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Armouring the Body
Why have ‘ideal’ male superhero bodies increased in size so dramatically? Superman had ‘the constitution, organs and abilities equal to the rigors of the Machine Age’ (Bukatman 99), but he was never so damned big and rippling with obscene amounts of muscles as these heroes. What the increasing size of the male superhero body indicates is a process of armouring.
A defining characteristic of postmodernism is the decentring of identity, of meaning being found outside of the self. Bukatman states that the bodybuilder/superhero-fantasy represents an attempt to ‘re-centre the self in the body’ (110). Stripped of signs, naked, idealised, this re-centring, armouring of the male body is an attempt to weather the postmodern storm; to re-load the body with meaning.
Simply, the times-are-a-changing and 1990s superheroes didn’t know much else to do other than to be bigger, badder, and just punch on, incarnating problematic and painfully reductive definitions of masculine power and presence’ (Bukatman 96). Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, distinctly postmodern in their own rights, had heralded the direction superhero comics would take. Image comics eschewed any type of self-reflexivity, and instead ran with the surface aspects of the dark, gritty, and violent figuring that extreme sex and violence was the natural extension from Miller and Moore. And for a time they were right. Without realising it they also produced a thoroughly postmodern response, that being that these comics were all surface and little substance. They had no meaning other than armouring the body to hypermasculine extremes against the postmodern condition.
Apart from the decentring of identity, the postmodern condition also signifies the instability of western culture due to its questioning of stereotypes, sex roles, and role models. James Maertens writes that controlling nature is ultimately ‘rooted in the desire for absolute self-control’ (191); for ‘self-control, mastery of nature and of our nature, is a defining marker of the masculine state’ (Frosh 104). Nature necessarily is equated with the female or femininity as Theweleit states – ‘male rationalist thinking repeatedly renews its demand for the oppression of women each time it calls for the subjugation of “nature”’(1987 432). Using the fascist male as an example, Theweleit describes perfectly how the state of controlling the self through armouring the body equates to control of outside forces –
Men themselves were now split into a (female) interior and a (male) exterior – the body armor. …the interior and the exterior were mortal enemies. What we see being portrayed… are the armor’s separation from, and superiority over the interior: the interior was allowed to flow, but only within the masculine boundaries… What fascism promised men was the reintegration of their hostile components under tolerable conditions, dominance of the “hostile” female elements within themselves.A line from Superman #123 relates how Superman’s inability to control his newly acquired energy powers threatens his existence – ‘that lack of control made him more vulnerable than ever’ (Jurgens, Frenz, and Rubenstein 1997 2). Therefore control of the self and the ‘female’ interior through armouring the body conflates with controlling the feminine as nature, and other ‘uncontrollable’ outside forces such as the postmodern condition. More succinctly, it is the wish to control chaos. However this control and re-centring of the self is ultimately relegated to the realm of desire; it is unobtainable. While being armoured protects one from outside industrial shocks, it imprisons the ego which is then ‘unable to escape the barriers it has raised against a universe that can only be conceived as an enemy’ (Maertens 190). An imprisoned ego is unacceptable to the masculine ideal because armouring the body is a passive mode of resistance, a protective rather than aggressive strategy. In the midst of postmodernism, the characters with reductive definitions of masculine power, unable to ‘re-centre the self’ turn out to just be, bulging, empty, armoured, shells.
Becoming the Weapon
However all is not lost! If re-centring the self through armouring the body is passive, there’s a further step that the male can take to fight this unstable, uncontrollable enemy that is indicative of the postmodern condition: a change from armouring the body to arming it with weaponry. The body is now becoming the weapon/machine, blurring the boundary between the weapon/machine and the body. This is exemplified in Wetworks where the team is enclosed by the symbiote described as a ‘bio-metalloid compound saturated and controlled by nanotech wetware’ (Portacio & Choi Jun.1994 9). The symbiote augments the Wetworks team’s metabolic systems, and adapts and integrates weapons systems so that they function as extensions of their body (Portacio & Choi, Aug.1994 3). The idea of the body as weapon is demonstrated more explicitly from this excerpt – ‘Look at them, Colonel. Don’t you see that you and your soldiers are the perfect weapons I need to bring the vampire nation to its knees’ (Portacio & Choi Aug.1994 4). The idea is not limited to the superhero comic however as the literature of the Freikorps explicates – ‘these men were living guns’ (Schauwecker in Theweleit 1989 179); ‘was I now perhaps one with the weapon? Was I not machine– cold metal?’ (Salomon in Theweleit 1989 179); and ‘What purpose would be served by all these weapons leveled against the universe, were they not intertwined with our nerves, were it not our blood that hissed on every axis’ (my italics)(Junger in Theweleit 1989 179). Becoming the weapon is a reaction to outside forces, and again we find the recurring motif of the universe as enemy.
As Connell argues, modern day "heroes" such as professional sportsmen are obliged ‘to treat their bodies as instruments, even as weapons’ (58) which ‘ultimately results in violence against one’s own body’ (Messner in Connell 58). But becoming the weapon gives one ‘the ability to recreate oneself into a predictable machine, one which, if it does break down, can be fixed’ (Maertens 191). The predictable body/weapon/machine aligns itself with the re-centring of the self, for predictability necessarily ensures control. This predictability and control of the self therefore translates into a control of outside forces.
Where armouring the body failed due to the imprisonment of the ego, becoming the weapon/machine is an active mode of resistance against the postmodern universal enemy. This resistance enables the individual to act rather than react.
