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Arad, the man behind the “Spider-Man” and “Fantastic Four” franchises, raised eyebrows in Hollywood when he switched gears from his comic book safety zone to produce the tween-empowerment movie inspired by the freakish dolls with enormous heads. In explaining the move, he insisted that Bratz are “X-Men for girls” — it’s just that their superpowers are singing, fashion, soccer and cheerleading.
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1565635/20070726/story.jhtml
Oh. My. PLEASE? PRETTY PLEASE? Can we have X-4 be just that?
- Wolverine singing cabaret numbers?
- Cyclops shopping for brand name glasses?
- Soccer with Nightcrawler? and with Colossus in a little cheerleader outfit cheering his beloved Nightcrawler on?
- Professor X’s Magic Makeover Party!
- Iceman’s and Pyro arguing over who has the prettiest scrapbook (then making up and making out)
- Angel being all angsty and writing poetry and standing on the roof of … damn, is this X-men or Buffy? Um, Warren being all pretty and winged and trying to find a salon that styles feathers.
Please? It’d be like “Bratz for Boys!”. A sure fire winner!
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In short, the first cover?
1. Smaller than the average Power Girl
2. More clothing coverage than Lady Death / Red Sonja
3. From Forbes.com’s coverage of the series ” The story, while provocative and sexy, contains no nudity and is intended for a mainstream audience” - which means DC and Marvel could learn something here. Mainstream? With no nudity? Surely this can’t be a comic book.
I’m torn. Seriously, and genuinely torn. I mean, I don’t want to typecast and do the “Oh, a porn star, therefore the comic has to be about the sex and nudity and the standards”. Yet, if there was ever a comics book developer, writer and franchise holder who could make an out and out sex comic (4 colour porn on paper), Jenna Jameson would be that person. A full industry load of contacts, a production house, match experience and a Greg Land field day where porn tracing would be a feature, not a bug.
Yet, at the same time, I want to highlight the fact that Virgin comics takes pains to explain this isn’t a comic with nudity.
Sure, the odds of it being a comic that’s, well, a comic with the usual level of gratuity that’s been pushed in the four colour book market are pretty good. But what interests me is the prospect of a comic produced by Virgin Comics, written by Jenna Jameson, and produced with less gratuitous female flesh per page than mainstream DC / Marvel.
That would be most interesting indeed.
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Five real ways blogging about comics has changed things in my life
1. I am a marketing lecturer. I teach marketing. I now think about the issues of race, gender, portrayals of gender, passive and active gender roles, stereotyping and the rest of the issues I’ve come to see in comics, over in my day job of teaching marketing to students who probably have never thought to question why all the examples in the text are white, middle class scenarios, and why everyone else is invisible.
2. Recognising I have white privilege (The Invisible Knapsack) and working towards doing something about it, and, in the industry I work in, doing something with it. Being a white male middle class intellectual with academic cred and long track record of speaking my mind freely because I’m a privileged white boy who sees no reason my voice shouldn’t be heard is a platform. Marketing could use a good dose of the stuff we’re dealing with in comics, and it may as well be me making the crossover, since if they’ll listen, we can start broadening the mindsets of marketers.
3. Parking the guilt, the anger and the rest of the crap, and just getting on with it. Somedays, being white and male isn’t all that’s grand. But for those hours, minutes or few fleeting seconds, they’re nothing to complain about, no reason to say “But white kids have it bad too” or generally be a defensive asshat when called on an issue. It also means that 24-7, I need to be aware. I don’t get days off to be privileged if I want to change. I don’t get time out if I’m serious about shifting me from what I was, to where I hope one day to be. And y’know what? It’s life. Cutting back on the privilege, taking steps back, having spaces you can’t access, having place your voice ain’t gonna be heard when you’re used to the opposite is a good start. I’ll never get it right, because if I want it to stop, it could.
