Posthuman Superheroes (Part 2): Performing Gender

This is the second part of a four part essay dealing with posthuman superheroes and theorises Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs as a negative ideal of a posthuman subject and analyses Martian Manhunter performing gender in two issues of Justice League Task Force.

Part One provides an overview of posthuman theory which include evolution of the human through mutation; and the idea of embodiment which theorises that the mind, body, and environment are a continuous entity.  It then identifies a number of superheroes as having posthuman bodies and genders

Part three ‘Shapeshifters, Cyborgs, and Embodied Superheroes’ theorises the superhero characters, Mystique, Jean Grey, Apollo, Midnighter, The Engineer, Jack Hawksmoor, as posthuman subjects.

Part four ‘Coming Off The Page’ investigates the growing real world emergence of the posthuman. 

The character of Buffalo Bill in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is another example of posthuman gender albeit a negative one. Halberstam notes that Buffalo Bill resembles ‘a heavy metal rocker as much as a drag queen’ (2000:60), and assumes a posthuman gender because he is: 

simply at odds with any identity whatsoever; no body, no gender will do… what he constructs is a posthuman gender; a gender beyond the body, beyond human, a carnage of identity (2000:58).

Halberstam notes Bill is ‘prey to the most virulent conditioning heterosexist culture has to offer. He believes that anatomy is destiny’ (2000:60). I would argue that the anatomic destiny to which Bill aspires is an illusion. Anatomy is more than the female skin which he violently covets. It is the illusion of femininity to which Bill is attracted as shown by the scene where he tucks his genitals between his legs, to give the viewer (and himself) the impression that his genital region, on the surface, looks like that of a woman. Combined with his awkward dancing it is clear that he is playing at being woman. Without male genitals, and of course also without those of a female, he theoretically becomes sexless. By clothing himself in the skin of a female he is clearly playing woman, yet becomes sexless. It is the appearance, the illusion of woman, which is attractive to Bill. The skin becomes a fetish – or even a kind of skin as condom. He can’t wear female skin in public (one presumes) so this pursuit is entirely of a solitary, and extremely private, nature. In a sense he is not really playing woman either. The skin he removes from his female victims can no longer be designated “woman.” Woman is the performance Bill wants to enact. The sexless female illusion he aspires to is similar to the way drag queens present a heightened version of femininity of which women provide no real counterpart. Drag queen make-up covers prominent male features or exaggerates them to something which is not recognised as male. Similarly Buffalo Bill simply uses the skins of women to cover up his maleness rather than to become a woman. Bill wants to wear the skin of women. He wants to be covered up. As noted by Lecter in the film, Buffalo Bill is not a transsexual but he thinks he is. Bill ‘hates his identity and thinks that makes him a transsexual’ (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991)[i]. Lecter is right. Bill has deluded himself. He is nothing more than an extreme cross-dresser, a drag queen who doesn’t want to dress like a woman, he wants to dress in woman. But the fact is that the skins that Bill collects to stitch together and wear will never look like him with his penis tucked between his legs, will never meet the illusion, the ideal of his aspirations. The skin becomes part of the performance. As Halberstam notes, to Bill skin is gender, all surface. This production of posthuman gender involves a process of violent transformation, one built through oppositions – Bill is completely opposed to everything. He is a gender in process, becoming something other:

he divorces once and for all sex and gender or nature and gender and remakes the human condition as a posthuman body suit. Buffalo Bill kills for his clothes and emblematises the ways in which gender is always posthuman, always a sewing job which stitches identity into a body bag (Halberstam, 2000:67).

