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Thursday, October 22, 2009

OUR BODIES, OUR NONBODIES: PART 1

I'm not going to expatiate in detail on part 2 of the "Comics in the Closet" essay I referenced earlier, but I will use as a conceptual jumping-off point a comment from an individual with the screen-name "Pallas" who took issue with Berlatsky's essay.

Pallas said:

"I think it's a real stretch to say that because Clark can take pleasure in his own super powers, he's somehow gay, or that he can have a homoerotic desire for himself..."

Later he adds:

"Superman is battling other men in order to win reproductive rights to the girl, who is only interested in him due to his masculine strength providing the best genes to ensure her children have the greatest chance of survival."

This is by no means a groundbreaking interpretation of the Superman/Clark/Lois dynamic, but it's a refreshing common-sense statement that is far more supported by the original comic books than Berlatsky's theory.

The first exploration of the Lois/Clark dynamic in ACTION #1 (a little before Lois even meets Superman) coheres perfectly with Pallas' argument. Clark, having affected his nebbishy disguise, is plainly moved by heterosexual desire to ask Lois out, rather than, say, "hanging with the boys" as any good repressed-homosexual oughtta be. A thug and his gang intrude. Lois slaps the thug but Clark won't fight. Lois leaves in her own car, and when the thugs pursue her, Clark has the needed excuse to unleash Superman (who's apparently only made a small handful of public apperances hitherto) to give the thugs a thrashing.

Or, to be more specific, what he thrashes is their car. Can one assumes that the car is essentially a penis-substitute? Probably, though Joe Schuster should be drummed out of the Repressed-Homosexual Corps in that he really doesn't make any of the thugs being indirectly thrashed as being full of masculine potency. Personally I think Schuster tends to focus more on the attractivness of Lois Lane more than any other character, including Superman, but that too is probably just more Freudian repression of the truth.

I don't know if Freud or any of his spiritual heirs were aware of the kind of "pleasure," to which Pallas alludes, that comes from the exercise of one's abilities. As I discussed earlier, Jung was aware that all human energies did not come down to sexuality, which is why he tried (though he failed) to advance "libido" as a term to describe all potential human energies, sexual and otherwise. I have, as some may know, advanced "dynamization" as a substitute neologism for Jung's "libidinization," and will be using it somewhat in the next essay in this series.

As to the other quote I drew from Pallas, I have my doubts that Eve Sedgwick, one of the founders of queer theory, would prove very insightful on the subject of What Men Do to Get Women. I haven't read (and don't intend to read) Sedgwick any time soon, though to judge from her one-note career she ought to be at least as funny as Laura Mulvey.

What's next, Eve? (She's unfortunately deceased, so I can't really ask her.) If the conflicts of men over women in stories really reveals their gayness, should the same thing hold true of real life?

If (as the anecdote goes) young Jack Kirby once had a fistfight to drive a male rival away from his future wife Roz...

Does that mean Kirby was really Kweer for the rival, not the woman he married?

Jeez-us. (And no, that's not meant sexually! Really!!!)

Oh, no! Too many phallic exclamation points--

AUGGHHH

(To be continued)

6 comments:

A. Sherman Barros said...

Hi there Gene!

Once again, you are absolutely right. As is Pallas. Besides the excerpts you quoted here, Pallas also says: "I think the reading of Clark Kent/Superman that makes the most sense is that Clark Kent is the real person and Superman is his fantasy life. He's a dweebish bookworm who can't get the pretty girl at the office to give him the time of day, so he creates this fantasy life where he is the ultimate masculine figure and earns her adoration by beating up men who threaten her. "

This is so true (despite its potential counter-intuitive feeling) that it is at the heart of the John Byrne *re-creation" of Superman in 1986-1987.

If I remember correctly (I can check it later) at one point Clark/Superman muses about how easy it would be to get Lois to fall for him as Superman, and how he is determined in getting her to love him as Clark Kent.

And, in another instance (once again - if memory isn't betraying me) I clearly remember Superman thinking to himself of the danger of Luthor finding out his TRUE identity: that of Clark Kent.

