CURSE OF THE BLACK WHEDON-TWEETS

I won't go into a lot of detail excoriating the idiocies of the hardline feminists who allegedly chased Joss Whedon off Twitter. However, here's a refutation of these clowns that I wrote for the Classic Comics Forum:

________________

I have a view contrary to [what some critics have called] the Smurfette Principle. 

The first is that, to some extent, the two AVENGERS film are victim to the same problem that dogged the earliest issues of the comic book: what do you do when you've got a group with at least four heavy-hitting heroes? We don't know exactly why Stan Lee chose to dispense with the heavy-hitters and try to sell the title with "Cap's Kooky Quartet." But since Lee's bottom line was always to sell more books, I'd speculate that he knew he couldn't really exploit the Marvel Approach to Character Conflict by using the team-up schema that worked so well for DC. Therefore Thor, Hulk and Iron Man were cast out to allow for more latitude in character-conflict, and for a time the group's biggest hitter was Giant-Man/Goliath, who didn't have his own feature any more and so could enjoy all of his dramatic arcs within the sphere of the AVENGERS comic. 

Unlike Lee, Whedon didn't have a choice: the AVENGERS movie-franchise was always meant to follow the pattern of DC's Justice League, exploiting the big-name heroes in both their own features and as part of a group.  So Whedon had to include Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America (who's not precisely a heavy-hitter but does have an impregnable shield). Hawkeye and Black Widow were spotlighted in their first appearances through connections with SHIELD. They would eventually provide, within the AVENGERS film-franchise, a contrast to all the top-level super-powers, in that Hawkeye and the Widow were closer to ordinary mortals. This is pretty much the same function that "low-powered" heroes like Hawkeye and the Wasp served in the AVENGERS comic-- or, if you prefer a LEGION parallel, Bouncing Boy and Dream Girl.

So if you've got a team of super-gods for which you, the writer, have to provide a credible challenge, you can't take time out to figure, "now how can I come up with something for non-powered Black Widow to do, that allows her to shine?" A single story in a comic can give a low-powered hero a featured position while the big stars are sidelined. A high-FX film like ULTRON can't do that; the low-powered heroes, both Hawkeye and Black Widow were never going to get featured positions. 

And that's why I become so torqued off at people like Whedon's critics. They're not thinking about whether what they want is do-able within a particular context; they JUST WANT IT.

Now if the group had written in She-Hulk and given her nothing to do-- that would be the Smurfette Principle.

THE SIR WALTER REFLEX

One more quick observation on the subject mentioned in my last post:

It occurs to wonder, why would NB be so intemperate about an offhand post that did not directly assail the pro-feminist beliefs of the essay under discussion. My post on the subject of the Asselin-CBR imbroglio wasn't even a matter of playing devil's advocate. It was on the level of "crossing a T" with respect to the reportage of factual news.

Yet, in a thread referenced here, I made copious direct comments in express opposition to another poster's ultraliberal views on race, as well as those of NB himself, and NB never threatened me with deletion.

I theorize that NB's attitude re: feminism is rooted in the "Sir Walter Reflex," a reflex that comes into play only when a male debater thinks that he is acting in the defense of womanhood.

I didn't name the reflex, but I witnessed it before while responding to another "hit-and-run" excuse for a critic, Chicken Colin. In his Sequart hatchet job on one of my essays, he tried to claim, falsely, that Kelly Thompson didn't need him to defend her. Yet when Thompson chose not to engage me in prolonged debate, the Chicken attacked my analysis of Thompson's essay in terms that were, like NB's, oriented on painting me as a male chauvinist.

The only thing that separates NB and CC is that even though both are equally oriented on defending womankind from the Evil Chauvinists, NB at least engaged me a few more times than the utterly cowardly Chicken.

I won't even get into the extent to which the views of Dave Sim-- as incoherent as they were-- were assailed not for their incoherence but for their failure to support an unquestioned ultraliberal narrative.

HOW CAN SOMEONE SO WRONG THINK HE'S SO RIGHT?