Halberstam’s idea of the posthuman body suit is one that can be constructed and put on, taken off, and exchanged when necessary. Bill’s posthuman body suit takes dressing in drag to a violent nth degree. It is not enough for Bill to dress as a woman but he is not suitable for gender reassignment surgery, of which he has been rejected. Bill’s gender resides somewhere in-between. Though it is clear that Bill doesn’t think he, or at least his body, should suffer in his search for a clearer/individual identity/gender and it is at the cost of women that he seeks to achieve this posthuman gender agenda. Halberstam writes: ‘Buffalo Bill thinks he is not in the wrong body, but the wrong skin, an incorrect casing. He is not interested in what lies beneath the skin’ (2000:60-1). I take issue with Halberstam on this point because once Bill has his victims’ skin on, he lies beneath the skin, and he is certainly interested in himself. And if we are talking about posthumanism here then the skin cannot be separated from the body because the skin is the body. If it was simply Bill’s skin that he had the problem with, why not replace his own skin with a woman’s using skin grafts? He would then be incorporating rather than eviscerating the essence of woman which he desires. Thus it is not the wrong skin that is the problem, but the wrong appearance, and again it is not Bill who violently loses his skin to fix the problem. Of course, I realise a solution effectively cancels the premise of the film’s horror narrative but my point is made. While this incarnation of posthuman gender is achieved through violent transgression and opposition, it is not to say that it is the only way. Of course if such ideas like posthumanism are to be embraced we must accept that not all realisations/theorisations of the concept will be of a positive nature. There must be room for those which are achieved through the negative and dark. What gender is Buffalo Bill then? Some (see part one). To be clearer in this explanation I guess it is perhaps better to say that it is uncertain what gender he is, or more correctly, to which he aspires.

The idea of some and someness is frustrating. Some, is an uncertain path to an uncertain limit that can never be reached. And if we are to proscribe to Pepperell’s view (see part one), uncertainty is a frustrating yet essential staple part of the posthuman condition.

Another example, of a male playing woman which at first appears to embrace the idea of multiple posthuman gender, though ultimately radically fails, is exhibited by the DC Comics character the Martian Manhunter (aka J’onn J’onnz) in the connected stories ‘Valley of the Daals’ and ‘How Green Was My Daalie?’ in Justice League Task Force #7-8 (Dec. 1993 – Jan. 1994). J’onn shapeshifts into female form in order to lead an “all” female mission (which includes Wonder Woman) to a hidden domain populated only by women known as Daals. In the two issue story, female gender stereotypes are addressed and jokingly played around with while actually being reinforced. J’onn categorically states earlier in the story that he is male, and certainly there is no changing this [ii]. Obviously to J’onn he is donning the outward appearance of a woman. Just like Buffalo Bill, J’onn J’onnz is ‘a man imitating gender, exaggerating gender’ (Halberstam, 2000:60). When J’onn is to reveal himself in his female form to his fellow female team members, he doesn’t want to be laughed at, invoking issues of self-esteem and appearance stereotypically associated with women. When a male compliments J’onn on his appearance he is clearly flattered, again invoking that vanity is associated with women, and that women are judged, and seek approval, from men on their appearance (lower right). The comedy elements here stem from J’onn, while playing a woman, immediately assuming the stereotypical role of female by responding to comments on his appearance and worrying specifically how others will perceive him. In another stereotypical scene J’onn initially refuses to come out of his room in his female shape because he is embarrassed [iii]. J’onn is thus not playing woman, but the stereotype of woman. 

Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz, steps out as Joan J’onzz 
(David, Velluto, and Albrecht & McClellan, 1993:12-3)

In the course of the mission, the leader of the Daals takes a fancy to J’onn (in his female guise, Joan) and arranges for them to be married, which J’onn plays along with in order to complete the team’s mission. Again he exhibits “female traits” – ‘this female masquerade is stressful. I’m irritable… tense… my head aches’ (David, Velluto, and Albrecht, 1994:2). Once married the leader of the Daals reveals herself to J’onn as half-male, half-female – in-between – solving the puzzle of how the Daals perpetuate their all woman society. Tellingly, the phallus still rules, signifying power, even in a women only society. If they are to consummate the marriage as the Daal leader intends, J’onn must, “go all the way” in his female performance, a step which he is not willing to take and he quickly changes back to his male form.

Seriously interrogating J’onn’s sexuality/gender is not an option even though, as team-mate, Gypsy, has stated earlier in the story: ‘We know you’re a shapeshifter. One shape should be like another to you.’ (David, Velluto, and Albrecht & McClellan, 1993:12). Indeed it should be, but it isn’t. Being serviced by the Daal leader would mark J’onn as a passive female, and with lesbian undertones. Throughout the story he has been playing the passive follower to the active Daal leader and to succumb to any other “feminised” role, especially sex, would further emasculate him. In simple and stark terms – the hero doesn’t get fucked, he fucks.

