Scots Taffer on 13/3/2007 at 11:05
Quote Posted by oudeis
I read "Sin City" ... where was the misogyny?
Something does not compute.
Fafhrd on 13/3/2007 at 11:32
Quote Posted by oudeis
but where was the misogyny?
OTOH We can start with how every strong female character in Sin City sells her body in one form or another (Nancy's a stripper, the Old Town Hookers are, well, HOOKERS.) The story that's seemingly centred on the strength and independence of the hookers of old town (The Big Fat Kill) has them needing to be saved by a man because their feminine lack of foresight has gotten them into a whole mess of trouble. Seriously, an ARMY of women, and they need ONE GUY to come up with a plan to save their asses.
Outside of Sin City, he created the character Elektra, the super badass lady ninja ex-girlfriend of DareDevil, for the express purpose of having Bullseye kill her by running her through with one of her own sais. Classic symbol of a male taking away a woman's strength (which in this case is a phallic symbol, hmm.) and destroying her with it (junior college Woman's Studies as that statement is.) And I believe in the issue he introduced Elektra, he turned Matt Murdock's long time, fairly well adjusted (for a comic book non-super hero female character) into a junky out of the blue.
oudeis on 13/3/2007 at 12:25
Frankly, I was struck more by the pathetic attempt at 'grittiness' than anything else, like a suburban child-of-privilege literature major who deperately wants to earn street cred. I should add that I only read a couple of the stories and gave up because they were so overwrought- I believe they were 'A Dame to Kill for' and 'The Big Fat Kill'. 'Dame' had the pernicious femme-fatale, of course, because hard-boiled work requires it; but since the males were almost without exception vile subhuman trash I can't say that they made out any better. I was struck more by the ludicrousness of the female characters than anything else: a six-foot tall valkyrie dominatrix with a heart of gold, a roller-skating Japanese ninja girl, a city precinct ruled by prostitutes, and of course,
a roller-skating Japanese ninja-girl. I swear, thinking about that last still makes me laugh out loud five years or more after reading it.
Miller's earlier work featured some positive, very strong female characters- Elektra, Yukio from the 'Wolverine' mini-series, the security chief from 'Ronin' (whose name escapes me). His work on 'Batman' had three notable and impressive females, Carrie/'Robin' (the young girl who helps Batman) and the tough cop Ellen Yindel from 'Dark Knight' and Sarah Essen from 'Year One'.
-MID-COURSE EDIT- DAMN YOU FAFHRD FOR POSTING BEFORE I FINISHED WRITING!!.
- Well, since you interrupted me you are just going to have to suffer the consequences, mister! :mad: :ebil:
Re Elektra's 'phallic' demise, two things:
* OH COME OFF IT. I'm sorry man, but that is just ridiculous. Would it have been less patriarchal if he had simply broken her neck, or cut her throat, or beaten her to death, or tossed her off a building (huh-huh, he said tossed-off!)? What if Bullseye had decapitated her as she did with the immortal and supposedly uber-ninja Kirigi, which in my almost non-existent understanding of japanese translates as 'soul-cutter'? Peace, I'm not looking for a fight, but that's overanalyzing because...
*
Comic book heroes never have happy endings with their loves. Spider-man accidentally breaks Gwen Stacy's neck while trying to save her. Captain Jean Dewolfe, the Mrs. Robinson of Peter Parker's world, is murdered before they can get past the smoldering attraction phase. The Thing loses Alicia Masters to the romantic depredations of the Human Torch, the little bastard. I can't remember how many times Tony Stark had a relationship go past the u-bend because he was Iron Man and an alcoholic. And of course let's not forget the Wolverine/Jean Grey/Cyclops dynamic and how well that worked out for
any of them. This theme is old as heroes themselves. Karen Price (?) becoming a junkie is more in keeping with a quest for cred than a misogynist streak: don't forget it was the precursor to the Kingpin utterly destroying Matt Murdock's life and breaking him back down to the slums- which I'm told are quite gritty.
Now, as I was saying before I was so impertinently interrupted *
glares around the room* , I don't see Miller as a misogynist as much as a self-impressed clown who started to believe his own press clippings. His later work brings to mind a quote about Humphrey Bogart and what a decent guy he was until he got drunk and started to think he was Humphrey Bogart. However, since I may not have as much exposure to his work as others, I will yield on this point to a rational exposition from someone better-versed. I should also add that I read 'Sin City' some months after exiting the world of (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Vachss) Andrew Vachss in disgust, so I might be judging Miller by that yardstick.
Matthew on 13/3/2007 at 13:02
Quote Posted by oudeis
*
Comic book heroes never have happy endings with their loves.
Well, there are a few, but not many.
Scots Taffer on 13/3/2007 at 13:16
I would say the intense brutalisation of woman and their sole depiction in Sin City would go some way toward labelling Miller as a mysognist.
oudeis on 13/3/2007 at 13:40
But, again, do the men really fare any better? If they were all virtuous and stalwart and true and were laid low through the machinations of malevolent molls I could see your point. But start to tally the male characters and they come out a lot worse. Marv is a psychopath, the Bishop and Kevin the mute ninja cannibal were utterly sickening, Dwight broke the heart of Gail the valkyrie dominatrix and she still saved his life, and don't forget The Yellow Bastard and his father, and boy did the movie make me glad I'd skipped that book and sorry they filmed it. I'm not saying you'd want your daughter to emulate any of the females in Sin City, but the men are enough to turn your stomach.
Scots Taffer on 13/3/2007 at 13:51
Quote Posted by oudeis
the Bishop and Kevin the mute ninja cannibal were utterly sickening
Yup, they were killing prostitutes and eating them. Sickening.
Quote Posted by oudeis
Dwight broke the heart of Gail the valkyrie dominatrix and she
still saved his life
Yup, the prostitute saved his life. She's still a prostitute in a city section devoted to them, and even they needed Dwight.
Quote Posted by oudeis
don't forget The Yellow Bastard and his father
Yup, he kidnapped young girls, raped and tortured them, before killing them. Then he later tries the same with Nancy.
So, all the male figures who were cruel, evil and sadistic were doing evil unto either helpless females who came to a horrible end or slutty whores who deserved it (in the context of this Universe, I'm not speaking personally), unless they happened to be saved by macho anti-heroes.
Don't you get it? Women in continuously horrible situations die at the hands of men or are saved by them. This indicates a view of women as very disposable and rather cold, hence mysoginistic. This discussion wasn't about the men being repugnant or not, it's about Miller's view of women being repugnant (at least, that's what's being discussed here).
Malygris on 13/3/2007 at 14:11
Guys, I don't want to appear overly critical here or anything, but I think in this case you may be applying a little too much intellectual analysis, and not quite enough jesus christ these are fucking comic books.
oudeis on 13/3/2007 at 14:17
You make some very good points- points that never ocurred to me- but I still think in a work where EVERYBODY is more or less a cliched piece of shit that we are dealing more with a general misanthropy than woman-hating bias. Yes, the women are almost all prostitutes- WHORES! FILTHY WHORES DEPLETING OUR LIFE-GIVING SEMEN!!!- but the men are, as you said, rapists and murderers and child-molesters, etc. Even if misogyny isn't a binary, absolute mindset, i.e., men are all good and virtuous and women are pernicious and corrupting by their innate nature, assessing a relative standard doesn't make the male characters come out any better. I understand that you are focusing on the passive-active continuum, with archetypal strong proactive males and weak, reactive females; I'm more interested in the moral stereotypes on display. The unremitting and unredeemed ugliness of the fictional work comes across more as a desperate attempt to be hard than anything else.
