How I Should Feel – Fetishism and Feminine Power in Witchblade

What it says -
the Witchblade

Psychoanalytically fetishism is the substitution of an object (or objects) for the penis that the mother is found to be lacking, thereby allaying the young boy’s shock of this realisation. Jean Baudrillard theorises that the fetishised female body is produced as a phallic body, a phallic effigy (substituting the body or body parts of the female for the penis) that reflects a male narcissistic desire to revel in what he knows to be true – that he is possessor of the phallus, of power. Baudrillard theorises that the body has become a representation, a sign that is constructed via a structuralist mode that posits the phallic effigy/body fragment as signifier and sexuality as signified. In this system, the phallus becomes the general equivalent against which everything is defined –‘everything is resolved into a phallic equivalent, even the female genitals, or any gaping organ or object traditionally listed as a symbol of the feminine’ (Baudrillard 102). This theory leaves little room for female bodies to have any other meaning than phallic, however Sara in Witchblade and her union with the Witchblade itself, I believe actually subverts this phallic model and phallocentric ideology by forming a positive, distinctive model of feminine power that does not rely on a concept of the masculine to define itself.

Witchblade (Vol. 1 #1-8, 1998) is the story of New York detective Sara Pezzini, who through fateful coincidence becomes the wielder of the Witchblade. Ken resolves to befriend Sara and then erode her confidence and spirit so she will transfer the Witchblade’s power to him. The Witchblade is a sentient symbiote that bonds to the wearer’s body, mind, and soul. Its primary form is a gauntlet, but can reduce in size to a bracelet or expand to armour the body in a spiky exoskeleton. At times it has an organic, plant-like appearance. When ‘activated’ by the wielder (or of its own accord) the Witchblade can create deadly whip-like tendrils, and fire blasts of energy. The Witchblade is a source of feminine power because it can only ever be wielded by a woman. Anyone who tries to don the Witchblade, but is not the rightful recipient, receives terrible injuries from the Witchblade itself. Sara is pursued by Ken Irons, a wealthy businessman who has researched the history of the Witchblade and wants its power for himself.

Ken Irons as a totality
(and looking quite grumpy)

Witchblade’s opening pages provide a stark contrast between representations of men and women. Ken Irons is shown from a distance in his high-rise apartment, then in a medium shot (head to knees), and finally in a close-up of his face. This sequence of images presents him as a totality, a "whole" person. Our introduction to Sara is quite different. Sara is shown dressing–putting on lipstick, a tight, short dress that fixes around her neck, knee high stiletto boots, elbow length gloves, and G-string underwear with the accompanying display of buttocks, legs, breast, arms, and lips. This attire makes Sara’s body parts closed and smooth, a pre-requisite in Baudrillardian theory for them to be produced as phallic effigies (1993:104). In contrast to Ken, who is shown as a totality, Sara is presented as dismembered, a “cut-up” of highly sexualised body parts exhibiting all the attire – ‘Ankle boots and thigh boots… over the elbow gloves and stocking top on the thigh, hair over the eyes or the stripper’s G-string’ (1993:101) –which Baudrillard cites in Symbolic Exchange and Death that demarcate the body, establishing the foot, leg, arm, neck, and waist as erectile parts. This imagery is what Naomi Wolf describes as the pornography of beauty where the most sexually central parts of women, breasts, thighs, buttocks, bellies are fetishised (Wolf 1990:119). As many comic readers would agree, depictions of females in comics often employ imagery that borders on the pornographic.

Sara as dismembered body parts

Sara thus begins Witchblade embedded in the Symbolic Order, conforming to a stereotypical image of a woman in order to achieve results in her job. The Symbolic Order (or simply the Symbolic) designates the ‘objective order of language, law, morality, religion, and all social existence which is held to constitute the identity of any human subject who enters it’ (Baldick 327). It is in opposition to the Imaginary. In Lacanian psychoanalysis the pre-Oedipal (as Freud describes it) or Imaginary phase of development consists basically of two terms: the child and the image of the other, which is usually the mother (Eagleton 165). Elisabeth Grosz states that as the child develops, this dyadic structure is disrupted by the father who represents ‘law, order and authority for the child’ (1990 68). The father is a ‘Symbolic or imaginary father’, a representative of the Name-of-the-Father that stands for patriarchal ownership. Taking on the Name-of-the-Father positions the child beyond the structure of dual imaginary relations (Grosz 1990 47). Recognition of this ‘paternal metaphor’ charts the child’s entry into the Symbolic Order and the social world beyond the family structure (Grosz 1990 104). Therefore, the Name-of-the-Father signifies the ‘Law’ or Law-of-the-Father that is the wider set of social and sexual roles rules upon which the Symbolic Order rests and relies. What this means for Sara is that she has taken on the wider set of social and sexual roles that are designated “female”. This is how Sara (and indeed women in general) is “forced” to conform to a feminine ideal. Indeed as a police officer Sara enforces the law and is also an agent of the Law-of-the-Father. From an early age Sara conditioned herself to be an agent of the Law knowing that she wanted to be a cop and imitating the male cops on the 1970s television show, Starsky & Hutch. Thus she has for along identified with male roles and ideals.

However the clothes Sara is wearing are for an undercover police operation in order to right an injustice perpetrated in an earlier case. She comments ‘Starsky never had to do this to make a bust’ (Wohl et at 1998:5). Later, after being told she is ‘dressed like a slut’ she retorts, ‘Hey! You think I like wearing this?’ (Wohl et al 1998:10). That Sara doesn’t actually like wearing this apparel is an indication that something is “wrong” (because don’t all women like dressing this way?). It is a semi-conscious realisation of her knowing she is conforming to a male ideal of a woman and that she’d rather resist than accept this ideal.