Startled and angered by J’onn’s deception, the Daal leader lashes out but is soon overpowered when J’onn grabs her hair and bends her arm up behind her back. Their mission accomplished, the heroes make their escape pursued closely by the Daals. The ensuing fight sees J’onn save the Daal leader, after which she forgives his deception. In these last scenes the lesbian connotations are deflected, J’onn only managing to kiss the Daal leader on the cheek. Indeed there is no questioning his heterosexuality at all, as evinced by the following passage:

J’onn: She told me I could come back if I ever changed my mind… But I think our physical relationship would be… strained.

Gypsy: That’s your call, wouldn’t you say, J’onn?

J’onn: Perhaps, but not a decision I choose to make.
(David, Velluto, and Albrecht, 1994:22, emphasis in original)

J’onn doesn’t want to be a woman, which isn’t surprising after all the negative connotations that have been associated with being female throughout the two issues. To cap it off, being the bride of a hermaphrodite is not the stuff of heroes, especially a male hero. J’onn becoming a woman “for real” or indeed questioning his heterosexuality in any context can only be done as an aberration to his male heroic role, and only when necessary to carry out a heroic mission. Recalling J’onn’s own fear that he would be laughed at, the narrative implies that even in a women-only population, female traits are stereotypical across age, race, and even species. It must be inherent, even if you’re a man who is only pretending to be a woman for a while. The narrative of dressing in drag, or playing opposing genders and sexualities, is one which is continually replayed in our culture. From Some Like it Hot (1959), Tootsie (1982), Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Strange Bedfellows (2004) to I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) and any other number of movies and television series, straight men have performed female and gay roles, and mainly for laughs. The same can’t be said for lesbian or gay men playing it straight, which often ends in tragic circumstances. Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and to a lesser extent the western, The Ballad of Little Jo (1993) are just two examples, which unlike the aforementioned comedies, have their basis in reality.

Read Part One: Posthuman Bodies and Genders

Read Part three ‘Shapeshifters, Cyborgs, and Embodied Superheroes

Read Part Four: Coming Off the Page

Reference

David, P. (w), Velluto, S. (p), and Albrecht, J. (i) (1994) ‘How Green Was My Daalie?’ Justice League Task Force v1 #8 (Jan. 1994), New York: DC Comics.

David, P. (w), Velluto, S. (p), and Albrecht, J. & McClellan, A. (i) (1993) ‘Valley of the Daals’ Justice League Task Force v1 #7 (Dec. 1993), New York: DC Comics.

Halberstam, J. ‘Skinflick: Posthuman Gender in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs’ in Badmington, N. (ed.) (2000) Posthumanism. Palgrave, pp. 56-68.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Orion Pictures, Demme, J. (dir.).

Footnotes
[i] Transsexual as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary is as follows: A. adj 1. Of or pertaining to transsexualism; having physical characteristics of one sex and psychological characteristics of the other 2. Of or pertaining to both sexes. B. n A transsexual person. Also, one whose sex has been changed by surgery (‘Transsexual’, n.a. 1989).

[ii] The Martian Manhunter has always been considered and represented as male. During his pre-Earth life on Mars he had a wife and son.

[iii] The idea of “coming out” is not lost on me here either.

Posthuman Superheroes (Part 1): Posthuman Bodies and Genders

This is the first part of a four part essay dealing with posthuman superheroes. The superhero universe is full of characters that exhibit a wide range of posthuman features. With their abilities of shapeshifting and embodiment they are forms without form; characters which exhibit endless possibility and multiplicity. Using the work of Ihab Hassan, and the idea of embodiment as defined by Robert Pepperell, and Katherine Hayles, part one provides an overview of posthuman theory which include evolution of the human through mutation; and the idea of embodiment which theorises that the mind, body, and environment are a continuous entity. It then identifies a number of superheroes as having posthuman bodies and genders.

Part two ‘Performing Gender’ theorises Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs as a negative ideal of a posthuman subject and analyses Martian Manhunter performing gender in two issues of Justice League Task Force.

Part three ‘Shapeshifters, Cyborgs, and Embodied Superheroes’ theorises the superhero characters, Mystique, Jean Grey, Apollo, Midnighter, The Engineer, and Jack Hawksmoor, as posthuman subjects.

Part four ‘Coming Off The Page’ investigates the growing real world emergence of the posthuman and the possibility of fostering a real world 'heroic imagination'.

