Hooray for Mythbusters!

[azurelunatic]

Since neither of us were up for anything yesterday, today's the day when I go over and hassle the best friend. :D

I'm already running late by his calculations and my estimation, but I had to poke around this fixing the Women in Refrigerators problem entry a little, and contribute since I was thinking about it in the shower.

A man can't be shown as a victim, basically. In the genre under discussion, you are going to have victims. No way around that. And in your real-world stats, yeah, women bear a whole lot of the brunt of physical violence. But it's simply lazy writing to have the bulk of your senselessly victimized characters who spur the heroes into motion be female, when your heroes have (boyfriends), sons, fathers, brothers, grandfathers, business partners, friends, uncles, cousins, and other important guys in their lives, not all of whom can fight back against the Masked Maven of Malice.

Comments

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Spiderman gets his start by losing his uncle. Batman lost a gender-balanced parental unit. Superman lost a gender-balanced planet. Sounds like the founders of the genre did better than the more recent writers.

[azurelunatic]

Indeed.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose Xander "the Guy In Recurring Distress" counts, as he's a Joss character? (Also not a comic-book character, though arguably a superhero story. And he never actually died.)

Ditto Wash the pilot from Firefly. Though that was even less comic-book-superhero-y than Buffy.

Hmmm...I have this notion that there are Guys In Distress (and/or dead) every now and again in the various X-Men titles. Perhaps if I ever have time I should go digging.

[http://users.livejournal.com/chas_/]

See, this is where the whole WiR issue fails to me. There is no corresponding list for men. It's all like "See, look at all these victimized women! Hey! Don't look behind the curtain! Those male bodies are of no consequence!"

WiR is completely biased towards women since men aren't even considered. You want to prove that woman bear such a brunt, give me a list of both sexes that shows that women are out of proportion.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

I had an Obnoxious Moment myself, actually. On another LJ (forget whose, as it was a click-through to someone not on my usual reading list, but a name I recognized as a fanfic/slasher/feminism-on-her-sleeve type), there was a similar (though more righteously-indignant) discussion.

I *blush* actually *wrote* a comment opining that it would be an interesting exercise to assemble a list of Menfolk In Refrigerators. And specified that what *I* would find "interesting" about it would be all the creative ways people would find to explain why each of the guys on the list didn't really "count".

Luckily, after my moment of obnoxiousness I had a moment of SANITY. And hit "back" rather than "send".

[azurelunatic]

I would be genuinely interested to see a list of Dead Characters In Comics, going on a single comic thread for a year or other manageable chunk of time, with stats of gender of Dead Character, as well as whether they were named, and several other points of how well-developed their character was, and what the effect of their death was (for example, spurring a hero to action or just anonymous collateral damage).

[http://users.livejournal.com/chas_/]

WiR is an ancient plot device. I mean look at Orpheus and Eurydice, Apollo and Daphne, and so on and so on. Comics are nothing but modern mythology, the same tropes that appear in the Classical myths are going to re-appear time and time again in comics.

And let's be honest here, we're talking about an industry aimed at young males. For all the high falutin' ideals of comics being art, etc, at the end of the day, megacomic houses like DC and Marvel are more interested in making money. Playing to the young male psyche is going to make them more money. Redeeming wronged females is a strong urge in young males.

Let's also be honest about a couple of other factor in comics. First, comic heroes are by and large males. They also have a tendency to have a tragic past or not much is shown of their larger families. Second, often times the closest thing they have a family is a girlfriend or maybe a wife. Third, given the even smaller number of homosexual male heroes, finding a male with whom the reader knows the hero has an emotional investment on par with that of a female may requires more build up than is feasible. I mean, sure you could introduce his Uncle Joe whom he has been close to but just suddenly appeared in his life, but his girlfriend is established. The readers themselves have an emotional investment in her that might have been built up over YEARS, versus dear Uncle Joe who gets a couple of panels for a couple of issues before the Bad Guy offs him.

I don't think WiR is a sign of lazy writing. I think how it is applied is a sign of lazy writing. Shakespeare has WiR in his works, yet it is his execution that keeps it from coming off as lazy writing.