Yes, it's time for another round of that overly familiar game show, "Someone on the Internet is Wrong."

Don't get me wrong: I support free speech, no matter what sort of ultraconservative or ultraliberal tripe it may produce. The tripe this week comes from my most frequent source of the ultraliberal variety, Noah Berlatsky. I'm sure that this won't be the last time he spins some web of ragged logic for me to rip apart on this blog. However, this week will almost certainly be the last time I'll say anything on his blog, for which small favor I'm sure he'll be grateful beyond all words-- or rather, all deletions.

I've tried to minimize comments on Berlatsky's blog because, as I said recently, there's never any genuine discussion there, just endless citations of the "right" way of political thinking.  Given the mindset of the blog's owner and his contributors, I made my infrequent posts there not for any profit--  I knew I wouldn't get many persons from that community checking out my blog, and even if I had, I don't participate in Googlebucks or whatever it's called anyway. I just did it to furnish myself with subjects on which to expatiate here. Usually I've dealt with impersonal critical principles, but this time-- it's personal.

Well, personal and boring, even to me. But needs must when the devil drives, etc.

So the other day I scanned a HU essay with an apocalyptic title, "The End of Comic Geeks?", by one Aaron Kashtan. I didn't read it in depth, though I soon encountered the phrase "straight white men," a standard trope in the diatribes of over-politicized, and therefore bad, critics. I had no thought of engaging with Kashtan or his editor on this particular article of faith.

I did, however, notice one item in Kashtan's essay that was presented as yet another "article of faith," though it actually should be governed by "burden of proof," and it regards the Janelle Asselin Imbroglio from April of last year. Kashtan first referenced the TEEN TITANS review with which the incident began:

Asselin was hardly saying anything controversial here. It’s pretty obvious that this cover is not only terrible but also misogynistic. And yet just for pointing out this obvious fact, she was not only criticized but threatened with rape. At the same time that she published the article, she released a survey on sexual harassment in the comics industry, which is also a significant problem, and some unfortunate trolls discovered this survey and filled it in by posting rape threats against Asselin. According to CBR proprietor Jonah Weiland, “These same “fans” found her e-mail, home address and other personal information, and used it to harass and terrorize her, including an attempted hacking of her bank account.” And according to Jonah, many of the fans in question were regular participants on the comicbookresources.com message boards

I had commented on the matter myself more than once. particularly in the essay DANCING ON THE DWARF.  In that essay I expressed my reservations about the Internet news-community having reported Wieland's allegations as fact. These allegations imply that Wieland had indubitable information on the identity of these fans, which, if true, should have led to the arrest and prosecution of said fans. I was not able to find any evidence of such an investigation except for what Asselin wrote about her unsuccessful attempts to get the law or her bank to trace the culprits. My DANCING blogpost still contains a viable link to that Asselin post, in which she describes her reasons for believing that all of her persecutors were comics-fans; evidence which I hope any jury would deem circumstantial. I chose to point that out to Kashtan and the readers of the Hooded Utilitarian.

Did I rant and rave to the HU readers that they were mindless dupes of a FemiNazi hoax? Hardly. I confined myself to making a very mild objection to reporting Wieland's allegations as unvarnished fact.

Though you [Kashtan] have quoted as printed Jonah Wieland’s view that CBR fans attempted to hack Janelle Asselin’s account, it should be noted that this was not decisively proven. This was not for Asselin’s lack of trying, but unless she’s written something new about the matter, I understood that in her last word on the subject amounted to circumstantial evidence. I print this excerpt from my blogpost on the subject, which mentions the title of the only related Asselin post of which I’m aware.“This Janelle Asselin blogpost, entitled “An Explanation No One is Owed,” clarifies that Asselin (a) was unable to interest the FBI in the investigation of the rape threats that appeared on her online survey, and (b) had only circumstantial– though not improbable– evidence that one or more of her harassers had been complicit in the attempt on her bank account."

