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Joined: May 31, 2002 Posts: 637 Location: Planet Mongo
Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 2:10 pm Post subject: Re: Women in comics - Round Table
By harnessing my most dysfunctional thoughts, insecurities, beliefs, personality quirks, personality flaws, contradictions, friends, relatives, aquaitances, and personal experiences for creative use, I might acheive my 15 minutes of fame.
Most successful creative people are consiously, or unconsiously, in touch with their own dysfunctionality. It doesn't matter what type of material you're trying to create. Ernie Hemmingway, Eugene O'Neal, Vincent Van Gough, Mozart, Socrates, Jerry Seinfeld, and Chuck Jones all had an awareness of their own dysfunctionality.........or you should at least listen to your dog when he tells to you to "do things"..........."horrible things". My dog tells me you should go on a camping trip to start.
Last edited by Hasdrubal on Sun Apr 02, 2006 3:25 pm; edited 1 time in total
I thought it was my functional self that told me to do horrible things ...
At one point in my work people would say 'oooh! That's a bit dark' which surprised me as I thought I'd toned it down considerable.
The problem with delving too deep into that side of things is partly, as my ma says 'If something is repressed there's probably a good reason for it', but mainly because, (in the art world at least), you then get into the BritArt cycle of having to up the ante all the time - Damien's put a dead cows head in a box with a load of maggots so I've got to think of something even more disgusting. This not only brutalises the artist and viewer but worse, leads to work that is boring and inauthentic.
Having said which it wouldn't do for everything to be kittens and daffodils.
Hasdrubal, a camping trip? Have mercy. What on earth good would that do?
I think your dog just likes the idea of making me suffer. _________________ A broken stereotype is a beautiful thing
Joined: May 31, 2002 Posts: 637 Location: Planet Mongo
Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 3:00 pm Post subject: Re: Women in comics - Round Table
Dysfunctionality is important to writting comics and crime stories because the author has to be capable of putting his or herself in the role of the villain. There's no reason a woman can't think like a villian, but women have more trouble writting characters who brutishly act out their violent impulses. Men are certainly more capable of acting out, if the number of men in prisons for violent crimes worldwide is compared to the number of women. I think that's the real reason why there are so few women writting comics, or why women don't buy as many comics.
Camping under the stars next to a blazing fire is one method of finding the more primordial essence of life and myth. If nothing else you might have a story to tell or make up the next day. If you find a snake or a serpent while camping in you're garden, you will certainly have good starting material. Just don't take any apples from him.
Are you serious? Women have more trouble writing characters who act out their violent impulses? Have you heard of hormones?
Prison populations aren't a good guide. The American prison population is disproportionately black, for reasons more social and procedural than ethnic.
There might be a bigger question about the creative arts. Are there fewer women playing creative roles in the arts? There seem to be. Perhaps gender-differentiated practical social roles are a factor - Cyril Connolly's pram in the hall - or perhaps the suspension of disbelief works differently for women (Are women as audiences more deeply and easily involved in fiction, films for instance?).
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
Joined: May 31, 2002 Posts: 637 Location: Planet Mongo
Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 12:53 am Post subject: Re: Women in comics - Round Table
Yes, I am serious. I was once force fed an entire Women's Lit course in college I didn't want to take. Action, adventure, acts of heroic chivalry, and dastardly deeds of violence were plainly absent from the menu. The books were all about, relationships, marriage, finding one's identity, change of life, carving out a personal space in the home, aging, isolation, and death from natural causes. The great female authors like May Sarton, George Elliot, and Edith Wharton just don't do material like Mickey Spillane's "I, The Jury". Spillane began his writing career with Funnies Inc. I don't think the women authors I read had the same stuff inside them as Mickey. At the end of the course, I begged the instructor to add an Agatha Christie story if the class was to be offered again. I don't think Agatha was P.C. enough for her tastes. Even a good female mystery writer would handle her characters and story differently than Mickey or other comics writers.
