DELVING INTO DECADENCE AGAIN

"In erotic fantasy there are no ‘wrong reasons.’

Wrongful real-life applications of fantasy exist.

But not wrong reasons in the domain of fantasy proper."

--me, arguing on some silly BEAT post about a "Comics Culture-Clash."


While searching for something else on THE BEAT I came across the above pearl of wisdom, and since it didn't spark a lot of comment on that forum (aside from one note of agreement), I decided to bring it over here and relate it to some of my concerns about the concept of superhero decadence.

I've never quite understood the contradictory attitudes of 'bloody comic book elitits' toward transgressive comics. Such elitists can extol some underground-comics talent along the line of R. Crumb for supposedly letting their ids run wild, as seen in, say, "Whiteman Meets Bigfoot." Then they turn around and get hinky about some sexually-charged fantasy because they consider it "creepy," as per Dirk Deppey's assault on the "decadent" eroticism of SUPERGIRL #14, which position I critiqued in this essay.

One of the things I found a source of continuing amazement is that on one hand Deppey could bald-facedly claim that "superhero decadence" didn't connote "sexual deviance" to him, and yet he critiqued SUPERGIRL #14 for its having portraying Supergirl and Batgirl as two ladies in "pervert suits."

"Pervert suits," Dirk? Really? Is sexual role-playing inherently "perverse" in all its real-life permutations, or only when it occurs within the superhero genre, since the genre was "created for children," even though children are no longer the target audience for most superhero comics?

I'm going to assume it's the latter. The original Deppey essay is hard to access these days, thanks to reconfigurations of the JOURNALISTA site, but Charles Reece was good enough to reprint a relevant section in one of my comment-threads:


DEPPEY: "My problem with this image [from SUPERGIRL #14] isn’t that it’s misogynist, but that it’s fucking ridiculous. This looks like sexual-fetish material, sure, but it would have exactly the same weird-ass vibe if both of the depicted characters were men. This image isn’t “sexist,” it’s emotionally stunted. Wrapped in the garb of teenage fantasy, it cannot help but take on an air of unreality that no infusion of sex or violence will dispel. Sixty years of accumulated kiddybook clichés won’t suddenly become adult reading material if you add lesbian relationships, hardcore gore or extended scenes of chartered accountancy; the latter only throw spotlights on the childishness of the former. Sexual objectification isn’t the problem; this picture would actually be more acceptable to adults if the women it depicted were naked and going after one another with knives. Genre-mandated sublimation and ritual creates the effect; the creepiness comes from the costumes. Looked at from any other perspective than that of the diehard fanboy or fangirl, these two women are wearing pervert suits."

Supposing that I put aside my earlier objections to Deppey's reading and conceded that the SUPERGIRL #14 scene is indeed rife with sexual innuendo, the question remains: what is this "air of unreality" that Deppey finds in the scene? Is it more "unreal" than my arbitrarily-chosen example above, of a white guy fucking a Bigfoot?

I know, I know. The fantastic content in "Whiteman Meets Bigfoot" isn't "unreal" because it takes place within the context of social satire. We all know that satire, to the extent that it can be called a "genre," isn't for kids. Therefore it doesn't matter whether or not Crumb drew the Whiteman opus with one hand on his pen and the other elsewhere. It doesn't matter how many underground comics-readers might have enjoyed the scene for a transgressive "creepiness" that some might find a little more extreme than mere superhero costumes. None of that matters because satire, just by virtue of being satire, is "real" rather than "unreal."

Hmm, does that mean that when superhero comics are true to their juvenile roots, then those particular comics DON'T have an "air of unreality?" Food for thought, surely.

I wrote above that there were "no wrong reasons in the domain of fantasy proper," which was my response to a fan on THE BEAT who thought that the TWILIGHT books encouraged an improper, quasi-incestuous type of fantasy. This viewpoint strongly resembles Deppey's conception that sexual superheroes are an improper type of fantasy, at least as practiced by mainstream publishers. I don't know if he views as improper any of the sexy superheroes published by EROS, which were also not patronized by juveniles, to my understanding.

Erotic works, of course, are not the only form of literature fueled by transgression: arguably all of them are to some extent. But certainly transgressiveness is pretty overt in all erotica, though I'm not familiar with any critic who's been able to rate one transgressive scene as inherently better or more "mature" than any other. Deppey apparently thinks that a transgressive scene that is widely "acceptable to adults"-- Deppey's hypothetical naked-knifefight-- is automatically better or more mature than something that appeals to more remote tastes. But by what criteria, Mr. Deppey?

I suspect the answer will continue blowing in the wind for the foreseeable future.