Here is Noah Berlatsky's response, delivered as if it were a general statement of his personal priorities. Since no one else on the thread has demurred against any aspect of Kashtan's pro-feminist narrative, it's clearly directed at me, though Berlatsky did not have the stones to address me.

You know, on second thought, there’s no particular reason to tolerate extended MRA nattering by random passersby on this thread. So…yeah, I’ll just delete that stuff. Fair warning. 

Berlatsky clearly chose this tack to discourage engagement, not just in the sense of a direct argument but in any continued postings. As soon as any administrator shakes the "delete" club, it's axiomatic that he would rather have the source of disturbance just go away entirely. Berlatsky is so eager to have this happen that he not only describes a mere two paragraphs as "extended," he decides to label me as "MRA." This abbreviation can mean either "Men's Right Activists" or "Men Run Amok" (the latter may or may not have evolved from the former). There's no knowing what NB really meant, given his history of posturing, but to be charitable, let's say the former was intended.

To "natter" is to jabber about unimportant matters. One would have to deduce from this that NB does not regard as important the question as to whether Jonah Wieland's allegations have any hard evidence to back them up. To be concerned with such niceties, it seems, gets in the way of the pro-feminist narrative that NB has put forth in roughly the same terms as those of Kashtan. Therefore, any counter-narrative must be the work of someone trying to protect the image of men from the complaints of women.

I'm sure that if NB read my blog, he'd manage to seize on something that he considered proof of this
opinion. But it takes a major mental leap to take the statement that Wieland's assertions lack hard evidence, and turn it into a defense of innocent fans-who-think-it's-funny-to-make-rape-threats.

This, of course, I have not done. In the above essay I referred to them as "scumbags" and expressed no doubt that comics-fans had assailed Asselin's online questionnaire about the comics-industry, since no one but comics-fans would have any interest in such a survey. But despite Asselin's circumstantial evidence, there are a lot of illegal hackers out there who routinely seek to break into bank accounts, and that fact should be out there, even if it does weaken the desired narrative.

So it's not about "men's rights;" it's about "burden of proof." Kashtan could have written roughly the same thing about the rape threats on the survey, and I would have said nothing. I would have liked to have pointed out that there would still be no evidence that all of the perpetrators are necessarily "straight white men," that Black and Latino men have their own history of woman-bashing. But I probably would not have bothered to point that out to someone who invokes the scapegoat of "straight white men" in such facile terms.

NB's response is a masterpiece of doublethink; of seeing what he wants to see. In ultraconservative terms, it ranks with the petty furor of people who don't like to hear "Happy Holidays" usurp "Merry Christmas."

So, assuming that NB keeps his word to delete any post of mine that he finds objectionable, here's my farewell post to HU-- always assuming that it will be deleted as promised.

Well, since no one would make such an absurd post without intending to use it as an excuse to get rid of an unpopular poster, I take Noah's dubious word that what I now post will be read only by him, and will be gone by morning.
Yes, Noah, it's your blog, so if you want to say that the sun rises in the west, or a statement about a lack of hard evidence constitutes a defense of Men's Rights, then you can make those definitions. They're chickenshit definitions, and it's a chickenshit way to justify getting rid of someone who disagrees with you, but you have every right to be chickenshit.
Kashtan, same to you. 

ADDENDUM: As of 6/9/15 Noah Berlatsky has stated that the "MRA nattering" remark was not directed at me, but at a poster who had been deleted. This does not invalidate all of the rhetoric regarding Kashtan's essay and other related matters, but I acknowledge that I may have been somewhat precipitate in my response.

SACRED AND PROFANE VIOLENCE PART 4

To sum up the arguments for the previous three installments, with an eye toward concluding this line of thought:

In Part 1, I asserted that one might view the manifestations of sex and violence within fiction as sources of 'violence" that served to propel and thus create the narrative. This extra-diegetical "violence" is the one referenced in the title of the essay-series, and I probably should have given it another name, to distinguish it from diegetical violence-- perhaps "disruption," in line with the Frank Cioffi quote cited in Part 1.