I remember this because when I read it I felt one of those paradigm-shifting sensations: Wait a minute - Superman (the alien) is his TRUE identity, and Clark is just a desguise. But not so to Byrne's renewed Superman. Clark is the true identity as it was only later that he got in touch (this sounds corny, sorry) with his superhuman powers.

So, yes, I think both your and Pallas interpretations are very much in accordance with the Superman Canon (at least post-Byrne).

I wonder what Joel would think of the cover of Gotham Knights #8 (Batman and Catwoman in mutual asfixiation, both dressed in leather...).. Just a thought.

Cheers,

Sherman

A. Sherman Barros said...

Sorry, I wrote Joel, but I meant Noah Berlatsky.

Sherman

Noah Berlatsky said...

That's especially funny, because my dad's name is Joel.

As I said to Pallas in comments, I don't object to any of your interpretations, all of which fit quite easily into Sedgwick's discussion of how and why male-male bonds function. So does the idea of Clark as the "real" person and Superman as the fantasy (though, of course, in truth, they're both fantasies, since neither are real.)

Gene, do you have any interest in female genre culture — romance, shojo, chick lit, contemporary R &B, etc.? I've never seen you talk about any of it (which could just be me; I haven't read all of your blog posts by any means.) I'd be curious what you have to say about it, if anything.

Gene Phillips said...

Sherman,
John Byrne's probably one of those who, like the guy I'm planning to write about, didn't buy into the "hairshirt" persona of Clark Kent.

Trouble is, he really didn't come up with anything to take the place of nebbishy Clark, and from what bits and pieces I've read since Byrne, I don't think anyone else came up with a better concept of Clark than the Siegel original. It still could be done, but I'm not holding my breath.

Gene Phillips said...

Noah,

There aren't many "women's genres" in comic books that I've got into, but I've found the world of the cinematic women's melodrama of more than passing interest. They do have a level of thought about domestic life that appeals to me. I haven't found a comparable complexity in the CLAMP works I've read, though I've liked the odd item here or there, like ROSE OF VERSAILLES.

On a side-note, the best gay-themed comic I've read (which admittedly doesn't cover a lot of ground) was LOVELY PRUDENCE, which I don't expect anyone will remember.

JRBrown said...

Well, actually, this Pallas' evo-psych take on the situation is, at best, a massive oversimplification. The evolutionary pressure for great big manly men, is, essentially, the sad fact that great big manly men are more likely to be able to fight off all other men and declare themselves the owner of a woman, whatever her actual preference may be.

For comparison: alpha male chimpanzees sire only 30% or so of offspring, despite trying their level best to be the only mating males; females will sneak off into the bushes with "beta" males whom they prefer, even though the alpha males will attack them viciously if discovered. The single best predictor of whether a female will try to mate with a certain beta is the amount of time he spends feeding with her, grooming her, and playing with her other offspring.

In humans, women in modern first-world societies strongly prioritize "good father" traits such as being kind, gentle, and good with kids over physical strength, competitiveness and aggressiveness. If Superman is "the ultimate masculine figure [who] earns her adoration by beating up men who threaten her", he's a male fantasy of manliness, not a female fantasy of the ideal man.

Superheroes may or may not be homoerotic (and I think they often are), but they are very definitely homosocial, not only in whom they associate with but also in that they reflect traits that are appealing to men rather than those that are appealing to women. Specifically, hypermasculinity.

Men in most modern societies, on average, want to be hypermuscular, masculine-appearing, and masculine-acting. Women, in contrast, overwhelmingly prefer male bodies of average muscularity, male faces with a mix of masculine and feminine features (broad jawlines and large eyes, for example), an absence of stereotypical cultural markers of masculinity (such as scars), and sex-neutral personality traits such as honesty and friendliness. Superheroes are designed to reflect a type of heterosexually-intended manliness that does not actually appeal to most women, but does appeal to many men, including gay men. So from a certain point of view they are closer to being homosexual than truly heterosexual.