The first time Sara wears the Witchblade, when it crawls and attaches itself to her and in the process saves her life, she unleashes the Witchblade’s power and suddenly feels ecstatic: I am power. This is freedom. I am... insane!’ (Wohl et al 1998:22-3). In accessing the Witchblade’s purely feminine power Sara becomes free from the Symbolic Order, yet this freedom seemingly comes (at least for a moment) at the cost of her sanity. The insane feeling is her experiencing a new paradigm of real power, one that grants her control, which is so overwhelming it feels like insanity. Later when she tries to take the Witchblade off it resists, cognisant of Sara opting to, and trying to stop her, returning to her “safe” and “sane” position in the Symbolic Order. All indications point to the Witchblade trying to wrench Sara from the Name-of-the-Father.

The second time Sara dons the Witchblade she has similar feelings of freedom, feeling ‘Unbound... she should be afraid, now she’s never been more confident’ (Wohl et al 1998: 66). This time she chooses to accept the feeling, the insanity – ‘That was the trouble while she was fighting it. But now... she’s strangely at peace with it. Connected to it’ (Wohl et al 1998: 67). The Witchblade’s power brings Sara peace, becoming more comfortable with feminine power free from patriarchal constraints. The Witchblade facilitates her realising what she already seems to unconsciously recognise–which is why the Witchblade chooses her.

Sara covered by the organic-looking Witchblade
while she sleeps

Sara takes the Witchblade off to sleep but while sleeping it sentiently reattaches to her body and covers her completely. In the morning in a full page illustration she lies asleep in a foetal position which is at once an image of rebirth and a voyeuristic tour de force, she recounts ‘I felt it on me, like some protective shell... it felt right on me. And I didn’t want to wake up because it felt so good... so safe’ (Wohl et al 1998: 98). This is in contrast to a coat Ken had loaned her the night before, which she wished would make her feel safe but doesn’t. This is another indication that Sara recognises something is “wrong” and acknowledges (albeit unconsciously) the protection of the Symbolic Order of which Ken’s coat is a sign is simply a ruse. The idea of safety and comfort is paramount for Sara but this male/patriarchal safety is a false consciousness. True safety and comfort for Sara can only come from embracing the Witchblade’s feminine power which enables real freedom. When fellow cop Jake intrudes into Sara and the Witchblade’s privacy the Witchblade suddenly feels ‘bulky. Alien’ (Wohl et al 1998:99). Jake’s intrusion breaks Sara and the Witchblade’s utopic bond. Female power suddenly becomes alien and discomforting as Jake’s male presence reminds Sara of her place in the Symbolic Order.

Sara in her 'wedding' dress
(and with impossibly long legs)

Bonding with the Witchblade however doesn’t stop Sara from further interpellation into the Symbolic Order, invoked in a scene reminiscent of a marriage. To garner the Witchblade, Ken romances Sara and she eventually falls for his extravagant lifestyle (he’s a Fortune 500 member), culminating with them attending a charity function at the ‘Prosperite Church’. Sara arrives in what could easily be mistaken for a wedding dress. Harking back to Sara’s dislike of her undercover clothes, she reflects on this dress:

This is how I should look… how I should feel. It just seems so right to be wearing something so soft… so caressing to my skin. It makes me feel… so beautiful. It doesn't confine my body like the Witchblade does. It’s not bruising me. Nor do I believe that when I take it off, will it resist like the Witchblade did… I feel safe. I feel good (Wohl et al 1998:155).

Marriage, especially for women, is invariably linked to the Name-of-the-Father (being renamed, becoming the “property” of the husband) and the submission with which it is traditionally associated. Sara is bowing to gender stereotypes, believing that soft, caressing things are feminine; that a woman’s appearance being the centre of attention is what being a woman is all about. She positions herself in the comforting symbolic. This is the final gambit to keep Sara in her “place” and prevent her accessing the full feminine power of the Witchblade, indeed acknowledging the genuine threat that the Witchblade represents. After the function, Ken and Sara argue, and Ken reveals his diabolical plans. In response the Witchblade activates, tearing Sara’s dress to shreds. After some hesitation and self-doubt, Sara rediscovers her willpower and realises she doesn’t want to be annexed to a phallic order that condemns her to a non-existence (Baudrillard 104). Sara finally accepts the legacy of the Witchblade and defeats Ken in battle. She has rejected the things that the Symbolic Order and gender stereotypes position as feminine in favour of the Witchblade’s true feminine power.

Sara and the Witchblade triumphant

Sara’s evolution from Baudrillard’s phallic fetish, a body in parts, to her (symbolic) rejection of the Name-of-the-Father, to her final acceptance as wielder of the symbiotic Witchblade, something that cannot (at least in Baudrillard’s terms) be classified as phallic is indeed a remarkable one even for comics. Most indicative of her transformation is her representation in the final pages. In two splash pages Sara is covered by the Witchblade resisting phallic fetishism. On the final page Sara is shown as a totality. The Witchblade’s spiky, organic, bony appearance resists closure making Sara’s body neither smooth nor closed off (it doesn’t completely cover her like armour). The exoskeleton could not in any way be construed as bracelets, necklaces, rings or a belt that would establish the accompanying body parts as erectile. The Witchblade is also labile, never assuming the same form twice, and are thus not contained by any fixed category. Sara becomes:

not the oppositional other safely fenced off within […] boundaries, but the otherness of possible worlds, or possible versions of ourselves, not yet realized (Shildrick 8).