In Part 2, I chose to explore the real-world alignment of sex and violence with the proclivities of, respectively, the females and males of the human species, as dictated by biological development.  Yet I specified that biology did not entirely define destiny; that it was possible for either real-world sex to perform a bouleversement with regard to dominant proclivities, a turnabout which would be the subject of Part 3.

In Part 3, I referenced an earlier essay-series in which I had investigated a similar bouleversement in the works of two of the philosophers who have influenced me. I did this in order to keep this line of thought distinct from my own meditations on a parallel turnabout, formulated by me alone, though other critics have certainly discussed similar archetypal figures, notably Camille Paglia. I termed these archetypes after a couple of their appearances in Greek myth: "Adonis, the Loving Man" and "Athena, the Fighting Woman." I then digressed to the subject of assigning merit to these-- or any-- archetypes when they appeared in fiction. This was the point at which I attempted to elucidate a meaning for the "sacred and profane" in my title, which, when extended from its Durkheimian definition into the realm of fiction, translates to something more like "widely significant and not very significant." This line of thought will be expanded on in a separate essay. I concluded the essay by stating that I would explore the "two turnabout archetypes" in terms of the ways they enhance the Bataillean concept of "narrative violence," henceforth "disruption," the specific source of the narrative's conflict, which as specified here may manifest in the mode of the dynamic or the mode of the combinatory. Since I've already critiqued several individual comics-stories for my "1001 myths"series, I'll draw upon two of those for my examples.

This essay on NEW MUTANTS #62 is one of the few occasions on which I dealt with a figure that conforms to the Adonis archetype. This character is the semi-villainous character of Manuel, who in this story forms a romantic connection of sorts with the character of Amara, one of the featured members of the titular group. "To Build a Fire" is a two-character story, dealing with the way in which Amara and Manuel attempt to survive in the Amazon rainforest. I noted in my analysis that Manuel's psychic persuasion-powers were "stereotypically female," while Amara's power-- the ability to manifest volcanic flames-- is far more potent. There is a conflict of dynamicity present, in that both teens are in danger from the jungle's denizens-- a signal irony, since Amara wants to preserve the jungle, refusing to use her power to create a signal-fire (hence the title). However, the primary conflict is of a combinatory nature, in that it deals with the "war between men and women," and the suspense is not so much "will the two teens survive" as it is "will they make sense of their feelings about one another?" In contrast to Amara, who possesses a kick-ass "male" power, Manuel's only influence over Amara is his male charm, enhanced by his mutant power-- though Manuel fits the Adonis mold in that he's strikingly handsome. He verges away from the male superhero mold in that he frequently evinces cowardice and selfishness, but this reversal is precisely what the story needs to bring forth Amara's own growth of consciousness.

For the archetype of the Fighting Woman, I cite this essay on RED SONJA #1 from-1977. This story takes particular interest for its inversion of the folkloric opposition of "the virgin and the unicorn," which in its usual telling claims that a wild unicorn will lose its wildness in the presence of a true virgin, and will lay its horned head in the virgin's lap. The SONJA story deals with a deep soul-bond between a unicorn and the titular swordswoman Red Sonja, who is not a virgin but has chosen to preserve her sexuality as if she were. She's also a swordswoman specifically because she was raped by men, which is an action that the story's villain Andar wishes to commit, in a figurative sense, upon her friend the unicorn. In this narrative the elements of the combinatory are certainly present, given that it belongs to the freewheeling genre of sword-and-sorcery fantasy. However, the archetype of this version of "Athena, Fighting Woman" is dominantly involved in a conflict of dynamicity: Sonja and her magical horse-friend against the depredations of a character whose name suggests a Greek word for "male."

Obviously, since I defined both stories as possessing a high mythicity, both of these stories would meet my criteria for being "consummate." I have not yet decided whether or not I'll try to come up with similar stories which would show these archetypes in an "inconsummate" form. Such stories would be by definition forgettable, and the only good reason to describe them would be to rail at their faults. So I may elect to allow this early CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN story to remain my go-to example of the inconsummate.