I still think the example of comparing male vs. female prison populations is correct, if it's looked at on a world wide basis. I never heard of the situation in Japan being any different, when Japan only has one large ethnic group.
Last edited by Hasdrubal on Wed Apr 05, 2006 7:17 pm; edited 1 time in total
My point was that there can be other reasons than the obvious why one group might appear more in prison than another. If we're talking skin colour, it could be how skin colour is treated by the legal system, or how people with different skin colours are treated by society, rather than something genetic. If we're talking gender, members of the two major (!) genders might be treated differently, and act in response to that different treatment, whether in the West or in Japan or anywhere else, so that a statistical difference like the ones in prison populations might not reflect "natural" differences, but cultural or societal ones.
On the question of violence in fiction, men might be conditioned to succeed by force and by assertion, while women might be conditioned to succeed by manipulation and relationship - bluntly, men might be conditioned to get rich and women to marry a rich man. Men take, women receive: the difference could be conditioned rather than born, and could therefore be both variable and changeable.
Women can be violent, in war and in the home: in fact, when they have the physical advantage, as in child-rearing, force might be their first resort. There are women fans of wrestling and boxing and of film stars whose image is violent.
Much violence in entertainment is symbolic, anyway. I think women can identify with forceful solutions without identifying with the ability to apply them forcefully, just as I can identify with Batman without imagining I'd win a fight with a mugger. If there's a problem with women and comics, I'm not convinced that gender-divided attitudes toward violence are it.
There might be an issue in the way we present violent characters. The tooled-up thug who never breaks his scowl could be a male fantasy-figure: Don't mess with me, sucka. The skilled winner of fights who then cradles a baby and strokes the cheek of the heroine could be a female one: I can and will protect you.
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 8:49 am Post subject: Re: Women in comics - Round Table
I would have thought that a women's lit course would have been a heaven sent opportunity for you to learn about female psychology...
The reason that traditionally woman's fiction has concentrated on relationships is because that is what was expected and approved, as in the old joke: 'Love the plot Miss Austen but all this effing and blinding will have to go'. There are many successful modern 'tough' female writers - read the V.I.Warshawski series for example (not the film which was a cop out). Admittedly you tend not to get the passages of mind numbing misogyny that you get with Spillane but nothing's perfect.
Also many superhero comic books have at the very least sub plots relating to matters of emotion - Superman and Watchmen immediately spring to mind.
Have you ever actually ever been camping Hasdrubal?
You say starry nights and flickering firelight, I say lumpy hard ground and nasty bitey insects.
Snakes I can handle, and as for apples, as Oscar Wilde said : 'I can resist everything except temptation...'
Last edited by lectatege on Mon Apr 03, 2006 9:01 am; edited 1 time in total
Going back to Palmers' point about women's under representation in the creative arts and elsewhere I think the pram in the hallway is a definite factor as is the bloke in the bed and the granny in the granny flat. Women are always expected to put the needs of family before any other personal aspirations and are rountinely vilified if they don't. When was the last time you heard of a man being lambasted for being a bad father and abandoning his children to go sailing solo round the world or whatever? _________________ A broken stereotype is a beautiful thing
And yes, Palmers a combination of masculine strength and sensitivity in a hero is an absolute winner everytime - hence the incredible popularity of that poster with the muscly guy holding the tiny baby. _________________ A broken stereotype is a beautiful thing
Joined: May 31, 2002 Posts: 637 Location: Planet Mongo
Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 11:08 pm Post subject: Re: Women in comics - Round Table
I did gain some useful insights by taking the Women's Lit. course as the only man in the class. I learned I was the only one in the class to read some of the more dull selections. Some of those women were slackers and didn't read the assigned materials. More importantly, I learned Feminism was defined by every member of the class discussion group in their own way. There was an old Quaker lady who equated it with her spiritual beleif in pacifisim. I learned great respect for her. There was another lady in the group who equated her type of "Feminism" with Vietnam era protests and "playful drug use". She was an elementary school teacher, and not the least bit remorseful over past (or possibly present) drug use.
