This is the second part of a lecture I delivered last year. In the first part here I argue that super-hero comics are built around homsexual panic and repressed male bonding. In this second bit I’m extending that argument. (Be warned; there are some explicit images below.)
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What’s really revealing, though, is the extent to which the nexus of sentiment/self-pity/troubled maleness transfers so seamlessly from these old, easily dismissed super-hero titles to much more intellectually and culturally validated efforts. For instance, there’s Cerebus, Dave Sim’s extremely successful self-published black-and-white 80s mega-series in about a gazillion volumes about a sword-fighting aardvark and the meaning of the universe, not necessarily in that order. Cerebus is one of the most influential and respected English-language comics of the last thirty years or so. And in it, Sim goes out of his way to make fun of the whole idea of manly adventure narratives in general, and, at various points, of super-heroes in particular. Yet, despite its ironic distancing, Cerebus is in fact engaged and even obsessed with the same kind of conflicted masculinity that we’ve been discussing.
From its beginning, Cerebus is a parody of a particularly overblown masculinity. In fact, the central, ongoing joke of the series is that Cerebus behaves like Conan and yet, he’s clearly not Conan. In other words, Cerebus is in part a funny character because he has all the attributes of hyper-masculinity (temper, violence, a certain kind of competence, emotional distance, etc.) even though he is essentially a (feminine-associated) plush toy. The joke is heightened by the fact that the other characters in the story are, for the most part, oblivious. Cerebus is treated as if he had all the privileges of masulinity — women try to seduce him, for example, and he is treated as a political threat. Or, to put it another way, Cerebus successfully passes as a traditional (heterosexual) man.
And here’s just two pictures of women throwing themselves at Cerebus — a Red Sonja like barbarian maid from the first volume:
And a high-powered sophisticated political operator from High Society, the second volume.
Part of the pleasure of the story, especially on the early outings, is the reader’s awareness of this open secret — a secret everyone in the book knows, and yet which is only rarely alluded to. Cerebus himself doesn’t talk about it, or even seem to notice it for the most part. And yet, even as the story becomes more intricate and the formative Conan meme fades into the background, the fact of Cerebus’ difference, and its relation to his masculinity, remains of central importance. The second volume of the series, High Society can, it seems to me, be read as a story about Cerebus’ masculinity — his efforts to eschew femininity, and lay hold of a manhood which he obviously doesn’t really possess. Ironically, most of these efforts to resist the feminine involve precisely turning down offers of sex and/or close relationships with women (as you can see, in the picture above, Cerebus is engaged in loud protestations of continence.) So is this (not always successful) imperviousness to female attention a sign of Cerebus’ true status as a manly-man? Or is it a sign that he is something other than a man, after all — another species perhaps? Or maybe it’s both?
In any case, the emotional climax of High Society is very near the end. Cerebus is saying his farewell to the super-feminine elf maiden, with whom he has a somewhat prickly friendship. And, as they’re parting, Cerebus breaks down and cries.
Of course, Cerebus is claiming to have something in his eye because he’s too manly to admit to giving in to sentiment. But that refusal is itself more sentimental — the tears are heightened in impact and importance because Cerebus is the sort of guy, or whatever, who is unwilling to cry. Emotional coldness and imperviousness is the romanticized soul of gloppy sentiment.
Dave Sim, the author and artist here, actually has a very strange history; sometime after he wrote these comics, he experienced a kind of religious awakening, which led him to conclude, among other things, that women aren’t human, that feminism is a great conspiracy against all that is good and right, and that homosexuality is despicable. He also became a rabid believer in his own pure rationality, and in the unbearably flawed otherness of all things emotional. Here’s a fairly typical quote from his later days:
Emotion, whatever the Female Void would have you believe, is not a more Exalted State than is Thought. In point of fact, I think Emotion is animalistic, serpent-brain stuff. Animals do not Think, but I am reasonably certain that they have Emotions. ‘Eating this makes me Happy.’ ‘When my fur is all wet and I am cold, it makes me Sad.” “Ooo! Puppies!’ ‘It makes me Excited to Chase the Ball!’ Reason, as any husband can tell you, doesn’t stand a chance in an argument with Emotion… this was the fundamental reason, I believe, that women were denied the vote for so long.
I like especially the way he randomly capitalizes various words, like “Female Void”‘ “Exalted State”, “Emotion” etc. And when he talks about the female void, it’s not nearly as metaphoric as you might think; he’s got pretty bizarre cosmological ideas.
Anyway, later volumes of Cerebus deal more explicitly with gayness — or so I’m told. I actually found the second volume a chore to wade through, in large part because of the hamfisted way gender is handled, and since I know it only gets worse from there, I haven’t been inspired to go on. But, obviously, there’s a continuity between the conflicted and romanticized comic-booky take on masculinity here, and his rejection of all things feminine later in his life.
Not that it’s just right-wing whackos who are attracted to masculine sentiment. Conflicted male-bonding is at the center of Art Spiegelman’s indisputably liberal Maus, for example, in which all the father-son angst actually manages to overshadow the Holocaust. And lots of male autobiographical comics by folks like Jeff Brown or David Heatley or Ivan Brunetti are basically about guys feeling sorry for themselves. (If you haven’t read any of those folks, well…don’t.) Dan Clowes does a lot of work in this vein as well; the title character of David Boring has unresolved fetishes and sexual issues more or less linked to his absent father, who, we learn, was an illustrator of super-hero comics.
And then there’s Chris Ware’s best known comic, Jimmy Corrigan. Corrigan is basically a realistic story; no gargantuan semi-clothed behemoths switching brains as a prelude to uber-violence; no diminutive semi-clothed aardvark barbarians turning down sexual advances as a prelude to swordplay. But nonetheless, it’s vision of maleness is oddly familiar.
First of all, like Batman and Superman and Spider-Man, Jimmy Corrigan loses his father early in his life (though in his case it’s through divorce rather than death). And, like his costumed predecessors, this lack of a father is figured as the defining emotional fact of his life. Surely it’s his wounding and his loss which makes the utterly repulsive (racist, emotionally inaccessible) Corrigan at all palatable, just as Bruce Wayne’s nocturnal nuttiness is made coherent by his tragedy.
Here’s one page form Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan.
The top part is a quick and unexplained flashback, showing Jimmy in a failed one-night stand. The woman has gotten cold feet, so Jimmy leaves her with the sensitive exit line, “Well, my dear, I for one have better things to do than waste my time with some cocktease whore.” The bottom sequence shows Jimmy awkwardly interacting with his father, whom he has just met. The parallel paths here are, I think, supposed to be emotionally linked, and maybe even causal. Jimmy’s failed relationship with his father on the bottom of the page is supposed to explain his overweening but incompetent heterosexuality. Or, to put it another way, beneath the icky heterosexual interaction is an icky male-male interaction of greater importance.
Ware, in other words, relies for his emotional effects on the exact same dynamic as Batman, Stan Lee, and all those old pulpy super-hero comics did. It’s all about men ostentatiously refusing to cry about their lack of manhood, mourning their failure to be heterosexual icons. Ware himself makes the connection quite explicit. A recurring character in Ware’s comics is a super-hero named Superman. This Superman isn’t quite like the one you’re familiar with. The costume’s different for one thing. For another, though he’s billed as a hero, he tends to behave more as a sadistic super-powered bully. In my favorite of Ware’s comics, Superman strands Jimmy Corrigan on an island for years, occasionally visiting him to break his arm, mock him, or masturbate to dirty films starring Jimmy’s mother.