INSTRUMENTALITY VS. AFFECTS

Just a quick note on matters diegetical and extra-diegetical:

I've repeatedly referred to fictional manifestations of "sex and violence" as "affects" because that's what they are in an extra-diegetical sense. For the audience of a given narrative, they are narrative events that are meant to generate strong, if purely gestural, emotions in that audience.

WITHIN the narrative, however, these manifestations are not only not "fictional," they are activities that function diegetically as instrumentalities, as per this definition:

a thing that serves as an instrument or means to an end

More on this later, possibly.

SACRED AND PROFANE VIOLENCE, PART 3

In the WHAT WOMEN WILL essay-series-- which I referenced in Part 2 of this series-- I chose to focus upon two cultural and fictional archetypes, the Compassionate Man and the Barbarous Woman. These archetypes, whose appeal derives from their reversal of default characterizations of males and females, were directly derived from the works of the two 19th-century philosophers most associated with the concept of "the will:" Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

Here, though, I'm concerned with following through the logic established in Nietzsche's assignment of the attributes of males and females as "will" and "willingness"-- which I in turn translated to the statement that the dominant attribute of males is violence, while that of females is sex. The Barbarous Woman, as represented by myth-figures like Athena and Ishtar, still applies to this dichotomy. However, the Compassionate Man-- represented by wise, caregiver-males like Osiris and Ea-- does not epitomize the male as a sexual being, though arguably both this archetype, and the substitute I'll shortly discuss, both depend on what Frank Herbert called "the force that gives" (see the WOMEN WILL series for details).

The turnabout myth-figure here would be rather "man, the lover," but it would have to be a type distanced from the notion of man as a dispenser of violence. In other words, though mythic and fictional characters ranging from Gilgamesh, Heracles, Don Juan and James Bond are known for scoring in epic proportions, their success with women is strongly predicated on the males' ability to fight. "Man the lover" would be represented by types like Adonis, Paris (despised in THE ILIAD for being only a "warrior between the sheets," or words to that effect), and the title character of the 1977 French film THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN (but not the ghastly 1983 American remake of said film by Blake Edwards).

So, for the purpose of this discussion, the archetypes that most fundamentally reverse the standard attributes of males and females are "Adonis, Loving Man" and "Athena, Fighting Woman." Both archetypes, despite going against the expected grain, sustained religious roles in archaic Greece and indubitably appeared in many, if not all, human cultures to some degree. And since one can also say this of the default gender-roles, then all four types have been "sacred" at some time or other-- which is my way of finally working back to the title of this essay-series.

At the same time, they have all had "profane" manifestations as well, if one accepts Durkheim's concept of the sacred and profane: that the former is devoted to the concerns of the group while the latter revolves around the concerns of individuals. Of course when dealing with figures from fiction, where one does not assume the unquestioned reality of supernormal personages, "sacred" and "profane" would assume a different meaning.

It would not depend on the fictional figure being actually popular with a large group of people, any more than sacredness in religious myth depends on this factor. for as I pointed out here, some figures of religious myth are clearly directed at "small enclaves or sub-societies."

More promisingly, I would say that for fiction the closest parallel between "sacred" and "profane" is the dichotomy proposed by Susanne Langer, which I in my turn have tweaked for my own uses. In fiction, to be "sacred" is to be consummate, in that the narrative's symbolic discourse has succeeded in promulgating some discernible meaning. In contrast, narratives that do not succeed in promulgating meaning through symbolic discourse would be profane in that their potential meaning is not activated, and is thus both profane and inconsummate.

In Part 4 I'll explore the two "turnabout archetypes" in terms of their relevance to Bataille's concept of "narrative violence" as referenced in Part 1.