4. Getting it wrong. When Alfred says the lines, “Why do we fall Master Bruce?”, I cry. Because it’s a moment cinema that speaks volumes to me, and those volumes are summed up poorly as “It’s okay if I get it wrong when I try, so long as I’m willing to actually be wrong, be corrected, and try again to do it right the next time”. I screw up. Until blogging for DS, working in a field where I am pretty bloody good at my job, I rarely screw up. I’ve had 50 conference papers accepted from 54 submissions over 10 years (and 20 from 23 in the last two years). The books and chapters I cowrite are accepted as “first draft, final draft”. Over here, at DS, I’m in new territory, and in territory where I am far from an expert, and just a guy finding his way in new terrain. (Okay, just a guy with a PhD and a willingness to learn)
5. It’s brought me back to comics. To be honest, before I started at DS, I was over comics. Now, I’m back into comics, reading far and wide, looking, learning, seeking out where people are doing it right, and learning how people are doing it wrong, why it’s happening, and how to change. It’s rekindled the love of the medium, and the burning desire for this medium that I love to be strong, to be successful and to be able to be shared with so many others.
Finally, the best part of this blogging run has been the day in, day out reminders that I don’t get a cookie for doing the right thing. Checking privilege, being less blind to rest of the world around me, and trying to do something about it has made a difference.
I am eternally grateful to the girl-wonder team from bringing me on squad, letting me have a slice of the G-W space, and not drowning me in Marvel crossovers.
I’m also grateful to the audience I have here at DS, particularly to people who debate, argue, and generally keep the comments thread alive during my routine absences (oh hai day job. IN UR STUDENT CONSULTATION, BLOGGING UR DS).
No, this ain’t a retirement or resignation letter. It’s a realisation as I started tackling teaching introduction to marketing to first years that the world of marketing they get to see is shaped in part by the world I’ve been lucky enough to be shown by Girl-Wonder and the bloggers, commentators and forum posters.
Now, I have to go corrupt the minds of youth. By semester’s end, they will be able to sing along to late 80s one hit wonders. I’m not all about the side of good you know.
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Just back from Transformers, the Michael Bay teenage romance flick which also had robots.
In short, it had more than a few race problems up and central on screen.
ETA: On the whole, as far as comparing Transformers:TheMovie to Transformers:TheSeries? No problems. Mainly, because, well, the series and the movie had so little connection, it was George Clooney’s “Batman & Robin” to the DC print lines.
[Complaining about a film means spoilers after the cut. Errr. Sorry about the RSS feed *grimmace*]
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I have a question. As a white male, why is it presumed that I can’t identify with non-white, non-male characters?
As a kid, I was supposed to be able to identify with Batman in the comics that were bought for me by my parents. I was supposed to be able to identify with an alien son of a deceased race who discovers later that he has a cousin as a fellow survivor?*
In order for me, the powerless non-superheroic reader of comics to identify with the character in the comic book, I have to use my imagination. Funnily enough, I also have to do that to identify with any character on a movie screen, tv set, comic book page or book. None of us are Harry “My Parents Impersonation of Batman’s Parents Went Too Far” Potter. Yet apparently, markets have no problem identifying with an scarred up orphan with a wand, but put a non-white, non-male character in his place, and you’ll hear the cry of “But the focus groups didn’t identify with the lead” or “How can we expect that audience to identify with a person of colour?”
I don’t know.
Maybe we could use the same techniques we use to self identify with a bloody great mechanical truck that talks?
Or a giant green ogre?
Or a cat with a hat and rapier?
See, I get the self identification with Bumblebee, Wheeljack and Prime and my hands aren’t even made of metal. How come I’m presumed to be capable of self-identifying with a shapeshifting VW with little yellow viking horns yet suffer total and irrepairable epic fail when trying to self-id with Martha or Mickey?
I’m not a yellow sports car, but I can mesh with the paper mirror reflection of Bumblebee’s characteristics, actions and role in the movies and TV series. Is there some magic barrier when they’re made of flesh, not steel? Or did I cut another class in Introduction to WhiteGuy and miss the training day on non-identification?
Clue me in here.
*Martian Manhunter. To be Superman, throw in a dog, a flying horse, flying cat, a cousin and/or cousin impersonators and slew of surviving Kryptons who were stuck in the Phantom Zone. (and yes, I will always bring up the dog whenever we get into these conversations). Just saying, the only things to survive Krypton were Clark and a dog…
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