Obligatory reading for today

  • Jun. 6th, 2012 at 3:54 PM
la_vie_noire: Anthy painting a portrait (Anthy painting)
[personal profile] thatlitgirl writes an uber insightful post about queerness in Western Superhero media: The lies, the scars, the musculature.

Alan Scott, the once and future Golden Age Green Lantern, is gay, in the new DC Universe. Is there a maximum quota of queer people that they had to retcon his son Obsidian out of existence to fill? How tokenistic.

More importantly – this reboot Alan is a media mogul, a wealthy white man, in a genre where queer characters who aren’t wealthy white men get little enough airtime as it is.

The highest-profile character who doesn’t hit those buttons is Kate Kane, who is wealthy and white, but also a Jewish woman. Intan called it “homogeneous diversity”, which is about correct.

Even amongst well-off white women characters, who remembers Ayla Ranzz and Salu Digby? Then there is Renee Montoya, who is a B-list character; and her ex-girlfriend Daria Hernandez, another queer working-class Latina, has not made an appearance in ages. There is Karma, a Vietnamese-USAmerican displaced by war, on whose body has been projected objectification and fat hatred. And Mystique, whose gender/queerness is either ignored or used to titillate.

This applies not just to canonically queer characters, I feel, but also to the queering of characters in fanwork.

As I tweeted: “I wonder what Bruce Wayne/Tony Stark fics say about masculinity, dominance, and capitalism.”

The superhero genre was – once, long ago – fantastically subversive. It hasn’t been that way for a long time, of course, but I do blame the visibility of RDJ’s Tony Stark in the Jon Favreau films, and Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan’s, for telling and reaffirming stories about Western saviours in conflict zones and affluent saviours in urban ghettos.

Mar. 14th, 2012

  • 10:45 AM
la_vie_noire: (kashira kashira)
Postcolonials Read Comics (And We’re Pissed).

Gail Simone depicted Singapore in Birds of Prey as a crime-riddled, totalitarian state inhabited by decadent drug lords. That’s not as bad as Marvel’s Principality of Madripoor, a parallel Singapore of authoritarianism and corruption eventually salvated by neo-colonial occupation; but that’s still better than in The Authority, where the fictional PRC destroyed the fictional Singapore in a secret nuclear attack.

Another interesting relationship between Singapore and superheroes: Ng Chin Han played the villainous Hong Kong accountant Lau in The Dark Knight.

[...] I want to see a Singaporean superhero genre that can amply offer critique on issues like race and gender politics in Singapore without relying on orientalist tropes or orientalised narratives of Asian political authority. [...] Asian political systems are either failed states or dictatorships, because the Orientals cannot be trusted to govern themselves. – A sign of how deeply we have internalised this discourse is evident in even homegrown criticism of the political system. I trust we can analyse and critique without resorting to such imagery, such portrayals.

Singaporean superheroes? I’ve been dreaming of this for years. If we postcolonials could take steampunk – with its intrinsic Victoriana – and subvert it, can we do the same for the superhero genre?


I could talk about the depiction of every non-western/developing nation in western comics. But I wouldn't end.

Aaaaaah

  • Nov. 25th, 2010 at 8:18 PM
la_vie_noire: (Utena-orz)
This comic here would have been so awesome if it wasn't for the whole penis-monument thing. It describes so fine the reactions of privileged people (seriously, not only cis men) when called out.

So, cis-feminists, damn it.

Indulging in some fandom nostalgia

  • Sep. 5th, 2010 at 7:59 PM
la_vie_noire: (leyendo)
Ah, Tsubasa, hon, I miss you. What happened to us? Ah, yeah. You ended. Damn you. *goes to look for fanfic* (Mako, este es tu post para exponer todas las teorías raras que tengas al respecto. Vos que le das a lo del pensamiento lateral.)

I was also re-reading Watchmen.

I also have an exam that I'm totally ignoring.

May. 14th, 2010

  • 5:56 PM
la_vie_noire: (Anthy flower)
Everything went damn fine with my medical appointment, it's something minor, that means: no that big! (I will talk about the details later because I know you are all dying to know about them.)