Here’s a picture of Superman abusing a young Jimmy Corrigan.
In this sequence, Ware is, I think, critiquing the kind of conflicted masculinity we’re discussing. Superman is an ogre of empowered masculinity, but his violence, as always in these situations, seems linked to self-doubt and self-justification. He drops Jimmy on the island because Jimmy dislikes his new stepfather. Superman reacts to this seemingly minor threat to patriarchal and adult authority with hyperbolic violence. Control and arbitrary power are built on a masculinity absorbed in eternally mourning its own potential failure. The fear and pity of failing to be a man justifies anything.
Unfortunately, when he collected his Jimmy Corrigan strips into a complete work, Ware decided to leave this material out. Superman is still present as a character of sorts, but he’s not “real.” On the one hand, he’s just some guy dressed up in a super suit who sleeps with Jimmy’s mom. On the other hand, he’s a metaphor floating about at the edges of the narrative. The frightening authoritarian masculinity that Ware created in the early strips is carefully bifurcated, and what we end up with is a figure ripe for enabling sentiment. Instead of critiquing comic-book maleness and its compulsive dynamic of pity and violence, Ware embraces it. Superman becomes a symbol for the elegaic sadness of insufficiently heterosexual nerds everywhere.
For instance, here’s another page from Jimmy Corrigan; that’s Jimmy Corrigan and his father erupting from Jimmy’s stylized mouth in an explosion of agonized and bifurcated male self-birth. In the background you see Jimmy sitting on the toilet wearing a Superman shirt.
And this is the last image of the comic; Superman flying amidst the falling snow. It’s similar to the final melancholy transcendence in James Joyce’s “The Dead” — except here the nostalgic swoon is prompted not by mortality or doomed lovers, but by the iconic super-hero father-figure.
Ware’s move here in turning comics themselves, as a cultural artifact, into signifiers of beautifully failed maleness, is actually a more and more popular move for thoughtful intellectuals. To the limited extent that I was able to force myself to read it, it seemed to be what Michael Chabon was doing in *Kavalier and Clay* for example. That novel is about the friendship between two Jewish comic-book creators set in the early twentieth century, and, it mostly deals with nostalgic atmosphere and male-bonding, both tied explicitly to super-hero fantasies. Fiction writer Jonathan Lethem gets at something similar when he muses that:
“This is a closed circuit, me and the comics which I read and which read me, and the reading of which by one another, me and the comics, I am now attempting to read, or reread. The fact is I’m dealing with a realm of masturbation, of personal arcana. Stan Lee’s rhetoric of community was a weird vibrant lie: every single true believer, every single member of the Make Mine Marvel society or whatever the fuck we were meant to be called, received the comics as a private communion with our own obscure and shameful yearnings, and it was miraculous and pornographic to so much as breathe of it to another boy, let alone be initiated by one more knowing.”
An all-male community tied together by “obscure and shameful yearnings,” in which it is “pornographic” to be “inititated by one more knowing” — could there be a clearer description of the closet? Comics are every man’s shameful truth; the sign that he is not really or fully a man. But, and in the same way, they serve as his apotheosis; he is special, because he understands comics. His otherness is his tragedy and his sentimental validation. The secret identity is simply lover of comics — the love that, on the one hand, dare not speak its name, and, on the other, won’t cease sentimentally snivelling about it.
In her book, Eve Sedgwick talks a lot about the dangers of labeling something “sentimental.” As she points out, the tendency is to use “sentimental” as a feminizing insult. I’ve perhaps been guilty of that here. But my problem with the sentimentality of American comics isn’t so much the sentiment itself as the kind of sentiment expressed and where it seems to point. So as a point of comparison, I want to turn briefly to another comics tradition.
Japanese comics, or manga, have developed very differently from comics in America. Most importantly for our purposes, manga isn’t predominantly male, the way American comics is. On the contrary, there’s a whole genre of manga, called shojo, directed at, and mostly created by, women. I’ve been arguing that American comics are furtively and anxiously gay; shojo, on the other hand, is openly, enthusiastically flamboyant. In shojo books, men turn into women, women turn into men, and characters fall in love with a delirious unconcern for boundaries of age, station, or gender.
For example, here’s a scene from Rumiko Takahashi’s, Ranma 1/2, where Ranma turns into a girl. Note that Ranma isn’t technically a shojo title — it was first serialized in a shonen magazine for boys. However, it was hugely popular, so both boys and girls read it, and it’s fairly clearly in a shojo tradition in a number of ways, even if it isn’t “really shojo.” (Just wanted to make that clear in case there are manga addicts out there waiting to trip me up.)
And below is a very explicit panel from Fumi Yoshinaga’s “Gerard and Jacques” depicting a homosexual, intergenerational quasi-rape.
This is actually an example of a subgenre of shojo called yaoi. Yaoi like all shojo, is mostly by and for women, but it features homosexual relationships between men. Often these relationships, as here, are very explicit. Yaoi is very popular in Japan, and is catching on here as well. Since it’s not a genre native to the U.S., lots of people sort of look at it strangely and say, basically “What? Women want to read stories about gay men having sex? What’s with that?” I have some answers to that, but here I just want to point out that the gender politics in American comics are *at least* as bizarre and homoerotic as those in Japanese ones.
So shojo has a lot of gender bending, and a lot of openly gay content. This isn’t to say that shojo repudiates the closet. On the contrary, sexual secrets are extremely important in the genre, and those secrets are productive, as they tend to be, of tons of melodrama and even more gushy sentiment. As an example, take the series Cardcaptor Sakura, written by a female collective which goes by the name of CLAMP. The series is about an elementary-school-girl named Sakura who must collect a series of magical cards while wearing a succession of excessively girly outfits.
And here’s a couple of those outfits from just the first volume:
The improbable plot, and even the improbable fashion statements, are both much less important than character interactions — basically, everyone has a crush on everyone else, and the narrative momentum happily effervesces into a haze of unrequited sighs, longing looks, pregnant silences, and moments of ecstatic embarrassment.
So, for example, here’s one character blushing as his secret crush is revealed.
Despite all this extended teasing, the title does manage to reach a climactic moment, when, having collected all the cards, Sakura is confronted with a final magical trial. In a super-hero comic, this would be the moment in which the villain threatens to blow up the city, or the world, or the multiverse. CLAMP, though, refuses to go there — they explicitly state that if Sakura fails, “The Evil that is released…isn’t something…that will destroy the world or move Heaven and Earth.” Instead, if the evil triumphs, all of the main characters will simply forget the person “they care for most.” Everybody’s secret crush will be erased.
Here’s Sakura learning that she will forget the person she cares for the most.
My first reaction on reading this was, “oh, come on.” I mean, how preposterous, not to mention sappy, can you get? But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed exactly right. In Cardcaptor Sakura, and in shojo in general, the stories are held together by relationships. Many of those relationships are unrequited or unspoken…but that doesn’t make them less important. The love you don’t say can be the point of your life; secret love is meaning. Without it, Cardcaptor Sakura’s narrative, its world, would come apart. In Cardcaptor Sakura, the closet exists, but it opens outward. And what you find inside is love, which invisibly binds together the world in a web of affection and sentiment.