Sara’s “other” version of herself, one with the Witchblade as a part of her being, enables her to evolve as an autonomous owner of feminine power and resist and transgress patriarchal phallocentric society. The Witchblade enables Sara to operate outside the boundaries of phallocentric culture, while not deforming or transforming her natural body, i.e.: becoming a monster. It is an extension of herself specifically highlighted by the fact that the Witchblade has been, and can only ever be, wielded by a woman. Sara with the Witchblade embodies a mode of difference that isn’t produced through a concept of oppositional otherness. Nor can it be co-opted back by being based on the concept of the phallus. Sara Pezzini and the Witchblade entity in the comic Witchblade provide a model of feminine power that is positive, distinctive, original and does not define itself against any masculine concepts. This is not to say that the actual narrative that surrounds and involves Sara, and the way she is portrayed at certain stages when compared with men, is not without its problems, but it does to a large extent overshadow these problems by concluding with a positive definition and direction for Sara. Metaphorically the Witchblade coincides with the feminist belief of women in general–their power may be thought to be “owned” by men but it can never be possessed.


Reference

Baldick, Chris. Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Exchange and Death. London: Sage, 1993.

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.

Grosz, Elisabeth. Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 1990.

Shildrick, Margaret. “Posthumanism and the Monstrous Body.” Body & Society 2.1, 1996.

Wohl, David. & Z, Christina. (w), Turner, Michael. (p), and D-Tron (i). Witchblade Deluxe Collected Edition. Fullerton: Image Comics (Top Cow), 1998. [Collecting Witchblade v1 #1-8, 1995-6].

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. Routledge, 1990.

Part 2 - Something Quite Close to Hell: The Monstrous Female in Darkchylde

Part 2 of 'Something Quite Close to Hell: The Monstrous Female in Darkchylde' investigates representations of the archaic mother and pre-oedipal in Darkchylde.

Read Part 1

Having argued as to why Ariel has become monstrous, now I would like to turn to what purpose she serves by taking up the position of ‘the monstrous feminine’. Ariel in her human form is the ‘acceptable’ form and shape of woman. When she transforms into a demon from the nightmare realm she becomes monstrous. Therefore the ‘pleasurable’ and ‘acceptable’ Ariel is needed to offset the visually horrifying aspects of her monstrousness. As a representation of the ‘monstrous-feminine’, Ariel exhibits characteristics that can be aligned with the feminine archetype of the archaic mother.

At this point it must be stated that there is some confusion over the figures of the pre-Oedipal and archaic mothers. Elizabeth Grosz in Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary (1992) and Mike Davis in his essay "'What’s the Story Mother?’: Abjection and Anti-feminism in Alien and Aliens" (1995) both refer to the pre-Oedipal mother as analogous to the phallic and archaic mothers. Barbara Creed however makes a distinction between these figures. She states that the pre-Oedipal mother is the mother of infancy, who is responsible for the early socialization of the child, while the archaic mother is the generative, parthenogenetic mother who gives birth to all living things and exists in all human cultures as the Mother-Goddess (Creed 24). Creed’s theorisation, I believe, is more useful as the pre-Oedipal mother, although a genderless ‘fantasy’ (the imaginary ‘paradise’ of the mother-child dyad), has a corporeal nature in the form of a person, whereas the archaic mother is a concept whose figure permeates the imagery of birth, primal scenes and the womb (Creed 19). The figure of the archaic mother is explored through the monsters into which Ariel transforms. When Ariel transforms she becomes a fetish object of the archaic mother carrying out the archaic mother’s wishes of reincorporating all to which she has given birth to through death and destruction.

The archaic mother is the parthenogenetic mother, the mother as primordial abyss, the point of origin and of end. She is the generative mother; the pre-phallic mother who exists prior to knowledge of the phallus (Creed 17-20). More importantly, the concept of the archaic mother does not depend on a concept of the masculine against which to define itself (Creed 27-8). This is because she exists before gender differentiation and does not need a masculine counterpart to exist. As the archaic mother exists only as a concept, Creed argues that the re-incorporating and destructive powers of the archaic mother are concretised in the figure of her offspring, the creature(s) whose mission is to tear apart and reincorporate all life (22). These offspring are represented in Darkchylde as the monsters into which Ariel transforms. These monsters are fetish objects of the archaic mother.

Freud defines the fetish as ‘a substitute for the woman’s (the mother’s) penis that the little boy once believed in and… does not want to give up’ (Freud 1961, Vol. XXIII, 152-3). According to Freud’s narrative, this takes place when the little boy sees, or simply realises, his mother or another close female figure, has no penis. He assumes that she has been castrated. He will deny this castration by replacing the penis his mother should have with the closest or first thing that he sees at the moment of realisation so as to deny that he can also be castrated. I use ‘he’ in this explanation because this is generally how the fetish is formed in the male child. Fetishism for the female child is quite different.

When the female child realises that her mother is castrated, she (eventually) recognises that she is also castrated. Comprehending that she can never have a penis of her own, and recognising that she cannot ‘own’ her father’s, she succumbs to the idea that her destiny is to have a child (preferably by her own father) as a replacement for the penis. Therefore a baby is what is deemed as her fetish object, her replacement penis. Hence the offspring of the archaic mother are referred to as fetish objects. But the offspring of the archaic mother are special because the archaic mother has no male counterpart, and therefore procreates without the aid of a male.

In the final battle of Darkchylde, Ariel transforms into a dragon where she kills the villain Kauldron and a host of other demons emerging from the nightmare realm. During this rampage Ariel also kills Perry’s father, Jack. Perry is Ariel’s love interest and he employs his father to help Ariel escape the authorities of the government agency SENTRY, for whom Jack works.

