YOUR MANGA MINUTE: WHAT BOTHERS US

[MattBrady]

by Troy Brownfield

Warning up front: this is not exclusively about manga. I know it’s not exclusively about manga, and I don’t need a post to be told that this installment is not exclusively about manga. It’s a conceptual piece. It’s a look at ways of thinking how certain recent events have spilled into discussion. It touches on manga, as the ways that fans take and process particular images can be different based on the material. But as it is, this is a wider approach to a much-discussed topic. If you guessed Identity Crisis, congrats, and yes, here there be spoilers.

I’ve honestly been impressed with the amount of discourse that IC has generated. Frankly, the idea of a murder mystery involving the leading lights of the DCU and featured dark secrets is a strong idea. Unfortunately, I’ve been less impressed with the level of discourse that has sometimes resulted from what seems to be a few misunderstandings.

There seems to be a persistent categorization of Brad Meltzer as some kind of misogynist because of the death (and revealed rape) of Sub Dibny. I find that to be a strange categorization. A little research would let you know that Meltzer is married to a woman that has worked with women who have gone through similar experiences. Even if you didn’t know that, characterizing a writer as something out of hand just because something happens in one of his stories is suspect at best, and troubling at worst.

It also flies in the face of detective and/or mystery fiction. I’m a fan of the stuff. In fact, I’m a noir nut. For there to be a murder mystery, you’ve got to start with a body. It’s kind of a given. Invariably, there have been several times throughout the canon where the victim is a woman. Some writers (like Edgar Allan Poe, himself a father of the genre) felt that the death of a beautiful, beloved woman was the worst kind of tragedy, and that it immediately engendered a different level of support. I would say that there exists some real world resonance in that idea; look how readily the cable news battens onto stories of missing women, with the ones that are highlighted inevitably being more attractive (I’m not saying that’s right; I’m saying that happens).

Perhaps the argument is being made that Meltzer’s move is anti-woman because of the level of brutalization involved. While I agree that Sue Dibny’s death was horrific, I challenge that it’s no more or less horrific than any number of other deaths in fiction. Consider the victims of Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho; car batteries, coat hangers, and the introduction of rats into orifices all play a part in that. Is that level of depravity necessary to depict? Maybe or maybe not; regardless, brutalization of that level does occur in real life, and it may be intellectually dishonest of the writer to ignore that.

I’m speculating on Meltzer’s motive here, but what if his goal WAS to shock you? What if he wanted to stun you, to show you something that you’ve never seen before? What if he DID want to incite you? Would you not say that he succeeded? It’s for each person to decide individually if that’s exploitation or if that’s pushing things to a different level. It’s no different than tactics used by both The Sopranos and The Shield, programs held up as exemplars of their medium.

Back to the murder mystery. The novel Laura (which became the basis for a classic film and served as indirect inspiration to the David Lynch/Mark Frost TV series Twin Peaks) deals with the apparent murder of a woman with whom the investigator posthumously falls in love. Several books by Sue Grafton and Mary Higgins Clark involve dead women, often murdered horribly. Violence against women in fiction is nothing new. By that token, neither is violence against men. Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer classic, I, the Jury, puts Mike on the trail of the femme fatale that offed his buddy; when he unexpectedly guns her down at the end after her offer of sex, the audience typically responds that justice was done, even though our hero kills an unarmed woman.

I’m sure that Meltzer knows crime fiction. He writes thrillers. He writes thrillers that are best-sellers. This isn’t a guy that wandered in from Freshman Writing 101 and got to play with the big toys. This is a guy who built his craft over several novels. He’s handled books that deal with the Supreme Court, the White House, and international banking. I’ve read most of these books (my Dad still has my copy of Dead Even; sorry). He’s not some schlub. And I doubt he considered the death of Sue Dibny lightly.

In addition to the grousing about the death of Sue, there are three other levels of debate: the fact that she was pregnant, the fact that it’s revealed that she had previously been raped, and the fact that this reaches back into the Silver Age JLA Stories. Granted, the pregnancy may have been a device to engender more sympathy, BUT I think it’s also possible that that particular fact goes to motive. We haven’t seen the whole series yet; who’s to say already what is and isn’t significant. Save that for later.

As to the rape, again, I say that Meltzer should be able to comment upon and introduce social ills. As a writer, he must be allowed to deal with issues. I read several ill-conceived posts on the DC message boards that claimed that the posters could never go back and read subsequent Ralph-and-Sue stories again; that they were now tainted. Frankly, that’s a mile more misogynistic that a fictional murder. I think it speaks to the fact of Sue Dibny’s character that she was able to overcome the incident and resume a functional, openly emotional and sexual relationship with her husband. An alarming number of women are raped daily in the United States; I don’t see them as tainted. I see the ones that confront the trauma and resume their lives as remarkably strong. Meltzer probably saw this through the work of his wife. It’s not anti-woman for Meltzer to not deal with Sue’s recovery; honestly, that’s not our story. Our story is how this incident changed the OTHER characters, and how these incidents echoed in the present. Sometimes, bad things happen to nice fictional people in order for areas to be explored. I think that an examination of how Sue dealt with that trauma and rebuilt her life might make a fine story, but the purposes of the narrative are to follow how the impact of violence toward the loved ones of the heroes affects the heroes. That is Meltzer’s story; he should be allowed to tell it. I think that we safely assume for the nonce that Sue endured her plight with dignity, with the loving support of Ralph, and demonstrated true heroism by being a whole, smart, loving woman for the rest of her life.

