread is fucking surreal,” indeed.
“Strong Female Characters†puts the lash to them. With a witty touch, of course. The thing about “Hawkeye†is that it’s just rather plodding and self righteous.
One’s got scantily clad girls, one’s got a scantily clad dude. Hmmm.
/back to lurking
Rich Puchalsky 03.07.13 at 4:59 am
Saurs, hipparchia, and wembley might as well be the same person, if they aren’t actually. They can’t just say that they”d like to ban sexist drawings, because no one wants to sound like a censor. But they can act incredulous about the main apparent alternative, which is to say that it’s harmless as long as it stays in the private sphere instead of the public one. There’s also the alternative of doing nothing while telling people that they sure should be ashamed, which does have a long American tradition to recommend it.
God knows what they’d think of Alan Moore’s _Lost Girls_. OMG it’s a comic book with scantily clad girls and dudes, how surreal.
Saurs 03.07.13 at 5:17 am
You asked me my opinion, Rich, and when I wasn’t prompt, called me a sockpuppet and put words in my mouth (“[xie]’d like to ban sexist drawings”). That you’re surprised (shocked, scandalized, pearls ostensibly clutched and fainting couches drawn) or feigning surprise and dismay that the men in this thread are getting fairly gentle pushback after impugning HI and discussing sexism as an abstract topic with no real-world harm is quite telling. I wouldn’t waste my fingers, frankly.
hipparchia 03.07.13 at 5:31 am
…probably I shouldn’t snark at people who misunderstand it.
dude, i live for snark. also hyperbole. also, i’m pretty sure i understood your argument just fine.
Make your argument for that conclusion, hipparchia.
heh. my original intention was to go all socratic on you and see if i could ultimately get you to reject your own top post argument [since i find it an offensive one, and full of baloney too] and that was the opening salvo. i was all set to return to the fray tonight, but alas the best-laid schemes o mice and women gang aft agley; real-life events have conspired against me and are going to be keeping me away from the internet for a bit. my apologies.
Rich Puchalsky 03.07.13 at 5:38 am
You were tremendously prompt after my last comment, I notice. Of course you still don’t want to say what your actual opinion is. Why?
I’m not surprised or in dismay at all, I just think that you won’t say what you think even through the protection of anonymity for obvious reasons — because it would make you look bad, and you don’t have the courage to come out and say it. And your reading comprehension sucks — no one has “impugned HI” that I remember, and what you’re calling abstract harm was brought up to make a distinction between public and private space. The drawings satirized by HI are decidedly public, since they’re in mainstream comic books, and I have yet to see one person in the thread say that the sexism in them doesn’t matter.
John Holbo 03.07.13 at 6:34 am
“my original intention was to go all socratic on you … i was all set to return to the fray tonight, but alas the best-laid schemes o mice and women gang aft agley; real-life events have conspired against me and are going to be keeping me away from the internet for a bit. my apologies.”
That’s all right. The same thing happened to Euthyphro, if memory serves.
wembley 03.07.13 at 10:17 pm
I didn’t say I wanted to ban sexist drawings. I think it’s mighty interesting that the drawings with the scantily clad girls are considered sharp satire, and the drawings that don’t cater to a straight male gaze are “ploddingly self-righteous”. (I’m not knocking Beaton’s work, btw; it’s making a slightly separate point than HI, and it’s a valid one.)
But, like you did with the others, thanks for putting words in my mouth and acting like I’m a prude who’d censor Lost Girls in my feminist utopia. Btw, you know a lot of the girls drawing the HI pictures… also enjoy drawing pinups of scantily clad Hawkeye, right? That these are fangirls? Who consume and create vast amounts of written and drawn porn about pretty much every fictional character and celebrity ever? That these are nerds just like the boys? It’s just that comics don’t cater to their gaze nearly as much. Obviously. And some fangirls are pointing that out. But I realize this isn’t really what the OP is talking about (I honestly don’t have the schooling to fathom what the OP is talking about), so I’ll try to keep out from now on. But seriously, dude, you are trolling hard.
Rich Puchalsky 03.08.13 at 3:54 am
Next time I advise understanding the thread before quoting-for-truth someone.
And yeah, aware of yaoi, slash fiction, and all of those related genres. Why is that bit seemingly addressed to me? Lawrence Stuart said that “Hawkeye” was plodding and self-righteous (which I skipped over, thinking he meant the original comics, not the HI parody), so, sure, go on and tell him about all of that.
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