In their editorial to the ‘Posthumanous’ issue of the journal, Reconstruction, Jason Smith, Ximena Gallardo, and Geoff Klock, write:

there is certainly no agreement as to what, exactly, constitutes posthumanism or a posthumanist position beyond the premise that what previously seemed to constitute the subject position of a “human being” has been threatened, infiltrated, deconstructed, or denatured (2004).

Even though there may be no consensus on posthumanism, there are several key theoretical concepts, that are, not the least for my discussion here, the most prevalent.

In his 1977 essay ‘Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Culture?’, Ihab Hassan echoes Michel Foucault’s claim that man as an invention of recent date is perhaps nearing its end (1973). In signalling the end of humanism, Hassan suggests:

We need first to understand that the human form – including desire and all its external representations – may be changing radically, and thus must be re-visioned. We need to understand that five hundred years of humanism may be coming to an end, as humanism transforms itself into something that we must helplessly call posthumanism (1977:212).

Although the essay seems to have been forgotten by current posthuman theorists – Hayles uses it only for quotation purposes – Hassan’s essay is for me a nexus from which the major strands of posthuman thought originate. Written in “scenes” using eight “textual voices”, Hassan’s succinct essay, covers much of the ground – evolution, consciousness, and human/machine hybrids – upon which the current posthumanist debate resides. These major strands of posthuman thought diverge from this essay, resurfacing and recombining years later as “new” theories on the subject including ideas that Robert Pepperell, author of The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain, uses twenty years later. Dealing more with the aspects of human consciousness than with the integration of human and machine which has come to dominate the posthuman debate, Hassan documents that posthumanist culture depends on ‘the growing intrusion of the human mind into nature and history, on the dematerialization of life and the conceptualization of existence’ (1977:205). Much like Francois Lyotard’s view that postmodernism is not an age, but ‘a mood or better, a state of mind’ (1986/87:209), Hassan’s posthumanism is that of a continual movement, an expanding of consciousness that happens, and has happened, throughout history; a performance in progress where ‘the languages of imagination and the languages of science have… crossed in certain epochs and certain great minds of the past’ (1977:207). Science and imagination are thus agents of change – their interplay as modes of representation and transformation, being vital performing principles in culture and consciousness (Hassan, 1977:208).

Robert Pepperell defines posthumanism as that which comes after humanism; the time dominated by the thought that humans are the measure of all things; the ‘long held belief in the infallibility of human power and the arrogant belief in our superiority and uniqueness’ (2003:171). This antagonistic/egocentric humanistic view results in humanity’s desire to dominate, control, and exploit nature. The emergence of movements that resist exploitative humanist behaviour – feminism, environmentalism, and animal rights – are the most evident of humanity moving towards a posthuman future. Incorporated in the humanistic view is the idea that scientific enquiry would prove the world, and indeed the universe, to be a gigantic machine, and once all the parts of this machine had been discovered and studied, then through logical reasoning, the future could be accurately predicted. Pepperell sees posthumanism germinating in three early twentieth century ideas – cubism; relativity theory; and quantum physics – which changed how the nature of reality was viewed and represented (2003:162). Specifically, seemingly stable reality became a ‘cluster of probabilities that mutate over time and which are dependent on the viewer for their perception’ (2003:166). The cubists’ role in this was the introduction of an ambiguous contingency into pictorial representation that was analogous to the uncertainty and paradox found in advanced physics (2003:166).

For Pepperell, the posthuman era begins proper when ‘we no longer find it necessary, or possible, to distinguish between humans and nature’ (Pepperell, 2003:161), shifting from ‘a universe of certainty and predictability to a universe of uncertainty and unpredictability’ (2003:167). While some posthuman debate tends towards the elimination, manipulation, or expendability of the body, Pepperell theorises about an expansive body through the dissolution of boundaries. Thus the idea of embedded consciousness – embodiment – drives his posthuman philosophy. Consciousness is the mind (as opposed to the brain as an organ) and body acting together – effectively we think with our whole body (2003:178). Pepperell argues that the human is identifiable, but not definable such that no finite division can be drawn between the environment, the body, and the brain. Our consciousness (mind) and environment (reality) cannot be separated and are therefore continuous (2003:178).