The death of Jack is seen to be an accident. However if we see Ariel in relation to the archaic mother, the situation can be better explained. Jack is in a position of authority at Sentry, a government agency interested in paranormal phenomena, and is also a father (reminding Ariel of her own father). Both aspects position him as a representative of the Law of the symbolic order. Killing Jack institutes a two-fold elimination of male dominance and power, first, by directly eliminating his paternal power. Second, with his father dead, Perry recognises the danger that Ariel poses to himself and sends her away, which eliminates him as a future representative of the Law. Ariel’s rampage of annihilation ensures that Ariel can never take up a position in the symbolic order, and as fetish object of the archaic mother, she doesn’t want to, which is in direct opposition to her ‘human’ desire to ‘fit in’. As a fetish object of the archaic mother, Ariel becomes a weapon which eliminates male, phallic dominance by reincorporating through destruction and death everything to which she has given birth.

Like the archaic mother, Ariel is constructed in opposition to, not separate from, the symbolic order. She is relegated to the margins to ensure the constitution of subjectivity and the law (Creed 26). Ariel states during the final battle of the comic:

I’ve invited all this rage that’s racing through me like a dark cancer, eating away at anything that remains of Ariel Chylde, and leaving in its place only the monster…and I feel my very essence threatened to be irreversibly consumed by the dragon…I almost welcome it… (Queen 129).

The invited rage that threatens Ariel’s essence is a veiled desire for oneness. This is best explained when Barbara Creed argues:

The desire to return to the original oneness of things, to return to the mother/womb, is primarily a desire for non-differentiation. If as George Bataille argues in Death and Sensuality, life signifies discontinuity and separateness, and death signifies continuity and non-differentiation, then the desire for and attraction of death suggests also a desire to return to the state of original oneness with the mother. As this desire to merge occurs after differentiation that is after the subject has developed as separate, autonomous self, it is experienced as a form of psychic death (28).

Consummation by the dragon, for Ariel, translates into a loss of self or ego, a ‘psychic death’ that is a desire for continuity and the loss of boundaries (Creed 30) where her desire to be one with the archaic mother would be realised. However Ariel is not allowed to ‘lose herself’, for to return to a oneness with the archaic mother would be to transgress the rigid ego boundaries of self and other which define phallocentric culture and patriarchal law. Instead Sage, the representation of Ariel’s pre-Oedipal mother, who as I have argued, exists in relation to the family and the symbolic order and is responsible for the socialisation of the child, scolds Ariel: ‘Ariel, no! You must relinquish this form at once or it will destroy you! And without your influence it will destroy us all!!’ (Queen 129). The tone of this quote is what distinguishes it as a socialising mother’s voice. She is not asking Ariel to relinquish her monstrous form, she is telling her – ‘you must relinquish this form at once…!’

Ariel has two desires. In her monstrous form as fetish object of the archaic mother she desires to return to a oneness with the archaic mother, not the body of the pre-Oedipal mother, because the monstrous form that Ariel occupies is a result of her unbroken link with the pre-Oedipal mother. When Ariel is in her human form she yearns for a return to the Imaginary where she recognises nothing other than herself and the body of her mother: ‘…lost in the amber glow of your eyes as you cradled me… I wish I could feel the gentle thrum of your heart as you held me to your warm breast’ (Queen 98).

What comes to pass is a power struggle between the archaic mother and the pre-Oedipal mother for control of Ariel. The archaic mother wants to overthrow the symbolic order, and as a fetish object of the archaic mother, Ariel will carry out her wishes of reabsorbing what she once birthed through a rampage of destruction. The pre-Oedipal mother, on the other hand, wants to uphold the Law of the symbolic order. Ariel is thus in a bind–to return to a oneness with the archaic mother where the psychic death of the self represents continuity and non-differentiation, or adhere to her pre-Oedipal mother and try to ‘fit in’ to a symbolic order that rejects her, and live a life that signifies a constant and seemingly endless time of discontinuity, marginalisation, separateness and lack.

While Ariel does return to her human form signifying the pre-Oedipal mother’s stronger hold, nothing is resolved. Ariel has killed and destroyed ensuring her no place in the symbolic order. Perry tells her ‘They’re going to hold you accountable. They’ll kill you Ariel…You’ve got to get out of here. Leave Salem forever!’, and that she has to ‘…find somewhere.’ (Queen 133).

It is telling that Ariel’s first metamorphosis into a monster occurs when she kills her father. Through her metamorphosis, Ariel decentres and reproduces herself. Decentralisation is the process of breaking away from the Western cultural habit of referring all experience to centres, beginnings, or origins of truth and being (Bersani 196). Bersani states it is in ‘parents and in brothers and sisters, the child finds himself by finding himself repeated’ (202) and it is only by smashing self reflections that one can decentralize themselves (216). Ariel kills her father in a pure and final act of anger and self preservation, destroying his paternal hold and power over her. In her father Ariel sees a repetition of herself, a centre, an origin. Killing her father is also an effort to break the cycle of abuse and the constant re-locations to different towns and schools. While moving from town to town finds Ariel always somewhere new, always ‘somewhere else’, it is really only a change of setting with the same script. Ariel’s decentralisation and transformation into monstrousness is different. It allows her to be ‘somewhere else’ within herself, signifying that she is not the origin or centre of what is happening to her, that she is not a killer, nor is she associated with her repetitive life, or her father. Put simply, she becomes an outsider looking in on herself.

