Calling Chris Claremont "one of the more notably feminist writers of superhero comics" is, uh, one way of characterizing the author of the Hellfire Club saga, I guess.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong-- but wasn't the Claremont X-MEN, particularly of the Byrne era that includes the Hellfire Club, a feature particularly popular with fangirls in that time-frame? Indeed, wasn't the Claremont X-MEN the first new creation of the 1970s to boast a substantial female fandom, including later fans-turned-pros such as the late Carol Kalish? Didn't that period of the feature provide the bedrock on which Marvel capitalized for its X-MEN cartoon, which Hope Larson notes was a "gateway drug" for female fans of the 1990s?
If all of these impressions are correct, then wouldn't it be fair to say that the fangirls who bought the feature did not deem the White Queen's bustier to be especially offensive (even though it played to the iniquitous desires of horny fanboys)? Indeed, bustiers seem to be fairly common in the genre that, from year to year, sells best in North America: ye olde romance genre.
So when Sean Collins expresses dubiousness over whether or not Chris Claremont ought to be styled a "feminist writer," I reply, "It depends on the type of feminist you mean."
For instance, this 2009 article by Rosalind Gill suggests that some branches of feminist have moved from "sexual objectification" to "sexual subjectification."
Gill sees the latter cultural movement as an outgrowth from the earlier one:
... the focus on 'harking back' may miss what is new about contemporary sexualised depictions of women. I want to suggest that what we are seeing is not just a harking back to a safe, bygone or mythical age when 'men were men and women were women', but rather the construction of a new femininity (or, better, new femininities) organized around sexual confidence and autonomy. Indeed, what is novel and striking about contemporary sexualised representations of women in popular culture is that they do not (as in the past) depict women as passive objects but as knowing, active and desiring sexual subjects. We are witnessing, I want to argue, a shift from sexual objectification to sexual subjectification in constructions of femininity in the media and popular culture.
I for one would not hesitate to consider Claremont's depiction of his most heralded X-women of the 70s and 80s-- that is, Storm, Phoenix, Rogue and the bustier-clad White Queen-- as "knowing, active and desiring sexual subjects," within the bounds of their being fictional characters, of course. Over time this even extends somewhat to Kitty Pryde, the juvenile femme introduced in the Hellfire Club sequence, who as I remember eventually becomes an "active sexual subject" even without being a Hot Chick like the other four I've named.
Now, truth to tell, after Gill offers this interesting analysis she then critiques it in much the same terms used by early feminist critics of sexual objectification:
The figure of the autonomous, active, desiring subject has become -- I suggest -- the dominant figure for representing young women, part of the construction of the neo-liberal feminine subject. But sexual subjectification, I would argue, has turned out to be objectification in new and even more pernicious guise.
I don't share Gill's pessimism. The communication of one's sexual nature *as* a sexual object is a physical aspect of life that won't be put aside just because it offends moral standards of either liberal or conservative persuasions. I won't say that there can't be a shitload of problems with "subjectification" of the type Gill describes, most significantly young women who purchase T-shirts that come with the written admonition that onlookers should "squeeze here." But along with these missteps comes a greater awareness of self, not just one's cultural expectations.
I agree with Camille Paglia here: a hierarchy of perceived beauty, not "real" except in the consensual sense of one's cultural parameters, will always be with humanity. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that the act of one's choosing to wear a tight T-shirt or a bustier is in itself a concession to some "phallocracy" (that's not from Gill). And as Gill observes, with this "subjectification" of femininity has come a greater consciousness of its application to masculinity. Such aspects of male sexual subjectification weren't precisely non-existent in popular culture prior to feminism, but said aspects were often obscured by other factors. (In comic books, this would relate to the "but it's not the same when guys wear tight costumes" meme.)
In addition, I feel that Gill is entirely wrong with one of her attempts to disprove the beneficence of subjectification:
...there is the problem of the exclusions of this representational practice. It is clear from looking at media representations that only some women are constructed as active desiring sexual subjects. Only women who desire sex with men -- except when lesbian women 'perform' for men -- but, equally crucially, only young, slim and beautiful women. As Myra MacDonald has pointed out, older women, bigger women, women with wrinkles, etc are never accorded sexual subjecthood and are still subject to offensive and sometimes vicious representations. Indeed the figure of the unattractive woman who wants a sexual partner remains one of the most vilified in a range of popular cultural forms.
I disagree with this quite as much as I disagree with Collins' implicit characterization of the Claremont X-MEN as no more than a haven for horny fanboys. Since the rise of subjectification there has been a consequent upsurge in which The Princess Is The Frog (and The Frog Ain't That Bad), most notably the animated cartoon SHREK, as well as my earlier example of the merely cute-but-not-hot Kitty Pryde. There will always be jokes involving men or women being mortified by the attentions of those they find unattractive, but current society is a long way from taking sadistic pleasure in the frustrations of a homely spinster a la Miss Hathaway of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES.
Objectification of the kind Collins critiques hasn't vanished, of course. But IMO it's clearly fighting a losing battle.
No comments:
Post a Comment