In contrast, the American comics I’ve been discussing look suspiciously like the emotionally empty world which Sakura struggles to avert. What happens when your crush disappears? Does sentiment vanish? Or does there remain the sense of a secret without content; an empty closet in which emotion rots and festers, slowly poisoning itself? Batman and Cerebus and Jimmy Corrigan all hide the fact that they have nothing to hide. The inside of their closets contain, not love, but love’s absence — an incoherent dream of an identity that never was. And if love produces life, this vapor creates only a simulacrum — an empty image of an empty self.
That simulacrum of a dream is masculinity — the non-face you get if you fold and spindle your entire comics collection like one of those old Mad magazine Al Jaffee fold-ins. In America, comic books are men, men are comic books, and the two drop, one from the other in an endless series of immaculately tedious births. Manliness isn’t so much a secret identity as it is a repetitive compulsion. That’s why, whether radioactive high school student, anthropomorphic animal, or literary darling, American comics characters always seem to be putting on the same damn mask.
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Update: Another post with some similar related thoughts here.
Excellent analysis! I had my doubts at first, but this second part really won me over. The use of Eve Sedgwick was quite good, too. Out of curiosity, where did you get that quote from Sim? Is it from the notes in later volumes or the "Mothers & Daughters" storyline? If you found "High Society" to be a difficult read, you'll want to skip the last four volumes of Cerebus. Going Home, Form and Void, and Latter Days deal with masculinity in more detail if you ever want to do a follow-up on the topic in Cerebus, though. The notes alone in the back of each volume may be more than enough to make your case.
Hey Jean-Luc. I can't remember where I got the Sim quote, honestly. I think it must have been online somewhere, but it was over a year ago now, so I'm not sure exactly.
Glad you enjoyed it, in any case!
I don't think being very bad at being heterosexual- like Ware- and showing discomfort/shame when it comes time to test it and retreating to a "safe" world, is necessarily gay.
It seems like you're adopting a really base view of male heterosexuality ( nerd (bad at being straight/unsuccesful)= gay).
This isn't to say there isn't lots of stuff to work with, but it seems like you set out to make them "gay", without defining these terms.
Hey Luke. Did you mean to sign in as yourself?
The stuff I'm pointing at with Ware is the way the male relationships are so much more important than (and serve as an excuse for bad behavior vis a vis) the female relationships. It's the father-son dynamic, and the panic about heterosexuality, that fits into Sedgwick's formula.
Also, just to reiterate, this isn't about what actual gay people are or aren't like. All this stuff is about heterosexual anxieties, in which certain kinds of ideas of gayness and feminization play a large part. The anxieties about failing at heterosexuality which haunt Ware are the worries of a heterosexual, not of an out gay man.
So you never read as far as the "Cerebus is a hermaphrodite" storyline? There's plenty more fuel for the fire… anaylsis.
Yeah, so I heard. I just couldn't hack it, though. I loved the first volume, but High Society really irritated me…I figured it was best to pull out while the pulling was good.
So to speak.
Noah, would you ever return to Cerebus for a straightforward review? I ask because most of the responses I've heard have been the reverse: the first book is okay, but the second book is where it gets good. In terms of further theoretical analysis, the later books (ie, 3-5) get good. Astoria is quite a character by herself – see "Church and State". "Jaka's Story" is worth reading ,too. All of this was written before Sim's meltdown so rest assured that it won't be as looney as the late stuff. Doug Wolk's essay "Aardvark Politic" is a good overview of the series if you want to know more.
Yeah, I've heard that before. I expected to like High Society, but, like I said, a lot of the politics and relationships really turned me off. I guess I might try the next one at some point…but I'm not exactly straining at the bit….
Part of Sedgwick's whole point is that homophobia and sexism are part of the mechanism that cements patriarchal bonds–which serve the economic/political powers of patriarchy…so insofar as we buy the argument, the homophobia/homeroticism fits in perfectly with Sim's sexism… and I think there's plenty of casual (and not as casual) sexism in the first phone book (the only one I've read). No need to go further to find it–I mean maybe it's not as systematic early on–but Sim finds a system later that's friendly to his beliefs going in. No big shock there–
My understanding is that he investigates and talks about it in much more explicit ways — Cerebus worries about his lack of genitalia, much discussion of male-male bonding and what it means. I'm sure it would be interesting to read further in some sense; I just don't think it's worth it for me at the moment.
I liked the first book's goofy satire and genre mixing. The take on Eastwood's Beguiled, for example, is hysterical.
Eh…there's some mildly humorous moments in the first book…but I actually felt it was kind of a chore to get through it. I never really cared about Cerebus or anyone else in the book as characters (he's such a Mary Sue in some ways) and the jokes all seemed fairly obvious and already repetitive within the first few issues. The art has its attractions, but, based on the first book, I don't get why anyone cares about Cerebus (and yes…I know it supposedly gets better in the next book or two)–other than its importance in the history of self-publishing.
Part of my problem with the humor is that I feel like they're the kind of jokes I myself would or could write (or would have at some point in my life). Although, I'm egocentric enough to find myself funny–when I see other people doing it, it never impresses me. Humor, to me, is based on surprise somewhat–and I never was surprised by the jokes in Cerebus.
"Cerebus worries about his lack of genitalia"
Someone misinformed you.
Long after High Society Astoria reveals to Cerebus that he is an hermaphrodite and thus has both male and female genitalia.
There's probably a sentence or two where Cerebus is a little freaked out by this but on the whole Sim chose not to make much of it. Read anything you like into that.
His avoidance of women in early issues should perhaps be put in context that he's a relatively young aardvark at that point and might have been a little overwhelmed by nutty Sophia throwing herself at him. Not that such is in the text but I think it makes as much sense as reading any hetero-hesitation as "gay."
C does have functional male genitalia which are implicitly used in his later marriage to Sophia and explicitly in his rape of Astoria.
Hey Gene. I could just be misremembering, actually. In any case, thanks for the info.
Here's some food for thought.
Going back to the Clark Kent/girl-man thing, its actually pretty inconsistent.
Clark, unlike Peter, actually runs TO the woman in the form of Superman. Beating up other men is how he gets the attention from Lois he can't get as Clark Kent. (And being in danger is how she gets his attention)
If you look at the first Superman movie, the ending has Superman disobeying his patriarchal father and reversing time itself to save his true love, which is pretty much the opposite of the values you discuss in these essays.
But if you go on to Superman 2, the hero obeys his father in losing his powers and becoming an effeminate girly-man because he loves Lois too much. Its exactly the opposite theme.
The image of Supeman with the coyboy getup is pretty selective evidence. Silver age stories were probably just as likely to imply that he had a forbidden crush for his cousin Supergirl than for Jimmy.
Superman's the one super character whose girlfriend is a part of the book from day one. He has hangups involving her but she's a more important presence in his life than any man or father figure.
The unreciprocated crush is as much a theme in Superman as it is in Cardcaptor Sakura. Enough so that the 90s Lois and Clark show actually recasted the story as a romantic comedy, giving Lois top billing.
I think the reading of Clark Kent/Superman that makes the most sense is that Clark Kent is the real person and Superman is his fantasy life. He's a dweebish bookworm who can't get the pretty girl at the office to give him the time of day, so he creates this fantasy life where he is the ultimate masculine figure and earns her adoration by beating up men who threaten her.