The villain Kauldron is also a repetition and doubling of her father, of patriarchal law. In finally killing Kauldron, Ariel eliminates another repetition of her father and therefore herself (remembering in family members we find ourselves repeated). Each kill allows further decentralisation to that outside position but from which she must always return. This cycle is the attempt to eradicate the imprinted identity of the Law, something that must be done over and over. Ariel is thus caught in a cycle of endless repetition, from which she continually strives for release. This cycle involves men in positions of power trying to use or hurt her, who are, like Kauldron, repetitions of her father, and herself, who she will have to kill over and over again in an endless attempt to completely decentre herself, to be ‘somewhere else’.

Without going into the complexity of death and repetition too deeply, we can say that Ariel’s repetitive compulsion is a desire to restore an earlier state of things (Freud 1961 Vol. XVIII 36). Ellie Ragland argues, that this earlier state of things is the earliest state–that of being one, in the Imaginary, with the mother. She writes:

although the goal of repetition is to re-experience a prior […] satisfaction, the effort to recapture such lost moments depends on the fixations put in place to compensate for the loss of the primary object: that is, the illusion of a primordial oneness between child and mother (Ragland 89).

Ariel’s repetitive compulsion does three distinct things. First, her killing of patriarchal male figures becomes an attempt to eradicate the ‘Law-of-the-Father’ (and its imprinted identity) that intrudes upon the mother-child dyad. Second, Ariel also kills repetitions of herself when she kills these males, in the attempt to decentre herself. This action, we can also say, is an effort to be one with the mother, a return to the blissful state of the Imaginary.

Ariel’s initial loss of her mother becomes a ‘palpable void’ (Ragland 87) and it is this loss that drives her life. Her murderous actions against patriarchal male figures become Lacan’s object a, that which is used to try and fill this void. Ragland’s argument can again be applied to Ariel as she is:

repeating relations to objects whose crucial function of semblance is that of filling up an actual void. Thus human beings pursue objects that sustain fantasies, even though attaining an object of fantasy can never completely close the void (Ragland 87).

Ariel’s fantasy is that she will one day ‘fit in’ and this is most readily achievable in the Imaginary where she could never be an outsider, but again Ariel’s (unavoidable) actions only push this fantasy further away.

Ariel’s repetitive gothic storyline positions her as both sadist (one who inflicts pain on others) and masochist (one who inflicts pain on themselves), both dominated and dominator, at once submissive and assertive (Day 19). In short, a masochistic/sadistic catch-22. Her efforts to eliminate the repetition of herself that she sees in others leads only to situations that will induce her to kill more repetitions of herself in an endless cycle. Her life is the archetypal “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. Wherever Ariel goes she can never be free from patriarchal Law which she threatens, and which will always threaten her. Ariel remains, both inside and outside male society; romantically idealised and a victimised outcast (Eagleton 190) literally always relegated to ‘somewhere else’, decentralised, never able to just ‘fit in’.

References

Bersani, Leo. A Future for Astyanax. Columbia University Press, 1984.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

Davis, Mike. “What’s the Story Mother?: Abjection and Anti-Feminism in Alien and Aliens.” 1995 http://www.ac.uk/fac/arts/English/wip/dav3ii.html(Please Note: this link is no longer active. The essay can be found here in Gothic Studies 2 (2000): 245-56.)

Day, William Patrick. In the Circles of Fear and Desire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.

Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vols. Vol. XXIII (1937-39). London: The Hogarth Press., 1961.

—. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey. Vols. Vol. XVIII (1937-39). London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.

Queen, Randy. Darkchylde: The Descent. La Jolla: Wildstorm Productions (DC Comics), 1999.

Ragland, Ellie. Essays on the Pleasures of Death: From Freud to Lacan. Routledge, 1995.

Something Quite Close to Hell - The Monstrous Female in Darkchylde

Randy Queen's drawings of his scantily clad and vulnerable heroine, Ariel Chylde coupled with outrageous demons and monstrous violence made Darkchylde a massive seller. With the release of a new Darkchylde comic (albeit a joint Darkness issue) at this year's San Diego Comic-con it's seems appropriate to revisit the 1990s incarnation of Darkchylde in an academic format.

Part 1 positions how monstrosity is produced when, psychoanalytically, separation of mother and daughter fails.

Part 2 investigates representations of the archaic mother and pre-oedipal mother in Darkchylde.

Something Quite Close to Hell – The Monstrous Female in Darkchylde (Part 1)

The female body shares with the monster the privilege of bringing out a unique blend of fascination and horror (Braidotti 81)

In the 1990s superhero comics were beset by a plague of ‘bad girl’ titles. Fathom, Witchblade, Danger Girl, Painkiller Jane, Chastity, Glory, Avengelyne, Allegra, Lady Death, Pandora, Webwitch, Shotgun Mary, and Allura were but a few which clogged comic shop shelves. Some have kicked on, while most have mercifully been sent to the remainder bin. These characters were generally young and attractive, sexy, sexually vulnerable, but ultimately packed a mean array of weapons, powers and skills. Maybe they were ‘bad’ because they transgressed patriarchal boundaries, or because they were powerful and seductive at the same time.

Or maybe as Jessica Rabbit says, they weren’t really bad, they were just drawn that way.

Randy Queen’s Darkchylde (Wildstorm/DC) was one of the more popular ‘bad girl’ titles at the time. This essay uses Darkchylde to explore representations of the monstrous female, specifically the pre-Oedipal and archaic mothers. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis as a point of departure it investigates how the concepts of the Law-of-the-Father and the symbolic order are pivotal in the production of the monstrous woman in Darkchylde. Drawing from Barbara Creed’s (1993) work on the monstrous feminine, I will argue that Darkchylde’s main character, Ariel Chylde, represents a female body in rebellion against the symbolic order’s oppressive and marginalising structures.

