“Jason Todd has always been my favorite character, so I was obviously excited for Red Hood and the Outlaws. But with all the controversy it was an internal struggle for me between my feminism and my appreciation of Jason as a character. I hope the series continues to improve.
Dear Secret-maker,
This is a really good secret. You are not alone.
Regarding the last submission. I’m not the best choice for a well-developed post on the Starfire issue, mostly because I’m not that good at English, but I wanted to point out a couple of things. I’m using the mods comments to exemplify them because I don’t want to spend more time looking for other articles, but this is in no way a personal thing! Let’s see…
She is being written by someone and drawn by someone else; she is a made up character. We can respect, applaud and be happy when a living, breathing woman makes her own choices with regard to her own body and her sexual experiences. We can do the same regarding decisions made about Starfire. But Starfire’s choices are up to the writer. In this case, the writer happens to be male, as does the artist. Now, male writers can absolutely write female characters and can absolutely give them agency (and many have done just that!), but the perspective they are more likely than not to be coming from with regards to that agency is a male perspective. And this can sometimes cause issues with portrayals of female characters.
I’ve a problem with this. Not this as in just this comment, but about that idea that somehow the artist has to be accounted for when discussing the art (the editors for RHAO were both women, and this is never mentioned). First of all:
a) That implies that an artwork/narration/whatever interpretation depends on what you think of its creator, and that the creator’s characteristics do matter when you interpret it. If we were to stick to this, then great novels would be considered toxic waste because their writers where disgusting people. The question is, if this comic happened to have been writen by a woman, then would there be a problem with its content? Or would we be thinking that she was trying to show us a different kind of woman and praising her taking risks when writing?
And then, onto another topic I wanted to comment:
she was very obviously posed for a heterosexual male reader.
There’ve been a lot of talk about how she’s only there for T&A shots because that’s what guys want. And I just have to say this: not only males are attracted to females nor can find them pretty.
I know the poses sometimes are just ridiculous, but at least Kory’s where given a context: the beach. So at least they tried to make them reasonable. Not saying that this wasn’t eye-candy, but I think we’ve all seen worse and not complained all that much about it.
I think there hasn’t been many voices defending Starfire mostly because doing so was like labelling yourself all the bad things the other side of the debate was saying about ”people that liked that book”. I saw nothing wrong with a girl having random sex, sex is fun, why wouldn’t she? A reason or emotional ties are not necessary for a lot of people, why would them be for a girl in a comic? It’s like female characters always have to be role-models or complete villains.
And as a last thing, the fact that a girl acts in a way that boys like doesn’t mean she’s doing so because of them or that she’s just a ”male fantasy”. She’s just acting however she wants, that what she wants and what they like is the same doesn’t make the last the reason of the first.
(Ugh, and forgive any errors in the text, please.)
FYJT: This was a submission by robinless and is in regards to this post.
We’ll just address a couple of concerns this poster had:
1) Absolutely, artists can and should be held accountable for how they depict characters, particularly women and minorities. (See: Greg Horn’s art on Catwoman and Powergirl which has received a lot of criticism). Granted, some artists get instructions from the writer on how certain scenes or characters should be depicted (see Frank Miller’s instructions to Jim Lee on ASBAR). As for the fact that two women editing the book: objectively, I (mod!Liz) have no idea how much say/sway the editors have over art and writing beyond editing for continuity, grammar and space. Anecdotally, I can say that there is a story in the comic book world regarding Powergirl that one artist (Wally Wood) drawing Powergirl on a regular basis would consistently make her boobs bigger and bigger until an editor noticed and ceased that action.
2) With regard to a creator’s characteristics or beliefs outside of the medium they are writing in — for some people, this may absolutely change their view of the work itself, while for others they could care less. For example: Chuck Dixon has espoused homophobic comments and/or actions. Some people may not want to read works by him, while others could care less, while others still acknowledge his personal views but still enjoy his work.
3) Women writers and artists absolutely can and should be held accountable for their work as well. Notably, for example, Gail Simone has been criticized for her portrayal of Dinah Lance and Barbara Gordon shaming Helena Bertinelli for sleeping around too much (based on their standards of how much is *too much!*) in Birds of Prey. So, Helena sleeping with Josh comes off as a non-heroic act based on the narrative text. Comics are quite bad at this, but the number of persons a woman sleeps with should not determine how “heroic” she is.
4) You are absolutely correct that heterosexual men are not the only ones who find women attractive. However, we must remember that DC has said its main audience is men aged 18-34. So, while, for example, many gay women may find Starfire completely attractive, whether or not that art is actually meant to be specifically for them or drawn with them in mind is another story.
Thanks for your thoughts and comments!