Clark Kent might be effeminate and puny, but he's unquestioningly heterosexual. If you go back to Action Comics #1, Clark doesn't walk out on Lois, she walks on out on him for not being manly enough.
Yeah, he has the "hidden in the closet" sort of secret, but my reading is that its his fantasy life.
Even Morrison said that one of the problems in their relationship is Lois can't love Clark like she loves Superman.
Hey Pallas. That's an interesting argument. I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that Luthor (and various villains) are more important to Superman's psyche than Lois is.
I think you're onto something with the movies and TV shows though. Both of those are much more invested in romance than the comics generally are, it seems to me. Which makes sense, since I think both of those are much more geared towards a female audience.
With regards to Cardcaptor Sakura, it's worth noting that the anime version played down the teacher-student relationship, and the Americanized dubbing removed all homosexual innuendo.
We've talked about how conservative American comics are compared to other media, but the reverse seems to be true in Japan.
The early Siegel/Shuster stories are obviously homoerotic and misogynist in my opinion. Clark wants Lois is rejected by her–and then Superman gets to continuously reject Lois. Clark gets to love the ideal male body (Supes' and, I guess, his own) and reject/scorn "woman" in the form of Lois. Patriarchy is affirmed and Lois is pretty clearly an "inferior being" who is always getting trouble. It's a classic Sedgwick love triangle–except two of the participants are supposedly the same guy. Bifurcation couldn't be clearer here.
Yeah, that's my take too…though I think Pallas is right that it's a different deal with the Christopher Reeve movie; the romance is played much more for romance rather than for sadistic/masochistic thrills.
I need to see that movie again, maybe. I remember quite liking it years ago, but it's been a while.
"based on the first book, I don't get why anyone cares about Cerebus"
If I'd only read the first book, I wouldn't get why anybody cares about Cerebus either. It's not very good and shows little sign of the qualities that later earned the series critical acclaim. (Though if you didn't think Elrod was funny, that's a bad sign.)
It's in "Church and State" that Sim begins writing like the whole series is a 300-isssue graphic novel, as he asserted. It's also there that the series becomes more than just a series of parodies (though that aspect remains important) and that Sim starts introducing recurring characters who aren't just one-joke characters.
The most fully realized of these characters are women, and in this period Sim's portrayals of women display little or no trace of his later misogyny. In fact, before Sim's misogyny became infamous, he was regarded as one of the best writers of female characters.
That said, I'm not a big fan of "High Society." "Church and State" and "Jaka's Story" are better. The latter is probably the series' high point, though I can't be sure, since I stopped reading not too long after.
Yeah…Elrod…that's exactly the kind of joke I was making in my teen years. I get it…but I don't laugh at it. I'll try more Cerebus if it turns up at my library. That's where I got the first one.
I rewatched the Reeve movies (I and II) a year ago or so (after Superman Returns which is basically a tribute to the first film). The first one stands up pretty well. It's a bit slow compared to modern superhero movies–but I prefer that to some degree. The second one wasn't as good as I remembered. I remember thinking it was really funny when I first saw it, but the jokes seemed pretty lame the second time round.
Movies in general from this period don't hold up all that well for me, though. Even Animal House doesn't feel that funny anymore. Maybe I've lost my sense of humor.
I never read all the way to the end of the "Cardcaptor Sakura" manga. (The anime, or at least the bowdlerized version of it shown on U.S. TV, omits the revelation about the distinctively shoujo relationship-threatening consequences of evil's triumph.) So I was surprised to discover that the dire fate that threatens the lead characters in "CCS" is almost exactly what actually befalls the alternate-world Sakura who is the female lead in CLAMP's much more recent (and still ongoing) "Tsubasa: reSERVoir Chronicle." That is, the "Tsubasa" Sakura–a princess who has grown up with, and fallen in (mutual) love with, Syaoran, who in this alternate universe is the polite, hardworking son of a local archeologist, rather than her prickly, initially obnoxious rival at capturing magical cards, as in "CCS"–accidentally triggers a magical portal that uses her life force to activate itself, leaving her bereft of both memories and consciousness. When the frantic Syaoran appeals to Youko the time-space witch for help in reversing Sakura's Sleeping Beauty/Snow White-like coma, Youko informs him that the only way to revive the princess is to travel from one dimension to another tracking down the magical feathers her memories have been turned into. However, Syaoran will not be able to do this unless Princess Sakura's memories of her previous knowledge of and feelings for Syaoran himself are sacrificed. I.e., even if they get all the feathers back, Sakura will have lost all previous memory of Syaoran, the person she cares about most–who, in this version of the story, is also the person who cares the most about her.
Of course, as they and their companions travel from one alternate universe to another on their quest, the amnesiac Sakura begins to fall in like, and possibly in love, with Syaoran all over again. So at least at the point I've read up to, this shoujo-style horrific fate turns out not to be quite as (emotionally) world-ending as its presentation in the original Card Captor Sakura manga apparently suggests.
Hey Margaret. Thanks for the summary. I keep half meaning to try more Clamp and not quite getting to it. I'll probably read Tsubasa before more Cerebus, though!
Really fascinating.
I disagree that what you call flashbacks in Jimmy Corrigan are flashbacks. I see them as Jimmy's fantasies. He would never dress and act that way himself, but he wishes he could. This doesn't change your argument at all, because it still means he is worried about his heterosexuality. This is further emphasized by what Jimmy's doing with the straw in the scene you post. Freudian. Actually, Clowes mentions the same kind of straw action in one of his comics, come the think of it.
But this heterosexual anxiety is conscious in Ware's work. It's a theme he's exploring, not an undercurrent that is leaking through. So while I agree that it is a theme in a lot of American comics, I think Ware is much more conscious and critical of it than you suggest.
Keep in mind that the only conversation that Jimmy has with a woman who's not a member of his family is at the end when he is crying. So it's only when he's given up clutching at his fantasies about masculinity that he can make a connection with a woman. Of course that last image of Superman and the young Jimmy complicates things.
And on that page where Jimmy and his father are coming out of the mouth, which you call "male self-birth," Jimmy is having a little "birth" of his own. Again, I think Ware is much more playful with these concepts than you seem to give him credit for.
Hey Nick. The suggestion that it's a fantasy makes sense — and that does change the dynamic somewhat. And the anal connotations of the toilet scene (with the link to male birth) are, as you say, probably intentional.
I think Ware is definitely talking about masculinity; as I said, I think there's actually a critique and a satire of the male super-hero dynamic in some of his work. I don't think he stops being aware of what he's doing, but I think there's a shift to a more elegaic and sentimental approach, something that looks like nostalgia. There's a shift from satirizing the comic-book male-male interactions to ironizing them — the second working, it seems to me, as a way to distance the issues while still sentimetalizing them for the book's main emotional effects.
I guess I feel like in Jimmy Corrigan he's trying to have his cake and eat it too in a way; he's not unaware of the dynamic, I'd agree, but that doesn't mean that he isn't still relying on them in a way not all that dissimilar to Spider-Man of Superman (if that makes sense.)
"The early Siegel/Shuster stories are obviously homoerotic and misogynist in my opinion. Clark wants Lois is rejected by her–and then Superman gets to continuously reject Lois. Clark gets to love the ideal male body (Supes' and, I guess, his own) and reject/scorn "woman" in the form of Lois."