One night I broke down and asked her, "Do they really let you teach children?" I didn't originally set out to antagonize her, but I also asked her a serious question about drug use during protests, undermining her own cause in the eyes of people who could have been persuaded to join her side. She dropped out of the class soon after. I began to question if Feminism had a single meaningful definition, or if it was just another "ism" for trendy people who lack strength in their convictions.
In regards to the books we read there was one I really liked called "The Edible Woman" by Margaret Atwood. I wouldn't normally have read a book about a woman seeking her identity, and navigating through relationships, but the story was hilarious. Humor is probably the best way to reach a male reader when the material is originally intended for female readers. It was a shame a certain humorless person missed out on that book.
Another thing I observed about female authors is their tendency to reinforce women's insecurities by incorporating it into their characters. In most cases the women authors were projecting themselves into their characters rather than trying to make any big point about women's social roles. I didn't care too much for the more insecure characters and authors. If I could have met the writers I would like to have said, "There's never any need to feel paranoid about society, when the rest of the world is so self-absorbed. No one will give you any thought. Do as you please." It takes a big person to admit to themselves how small they are in the overall scheme of things. The "strenuous life" as Theodore Roosevelt put it helps in keeping ones self small and in awe of the world with a correct perspective.
I do actually camp out. The Sonora Desert in northern Mexico is my favorite place in January. There are other ways of finding your primordial self beside camping. Fishing in a small boat on the ocean, crawling through caves, hunting for fossils, or parachuting from a plane on an autumn day are other options for building self awareness, and life experiences for literary fodder. I don't recommend the Grand Canyon.......too many mule turds to hop over.
Yes, like most religions and other belief systems the definition of feminism varies considerably from one adherent to the next.This seems to be quite healthy to me - it means that people are actually thinking for themselves rather than slavishly adhering to a set of someone else's rules.
In my own case my feminist mindset arose from the wish to be viewed and treated as a human being of equal worth, and not patronised or prejudged by some doit purely on account of me lacking that vital Y chromosome.
Do you not think that by acknowledging a character's flaws and insecurities it makes for a more rounded and truer depiction of that person?
Of course it can be taken to excess, Bridget Jones is without doubt the most stupid and irritating bint I have ever encountered in fiction and has probably put the feminist cause back a good decade.
The Sonara desert sounds very beautiful but I do not understand this urge to find your 'primal self', I never lost mine.
Is it because you don't have periods?
Incidentally you may or may not be surprised to learn that I was brought up in a Quaker household. _________________ A broken stereotype is a beautiful thing
What I couldn't understand was that if a man wrote a female character as chocolate-obsessed, weight-obsessed, self-obsessed, quite happy to judge a man by his pullover, and ambitious to find and marry Mr. Darcy from Pride & Prejudice (a TV serial, not a book), he'd have been lambasted. A woman writes it, and it's so, so true.
I don't want to believe many women are that way, and it distresses me when they bleat that they are.
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
Well, they can't all be as Goddess like as my humble
self...
Let us be charitable and assume that women are not identifying with the vacuuity that is BJ as such, more her situation - i.e.living in a society where :
a)women are primarily judged on their appearance, b)for the majority of women it is easier and more acceptable to achieve status by 'marrying up' rather than by dint of their own achievements, and c) to be without a man after the age of 30 is deemed a social embarrassment. _________________ A broken stereotype is a beautiful thing
Also, vis a vis the strenuous life, I do not see why exerting yourself physically should automatically either increase your self awareness or give you a greater understanding of your place in the Universe,
otherwise the world would not be as full of as many egomaniac, testosterone-ridden, brainless Jocks of both gender as it sadly is.
You are either a thoughtful person or not and if you are you can get as much benefit out of staring out the window all morning as hiking up a mountain.
However if it works for you who am I ..
Off now to stare out of a window eat chocolate and paint me toenails. _________________ A broken stereotype is a beautiful thing
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