Darkchylde is the story of seventeen year old Ariel Chylde who lives with her abusive father, Robert. Of her mother we only know that she “left” when Ariel was very young, although the assumption is that she’s dead. Ariel is the possessor of the Darkchylde giving her the ability to transform into demons from the Nightmare Realm. These generally manifest when she or people close to her are threatened with harm. When the threat has been neutralised, Ariel and the demon separate. Ariel regains her human form and the demon scarpers back to the nightmare realm via a portal. To complicate matters, Kauldron, a human exile from the nightmare realm, has taken control of several demons before they have had a chance to return to the Nightmare Realm. Ariel must then save herself and her town from Kauldron and the demons under his control.

Ariel’s first transformation into a monster occurs during an incestuous attack by her father which ends when Ariel kills him. She is then helped by Perry, a male love interest, and his father Jack, a bigwig in the government agency SENTRY that deals with strange phenomena.

After Ariel’s second transformation she’s taken to SENTRY headquarters and subjected to experiments and tests (for her own good, of course). However, Ariel escapes with the help of Jack, Perry and three sympathetic demons from the nightmare realm – Sage, War and Piece. We find out that Sage is the spiritual representation of Ariel’s dead mother, and as her name suggests, she is very much a voice of wisdom and guidance. By the end of the comic Ariel has wreaked bloody carnage on most of the characters and the town of Salem; actions that lead to her exile.

Investigating the monstrous females in this simple narrative begins by examining the pre-Oedipal phase. In Lacanian psychoanalysis the pre-Oedipal (as Freud describes it) or Imaginary phase of development consists basically of two terms: the child and the image of the other, which is usually the mother (Eagleton 165). Elizabeth Grosz states that as the child develops, this dyadic structure is disrupted by the father who represents ‘law, order and authority for the child’(1990 68). The father is a ‘Symbolic or imaginary father’, a representative of the Name-of-the-Father that stands for patriarchal ownership. Taking on the Name-of-the-Father positions the child beyond the structure of dual imaginary relations (Grosz 1990 47). Recognition of this ‘paternal metaphor’ charts the child’s entry into the symbolic order and the social world beyond the family structure (Grosz 1990 104). Therefore, the Name-of-the-Father signifies the ‘Law’ or Law-of-the-Father that is the wider set of social and sexual roles rules upon which the symbolic order rests and relies. Keeping this in mind, let’s examine Ariel’s relationship with her “father”, Robert.

Ariel is sexually abused by Robert who represents the ‘Law’ of the symbolic order. However Ariel has a deeper feeling that Robert isn’t her father at all. She says –

I usually just call him Robert. He hates it but “Dad” just doesn’t feel comfortable. It’s funny, sometimes I feel like he isn’t my real father at all, just a man with the title (Queen 23).

In relation to paternal authority, Jane Gallop writes:

What if in making love the father still remained the law, and the daughter were just passive, denied? The father’s law has so restructured the daughter and her desires that it is hard, well nigh impossible, to differentiate the Father (that is to say the Law) from the male sexed body. What if making love with the father were merely a ruse to get the impertinent daughter to give up her resistance to the law? (Gallop 78).

This quote presents an excellent explanation of Ariel’s incestuous relationship with her father. Her use of Robert instead of “father” or “dad” is a resistance to the Law. She sees past Robert’s ‘male sexed body’ denying him the recognition, the ‘patriarchal right’, he ‘deserves’ as an embodiment of the Law. Robert’s sexual abuse of Ariel is his attempt to quell her impertinent resistance to the Law.

At the end of the comic we find out that indeed Robert is not Ariel’s father at all, he is simply an agent of the Law. Thus the Law itself is positioned as Ariel’s “father”, which is embodied by the many different male characters in the comic. This also explains why there are so many male figures (Robert, Perry, Jack, Kauldron) in Darkchylde compared to the solitary Ariel. Each male is another representative of the Law trying to quell her resistance. As Gallop states precisely for our purposes:

the law of the father gives her an identity, even if it is not her own, even if it blots out her feminine specificity. To give it up is not a ‘simple’ matter. It must be done over and over (Gallop 78).

As Robert is not Ariel’s father, she eludes the Name-of-the-Father that is patriarchal ownership (the identity he has given her is not her own). However she is still imprinted with the identity of the Law (i.e.: she is ‘imprinted’ with the ideals of woman that phallocentric culture positions as ‘feminine’), and as will be shown, trying to ‘give up’ this imprinted identity, by eliminating repetitions of her father (and herself), is something that must be done ‘over and over’.

For Ariel, the first appearance of the Law-of-the-Father, embodied by her (symbolic) father Robert, necessarily coincides with the death of her mother. Ariel is quite literally divided from her mother’s body and wrenched from the Imaginary (the realm where there exists only the child and the body of the mother) into the Oedipal drama (where the child must recognise the Law-of-the-Father). Therefore Ariel’s recognition of the Law equates with death, and more importantly, the death of her mother. As happens in the Oedipal phase, after recognition of the Law, Ariel acquires a guilty desire to return to the Imaginary (to be one again with her mother). This desire that cannot be realised is unconscious and is compounded by coinciding with her mother’s death. Thus her Oedipal drama remains unresolved because once she has realised that she cannot be her father’s lover (complicated by his sexual abuse of her) she has no mother figure to turn to or with which to identify. Without a mother as role model she will find it hard to take up a female position in the symbolic order, which is compounded by the incestuous abusive relationship with her father, her shyness, and her constant relocation from town to town. These factors position Ariel as an outsider who stands out from the crowd. But despite this, she still longs to fit in, to be part of the symbolic order. 