I think its a real stretch to say that because Clark can take pleasure in his own super powers, he's somehow gay, or that he can have a homoerotic desire for himself, or, if you want to imagine Clark and Superman are two different people, for somebody he never even sees or interacts with.
I think there's clearly a real ambivalence towards Lois in those early stories, so a can buy a misogynistic reading, but homoerotic seems a bit of a stretch to me.
In those early issues, there's only literally one recurring male character, Luther isn't even an invention yet… but whatever, I haven't read "Sedgwick" either.
As for the movies, Superman 1 is a lot of fun, and more lukewarm on Superman 2 (but enjoy Luther's campiness throughout)and I think there's definitely a real warmth in the way the actors play Clark and Lois's interaction is played.
I think there's a fairly obvious analogy to the closet in the Superman/Clark dynamic. And it's not too hard to see some homoerotic elements if you see Superman as Clark's fantasy of perfect maleness. Wanting to be and wanting simply aren't that far apart. (I don't think the relationships with the bad guys necessarily need to be continuing either; Superman's physical interactions with his enemies are just a lot more intense and a lot more focused on than his physical relationships with women.)
The Sedgwick we're talking about is Eve Sedgwick, a really smart writer and theorist. Between Men is I think her best known book. She's great.
I think Epistemology of the Closet is equally well known.
The whole Clark/Lois dynamic in the early stories (I've read the first 3-4 years worth of Superman stories) is all about Superman drawing Lois' attention–making her "want" him (by saving her repeatedly, etc.) and then scornfully turning her down…just as she turns him down when he's Clark. This is classic revenge fantasy by scorned (nerdy) men (as Siegel, esp., was). The woman-hating element of it is palpable. So…Lois/women are, in some sense, object(s) of desire–but it's kind of weird (although obviously they're not going to have any sex scenes) that when Superman could easily bag Lois, he prefers to take revenge on her and scorn her. This not only expresses a kind of woman hating, but shows that having the ideal male body (and superpowers) is a more important fantasy to achieve than actually achieving heterosexual success. Combine this with all the lingering looks at Supes without his shirt in these early stories and the homoerotic element comes to light. Again–it's a closeted thing, which is what makes it all about anxiety over masculinity, and not really a "straight" gay narrative (as if such a thing could exist).
Obviously, through the years, Lois becomes more attainable, less "bitchy," etc…and the desire to scorn her is less an issue…So maybe the misogyny and homoeroticism is less obvious in later years–but the first couple years of Supes stories is actually a fairly useful illustration of the Sedgwick theory, it's so obvious.
Male power established and consolidated…check. Misogyny…check. Homoeroticism…check. The only thing missing is any obvious homophobia, I guess…but Lois' mistreatment of "feminized" Clark probably qualifies.
I think Clark is a pretty obvious gay/Jewish despised stereotype….
"I don't think the relationships with the bad guys necessarily need to be continuing either; Superman's physical interactions with his enemies are just a lot more intense and a lot more focused on than his physical relationships with women."
Please forgive this long rambly post:
Superman is battling other men in order to win reproductive rights to the girl, who only is interested in him due to his masculine strength providing the best genes to ensure her children have the greatest chance of survival. If he successfully proves himself to the girl and mates with her, the story is over, so its always stuck at the fighting stage.
(Your CCS example of the characters love is when the was presumably near the end. American comics don't tend to end.)
Clark is the ultimate frustrated heterosexual man forced to pretend to be civilized in today's civilized society. The law say he can't beat up a romantic rival to get the girl, he can't kill a gazelle and hand it to her to prove how much he loves her, he can't even buy her lavish gifts because she's a career woman, has her own money, and won't care, so he's stuttering and anxious because he doesn't know what to do.
Now I don't really believe that, I kind of pulled it out of thin air, but I think its no less plausable. Lois's tastes in men seem pretty primal in those early stories "MUST FIND STRONG MATE" seems to be the extent of it. "CLARK IS NOT STRONG MATE, REJECT. SUPERMAN IS STRONG MATE, ACCEPT!" seems to be about it.
What I'm guessing here is that Sedgwick is clearly an author, and a school of thought, highly influenced- directly or indirectly- by Freud. If you believe that every human activity is inherently a sexually motivated activity- then you are going to see, well, pretty much any story that contain two male characters as somewhat homoerotic.
Look, those two battling men are touching each other! How gay! Look, those two men dislike each other, how gay (because they are "repressed" or whatever)! Look, those two man enjoy each other's company, how gay!
I think if you asked Superman why he was fighting, he would tell you he wanted to stop the bad guy from blowing up a bridge or whatever, because its wrong, or some similarly simple explanation.
You have to do a Freudian reading to say "Oh, Superman! How naive you are! You are so completely gay for that villain, and you've repressed your feelings so deeply, that you can't even admit how completely, flamboyantly gay you are!"
I get the impression that "homoerotic" is a very vague term in this context- and also that the culture that produced and enjoyed Superman probably didn't consider him homoerotic.
I think there is something a bit problematic about this "I know something you don't about your self, because I am SOOOOOOO much smarter." line of thinking with Freud, when any criticism is taken as "repression" and obvious denial about the proclamations coming from Freud's big, wonderful, superior brain.
And, yeah, there is something weird and unhealthy about Superman's relationship with Lois in many incarnations of the story, most recently in Superman Returns- he is stalking her, living apart from her, and unable to sufficiently be with her and his son. It's weird. The Grant Morrison version seems emotionally stunted as well.
Dr. Mahatten is actually a terrific take on this aspect of Superman. Vaguely heterosexual, yet extremely, and increasingly, emotionally distant.
Usually, in genre stories, in order to prevent the characters from successfully getting together, and removing the sexual tension- I think one or more of them have to be emotionally stunted to some extent.
Even in manga, the author always tends to contrive a reason the characters don't just get together- in Cardcapter Sakura- as i recall- its because people with magical powers are attracted to each other regardless of gender, so that Sakura and Li are led away from each other by various gay crushes until they get together.
Also, Sakura has too much of an age difference with half of her love interests.
Because, you know, children probably don't tend to have deep, romantic relationships with other children, and these stories are largely aimed at children, especially in the original incarnation.
Do you really expect Superman to settle down with Lois and raise a family in a children's story?
If Peter Parker doesn't run away from Liz, where's the dramatic tension?
Peter likes Liz but has to run away to save the world. Drama.
Reed likes Sue but she likes Namor (A love triangle. Apparently love triangles are all totally gay!) Drama!
Ben likes Alicia but is too self loathing to be with her. (Self loathing= secretly gay!) Drama.
Doom wear's a mask, which is totally gay, and hates Reed, which is also totally gay!
Except, grant Morrison says that Doctor Doom is Reed's ID- which would mean so the whole things is, i guess, a battle over self control. A completely contradictory theory. Also based on freud.
These theories are pretty cheap. I can totally see myself using them in some other post if it makes me feel smart.
But yeah, Batman, he's totally gay.
"that when Superman could easily bag Lois, he prefers to take revenge on her and scorn her"
Lois can't keep her hands off Superman. If Superman bags her, we have a porno comic, and the publisher isn't going to publish that, that the children are not going to be allowed to read it.
Maybe he actually does want to "bag" her. How confident can we be we know what's going on here?
If superman= id, and Clark is the superergo, then turning into Clark Kent represents restraint.