Posthuman – After the Human

The term posthuman is also used in an evolutionary sense, with differing definitions. One branch of posthuman thought posits that we have evolved enough to decide the direction in which we are to evolve. A definitive, and somewhat idealist, explanation of this facet of posthumanism is put forward by Nick Bostrom:

A posthuman is a human descendent who has been augmented to such a degree as to be no longer human… your mental and physical abilities would far surpass those of any unaugmented human. You would be smarter than any human genius and be able to remember things much more easily. Our body will not be susceptible to disease and it will not deteriorate with age… you may have a greatly expanded capacity to feel emotions and to experience pleasure and love and artistic beauty. You would not need to feel tired, bored or irritated about petty things (in Graham, 2002:159)

This level of enhancement says that if more is better, then lots more must be much better. Opponents to the engineering of human evolution point to the dehumanising effect it may have on the human subject, undermining dignity and eroding the fuzzy value of what it is to be human. There is also the threat posthumans might pose to “ordinary” humans (Bostrom, 2005: 204). Though as Michael Akerib (2007) writes, the means and availability of procedures to attain a posthuman state of this kind would inevitably be restricted, initially, to a chosen few, which is essentially no different to the liberal humanist conception that:

may have applied, at best, to that fraction of humanity who had wealth, power, and leisure to conceptualize themselves as autonomous beings exercising their will through individual agency and choice (Hayles, 1999:286).

Like claims that postmodernism is simply the natural extension of modernism (high or late modernism), the posthuman could also be claimed to simply extend the ideas of the humanist agenda – progress, self-improvement, individualism (Graham, 2002:153), of which all three can be applied to the posthuman ideal. Thus the domination of technology is achieved by incorporating technology into our(selves), allowing a complete mental mastery over prosthetic devices. These machines/augmentations, such as artificial prosthesis, literally respond to our commands, our thoughts. Again opponents point out that this progress could actually be harmful to the human subject/psyche and is therefore not progress at all.


Posthuman Bodies, Posthuman Gender

For Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingstone posthuman bodies ‘emerge at nodes where bodies, bodies of discourse, and discourse of bodies intersect to foreclose any easy distinction between actor and stage, between sender/receiver, channel, code, message, context’ (1995:2). A posthuman body is ‘a technology, a screen, a projected image… a contaminated body, a deadly body, a techno-body… a queer body’ (Halberstam & Livingstone, 1995:3). They are ‘causes and effects of postmodern relations of power and pleasure, virtuality and reality, sex and its consequences’ (Halberstam & Livingstone, 1995:3). This suggests the posthuman body, using the metaphor of space in this context, simply occupies space(s). Similar to Pepperell’s use of uncertainty, Halberstam and Livingstone elicit the uncertain posthuman concepts of gender, race, and sexuality, through the idea of someness:

How many races, genders, sexualities are there? Some. How many are you? Some. “Some” is not an indefinite number awaiting a more accurate measurement, but a rigorous theoretical mandate whose specification… is neither numerable nor, in the common sense, innumerable (1995:9).

Here is a posthuman ideal set out – the idea of uncertainty of which Pepperell writes – where some number of genders, race, and sexualities are embraced. Succinctly, by keeping the number uncertain then none can be excluded nor when another mode is invented/rehashed/reincarnated, will there be a conflict because there is always, and can only be, some. The posthuman being is always a multiplicity. There is neither one nor other, object or subject, but at the same time, also both. Therefore, the posthuman body:

vibrates across and among an assemblage of semi-autonomous collectivities it knows it can never either be coextensive with nor altogether separate from. The posthuman body is not driven… by a teleological desire for domination, death or stasis; or to become coherent and unitary; or even to explode into more disjointed multiplicities. Driven by the double impossibility and prerequisite to become other and to become itself, the posthuman body intrigues rather than desires; it is intrigued and intriguing just as it is queer: not as an identity but because it queers (Halberstam & Livingstone, 1995:14).

