Talk Islam

muse

  • 06:01:33 pm on June 22, 2008 | # | |
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    The Objectification of Women in Graphic Novels. I’d like to hear Willow’s take on this - what considerations went into depicting the characters in Cairo, specifically the women?

     

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  • Willow 9:11 pm on June 22, 2008 | #

    Oh man, this is such a pet peeve of mine…I think it stems from the realist movement in the 80’s, when comics began to deal with MUCH darker themes than the usual zombies and robots from Mars. Writers started to tackle drug abuse, mental illness, land mines/nuclear armament, domestic abuse, rape etc. At the time this stuff was all incredibly edgy and well-observed, and furthermore it sold a lot of comics. Sadly, today a lot of comics writers have forgotten *why* people like Alan Moore dealt with this subject matter, and treat it like an empty formula. (Want to sell comics? Inject as much unexamined sleaze as humanly possible!! Because no one’s ever done THAT before!)

    In some graphic novels/comic book series it’s gotten really out of hand, to the point of being disgusting and meaningless. People have confused being edgy with being vile. And because the vast majority of comics writers are men, it’s usually female characters who take the brunt of the sleaze. Not out of any overt hatred of women, I think, but because producing Freudian garbage is easier than thinking.

    In CAIRO my main concern was that every character go through some sort of arc. If a character doesn’t change it means you haven’t put enough thought into her. Kate starts out pretty flat–intentionally so; she’s young and sheltered–and grows a little humility and depth. Tova takes on a role traditionally given to male characters…the noble “no matter what you do, you’re screwed” role. (A la Ken Watanabe’s character in The Last Samurai; it’s always a character who loves two things that cannot coexist.) Communicating that kind of sadness and resignation from a woman’s perspective was actually kind of hard because there is very little precedent for it in fiction.

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