In fact, Clark's "secret identity" that he is concealing is his ID, namely, his animalistic heterosexual desires.
These sorts of Freudian theories are REALLY easy to put together.
Sedgwick is certainly indebted to Freud. She uses him more in terms of social and political interactions, rather than personal psychological ones (which I find more appealing.)
One of the thing about the closet is it's all about knowledge and secrets. The dynamic you're talking about with Freud (I know something you don't), is part of how the closet works.
I think it's also a pretty powerful explanatory tool for how masculinity in general, and these stories in particular, work. Your evolutionary explanation doesn't explain, for example, why Superman is so eager to reject Lois; or why he wears a skin-tight costume; or why Clark is so nebbishy; or why (to go broader) Jewish and Asian masculinity is so often feminized or linked to homosexuality. Or why male-bonding is so often cemented with gay jokes…and so forth.
Reed/Doom as one person is not at all contradictory with Sedgwick's theory. Masculinity is bifurcated; men both identify with controlling/strong masculinity and feel inadequate or alienated form it. So you hate and desire and embrace and are cast out of patriarchal power, which makes you gay (in that you love the patriarch) and gay (in that you are feminized by being unable to access patriarchal power.) Reed can love/hate his other self Doom just as Clark love/hates his other self Superman — and yes, that dynamic is very much about homosexual panic.
"also that the culture that produced and enjoyed Superman probably didn't consider him homoerotic."
That's the closet! People enjoy the closet because they don't know aobut it!
But don't be so sure about Siegel and Shuster; they were definitely interested in various kinds of perversion. I think assuming they were entirely naive about this kind of dynamic is a mistake.
Also…why does drama have to center around agonized male-male conflict and self-denial and refusing the girl? You can have lots and lots of drama around other kinds of stories (Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Nana, etc. etc.) Male genre literature works in certain ways. It's not just because they want drama; it's because they think of drama in a certain kind of way.
Cerebus is a pretty interesting series, and seeing Sim work out his thoughts and feelings on the page can be fascinating. It's weird to look at the earlier stuff in light of the later meltdown, although at least some of it had to always be there. That's how mental illness works; you don't just suddenly "go crazy", it's a brain chemistry issue that affects you forever, and at some point in Sim's life, it went out of his control. I've heard people say that his issues with women never actually enter the main narrative, but I don't agree with that; there's at least some points where he seems to have his characters agree with him that women are evil and manipulative. It can still be a fascinating book though, especially when he starts doing some experimentation with artistic techniques and layouts, and the lettering is probably the most expressive comics text of all time.
Of course, I haven't even finished reading the thing; I've only gotten through Rick's Story. Maybe someday I'll get to the rest of it. I do think the Jaka's Story is the high point; that one has some really interesting ideas about literature and gender relations, and the next story, Melmoth, is kind of bizarre, an examination of the end of Oscar Wilde's life, which seems completely incongruous both with the narrative of the series and Sim's views about homosexuality. I totally don't get it, but it's interesting nonetheless.
So, yes, I also vote for Noah to read the whole damn thing and write about it, since I would love to see what insights he could bring. I realize it's probably not going to happen anytime soon, but I can always wish.
"In fact, Clark's "secret identity" that he is concealing is his ID, namely, his animalistic heterosexual desires."
But that works perfectly with Sedgwick's theories! Superman as uber-heterosexual fits perfectly with Superman as kind of gay — because uber-masculinity is by its nature gay (see bodybuilders.)
If you're going to talk about how easy it is to present alternate theories, you are going to need to come up with a theory that actually contradicts Sedgwick's. So far, you're just reiterating and reinforcing her theories while claiming you're doing no such thing…which in turn kind of reinforces her theories.
"That's the closet! People enjoy the closet because they don't know aobut it!"
"If you're going to talk about how easy it is to present alternate theories, you are going to need to come up with a theory that actually contradicts Sedgwick's."
Freudian theories cannot be proven or disproven. They are inherently unscientific, because there is no test than can be made to disprove them. These days they are more popular among literary critics than psychologists, as psychologists generally prefer using the scientific method.
(These are not my own thoughts, but Professor Robinson on the Great ideas of Psychology audio/video course)
A man grows up to marry a woman like his mother. This validates Freud, the freudian says, because the man clearly has an oedipal complex.
If, instead, the man goes on to marry someone completely unlike his mother, aha!, Freud is validated yet again, because the man clearly had a castration complex which led to him marrying someone unlike his mother.
The man says he finds, in his experience, that he is not quite so influenced by sex at Mr. Freud would claim. AHA, Freud is validated yet again, because that dope is repressing his desire.
This essay of your seems pretty similar. Although you begrudgingly acknowledge the instances of heterosexuality in these stories in the beginning, even the heterosexual dynamics become evidence of how homoerotic everything is.
So my reaction to these weird terms you're throwing out there, "bifurcated" id/ego =homoerotic reaction to the patriarchy (or whatever) is sort of a yawn.
So, you seem to be indicating to me, Sedgwick invented enough literary-feminist-psychobabble to cover every conceivable situation in popular western culture? So what?
Earlier, I thought it was funny when Eric B. wrote "It's a classic Sedgwick love triangle–except two of the participants are supposedly the same guy."
So, it's a classic Sedgwick love triangle- except in the ways that it isn't???
Aha, Sedgwick is right again??
I haven't been inundated to this method of thought, so it seemed pretty natural to me than a man's internal struggles are not homoerotic, but apparently Sedgwick's psuedo-science-whatever you want to call it- includes the concept that internal struggles are homoerotic, so every story with an internal struggle is, i guess, kind of gay.
Ok, great. Whatever.
Musing on manga:
Were you actually implying in this essay that ranma is not like the western patriarchal stuff?
Man man with a hidden, closeted secret? Rejects Akane, long, drawn out rivalry with Rouga? Constantly fleeing from women and refusing to marry them? Ranma is almost like Cerebus, in that part of the joke is he's acts all male all the time, even when he has woman parts.
From the author who did Uresai Yatsura, about a man who hits on women until they like him too much, at which point he runs off and picks another woman? Always fleeing from a hot alien girl?
At lot of shoujo has explicitly lesbian subtexts. There doesn't seem to be the same element of self conflict, but, actually, guilt is usually associated with Jewish culture, also there's a theory that western cultures are guilt based culture whereas eastern cultures are shamed based, which would explain the difference.
The theory is that in Japan, for example, you would only feel bad if you are caught doing something culturally unacceptable. In the west, the christian tradition would have you feel guilty about your thoughts, whether you are caught or not, which would explain the self loathing.
Jews don't believe in the same approach to confessing for sins, but their culture is frequently considered more guilt based than Christianity, for whatever reason.
I'm not clear how a Jewish mother stereotypically saying "So you want to be a comedian. Fine, go ahead, if you want to you break your mother's heart!" is a sign of oppression from Patriarchal western culture, but presumably Sedgwick has a theory for that as well.
'So far, you're just reiterating and reinforcing her theories while claiming you're doing no such thing…which in turn kind of reinforces her theories."
I suspect these theories- filled with circular reasoning- tend to be *remarkably* ego stroking for the people who buy into them.
Certainly, for a Freudian, the fact that someone refuses to accept the theory is taken as evidence that the Freudian was correct. Repression, resistance, reinforcement, etc.
Yep, knew you were going to say that.