Meanwhile, I wanted to link this all week, thanks god, [personal profile] shewhohashope posting at DBW made me remember.

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night. On DC comics, racism, and Somali pirates.

this whole thing feels like a slap in the face. On a less personal level, this is indeed regressive storytelling. A black hero gets disembodied and has to share the body of his white predecessor, a black villain from back when it was acceptable for every non-white character have a reference to their ethnicity in their title gets brought back in a book where two white heroes take down a group of men who not only bring to mind the worst stereotypes and phobias about black men in the collective unconscious, but are based on real black men who have been demonised and misrepresented in Western media, all in the series which is already associated with White Power Rings.

White supremacy is not just for white nationalists, it's so embedded in our culture that people can't imagine seeing it unless one was looking for it.

What, spamming again

  • Dec. 23rd, 2009 at 6:59 PM
la_vie_noire: (Anthy flower)
Dos cosas:

Via [livejournal.com profile] ilye_aru: Michelle Bachelet contra el Apocalipsis Zombie. Michelle Bachelet contra el Apocalipsis Zombie. No gente, yo no podría inventar esta clase de cosas ni aunque quisiera.

Uhm, have you been madly in love with a male character in a stereotypical Shonen Jump manga series? Just asking because I have heard it happens sometimes. Not that I know about it.

Who am I kidding? MY NEW MANGA BOYFRIEND AND CURRENT OBSESSION, YAMAMOTO TAKESHI. Just him though, his series gives me headaches more often than not.

Nov. 20th, 2008

  • 9:20 PM
la_vie_noire: (Anthy)
Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] deadbrowalking, I found this gem: Bayou. It has one of the best treatments of race and gender I have seen in fiction (if not the best). It will be printed soon, and holly fuck it does deserved it. Webcomic. And an amazing work of fiction. (Warning: don't expect some bullshit like The Green Mile of whatever it was called, with Magical Negroes who are there to enlighten good white folks.)

I was going to write an entry about Bayou, but I have no time. Studying and all that. So I leave it there for now, maybe will write about it the way it deserves. Now read it. NOW. Gem is an understatement.

Holly fuck, Tsubasa, you have beautiful art.Tsubas 205 )

Ok, this meme amused me:

Cut for Meme )

I'm a male who writes primarly about himself. Seriously, am I?

Aug. 28th, 2008

  • 8:45 PM
la_vie_noire: (Oh. Horror.)
I'm feeling very down due to some shit (I'm Rose there by the way; and people, please, I mean it when I say this upsets me greatly, I will ban you if you continue with the shit here, I have no energy for more). Not even posting it at [livejournal.com profile] dot_race_snark made it better. I'm not in mood for much, and my eyes are hurting me. Literally. I'm getting teary just by looking at the computer screen, I think I'll need glasses.

Volviendo a cosas fandomeriles, y porque conseguí los scans en español, leí Watchmen y V de Vendetta, ambas de Alan Moore.

No esperaba que me gustaran tanto. Watchmen fue una gran sorpresa por llevarse abajo la grandiosidad y mitología del 'Super-héroe Americano', por su increíble uso de metáforas, y por tener una narración y ambientación impresionantes, entre otras cosas. V de Vendetta fue... grandiosa. Trataba mucho mejor los asuntos de raza y sexo de lo que Watchmen lo hacía (tampoco era perfecta), y era mucho más política. Más sofisticada y mejor ejecutada que Watchmen, también. Aunque dudo que vuelva a leer comics estadounidenses, éstas dos fueron una grata experiencia. Tal vez vuelva a leer alguna de Alan Moore.

And, via WOC Phd, Writing as Resistance, Writing as Love by Joanna Kadi. Very Recommended.

EDIT: [livejournal.com profile] ilunen hizo muy bien, y me corrigió en los comentarios. ^^; Watchmen, y V for Vendetta no están escritas por un estadounidense, y la última ni siquiera se publicó originalmente en USA. Gracias!

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