Literary Analysis - Subtle is Better: Feminism in Comics

Darcy Smittenaar

Professor Clayton

EN224P

February 18, 2013

Subtle is Better

Feminism in Comics

William Moulton Marston, also known as Charles Moulton, was a self-proclaimed feminist.  Throughout his comic, Wonder Woman, he blatantly shows his views of the feminine ideal in the actions of not only Diana, but also of Etta Candy and Hypolita.  Frank Miller, on the other hand, in his comic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, sets out to explore themes such as mental disorder, vigilantism and police effectiveness.  Nevertheless, through the motivations, appearances and actions of characters such as Carrie Kelley (Batman’s new Robin), the new police commissioner Ellen Yindel and the various female news reporters in his comic, Miller’s feminist ideals are plain to see without such focus as Marston’s.

The women in Marston’s comic are all motivated by love.  Diana is in love with the man who fell from the sky to Paradise Island, and it is through the love of Aphrodite for the Amazons that Diana’s power comes to her.  Hypolita, tricked into giving up the girdle which was a gift from Aphrodite by Hercules, learns not to love men, but instead focuses all her love on the Amazon women and her daughter Diana.  In The Dark Knight Returns, there is not really any apparent love.

Instead, the motivation of the various women and girls in Miller’s comic are as varied as their individual personalities.  Carrie wants to get away from druggie parents who never pay attention to her and to make a difference by taking criminals off of the streets of Gotham City.  Ellen Yindel wants to be a good commissioner, to do things by the book, and that means locking Batman away just like his enemies had been for the last fifteen years.  The main reporter in Gotham City is a woman, and she just wants a good scoop, whereas Lana Lang, who the reporter often asks for opinions on the matter of Batman, wants Batman to be seen as a good help to the city, not hunted as a criminal.  By showing realistically varied motivations in all of his female characters, no matter how prominent such characters are, Miller advances the feminist cause better than Marston’s singularly-motivated characters.

The way each female character is drawn and dresses herself is another aspect of feminism which is better portrayed in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns than in Wonder Woman.  Hypolita creates a skimpy, barely-there costume in red, white and blue for Diana to wear as she protects America and democracy from the Nazis.  A sensible reader would expect that no mother would be caught dead letting her daughter out of the house in such an outfit, and that, knowing the daughter was going into battle, would provide instead at least some head-to-toe leather garment to act as armor.  Etta and the Holiday College girls are all dressed the same, which does not happen except in cases of uniformed teams—not sororities.  Providing Diana with a lasso to make anyone do what she tells them is also an egregious error on Marston’s part, for the lasso does not show that his ideal woman is motivated by love, but that women prefer to manipulate those with whom they interact.

Miller, in his comic, draws the women and girls with the same variation as he shows their motivations, and tailors their appearance to their role in the story.  The television reporter is pretty, with dangling earrings, but her face is generic—no one is going to really see her as a person, just a “talking head.”  Nevertheless, she is dressed smartly, as a news broadcast professional would be expected to dress.  Similarly, Lana Lang is professionally dressed, but her hair style, instead of the intricate up-do of the news anchor’s, is a no-nonsense ponytail.  Lana is not out to dazzle people with her looks; she just wants to be taken seriously, and by extension wants Batman to be taken seriously.  Commissioner Yindel dresses like any no-nonsense cop, in a business suit—albeit with a feminine cut—and carries herself with a confident posture.  She also carries a gun, and is a police officer in her own right.  Granted that women would not have been on the police force in the 1940’s setting of Wonder Woman, it is doubtful that Miller would have included a female cop in his comic even if they had been common at the time.  Also, Carrie, instead of becoming “Batgirl,” like Alicia Silverstone’s character in the 1997 Joel Schumacher movie Batman and Robin (Schumacher), Carrie herself becomes Robin, a role usually filled by a young man or a boy despite the unisex nature of the sidekick’s name.  With the Robin costume come the utilities given to Robin as Batman’s sidekick, and Carrie, to Bruce Wayne’s surprise, brings knowledge of computers and technology to the role as well that previous Robins have lacked.  By varying the appearance and accessories of the female characters in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Miller makes a better case for the feminine ideal than Miller’s cookie-cutter, manipulative women.

Finally, the actions of the female characters in both comics highlight the creators’ ideas of feminity.  In Wonder Woman, Diana is constantly pining over the man she loves, bemoaning the fact that he will not see her as plain old “Diana Prince,” but that he only wants to see Wonder Woman.  The fact is that Wonder Woman is the real person, the person sent from Paradise Island to help protect the democratic way of life.  Diana Prince is only an identity bought from another woman so that Diana can stay close to the man she loves—it is not who she really is.  The actions of Etta Candy and the Holiday College girls also show poor examples of feminism.  Etta and the girls, more than once or twice, throw themselves at enemy soldiers in order to distract them so that Diana can rescue someone or go after the villains.  They have no respect for their own individualism and see nothing wrong with cozying up to strangers.

In Dark Knight, the women know who they are, and do not compromise their identities.  The television reporter does not jump up out of her chair and start ranting about crazy things—she reports the news in as unbiased a manner as possible.  Lana Lang does not change her mind about Batman’s goodness.  Commissioner Yindel does not throw up her hands and say, “It’s too hard” when catching Batman and putting him in prison turns out to be more difficult than originally anticipated.  And finally, Carrie, when she is almost raped by an old enemy of Batman’s (Miller 149), does not give up the “boy wonder” persona, even though she needs Bruce to comfort her after the ordeal.

Unlike Marston’s blatantly single-minded, scantily-clad, wishy-washy portrayals of women, Frank Miller’s subtle female characters do more for the cause of feminism over all.

 

Works Cited

Marston, William Moulton. The Wonder Woman Chronicles. Vol. 1. New York: DC Comics, 2010. Print.

Miller, Frank, Klaus Janson, Lynn Varley, John Costanza, and Bob Kane. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. New York, NY: DC Comics, 2002. Print.

Schumacher, Joel, dir. Batman & Robin. 20 June 1997.