To complicate matters further, Ariel’s monstrous and murderous rebellion against her father, where she refuses to be a passive subject to his abuse, positions her as a possessed female subject who refuses to take up her role in the symbolic order (Creed 38). Thus Ariel presents an interesting dichotomy – the passive victim who wants to be part of the symbolic order versus the aggressive monster ensnared within the passive victim who threatens the symbolic order from her marginalised position. To draw an analogy, Ariel is similar to the main character of the film Carrie (1976). Barbara Creed writes of Carrie: ‘on the one hand she is a painfully shy, withdrawn, child-like girl who just wants to be ‘normal’ like every other teenager, while on the other hand she has the power… to transform into an avenging female fury’ (78). Like Carrie, that which Ariel outwardly desires (to fit in) can never be attained due to her monstrous, ‘uncontrollable’, capabilities which threaten the symbolic order. But from where does Ariel’s monstrousness originate? To explain we must return to the site of the pre-Oedipal and Oedipal phases.

Freud states that the pre-Oedipal phase is far more important in women than in men. This is because the mother-child relation is a site for both the transmission and subversion of patriarchal values, where the archaic force of the pre-Oedipal, which although repressed, is also permanently preserved (Grosz 1990 149). But how can this be so? How is this mother-child relation preserved? Elisabeth Grosz again explains:

As Freud himself noted, the girl remains in contiguity with the pre-Oedipal period in ways that are barred for boys […] In the case of the girl, there is no clear-cut division between the pre-Oedipal and the oedipal; she occupies an oedipalised position only gradually and unsurely. Her oedipal complex may persist indefinitely or fade because of disappointments, rather than end through a dramatic repression. She thus remains in touch with the pre-Oedipal maternal continent (Grosz 1989 115).

Ariel’s mother died when Ariel was only an infant, as is denoted by her memories:

being lost in the amber glow of your eyes as you cradled me… as you held me to your warm breast, as I listened to stories of dark forest and houses made of gingerbread… I try to recall your face but no images come. Only feelings. Feelings of love and joy… (Queen 98).

This mother figure that Ariel speaks of is the pre-Oedipal mother, who exists in relation to the family and the symbolic order (Creed 20), and as is responsible for the early socialisation of the child.

Ariel’s mother dying may have been her way of refusing to submit to the symbolic order. Thus she also becomes monstrous, as both the monster and death signify a monstrous obliteration of the self, and both are linked to the demonic (Creed 30). This is significant as Ariel’s mother resides with the demons in the nightmare realm. Ariel in her monstrous rebellion follows her mother’s lead by refusing to recognise the paternal order and thus is also produced as monstrous (Creed 38).

Even though the link between Ariel and her mother should be completely severed through death, they remain linked shown through the appearance of the bird, Sage, Ariel’s “guardian angel”; the representation of her pre-Oedipal mother. This is made explicitly clear when Ariel says:

Little bird. Always appearing and disappearing at your leisure… with your cryptic warnings… the bird of light who always seems to know right when I need her… right when I need… her. M-mom? Mommy? (Queen 129).

Thus the source of Ariel’s monstrosity is, as Creed argues, the failure of the paternal order to ensure the separation of mother and child (Creed 38).

Read Part 2

Reference

Braidotti, Rosi. (1994). Nomadic Subjects. New York. Columbia University Press.

Creed, Barbara. (1993). The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis. London and New York. Routledge.

Gallop, Jane. (1982). Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter’s Seduction. Macmillan Press.

Grosz, Elizabeth. (1986). 'Language and the Limits of the Body: Kristeva and Abjection' in Grosz, E. (ed.) Futur*fall: Excursions into Post-modernity. University of Sydney.

Grosz, Elizabeth. (1989). Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Allen and Unwin.

Grosz, Elizabeth. (1990). Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction. London and New York. Routledge.

Queen, Randy. (1999). Darkchylde Collected Edition: The Descent. DC Comics.

Part 2 - Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics

Part 2 of 'Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics' uses Baudrillardian theory to analyse the superhero comic Wetworks demonstrating how 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. 

Read Part 1

In the Image comic Wetworks the characters are covered by a gold bio-metalloid compound that’s like ‘having a suit of armour for a second skin… I feel as though it’s reading my mind and working with my body, making me stronger and faster than ever before’ (Portacio & Choi, Jun. 1994, 15). On initial contact the compound covers every orifice, one character having to fight desperately to open his mouth . This ‘symbiote’ makes the body smooth, shiny and enclosed, even the eyes. A goggle wearing character now finds them incorporated into his body. The Wetworks team walks naked and smouldering from their symbolic (re)birth by fire and explosion, their bodies completely covered and protected by the symbiote. Their sex differences erased and the bodies now ‘lacking’ nothing, they literally wear Baudrillard’s second skin becoming ‘more nude than nude’ and a phallic effigy at the same time.

The ‘nudity’ of the energy being superhero is best of all. These energy beings have no corporeal body. As Baudrillard writes, the corporeal body is–

denied in the interests of a second, non-porous skin that neither exudes or excretes, that is neither hot nor cold (it is “cool” and “warm”: optimally air-conditioned), with no proper density…and above all without orifices (it is smooth)…All these qualities (coolness, suppleness, transparency, one-piece) are qualities of closure… (105).