The problem is that you actually do present evidence which suggests that the dynamic doesn't work in some cases; for example, the Superman movies. I think you're right there that Sedgwick's formulation isn't applicable; there's much more interest in romance, and the clark/superman relationship seems a lot less fraught. Same for the Lois and Clark series. The problem isn't that you can't find cases where her theory doesn't apply; the problem is that your contradictory examples for mainstream super-hero comics just aren't nearly as convincing as you'd like them to be.
Moreover…you don't really seem to get most of what I'm saying in the essay. I presume this is because you're just not interested, which is fine, obviously (though a lot of words expended on something you're not interested in!) The idea that heterosexual identity is always collapsing into homosexual identity isn't some sort of trick to undermine your argument. It's the central thesis of the essay. Complaining that I'm unfairly shifting terms on you, therefore, seems a little silly.
For Ranma, I'm actually suggesting that manga is a lot more out in its gayness; Ranma's closet is a lot more explicit, and thus (contradictorily) a lot less like a closet, in that it's less repressed. The gender slippage in shojo is a lot more directly celebrated/enjoyed; it's more furtive and anxious in super-hero comics.
You might actually want to read Sedgwick at some point. Her theories are pretty specific; they're about male relationships and male identities within the context of cultures where homosexuality is seen as sinful or shameful. She doesn't talk about Judaism or guilt as far as I've seen.
You have read Freud, right? I mean, you can certainly dismiss him without reading him if you'd like…but it's kind of a shame if you do. He's a great writer, among other things. I have problems with him too, but I've definitely enjoyed reading his books, and learned stuff from them.
"I suspect these theories- filled with circular reasoning- tend to be *remarkably* ego stroking for the people who buy into them."
Right, and you're not stroking your own ego by your whole "I don't even need to understand what your saying in order to know this is wrong and what you get out of it" skeptical stance. Get real.
Or, you know, if you don't want to get real, at least admit that your ego-stroking theories are based on pop-Freudianism.
I should point out, as long as I'm nattering, that Sedgwick doesn't present herself as a scientist, as Freud did. Her analysis is social and cultural; she's saying this stuff works this way in a particular society given particular attitudes and givens — she makes no claims that it's hard-wired or based on universal human experience the way Freud does.
"Moreover…you don't really seem to get most of what I'm saying in the essay. I presume this is because you're just not interested, which is fine, obviously (though a lot of words expended on something you're not interested in!)"
I started out generally feeling I understood the main points you've made in the two part essay, but the essay, as presented, didn't seem to presume knowledge of a canon of feminist scholarship. But honestly, the more I think about it, the more I feel I understand very little of it.
"Her theories are pretty specific; they're about male relationships and male identities within the context of cultures where homosexualit."
I think what I'm unclear about is some of your (or her) ground assumptions:
Such as what "homoerotic" means in this context?
What "erotic" means?
Is there such a thing as platonic friendship, or only "erotic" friendship?
Is the appreciation of a parent towards a child inherently "erotic"? (Hey, you brought up the Batman surrogate father examples, not me!)
Is it possible to appreciate aesthetic qualities without that appreciation being "erotic"?
Is it possible to be “misogynist” without also being “homosexual”?
Is it possible to enjoy one’s body without that enjoyment being "homoerotic?"
Are you using "erotic" in a inner state of mind context, or some term of art completely devoid the common meaning of a person’s inner state of mind? In other words, can my friendship with another man be “homoerotic” if I subjectively feel no sexual desire towards that man at all? If so, are you assuming that part of my mind is indeed unconsciously attracted to this man, or are you just saying that term has no connection to my subject feelings at all, being instead a sociological term of art?
And do people in this canon of thought agree with what they mean by these terms?
"Or, you know, if you don't want to get real, at least admit that your ego-stroking theories are based on pop-Freudianism."
I take full responsibility for any abuse of Freudian theories I've stated here, but no responsibility for the idea that Freud did not utilize the scientific method or that his theories are not disprovable. That comes from the Daniel N. Robinson psychology lecture, and he was president of the American Psychological Association Division of the History of Psychology, so I presume his opinion is, at least, informed.
I believe the example of marrying someone like your mother/ not like your mother comes straight from the lecture, if i recall correctly, but the other inventions were my own.
"The problem is that you actually do present evidence which suggests that the dynamic doesn't work in some cases; for example, the Superman movies."
You mean the movies where:
1. Hero wears tights
2. Hero doesn't sleep with girl
3. hero has a closeted identity
4. Hero is both puny/ effeminate and hyper masculine
5. Hero has significant relationship with male villain.
6. Prominent father figures, but no prominent mother figures.
7. A cosmology devoid of the feminine. the father creates the rocket which gives birth to Superman. Like your discussion of men giving birth to men in the essay. Line about father to the son, Christ symbolism.
Honestly, the terms of debate seem vague enough to me that I think you could easily say Superman 1 is homoerotic. I don't see how I can really have proved anything.
I certainly think the Superman films are less ambivalent towards women than the early comics, but you could probably say that Spider-man comics as well, or any number of things.
Joe Shuster was obsessed with bodybuilding magazines (see Jones' Men of Tomorrow)
I'll just respond to one of Pallas' questions…
Sedgwick's point (derived partially from Claude Levi-Strauss' account of kinship systems) is that we live in a patriarchal culture, where men have the power and are interested in maintaining that power. One of the ways in which this done is in the "trading" of women. Marriage serves a central function in cementing bonds between two families, consolidating patriarchal power, by joining two or more men in "homosocial" bonds. Women traditionally had no power in marriage (obviously this changes post 19th century) and so become "objects of exchange." So…marriage itself is a weird structure–less about sex than about power and perpetuating bonds between families "ruled" by men. So…women become mediators of "relationships" between men. This reverses some old second-wave feminist accounts of "feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice." Instead, its "patriarchy is the theory, homo- bonds is the practice." This is how she links homophobia with misogyny. Women are treated as object in this model…but necessary objects. Without marriage (and therefore love and heterosexuality), you have no consolidation of power. Because of this "necessity" (just a structure–no "natural" reason why its necessary other than reproduction, which doesn't require marriage, just sex)–homophobia develops as a part of patriarchal culture. Once marriage becomes important to power/economic structures, it must be maintained by powers-that-be and one of the ways that happens is a discouragement of same-sex relationships. So…misogyny and homophobia are linked…but they are also linked to homoeroticism (which isn't always erotic, but often is), since the system requires (yes) the repression of homosexual sex, but also requires close bonds "between men." It's convincing to me more because of the links to Levi-Strauss account of kinship…an anthropological theory that is fairly widely accepted as helping to explain various "taboos" against certain kinds of marriage in a variety of different cultures/societies. I think there is some reliance on Freud, but the "repression" is less internal/psychological and more "socially necessary" to perpetuate a certain kind of culture. We don't repress homosexual desires because of an overactive superego–but because we know society frowns on it and we can be gay-bashed for it, etc. I feel like I didn't explain this that well…but I've got a forthcoming article that discusses it!
I think you can certainly argue for homoerotic/closeted dynamics in anything having to do with Superman; as you say, the wearing tights and having a secret thing is pretty important.
In terms of the kind of agonized male-bonding as the primary emotional motivator, though…I think you're right (in what you said initially) that the Clark-Lois relationship takes up more emotional space in the movies, and that the split between Clark and Superman is less than in the comics. Reeve in the movie seems more aware of Clark as an act; in the initial comics, it's really like they're two different people.
