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SEQUENTIAL CULTURE #31 21 Aug 04 |
In Defense of Sue Dibny’s Rape |
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JULIAN DARIUS |
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Call me a sick fuck, but I’m in favor of Sue Dibny’s rape. |
Call me a sick
fuck, but I’m in favor of Sue Dibny’s rape. Wait. That came out wrong. I’m in favor of its use in Identity
Crisis. Let me back up
here. I didn’t like, at least upon
first reading, Identity Crisis #1.
Its great sin was that it was confusingly paced. It jumped around awkwardly, and the big
payoff seemed to be the death not of Elongated Man -- as had been rumored --
but of his wife. And I think this
disappointment -- the feeling of bait and switch as readers expect a super-hero
casualty only to witness Sue Dibny’s rushed death -- has been the underlying
reason for a lot of the controversy. In fact, the
previous rape of Sue Dibny isn’t revealed until the second issue. And, yes, it is shown in flashback. But we’re hardly talking about exposed
genitalia here. We don’t see Doctor
Light’s erect member. And this flashback
occurs as the heroes who dealt with Doctor Light after that incident secretly
plan to go after him for Sue Dibny’s death, believing Light responsible. The emphasis is distinctly upon this
secret that the heroes have kept. The
emphasis is distinctly upon the trauma of these heroes who fear for their
loved ones and made the tough decision to effectively lobotomize Doctor Light
after the incident. In other words,
the emphasis in distinctly not upon the rape itself. Despite this, a
flurry of condemnation came no sooner than the issue was published. Fans repeatedly blasted the comic as
manipulative, as crass, as low. Many
expressed a desire for bright-colored super-heroics, for classic
good-versus-evil stories. The
rhetoric used was that of “super-hero rape fantasies” and “seeing innocent
women raped by costumed criminals.” They Call it
“Manipulative” Is Sue Dibny’s
rape manipulative? Well, yes. But no more than an image of Aquaman
crying. |
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Apocalypse Now showing a
boar sliced to ribbons instead of Kurtz is manipulative, but it is also one
of the most powerful sequences on film. |
Put another way,
“manipulative” has two definitions.
The first is simply to manipulate in the sense that we manipulate a
pencil when we write with it. There’s
no negative connotation here. A good
work of art is manipulative in this sense. The pieta is manipulative.
Showing that a character is a good person may be characterization, but
it’s also manipulation -- getting you to identify with that character. Apocalypse Now showing a boar
sliced to ribbons instead of Kurtz is manipulative, but it is also one of the
most powerful sequences on film. The way most
people use “manipulative,” however, is in the sense of “crassly
manipulative.” The same
characterization of a woman as a busy but good person, preparing food and
petting her dog, becomes crassly manipulative when the wide-eyed serial
killer enters, stabs the dog to death in a scene with copious spurting blood,
and then brutalizes her. Whether
we’re shown the brutalization or it occurs off-panel or off-screen is by itself
irrelevant: saying that the sweet wife
in Seven has been beheaded can be even more manipulative than showing
her death. The question is whether
the “manipulation” is artistically crass. |
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Whether something is artistically crass -- or “cheap” or
“easy” -- is entirely contextual. |
And whether
something is artistically crass -- or “cheap” or “easy” -- is entirely
contextual. Few would be so crass as
to condemn a drama about a woman who was raped coming to terms with that
abuse and learning to relate again to men.
Although, it is worth pointing out, such a drama would more than
likely be staged in the vein of Lifetime’s original movies, which notoriously
play with the line of crass manipulation in order to advance emotionally a
particularly fact-starved version of feminism. But using rape casually, particularly to escalate the emotional
stakes of a story, would be artistically crass. |
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The focus in Identity Crisis is distinctly upon the
age-old danger in the genre to the heroes’ loved ones -- now given a new
edge. This threat is not only of
capture or death, as has been conventionally depicted, but of torture or rape
-- after all, these are super-villains we’re talking about here, and they’re
known for both insanity and brutality. |
Identity
Crisis may not be fine
literature, but Sue Dibny’s rape is certainly not used casually. The focus is distinctly upon the age-old
danger in the genre to the heroes’ loved ones -- now given a new edge. This threat is not only of capture or death,
as has been conventionally depicted, but of torture or rape -- after all,
these are super-villains we’re talking about here, and they’re known for both
insanity and brutality. As always,
the focus is upon the heroes’ actions to prevent this danger to their
loved ones -- except that, in Identity Crisis, this leads the heroes
to take greater, more disturbing steps. What’s the Real
Issue Here? Should it have a
“mature readers” label? Well, I don’t
know that any comic should have a label -- books don’t, and Frank Miller
(among others) has rather deftly pointed out the troubling if not outright
censoring nature of such labels. But
if DC’s going to slap “mature readers” on comics at all, it probably ought to
go on Identity Crisis. I think
we can agree that Sue Dibny’s rape and the heroes’ reaction isn’t for
six-year-olds. |
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The attack has been distinctly retrogressive: that this has no place in super-hero
comics. |
But the attack
against Identity Crisis has not been the relatively minor argument
that DC neglected to place two words on the cover. In fact, the attack has been distinctly retrogressive: that this has no place in super-hero
comics. That, in essence, we ought to
go back twenty or so years. These are
people who have never read Rick Veitch’s Bratpack. Or French and Japanese comics from Metabarons
to Crying Freeman, which don’t shy away from this sort of stuff. Or they just don’t want that stuff in a
story with Superman. Which is fine,
except that it consigns Superman et al to the dustbin of history. Comics aren’t
just for kids. Some comics aren’t for
kids at all -- even some super-hero comics.