Posthuman genders ‘include any and all former “unnameables”… and any other “transgressive” gender practices’ (Smith, Klock, & Gallardo, 2004). The reasoning is simply that these gender types have assaulted and undermined the two-sex model and thereby what it means to be human (Smith, Klock, & Gallardo, 2004). While I don’t feel this term posthuman gender is particularly relevant – they are hardly “post” anything and have always been labelled – there is something to be said for their increasing representation in the traditional white/male/heterosexual space of superhero comics. Thus we have the emergence of previously unnameable posthuman genders becoming named, starting with the Marvel Comics character, Northstar, who openly declared his gay sexuality. The trend continues to The Invisibles’s Lord Fanny (a Brazilian transvestite shaman, though more correctly she is transgender), and culminates with Apollo and Midnighter of The Authority, who engage in an openly gay and committed relationship; who get married; and adopt a baby. The posthuman superhero narrative is not that of Dr Fredric Wertham’s implied undercurrent of homosexuality (which in itself implies that there is no place for homosexuality in comics) in his diatribe, Seduction of the Innocent. Rather, the posthuman superhero narrative is that of The Authority which sees homosexuality function at full volume, where the two most powerful characters on the team openly make out with each other (Klock, 2002:143). The fact that Apollo and Midnighter are deliberate tropes of Superman and Batman actually turns Wertham’s argument against itself. Why not make the two most powerful representations of superheroes gay? As a representation of a committed gay couple, Apollo and Midnighter show readers what is possible and present, dare I say, a normative picture of homosexuality. On the other hand, as two of the most powerful humans on Earth, they can basically do what they want without any worry of social reprisal, a situation which is perhaps difficult to replicate in the “real” world. I recall here the X-Men character, Beast, being unwilling to correct the impression that he is gay in New X-Men #134: ‘I’ve been taunted all my life for my individualistic looks and style of dress… I’m as gay as the next mutant’ (Morrison et al, 2005:14). Incorrectly Beast equates gay sexuality with the surface quality of mode of dress – a matter of performance. Assuming that it doesn’t matter whether he is gay or not, which of course can be seen as a positive representation of homosexuality, this is perhaps something only someone of a heterosexual identity could say. Like Apollo and Midnighter, Beast has the ability to repel any attacks that might occur in the event that his ruse is revealed. His is a position of power, mainly physical, even though as a mutant he is relegated to society’s margins.

Read Part Two: Performing Gender

Read Part Three: Shapeshifters, Cyborgs, and Embodied Superheroes

Read Part Four: Coming Off the Page

Reference

Bostrom, N. (2005) ‘In Defence of Posthuman Dignity’ Bioethics 19, 3, pp. 202-14.

Akerib, M. (25 July 2007) ‘Towards a Post-Human World?’,
http://clubofamsterdam.blogspot.com/2007/07/towards-post-human-world.html (Accessed 11 Oct 2007).

Graham, E.L. (2002). Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Halberstam, J. & Livingstone, I. (1995). Posthuman Bodies, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Hassan, I. ‘Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Culture’ in Benamou, M. and Caramello, C. (eds) (1977). Performance in Postmodern Culture, University of Wisconsin – Milwaulkee: Coda Press, pp. 201-20.

Hayles, N. K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Klock, G. (2002). How to Read Superhero Comics and Why, New York, London: Continuum.

Lyotard, J. (1986-7). ‘Rules and Paradoxes and Svelte Appendix.’ Trans. Brian Massumi, Cultural Critique 5, pp. 209-19.

Morrison, G. (w), Quitely, F. with Grant, K. (p) and Avalon Studios (i). ‘Kid Ω’ New X-Men #134 in Morrison, G. (w), Quitely, F. with Grant, K. (p) and Avalon Studios (i) (2005). New X-Men Vol. 4: Riot at Xavier’s, [Collecting 2003 ‘New X-Men’ #134-138] New York: Marvel Publishing.

Pepperell, R. (2000). ‘The Posthuman Conception of Consciousness: A 10-point Guide’, http://robertpepperell.com/papers/The%20Posthuman%20Conception.pdf, (Accessed 16 Oct 2007).

Pepperell, R. (2003). The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain, Bristol, et al: Intellect.

Smith, C. J., Klock, G and Gallardo, X. (2004). ‘Introduction: Posthumanous’ Reconstruction 4, 3, http://reconstruction.eserver.org/043/Klock.htm (Accessed 11 Oct 2007).

Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics

In the coming posts I will be going retro and presenting pieces on comics produced in the 1990s, specifically the comics Wetworks, Darkchylde, and Witchblade,

In this three part essay I discuss how the feminine is effectively eliminated in superhero comics by eradicating the difference between the sexes reducing them to an economy of the same.

