comickal: Men in Refrigerators
Very ... interesting.
(postmodernbarney.com): Comics and Raped Men:One of the things that absolutely infuriates me whenever the topic of violence against women in comic books (and to a larger extent, in entertainment mediums in general) comes up is that there's always someone seriously trying to counter-argue that "well, bad things happen to men, too, so you're just seeing something that's not there." This is utter nonsense, of course, because the argument has never been "nothing bad should ever happen to female characters." Rather, the argument, as I've interpreted it, has been "when violence, particularly sexual violence, is used against women in comics it is either particularly degrading or only dealt with in terms of the impact the violence has had on the men in the victim's life." And this is one of those situations where you can't really make the counter-argument that this happens to male characters to. Because I've been thinking about male characters who have been sexually assaulted in comic books. And the pattern that emerges is quite different.
About the only thing I would quarrel with, in his list of examples, is that having read that story arc (and only that story arc, because the Authority just doesn't interest me at all), I really don't think that Apollo was raped. I know Millar has said, "I don't want Apollo to be seen in therapy because this would mean that A) I've made a firm decision on whatever the horrible thing was that was done to Apollo and B) would become a different story. I want these kind of personal details to be happening off-camera sometimes because it's rarely done in comics. I want the glimpses we have of these people to be similar to the people we know in real life [...] Does this mean Apollo's situation is being glossed over? Not at all. We should see subtle, emotional scenes over the next few issues, but letting it swamp the storyline just makes it a different kind of comic." But, honestly, that sort of thing happening to that sort of character would pretty much swamp his life, at least for the immediate term. Subtle just kind of ... doesn't work for that. Bad writing, yes; subtle, no.
Other than that, rape in mainstream comics really does seem to be used as a variant of the "women in refrigerators" syndrome. As PMB states, it's either used as a defining characteristic for the character -- and, honestly, that doesn't necessarily strike me as invalid, because at least then it's actually about THAT character -- or it's used purely as a trigger for another character. While exploring how it affects the other people in the character's life is also valid, it really shouldn't be used primarily to be about the other characters.
(postmodernbarney.com): Comics and Raped Men:One of the things that absolutely infuriates me whenever the topic of violence against women in comic books (and to a larger extent, in entertainment mediums in general) comes up is that there's always someone seriously trying to counter-argue that "well, bad things happen to men, too, so you're just seeing something that's not there." This is utter nonsense, of course, because the argument has never been "nothing bad should ever happen to female characters." Rather, the argument, as I've interpreted it, has been "when violence, particularly sexual violence, is used against women in comics it is either particularly degrading or only dealt with in terms of the impact the violence has had on the men in the victim's life." And this is one of those situations where you can't really make the counter-argument that this happens to male characters to. Because I've been thinking about male characters who have been sexually assaulted in comic books. And the pattern that emerges is quite different.
About the only thing I would quarrel with, in his list of examples, is that having read that story arc (and only that story arc, because the Authority just doesn't interest me at all), I really don't think that Apollo was raped. I know Millar has said, "I don't want Apollo to be seen in therapy because this would mean that A) I've made a firm decision on whatever the horrible thing was that was done to Apollo and B) would become a different story. I want these kind of personal details to be happening off-camera sometimes because it's rarely done in comics. I want the glimpses we have of these people to be similar to the people we know in real life [...] Does this mean Apollo's situation is being glossed over? Not at all. We should see subtle, emotional scenes over the next few issues, but letting it swamp the storyline just makes it a different kind of comic." But, honestly, that sort of thing happening to that sort of character would pretty much swamp his life, at least for the immediate term. Subtle just kind of ... doesn't work for that. Bad writing, yes; subtle, no.
Other than that, rape in mainstream comics really does seem to be used as a variant of the "women in refrigerators" syndrome. As PMB states, it's either used as a defining characteristic for the character -- and, honestly, that doesn't necessarily strike me as invalid, because at least then it's actually about THAT character -- or it's used purely as a trigger for another character. While exploring how it affects the other people in the character's life is also valid, it really shouldn't be used primarily to be about the other characters.