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beccatoriaSo, something awesome happened today that I am going to share with YOU, interwebs, because I love you.
A friend's been dating this awesome person for a while which is great, because when your friends date awesome people, you get to make new awesome friends. Now, this person is pretty quiet, likes to listen to everyone else more than to herself, but from a few comments, I knew that she wasn't really a big fan of comics, they made her kinda uncomfortable - I am pretty sure she classed them in the same category as lad's mags other stuff that's basically porn you can read on the train. Like I said, she's a quiet person, a few comments from her constituted a forceful opinion.
The thing that's interesting to me about this, though, is that her opinion wasn't formed in a vacuum. It's not like she had a media stereotype in her head. The guy she's dating - our friend - reads a lot of comics we lend him and doesn't read a huge amount of books beyond that. I haaaate gratuitous cheesecake and shitty depictions of women in mainstream cape books, and the books our mate was reading reflect that - but we were mostly lending him mainstream cape books, and it made me realise how numbed I am to how they look.
And damn, man, it just made me sad. And also nostalgic for those days when I didn't really read cape books, I read whatever trades were available at the library because I was a broke teenage girl and didn't even know where the local comic shop was. And honestly, it's rose-tinted spectacles of enormity if I say that none of that shit made me uncomfortable or made me wonder why I was reading it or didn't have shitty depictions of women - not to mention how confusing it is to read like ONE trade from near the end of Marvelman, because hell if I knew what order things were sposed to be in - but...that's when I fell in love with the medium, even though I spent the ten years after that wandering in and out.
And I wanted to do that for my new friend. So when it was her birthday, just recently, I thought to myself, fuck it. I am going to buy her a comic. I am going to buy her a comic that a) features a woman as a main character, b) is not drawn in an exploitative manner (and that will be defined broadly), and c) is self-contained.
So first I went and got depressed at how difficult this was. I basically had to write off superhero stuff entirely except for possibly Batwoman but I felt even that had too many ties to the wider DCU to be an easy entry point and besides, I wanted to show her that it's not all a genre where spandex is an entry requirement.
In the end I settled on the first volume of Fables. When I gave it to her I said, more or less, "this is a comic that will not make you feel like you need a shower." I honestly thought that would be an end to it - perhaps I'd get a polite "Oh, it was fun!" in a few weeks. I honestly suspected it might sit on her shelf gathering dust forever, and I would not have judged her for it.
Instead, I started getting texts about how much she liked it - how easy it was to read, how she wasn't expecting to be so engrossed she finished it in one sitting, how much fun it was and what should she read next.
Today she dragged her boyfriend shopping for new comics; I got a panicked text from him - they didn't have the next Fables! What did I suggest instead! - I missed out on answering because I was at my new job where I'm still nervous enough I don't let myself check my phone unless I'm on break - but apparently she bought the first volume of Madame Xanadu because she thought it looked cool.
And that's my story, interwebs. Just one more of the million examples of how it's not that chicks don't dig comics, they just don't dig exploitation.
A friend's been dating this awesome person for a while which is great, because when your friends date awesome people, you get to make new awesome friends. Now, this person is pretty quiet, likes to listen to everyone else more than to herself, but from a few comments, I knew that she wasn't really a big fan of comics, they made her kinda uncomfortable - I am pretty sure she classed them in the same category as lad's mags other stuff that's basically porn you can read on the train. Like I said, she's a quiet person, a few comments from her constituted a forceful opinion.
The thing that's interesting to me about this, though, is that her opinion wasn't formed in a vacuum. It's not like she had a media stereotype in her head. The guy she's dating - our friend - reads a lot of comics we lend him and doesn't read a huge amount of books beyond that. I haaaate gratuitous cheesecake and shitty depictions of women in mainstream cape books, and the books our mate was reading reflect that - but we were mostly lending him mainstream cape books, and it made me realise how numbed I am to how they look.
And damn, man, it just made me sad. And also nostalgic for those days when I didn't really read cape books, I read whatever trades were available at the library because I was a broke teenage girl and didn't even know where the local comic shop was. And honestly, it's rose-tinted spectacles of enormity if I say that none of that shit made me uncomfortable or made me wonder why I was reading it or didn't have shitty depictions of women - not to mention how confusing it is to read like ONE trade from near the end of Marvelman, because hell if I knew what order things were sposed to be in - but...that's when I fell in love with the medium, even though I spent the ten years after that wandering in and out.