Part 1 compares standard human anatomy with bodies in superhero comics showing how female characters are depicted with characteristics of the ‘standard’ male body. Male bodies are subsequently rendered as hypermasculine. Using the work of Jean Baudrillard I show how the female superhero body is phallicised thus creating ‘erectile’ parts.

Part 2 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.

Part 3 covers how armouring the male superhero body is an attempt to elicit self-control and thereby control the feminine that is embodied in chaotic, uncontrollable and changing ‘outside forces’. I further establish how armouring the body is unworkable due to its passive mode of resistance. I describe the next step in the process to control outside forces as becoming the weapon/machine and the consequences that this can have for culture at large.

Notice the Difference? Eliminating the Feminine in Superhero Comics
(Part 1)

Of course the female form has absurdly exaggerated sexual characteristics; of course the costumes are skimpier than one could (or should) imagine; of course there’s no visible way that these costumes could stay in place; of course these women represent simple adolescent masturbatory fantasies (with a healthy taste of the dominatrix) (Bukatman 112).

The female superhero body is constructed as hyperfeminine, as a spectacle insistent on breasts, thighs, crotch, and hair. In the quote above Scott Bukatman answers why female superheroes are drawn the way they are – they’re eye candy to satisfy the male gaze. You might also answer that because the vast majority of superhero comic artists are male, they draw female superheroes that way because they can. But what is it about these female superhero bodies that make them so good to look at so that, of course, they must be drawn with absurdly exaggerated sexual characteristics? Why are their costumes skimpier than one ‘should’ imagine? There must be more to it, and there is.

In part one of this essay I’ll undertake an anatomical comparison of ‘real’ female bodies against bodies represented in superhero comics. This line of reasoning will explicate how the female superhero body is depicted according to characteristics normally associated with the male body. The male body, in turn, has been exaggerated to hypermasculine proportions. I’ll argue that superhero comics reduce all ‘others’ to the economy of the same by eradicating the difference between the sexes (Irigaray 74). I’ll use the work of the French theorist Jean Baudrillard to demonstrate how the male and female superhero bodies and body parts are phallicised as ‘erectile parts’.

In her book An Introduction to Drawing the Nude Diana Constance recognises that the standard female torso is longer than a male’s, the distance from her waist to crotch is also longer, and her hips are wider than her shoulders – ‘no amount of dieting will ever give her the slim hips of a man’ (Constance 23-4). The ‘standard’ body of a male has longer legs than a woman and his shoulders are slightly wider than his hips (Constance 23). Comparing the ‘standard’ body of a human to that of a comic book character might seem silly or even absurd but there is nothing to say that characters shouldn’t, at least proportionally, exhibit the characteristics of a ‘standard’ body. However, in superhero comics there is a radical inversion of the female’s standard body characteristics where the female superhero body exhibits characteristics of the standard male body. Their shoulders are wider than their hips and their legs are longer than a males (sometimes alarmingly so). Because of this fusion of the female into the male form, the distinctive sexual characteristic of the female – her breasts – are made prominent to distinguish the character’s “femininity”. This in turn makes the breasts appear unrealistic, ‘stuck’ on, and disharmonious with the rest of the body. The effect this has on the depiction of the male superhero body is that male features need to be exaggerated to a hypermasculinity. The male’s shoulders and legs are made wider (by muscles or armour/costume), and the torso becomes overtly muscled and lengthened.

 

There is further evidence to suggest that female and male superhero bodies are ascribe to the one ideal. The ‘standard’ female body requires the pubic area to be just below the mid-point of the body (Constance 23). Moving the pubic area above a females’ natural mid-point, lengthens the legs and shortens the torso thereby eliminating the hips (a defining female body feature), leaving the legs to butt straight on to the waist. With the torso shortened the female gains another ‘standard’ male body feature. This elimination of the female characteristics is demonstrated in the WILDC.A.T.S advertisement (Figures 1 and 2) where the male and the female characters, Ripclaw and Zealot, have virtually the same body (high heels and hair too)! (See further images in the Image Appendix). The elimination of the female body, I believe, has to do with the fetishisation/phallicisation of the female form. The work of theorist Jean Baudrillard provides a useful framework for understanding this phenomenon.