The consequences for the feminine and other outside forces when the male becomes the weapon/machine is very disturbing. Becoming the weapon involves a mode of production that Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call machinic. Ideally an individual is a ‘human multiplicity-machine’. Theweleit describes the functioning of the individual as machinic thus:
by manufacturing an infinity of new associations… it is always in search of accessible connections, open pathways, unforeseen spaces, powerful flows. It couples, it uncouples; each component is functionally independent; it may function here, or… elsewhere’ (Theweleit 1989 198).This human multiplicity-machine has the ability to produce infinite pleasures. Becoming the weapon explicitly negates the desire of the human multiplicity machine, the individual becoming a human totality machine– ‘hierarchized, functionalized, individual; the machine connections are standardized and unified, it flows liberated only if individual components overwhelm and explode’ (Theweleit 1989 198).
As weapon/machine, the human being, a ‘producer of desire’, is transformed into a muscle machine (the armoured body incorporated) that prohibits and persecutes the production of desire (Theweleit 1989 199). In turn the machine also becomes anthropomorphised. The human-
becomes an imperfect machine and the machine an imperfect human being, neither any longer capable of producing, only of expressing and propagating the horrors they have suffered. Perversely distorted, both now become destroyers; and real human beings… are the victims’ (Theweleit 1989 199).These horrors are the bombardment of the decentring process, and the extraction and distortion of meaning from the human self. The ‘horror’ of these perceived attacks, this destabilisation that the masculine psyche has experienced, can only mean that the attacks will be violently returned against those who are seen as responsible, namely women, the feminine as nature (the environment), and other ‘outside forces’ like postmodernism. It could be argued that these attacks are demonstrated by violence against women such as domestic violence and rape, the continued devastation of the environment when it is seen an economic resource, and to a lesser degree, the call for a return to "traditional" gender roles and "family values". The male, ‘perversely distorted’ as expression-weapon/machine can only express his anger through becoming nothing more than a ‘destroyer’.
The message from the Freikorps through to the superhero comic, indicates that masculinity is unsuccessfully trying to come to terms with the chaotic, fluid and uncontrollable nature of the feminine and a postmodern world. The masculine subject resists rather than accepts these new circumstances.
Superhero comics seem to come up with ever more elaborate ways of expressing masculine resistance. The energy being superhero is an example of this resistance. Fuji from the comic Stormwatch is an energy being who needs a containment suit otherwise he'll disperse limitlessly into the environment. The same scenario has been played out with other characters such as another Stormwatch character Hellstrike, and for a short time Superman (when he was Electric Blue Superman, May 1997- May 1998). Often it involves a race against time to ‘save’ the hero. Merging with the environment would mean accepting rather than resisting the outside forces of the feminine and the postmodern condition.
The message that superhero comics communicate to their predominantly male audience is one of fight, resist, and eliminate the female ‘outside forces’, while delighting in homoerotic/narcissistic desire and the worship of impossible ideals of masculinity and femininity.
Conclusion
The female superhero body in superhero comics (especially the Image comics of the 1990s) is endowed with characteristics of a "standard" male body–shoulders wider than hips, a shorter torso and long legs.
For Baudrillard the body is a representation that has been phallicised thus creating erectile parts. This representation of the female is unattainable, derived as it is from the phallus as general equivalent. The phallicised female body is eliminated when it is used as a mirror that reflects male dominance and desire. The female is further not allowed to become a body due to her potential threat of castration (the vagina dentata and the phallic woman) which is eliminated when she is eliminated as female.
In order to control "outside forces" the male superhero tries recentre the self by armouring the body which also is an attempt to control the feminine. This mode of resistance is doomed to failure due to its passive mode of resistance against the postmodern condition.
The next step in controlling outside forces is to become the weapon/machine. This offers a more active mode of resistance. However becoming the weapon/machine has a disturbing potential dehumanising the individual, becoming an expression-machine/weapon that has the capacity to retaliate violently against uncontrollable outside forces such the feminine and a constantly changing postmodern world, perceived as propagating horrors on the male, such as extracting meaning from the self.
The elimination of the feminine "other", nature or other uncontrollable "outside forces" is effectuated by a masculinity that thrives on homoerotic/narcissistic desire, and the control of the self, which is equated with the control of all else.
Reference
Bukatman, Scott. “X-Bodies (the torment of the mutant superhero)” in Sappington, Rodney and Tyler Stallings (eds) Uncontrollable Bodies: Testimonies of Identity and Culture. Seattle: Bay Press, 1994.
Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Allen & Unwin, 1995.
Frosh, Stephen. Sexual Difference: Masculinity and Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Jurgens, Dan, (w). Ron Frenz & Joe Rubinstein (a). Superman v1 #123 (May 1997), New York: DC Comics, 1997.
Maertens, James. W. 'The Dragon and the Man-Machine: Reflecting on Jurassic Park and Frankenstein', in Mary Lynn Kittelson, (ed.) The Soul of Popular Culture: Looking at Contemporary Heroes, Myths and Monsters. Chicago & La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1998.
Portacio, Whilce, (w,a). Brandon Choi (w). Wetworks. v1 #1 (Jun. 1994), Image Comics Inc, 1994.
----. Wetworks. v1 #2 (Aug. 1994), Image Comics Inc, 1994.
Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies. Volume 1.: Women, Floods, Bodies, History. Polity Press, 1987.
----. Male Fantasies. Volume 2.: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror. Polity Press, 1989.
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