And I wanted to do that for my new friend. So when it was her birthday, just recently, I thought to myself, fuck it. I am going to buy her a comic. I am going to buy her a comic that a) features a woman as a main character, b) is not drawn in an exploitative manner (and that will be defined broadly), and c) is self-contained.
So first I went and got depressed at how difficult this was. I basically had to write off superhero stuff entirely except for possibly Batwoman but I felt even that had too many ties to the wider DCU to be an easy entry point and besides, I wanted to show her that it's not all a genre where spandex is an entry requirement.
In the end I settled on the first volume of Fables. When I gave it to her I said, more or less, "this is a comic that will not make you feel like you need a shower." I honestly thought that would be an end to it - perhaps I'd get a polite "Oh, it was fun!" in a few weeks. I honestly suspected it might sit on her shelf gathering dust forever, and I would not have judged her for it.
Instead, I started getting texts about how much she liked it - how easy it was to read, how she wasn't expecting to be so engrossed she finished it in one sitting, how much fun it was and what should she read next.
Today she dragged her boyfriend shopping for new comics; I got a panicked text from him - they didn't have the next Fables! What did I suggest instead! - I missed out on answering because I was at my new job where I'm still nervous enough I don't let myself check my phone unless I'm on break - but apparently she bought the first volume of Madame Xanadu because she thought it looked cool.
And that's my story, interwebs. Just one more of the million examples of how it's not that chicks don't dig comics, they just don't dig exploitation.
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Date: 2012-03-08 06:28 pm (UTC)Yes, I too wondered why they wanted to have a baby boom while on the run with NO FOOD, LIKE AT ONE POINT THEY ACTUALLY RUN OUT OF FOOD. It's why I also always never bought those arguments some fans used to bring up early on that they should have brutally only taken those most likely to survive with them, ditching old people and kids and stuff because, well basically that only works if you know you're going to find a safe place right around the corner and restart; if you're going to be living for years, possibly more than a generation on a ship, you need a staggered population.
Honestly, they pretty much did nothing WITH the Arabian Fables women except...dress them up and let them be oppressed. :( I have some thoughts on this and the widening of the Fables world with new creators, but I will respond over on the Totenkinder thread.
Thanks for the information about Scheherezade! I never knew that - I never knew that her sister was such an integral part of her story. That's both fantastic, fascinating and yes, sad that it's gone. Especially since, while not free of potential problems, a far more interesting reimagination of the tale would have been for Snow to somehow take on the role of the sister/supporting female character so that it would still have been a tale about two women and a plan. Perhaps if Scherezade were still the bride, but colluded with Snow so that, in her role as ambassador, Snow asked to hear one final tale from Scherezade before such tales could no longer be heard. It's so sad when stories are so...wasteful of such great potential. :(
I'm honestly not sure what to say about Once Upon A Time. I don't really think that it is trying to be deconstructionist? I mean, sure, I guess it is on the level that there are attempts to make both Rumplestiltskin and Regina characters with reasons to be evil rather than cartoon characters and we have a more modern narrative structure. But I feel those are more concessions to our current storytelling mores rather than deliberate commentary on the nature of a fairytale. I think what Once Upon A Time is doing is...telling fairystories.
I think it's trying to modernise without criticising, rather than rebuilding through critical deconstruction. I want to believe that what it's trying to do is possible, but I waver wildly on how successfully it's achieving it. Its record on pretty much all issues save gender issues is abysmal. I had fairly high opinions of the way it had three female leads with complex relationships with each other on multiple levels, and I still really appreciate that, but I'm starting to seriously pissed at the way the fallout from Mary Margaret and David's affair is blowing back solely onto her in ways that can't be solely explained by the Mayor's personal vendetta and secret can of red spray paint.
Finally! I didn't even know the Vampire Diaries WERE a series of books. If they were pre-Twilight, I bet the author is seriously annoyed they missed the moment... ;)
And as I said, no worries on Fables. I'm enjoying it a lot right now, but I don't think it needs to be cocooned away from criticism, particularly not the criticism it's fairly obviously earned. My opinions may not be as harshly critical as yours on some issues, but I have the benefit of different OTCs, and a longer run where I got to power through more of the stuff I found distasteful and find more stuff I enjoyed. Plus, never, ever get me started on Jack of Fables! :p