Superman’s value as the first ‘super’ hero was of a symbolic nature. All the drive he needed was the inherent goodness in doing the job. No rewards necessary or wanted. The ‘S’ on his chest is his sign; his symbol of recognition. Without the ‘S’ he’s just a big guy in a blue suit. The costumes of more contemporary superheroes are conspicuously devoid of individual signs, (characters from the Image titles of the early 1990s are a case in point). They are just big guys in colourful suits. Far from being superheroes for the sake of it, many are employed by an individual, corporation, or governmental department, consequently embedding them in the political economy of the sign. By accepting money for their heroic actions they become rationalised subjects, turning them into items of exchange value – the abstract, meaningless value of quantity measured in monetary terms. A superhero’s exchange value can subsequently only be measured against that of other superheroes.

Without individual signs that designate identity (or only ones that align them with a certain group or corporation) the superhero is now merely a sign that reproduces the capitalistic economy. Now to designate a superhero’s individuality the superhero’s body becomes a sign – the guy in this suit is bigger and different that the guy in that colourful suit. However, Baudrillard states that signs covering the body reduce it to uniformity or an ideal type. Signs cover, divide and annihilate the body’s difference in order to organise it into structural material for sign-exchange (101). Thus the superhero’s body can also be reduced to an ideal type. This ideal is derived from one source – a body and an economy derived from ‘a sexuality taken as a determining agency, a phallic agency entirely organised around the fetishisation of the phallus as the general equivalent’ (Baudrillard 101). The hypermasculine male ideal of which the superhero stands as an emblem is designed around this phallic general equivalent. As Scott Bukatman argues –

Indeed, with their thick necks, bulging veins, and protruding tendons tightly swathed in coloured skintight hoods, these heroes really become enormous dicks sheathed in an array of distinctly baroque (and somewhat painful looking) condoms – an effect both menacing and comical (111).

In Baudrillard’s terms – ‘the entire body has become a phallic effigy’(102). For Baudrillard the body has moved into representation, it is a sign that is constructed via a structuralist mode consisting of the phallic effigy/fragment of the body/subject as signifier, and sexuality as signified. The body is not an erogenous zone anymore, but an eroticised zone in a capitalist economy of exchange value. It is a site that does not produce excitement but is produced to excite.

We must remember that for the most part superheroes – ‘Despite accoutrements such as logos, masks, gauntlets, epaulets and other superhero accessories… are essentially presented as nudes (costumes are more coloration than cover up)’ (Bukatman 106). This colouration/costuming of superhero nudity produces ‘Certain marks… (that) render the body more nude than if it were really nude… these marks may be clothes or accessories’ (Baudrillard 121n). Accessories such as ‘the tight fitting bracelet round the arm or the ankle, the belt, the necklace and the ring’ are staple parts of superhero attire which for Baudrillard ‘establish the foot, the waist, the neck or the finger as erectile parts’ (102). While both male and female superheroes sport these accessories, the female superhero body, with exaggerated legs and breasts, is the most prominent in this process of phallusisation. While we have already seen that male superheroes are bulging ‘dicks’. However it is not only certain bodies or body parts that can be transformed into phallic effigies. In fact –

Any body or part of the body can operate functionally in the same way, provided that it is subject to the same erotic discipline: it is necessary and sufficient that it be as closed and as smooth as possible, faultless, without orifice and “lacking” nothing, every erogenous difference being conjured up by the structural bar that will design(ate) this body (in the doubles sense of “designate” and “design”), visible in clothing, jewellery or make-up, invisible but always present in complete nudity, since it then envelops the body like a second skin (Baudrillard 104-5).

Baudrillard is arguing that anything that marks the body as ‘closed and smooth as possible’ (including make-up, lipstick, tattooing, scarring) can be placed in the structural demarcation of phallic effigy as signifier, alongside male sexuality, or phallic agency, the general equivalent everything is defined against. In other words the phallus is the standard marker or measure of identity.

Read Part 2

Image Appendix

Reference

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

Bukatman, Scott. “X-Bodies (the torment of the mutant superhero).” Uncontrollable Bodies: Testimonies of Identity and Culture. Ed. Rodney Sappington and Tyler Stallings. Seattle: Bay Press, 1994.

Constance, Diana. An Introduction to Drawing the Nude. London: New Burlington Books, 1993.

Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985.