I also reject the notion that it’s about “the big men protecting the little women”. It’s about the people with the power protecting the powerless. Most experts will even tell you that rape itself is more about power than about sex. Some readers have even questioned how we would react if it were a male character or a male hero that were raped. Honestly, I think most readers would treat it as a joke. Face it: violence toward men is often snickered at in our society. I say John Wayne Bobbitt, and you laugh. I say that scene in Deliverance, and you think of the redneck yelling “Squeal,” and not Ned Beatty’s pain and anguish. It’s true that one of the unpowered male associates of the heroes could have been raped, but there would have actually been too many unsophisticated readers who took it as a joke. Hell, in the lengthy discussions, there are those who ignore that Apollo was raped in The Authority, or that both Nightwing and Starman were quite honestly raped by women in the pages of their own books (some people wrongly believe men can’t be raped, which is crazy). I think that Meltzer measured his writing carefully, and took a path that he knew would be difficult, and that he managed to do it without “tainting” the character.

For that matter, I don’t see the Silver Age stories as tainted either. Every forgone decade or age only appears more brightly lit in retrospect. Many people think of the ‘60s as peace, love and Beatles; don’t forget that it was also Altamont, Vietnam and Manson. For the disco age of the ‘70s, we had the Son of Sam. The beauty of Southern architecture in the 1800s was built on the backs of dead slaves. Just because something was nice and pretty on the outside, it doesn’t mean that a seamier underside can’t be revealed or explored. In fact, it’s a tenet of mystery that things aren’t what they seem; hell, master writer Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters) said that the ONLY story is that things aren’t what they seem.

True, many people batten onto the stories of the Silver Age as a beacon of a more hopeful time. Maybe they seem them as a loving memory of childhood or innocence. They’re welcome to that. I think that it’s also incumbent on the new and curious writer to re-examine old notions and push them into the unexamined light of new times. Watchmen, anyone? Dark Knight Returns for 100, Alex? This series seems to be the tale (although it’s only two issues old) of how good people with power went a step too far because of something horrible, and how it’s possibly jumped up and bitten them in the ass later on. Regardless of circumstances, that’s a worthy idea to examine.

And of course, the white elephant here is a simple fact: many, many readers loved Sue. Of course it’s hard to see her die horribly. And yet, people do die horribly in real life. Consider Sharon Tate or the children of Susan Smith or Laci Peterson. Those things happened. If Meltzer and the DC editorial staff decided that the murder mystery needed a murder that mattered, then it needed to be a murder that carried emotional weight. I’m going out on a limb, but anyone have given a rat’s ass if it were Snapper Carr? Maybe a few people, but I doubt the outcry. The villain of the piece obviously intended to hurt the heroes, and hurt them he did.

Identity Crisis has time left to unfold, but I admire that Meltzer is telling a tough story. There are legitimate arguments to be made about whether or not this should carry a Mature Readers tag. There are legitimate arguments about how this affects the DC Universe. I even understand some arguments about the behavior of Dr. Light (but I also remember that real people act out of character all the time; it’s not crazy for someone to do something unexpectedly vicious, when we know about Dahmer and Columbine). Nevertheless, the creative team deserves the room to tell a challenging tale.

And how does this apply in terms of manga? Well, it’s interesting. A few weeks ago, I talked about La Blue Girl, a manga that’s bizarrely obsessed with rape. In fact, there are quite a few manga volumes that deal with that topic quite graphically, and there’s rarely outcry. Many seem to accept that certain graphic elements are common in the Japanese ouvere, and they let those elements slide in the interest of cross-cultural communication.

Does that mean rape is accepted in Japan? Of course not. It just means that there is a culture that is more inured to particular representations, and we as outside viewers tend to give the imported artists a little more room to move because of the difference. They have different perceptions, and while we may be appalled or offended, we relax a bit to see what their outsider perspective shows.

I think it should be the same with Meltzer. Here’s a man of strong background who has taken on a harsh topic and has really freaked out a lot of longtime fans. You may not like it. You don’t have to like it. But I believe in his right to examine his idea. And I believe in watching the whole picture unfold. A man isn’t unseemly because pieces of his work are unseemly, and a man isn’t bad because his characters do bad things. There are bits to be examined, and bits to be understood, and that should hold true in any language.

[Loren]

Originally posted by MattBrady
Perhaps the argument is being made that Meltzer’s move is anti-woman because of the level of brutalization involved. While I agree that Sue Dibny’s death was horrific, I challenge that it’s no more or less horrific than any number of other deaths in fiction. Consider the victims of Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho; car batteries, coat hangers, and the introduction of rats into orifices all play a part in that. Is that level of depravity necessary to depict? Maybe or maybe not; regardless, brutalization of that level does occur in real life, and it may be intellectually dishonest of the writer to ignore that.

Ellis' novel hardly makes the case for the argument that fans are overreacting to Meltzer's work. "American Psycho" was lambasted by critics and commentators for being excessively gruesome and depraved. The National Organization of Women organized protests of the book, of products that appeared in the book, and I believe even of other books printed by the same publisher. The original publisher, Simon & Schuster, broke their contract a month before release and refused to print the book. Ellis received death threats and ended up cancelling his book tour. Numerous bookstores refused to even stock "American Psycho" on their shelves.

So if the Sue Dibny's treatment in "Identity Crisis" is equivalent to the murders in "American Psycho," we should be impressed that fans have been as calm as they've been, and haven't resorted to boycotting DC altogether.

Loren

[Conor E]

Originally posted by MattBrady
There seems to be a persistent categorization of Brad Meltzer as some kind of misogynist because of the death (and revealed rape) of Sub Dibny.

God, Ihate this kind of arguement. Using this logic, I can conclusively prove that Steven Spielberg is a Nazi. He's made, what, four movies featuring Nazis? Maybe more?

Never mind that the Nazis were always portrayed negatively. The rape in IC was clearly portrayed as a bad thing, but that doesn't stop people from calling Meltzer a misogynist.