The energy being must have a suit, a second skin (their only one) to contain their ‘design(at)ed nudity’. As Baudrillard argues design(at)ed nudity–

implies that there is nothing behind the lattice of signs that it weaves, especially not a body: neither a body of labour, nor a body of pleasure; neither an erogenous body nor a broken body (106).

The suits could be any shape because these energy beings resemble Brigitte Bardot, who is ‘“beautiful because she fits her dress exactly”’ (Baudrillard 106). They fit into their suits perfectly. Because the energy being’s body is only a body because of their suit, their body is faultless. It has no gaps, no orifices and is completely smooth. These energy beings in their suits are simulacra of ‘real’ bodies but without the lack that comes with a real body. Like the Wetworks characters, the energy being is ‘more nude than nude’, lacking nothing and a phallic effigy.

Both aspects of the fantasised phallic ideal are covered in the depiction of female and male bodies in superhero comics. The first is the exaggeration of the ‘erectile’ legs in the female creating the ‘ideal’ long penis. The extra muscled legs and arms of male characters resemble ‘ideal’ thick and ‘veined’ penis. Although uncommon, some depictions have all three in one– a long, wide and veined leg/phallus.

In superhero comics the female body is incorporated into a system of phallic exchange ‘whereby woman becomes erect and man’s desire will be received in its own image’ (Baudrillard 103). The body of the female superhero is merely a disguised phallus which signals the homoerotic/narcissistic undertones of the superhero comic. This homoerotic desire is also present in mainstream media as Jane Ussher recognises–

The mass media encourages heterosexual women to desire masculine bodies, which are hard, lean and slim – at least in their ideal state. It is this that many women measure themselves against (and are certainly measured against in the media – those cellulite free thighs are very like those of boys; we may wonder whose fantasy is at play here, given it is largely men who create this imagery) (71).

Indeed, as Lynda Nead argues, representations of the female nude created by male artists not only testify to patriarchal understandings of female sexuality, they also endorse certain definitions of male sexuality and masculinity (283). In the case of the representation of female superheroes, the patriarchal understanding of female sexuality is not of woman as ‘other’ as may be expected, but of woman as mirror. The tough, strong, and independent female superhero becomes a mirror reflecting male dominance and desire. It is just as Baudrillard states that when woman is annexed to a phallic order she is condemned to a non-existence (104).

Eliminating Castrating Women

Barbara Creed argues in her book The Monstrous Feminine that the vampire’s fanged mouth is a symbol of the castrating vagina dentata (22). The Wetworks team leader, Jackson Dane, has a dream where he is attacked by a vampire of the “Night Tribes”, (the vagina dentata), and in typically feminised fashion is unable to fight back– ‘All he can do is bleed… and take the pain’. In a scene reminiscent of a rape, the vampire stands behind Dane snarling. Dane screams ‘SSS-stop! No more! PLEASE!’ The vampire replies – ‘Giving up already, my pet?’. Dane hopes his newly acquired symbiote will protect him, but it moves aside revealing his flesh for the ‘fanged monster’ (Portacio & Choi, Aug. 1994 23-4). Fortunately for Dane and reader alike, this is only a dream and could never happen for “real”. Still, this sequence demonstrates how the threat of castration could happen, impregnated as it is with the ideas of passivity, feminisation, rape and violence. In fact it says that castration could only happen through the male being passive and overpowered.

For Baudrillard, as with Freud, the fetishised object/phallic body part is caught up in the denial of castration. The phallic/castrating woman is mirrored in Klaus Theweleit’s description of the proletariat women who appeared in Freikorps literature. These rifle-women (flintenweiber) were depicted as cold-blooded killers, often in the company of several men (which obviously made them whores) and in no way could be trusted. Theweleit describes one image of the rifle-women that was so feared– ‘Hair flying, packing pistols, and riding shaggy horses, the women present an image of terrifying sexual potency. It is a phallic, not a vaginal potency that is fantasized and feared’ (73). This phallic potency also translates to the fear that the rifle-women have a concealed weapon (a gun or a grenade) under her skirt. The phrase that is of interest here is the phallic potency that is ‘fantasized and feared’, which plays right into the depiction of the female superhero – fantasised as phallic effigy, feared as the phallic castrating woman. But we cannot have both. They cannot co-exist.

The pervasive threat of castration embodied by the female superhero is eliminated by eliminating the castrating potential of women. This is done in a number of ways. In Wetworks the threat of woman as vagina dentata is eliminated through the symbiote’s ability to seal all orifices of the body (especially the female body) as well as protect the penis with its armouring properties. The threat of the castrating woman as a phallic woman is eliminated when her body is given male body characteristics. When she is phallusised she is eliminated as female by incorporation into a masculine ideal. Although what I am talking about here is not as extreme as Theweleit’s dissertation on the German Freikorps where the soldier seeks to eliminate the female and the threat of castration by reducing her to a ‘bloody mass’, the parallel is more to do with what he states as a ‘dissolution of the body itself, and of the woman as bodily entity’ (196). If the ‘standard’ female body is dissolved, it has no presence, no corporeality, and no representation. If, as Baudrillard theorises, the body has moved into representation, feminine specificity is thus eliminated, and the only representation that remains is that of the masculine.

To give the female a body of her own is to give her representation, to recognise her difference. Denying female representation denies her an existence, thus eliminating her, leaving only the image of the male.

Read Part 3

Reference

Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Exchange and Death. London: Sage, 
1993.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London & New York: Routledge, 1993.

Nead, Lynda. 'The Female Nude: Pornography, Art, and Sexuality' In Segal, Lynne. & Mary McIntosh (eds). Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate. Virago Press, 1992.

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.

Ussher, Jane. Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex. Penguin Books, 1997.