In other words, just having it be gay isn't exactly the issue; it's how homosexuality is used and how the bonds between men are worked out. In that sense, the dynamic I'm talking about works a lot better for Siegel/Shuster than it does for the Superman movies.
Freud didn't use the scientific method; his claims to the contrary are clearly silly. He's more a poet or a philosopher than a scientist. But just because something isn't provable doesn't mean its false, or that it isn't valuable.
______
Your other questions are all interesting. Doubt I can deal with them all, but I'll try to answer some later tonight if I get a chance.
Okay, I've been thinking more about this, and I think if I'm going to try to formulate a philosophical answer to the question of erotics and human interaction, I may need a couple of days. I'll probably have a post on it next week.
Thanks for the discussion by the way, Pallas. It's helped me connect up a couple of stray thoughts I've had lying about for a bit.
Eric, that helped a lot, thanks.
Yeah, that's a theory to explain western culture, so it's hardly surprising that Noah has found items that match the theory in Western Culture. The theory was tailored to Western culture to begin with.
Noah:
"In terms of the kind of agonized male-bonding as the primary emotional motivator, though…I think you're right (in what you said initially) that the Clark-Lois relationship takes up more emotional space in the movies, and that the split between Clark and Superman is less than in the comics.
Reeve in the movie seems more aware of Clark as an act; in the initial comics, it's really like they're two different people."
I don't get a misogynist vibe or a "bifurcated" vibe from the 1950s Superman tv show either, from what I recall from it and from this clip I found on Youtube, if you want to take a look, go about 7:30 in for the Clark/ Lois banter, this is from the pilot:
http://www.youtube.com/user/normandytiger#p/u/3/zJAUPizIcUc
Clark is very obviously Superman and Lois pretty much suspects it. Clark seems very warm, and Superman does as well. I haven't read much about the Superman comics around that time period, so I don't know that I can really speculate on how different this is from the comics, but I don't get the impression that the 1950s tv version is filled with self doubt or agonizes over his masculinity.
Yes; I actually remember hearing that they sometimes almost forgot to put Superman in the 50s TV show. It was much more a team adventure with romance, like Nick and Nora or something like that.
Think about the medium…male TV and movie stars are by definition macho and attractive to women. Comics writer/artists/readers hardly fall in the same category
'Think about the medium…male TV and movie stars are by definition macho and attractive to women. Comics writer/artists/readers hardly fall in the same category"
Not a bad point. Peter Parker isn't often as unattractive as Noah implies in the panel he chose, though. In the second year, Parker already loses the glasses and beats Flash Thompson in a boxing match as Parker.
When Ditko leaves, he's drawn far better looking. There seems to be a recurring interest in romance in the book, though i havn't read the "Gwen Stacy" issues.
I think that's right; post-Ditko, it moves more towards romance (or maybe towards Fanny) and the male-male obsessions I'm talking about here are somewhat tamped down — though not eliminated altogether, I don't think.
Parker gets downright rugged and attractive under Romita (or is it Busceman?) There's one story I read where Parker is almost stalked by Mary Jane, while in the middle of his ongoing drama with Gwen Stacy (and I think Betty whatsername is still hovering around the background). Spidey strikes me as much less fodder for this kind of thing than Superman or Batman. No kid sidekick, for instance. It obviously works for any male superhero if they have a secret identity to some degree however.
"The anime, or at least the bowdlerized version of it shown on U.S. TV, omits the revelation about the distinctively shoujo relationship-threatening consequences of evil's triumph."
The original anime, which you can get subtitled on DVD (look for the ones labelled "Cardcaptor Sakura"; avoid the ones labelled "Cardcaptors," which are the butchered U.S. TV version) does have this revelation. In fact, the anime goes further, showing a brief glimpse of the world where the "evil" has happened.
"So I was surprised to discover that the dire fate that threatens the lead characters in "CCS" is almost exactly what actually befalls the alternate-world Sakura who is the female lead in CLAMP's much more recent (and still ongoing) "Tsubasa: reSERVoir Chronicle.""
Huh. I never noticed that before. I wouldn't recommend making Tsubasa one's next CLAMP series after CCS, though. For one thing, it's CLAMP's version of a mega-crossover, which alternate-universe versions of characters from all their series. You don't have to have read all these series to follow Tsubasa, but it probably helps. (It would certainly help in keeping track of the many characters.) For another, it's very long: complete at twenty-eight volumes in Japan, according to Wikipedia.
Actually, I don't think there's any CLAMP series other than CCS that I'd recommend unreservedly. I like Chobits, but you do have to get beyond the adolescent-male-fantasy setup. Legal Drug is, I believe, the series in which the gay overtones are most explicit, but CLAMP abandoned it unfinished after three volumes. And I didn't find those three volumes that impressive. XXXholic is pretty good; it crosses over with Tsubasa, but you can pretty much ignore that.
I have two Clamp art books (clamp north and clamp south) which are amazing, and probably the best thing I'll ever see of theirs; I just like their art a lot more than their stories, in general.
In that case you might like XXXholic (loads of swirly stuff) or Clover.
Thanks Adam. And, hey, I just figured out who you are. It's nice to see you here; I like your writing.
Thanks. I wish I wrote as well as you. Or as regularly, for that matter.
Aw, thanks.
The writing regularly is easier when you don't feel you actually need to know what you're talking about.
My response to Pallas' questions in this comment thread is now online as here.
This thread is old, but I've got to post to point out that Pallas' evo-psych is somewhere between "oversimplified" and "wrong".
He (?) said:
"Superman is battling other men in order to win reproductive rights to the girl, who is only interested in him due to his masculine strength providing the best genes to ensure her children have the greatest chance of survival."
Women overwhelmingly don't like manly macho hypermasculine men, and insofar as there is selective evolutionary pressure on men to be hypermasculine, it is specifically so that they will be able to compete with other men for the ability override the woman's preferences. I left a longer comment on this point over at The Archetypal Archive's response post on this post; the basic point is that Superman, and superheroes in general, are a man's fantasy of masculinity, not a woman's fantasy of the ideal man. Lois Lane wants Superman because he's Siegel et al's perfect man, and that has to include getting the girl (or getting the chance to reject the girl, maybe).
Oh, that's nice. In that reading, Siegel and Shuster are actually cross-identifying with Lois Lane, who is a stand-in for the (homoerotically charged) male reader. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes much sense.
Boy will Gene hate that.
I didn't see JR's post until recently but have since devoted a blogpost to my response here:
http://arche-arc.blogspot.com/2009/11/thymos-be-de-place-part-2.html
I have responded to Mr Phillips' post on his site. And so the circle of blog-life continues.
I just stumbled across this article, and I have to say that, while I don't agree with all of Noah's conclusions, I do find it a fascinating work. However, I wanted to point out something in the page you posted from Corrigan: I read the first tier of panels not as an actual, real-world flashback, but as an imaginary, wishful thinking sequence. There's a couple more sequences in the book where Jimmy places himself–and sometimes his father as well–in a different world, where he can be the powerful, self-assured, above all masculine man he's always wanted to be (and felt threatened by). Not sure if this changes your analysis at all, but I wanted to bring it up.
Hey Ted. A couple of other people noted that as well. I don't know that it changes the analysis hugely..but, yeah, it's certainly worth noting.