When it comes to Identity Crisis, this is used as a line of
condemnation. When it comes to Wildcats
3.0, Sleeper, or The Authority, no one minds that we see
people in bondage outfits, some of whom sodomize their opponents,
occasionally with jackhammers. And by
the way, the Mark Millar issues of The Authority didn’t carry the
“mature readers” label either. Even Grant
Morrison has chimed in against Identity Crisis because of Sue Dibny’s
rape -- and Morrison has been one of the prime people advancing super-heroics
over the past fifteen years. But
then, Morrison’s been becoming a bit of a retrograde as of late: he also condemned The Authority’s
violence in the wake of 9/11. |
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The real issue here isn’t sex, nor is it violence. Tell me super-heroes don’t have a sexual
element, with their skin-tight spandex and bulging boobs and constant sexual
situations. And the problem isn’t the
violence of the act of rape: nobody
minds when super-villains open fire on crowds of civilians -- in fact, comic
book readers and movie-goers reward such violence. |
The real issue
here isn’t sex, nor is it violence.
Tell me super-heroes don’t have a sexual element, with their
skin-tight spandex and bulging boobs and constant sexual situations, going
back at least to Superman’s love triangle with his alter ego and Lois
Lane. And the problem isn’t the
violence of the act of rape: nobody
minds when super-villains open fire on crowds of civilians -- in fact, comic
book readers and movie-goers reward such violence, sometimes calling its
implications brilliant. No, the real
issue -- what really sets people off -- is rape. Yes, rape has
been used before in super-hero comics.
Many male creators have felt it sensitive to women’s suffering to make
a female character a victim of some sort of sexual abuse or assault,
dramatizing the problem. But, more
poignantly, rape has long been used in art.
Would anyone condemn, with the vitriol reserved for Identity Crisis,
the countless paintings of the rape of the Sabines? The depiction of rape from Homer and Herodotus to modern
literature? The history of art and
literature are filled with depictions of rape, just as much as they are with
sex and violence and all other elements of the human condition. |
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The problem people have is that a super-villain raped a
super-hero’s wife -- and that just shouldn’t happen. Or, at least, not in a comic by DC. Or, at least, not one with Superman in it. |
So let’s be more
specific. The problem people have is
that a super-villain raped a super-hero’s wife -- and that just shouldn’t
happen. Or, at least, not in a comic
by DC. Or, at least, not one with
Superman in it. Conclusions I cannot judge
the sum of Identity Crisis: as
I write, the third issue has been published only yesterday. I am not claiming the work as a whole to
be artistically successful or not:
that remains to be seen. But I
can say that the reaction against the title -- entirely based on its
use of rape -- appalls me. |
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It is the height of didacticism to assume that a whole genre --
even super-heroics -- should exist in a rape-free world. |
Let’s be
clear: in a world filled with crazy
super-villains carrying personal vendettas, this kind of thing would
happen. It is the height of
didacticism to assume that a whole genre -- even super-heroics -- should
exist in a rape-free world. If you don’t
like rape in your super-hero stories, no matter the context, you just don’t
want that much realism in your super-hero stories. You probably didn’t like Frank Miller making Catwoman a whore
either. And I respect that. If that’s you, there are a lot of
super-hero comics out there -- even some good ones -- to please you. But at least be honest about it. Those of us who
appreciate comics as art are more inclined to ask how smart the story
is, how clever the execution.
Rather than, you know, condemning outright. |
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Identity Crisis, like it or
not, is teaching us about the super-hero genre -- and it’s doing this both within
the text, in terms of extending the old generic threat to the hero’s loved
ones, and without, as we observe the retrogressive, didactic, and
vitriolic responses to the series. |
Identity
Crisis, like it or not,
is teaching us about the super-hero genre -- and it’s doing this both within
the text, in terms of extending the old generic threat to the hero’s loved
ones, and without, as we observe the retrogressive, didactic, and
vitriolic responses to the series. We are, in short,
understanding the medium of super-heroics better because of Identity
Crisis. |
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