SACRED AND PROFANE VIOLENCE, PART 2

Will and Willingness. —Some one brought a
youth to a wise man, and said, " See, this is one
who is being corrupted by women!" The wise
man shook his head and smiled. " It is men," he
called out, "who corrupt women; and everything
that women lack should be atoned for and improved
in men,— for man creates for himself the ideal of
woman, and woman moulds herself according to
this ideal."—" You are too tender-hearted towards
women," said one of the bystanders, " you do not
know them ! " The wise man answered : " Man's
attribute is will, woman's attribute is willingness,—
such is the law of the sexes, verily 1 a hard law for
woman ! All human beings are innocent of their
existence, women, however, are doubly innocent;
who could have enough of salve and gentleness for
them ! "—"What about salve ! What about gentle-
ness ! " called out another person in the crowd, " we
must educate women better ! "— " We must educate
men better," said the wise man, and made a sign
to the youth to follow him.— The youth, however,
did not follow him. -- Nietzsche, THE GAY SCIENCE.

My re-interpretation of Nietzsche's "will and willingness" would not quite fall into the trap of viewing men as entirely active and women as entirely passive. Yet Nietzsche's dichotomy does apply in a more specific biological sense: male humans are biologically positioned to specialize in violence (a rough analogue to Nietzsche's "will") , and female humans are biological positioned to specialize in sexuality (an analogue to "willingness," up to a point).

I specify "humans" here since my main concern is human expression of its own propensities and limitations. Yet the biology doesn't start with human beings, but applies to the majority of humankind's nearest simian relations. With some exceptions, the so-called "great apes" follow the example set by a majority of birds and other mammals in that most male apes possess greater size, about 25 percent larger than the females. This gives the biggest ones a generally greater capacity for imposing their will, either on females or on other males. Meanwhile our nearest DNA-relations, the common chimpanzees, seem to have stolen a march on their earlier relatives by becoming experts in sexual promiscuity, in a "willingness" to indulge in sex for purposes not entirely defined by procreation. (Their relatives, the so-called "bonobo" or "pygmy chimps," go even farther, as noted here.)

Classical evolution's explanation for such modifications is that they just happened, either by random gene selection or equally random mutation, and were then preserved because they proved useful, or at least not a hindrance, either to immediate survival of the organism or general survival of its species. I've touched on the evolutionary theories of Stuart A. Kauffman in a four-part essay series, beginning here, which suggest that there may an element of "choice" in such modifications, perhaps one rooted in the quantum mechanics rather than classical physics. On this basis I would suggest that some modifications may not be entirely random: that they are prompted by a species' need for that modification, even though the species cannot cognitively know how to articulate that need before it is fulfilled, nor can they keep the modification from having all manner of unanticipated consequences.

If there is any truth to the idea of a "non-conscious modification," then male animals' acquisition of greater size and physical strength is a direct consequence of the males' desire to achieve dominance, both over other males and over females. This would be the logical counterpart of a theory that is taken much more seriously by evolutionary biologists: that "woman made herself." To be sure this theory is only applied to human females: to my knowledge there is no consensus that female primates were responsible for the intensification of their species' sexual nature. However, as far as I know all biologists credence the notion that at some point the human female perfected what Lynn Margulies called an "anatomy of deception"-- banishing outward signs of estrus, which in my opinion would have preceded the actual cessation of estrus. There is no universally accepted theory as to how or why this occurred, though the most popular idea seems to be that the human female gained power by making herself more unpredictable-- that any male desirous of fathering progeny might have to devote more time and attention to a given female in order to be sure of producing said progeny.

While no one can prove, with the data beloved by empiricists, that "men are the masters of violence, and women the mistresses of sex." the dichotomy nevertheless informs the basis of much human culture, even if one need not quite view woman's "willingness" as being something as passive and "moulded according to an ideal" as Nietzsche does. Additionally, the dichotomy, while biologically and culturally dominant, is not determinative of the full range of male and female capacities. I have suggested the potential for a *bouleversment* of gender-roles in WHAT WOMEN WILL PT. 3, where I spoke of these reversed roles as "the Compassionate Man and the Barbarous Woman." While I don't renounce anything I said in that essay, for the purpose of further examining the role of sexuality and violence in fiction, I'll come at the same topic from a slightly different angle in Part 3.