June writey stuff

[sholio]

For those (few?) on my friend list who are comics fans and have paid any attention to the controversy surrounding the risque Mary Jane statuette and Heroes For Hire cover, I wrote a long ranty rant about the whole thing for this month's Sequential Tart. (Which would probably have been a lot less ranty and tongue-in-cheek had I known beforehand that it would be running as an article rather than an editorial, but hindsight is 20/20.)

There is also a review of the first "webisode" of Sanctuary.

Comments

[alipeeps.livejournal.com]

Heh. Awesome rant. Eloquent and reasonable and entertaining. I admit my comic readership has slipped in recent years (and was always mostly confined to X-Men and related titles) so the whole controversy had passed me by. Having clicked on the various links and taken a look though... wow, gotta agree with everything you say. The statuette in particular? Skeevy in the extreme... :(

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Whee to the rant. Good job! I was following the controversy through fandom_wank. To me the biggest problem was Marvel's doublethink stance, that they claim to want female readers and then offer this to the fanboys without a corresponding catering to we female fen. I don't have a problem with this sort of stuff existing...it's all fiction: these women aren't real people, and I can't see the problem with objectifying the imaginary. And if Marvel were trying for boys-only, yeah, whatever. But to offer this character-degradation as canon, and still think women would be interested in comics...umm. It's just stupid.

Ah well. I have faith in capitalism. One of these days they'll realize how much money they're losing, not selling out to us as well!

(and thank you for pointing out that cheesecake does not necessarily equal exploitation. There's some fanservice that I find quite hot. In One Piece, for instance, the women are outrageously proportioned, but they're treated as characters, not figures; they're always aware of their sexuality; they own it, and whoever looks at them is looking on their terms. The Adam Hughes shots you linked are similar, if more explicit. And there's a certain point one simply has to admit that drawing boobies is fun...)

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for that Batman statuette! Dangit!

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's the imbalance that bugs me more than the cheesecake, and I know that I derailed several times during the whole thing, but that's what I really wanted to *try* to get across. I mean, if the statue or the cover had occurred in a wider context, with well-written female characters alongside poorly written ones and cheesecake for women alongside cheesecake for guys, I'd just shrug and go, "Hey, not my thing, but go for it," and leave it alone. I mean, fandom (especially slash) is TREMENDOUSLY self-indulgent and exploitive. So's manga. But they're fairly even-handed about it, whereas mainstream comics are pretty obviously aiming at a fairly narrow demographic of adolescent-to-thirtysomething males, and then the utter hypocrisy of claiming that they're NOT, that I should still enjoy their product even though what they're producing is largely softcore porn for guys ... I mean ... WHAT???

Drawing boobies IS fun! And I've never been one to believe that I should avoid a movie, show, book, comic or genre just because it's not marketed to my specific "demographic". Demographics, blech. But there's a difference between something that's aimed at guys without being specifically off-putting to the opposite sex (like, say, One Piece or the Hughes covers), and something that is SO narrowly aimed at guys that it's highly unlikely a woman could enjoy it. And, again, I really am not bothered by other people enjoying something which I find irritating, exploitive or offensive; most of that stuff is in the eye of the beholder anyway. But there's a lack of balance which I find, frankly, kind of disturbing, because it implies that the decision-makers at Marvel and DC are either acting on a very freaky vision of how the world works and women's place in it (which is just fine in an individual fan or a single comics producer among several, not so fine when it's the entire establishment doing it) or are marketing themselves very narrowly to one demographic but refuse to admit that they're doing it or to provide anything for other demographics, which is stupid in the extreme.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I'm glad my rant came across as reasonable, because I was hoping that it would read as more of a reasoned discussion than just blowing off steam (which is why I kinda wish I'd rewritten it a litle when I found out it would be running as an article). On the scale of general annoyance, this whole thing for me falls more in the category of "annoyance at people doing something blatantly stupid" than "annoyance at something that's offensive and morally wrong". But obviously I still got something like 3000 words out of it. *g*

[naye]

Oh, excellent article! It does feel more like an article than a rant to me - very nicely conveys your feelings on the subjects (to which I'd just like to say "hear, hear"), but without going... rabid? Or whatever would be appropriate to describe the less controlled part of the debate. Not that I can't understand that side, but I'm glad to see a (web-)published piece like this be so coherent and yet firm on why what Marvel is doing is stupid

In other words - go you! And thanks for linking; it was an interesting read.

[parisntripfan.livejournal.com]

I am not a comics fan but I did follow at least some of the MaryJaneGate.

I do agree that most troubling part of that whole debacle is that Marvel doesn't seem to understand what the big deal is. They don't get that this sort of thing could turn women/girls off of buying comics...and I don't think (I have no idea of the numbers) they gain enough sales from men/boys buying the comic because of the "sexy" cover...

I agree I don't have a problem with some occasional cheesecake. As long there some beefcake there as well.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

It's really not something that makes me totally froth at the mouth -- like I mentioned in one of the comments above, it's more like the kind of aggravation that you get from someone doing something blatantly STUPID than the sort that comes from moral offensiveness. In other words, I don't think that it's WRONG that they do this sort of thing, just insanely STUPID to the nth degree.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the cluelessness is just ... boggling.

I like my eye candy just fine, and I don't mind if the guys get theirs, too. It's just that balance is nice. There's lots of female eye candy on SGA, but I'm frankly too busy drooling over Sheppard in black leather to care. *g*