Thursday, September 18, 2014

UK METRO WRITER DEFENDS SEXINESS AND STRENGTH FOR HEROINES, THEN PROCEEDS TO WRECK ARGUMENT

A writer for the UK Metro paper told why she's okay with heroines like Spider-Woman being sexy so long as they're not helpless:
I like a little controversy in art and comics are very much an art form. I’d be angrier if the actual content of the comics I read featured helpless, sexualised females and flimsy plot lines but, as a reader, I feel I’m living in a time where strong female characters are in abundance.
That's an argument I can get behind - while nobody expects the female casts to be invincible, it would certainly be bad if they were throughly helpless. But, as Identity Crisis proved back in 2004, and New Avengers in 2007 with the story where Tigra was attacked by The Hood, it's not entirely true women in modern comic book fiction are depicted strongly. Now that I think of it, the former example gave sex a bad name too.

But then, the writer ruins everything by bringing up the Muslim Ms. Marvel series for the umpteenth time in a mainstream press piece:
In the interest of fairness though, great strides have been made to move away from this image too, with Kamala Khan as a young Muslim Ms. Marvel and Marvel re-launching Thor as a woman.
Yes, that's all we need to hear. It would be a lot better if they'd cite the current Captain Marvel series starring the real Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, but I guess that was just too easy for them. The premise of a new teen protagonist doesn't have to be sexy, but if they're going to inject religion (and taqqiya), then they've scuttled it nevertheless.

And here's somebody who doesn't question whether it's ridiculous to arbitrarily replace Thor with a woman bearing a man's name.
I feel the world of the superhero should be fun, where creators can play with sexuality and imagery. There are some brilliant writers and artists producing fantastic, inclusive stories that appeal to all readers, whatever your background.
I also feel they should be fun, but if you set up a dishonest picture of Islam, that's not fun at all. "Fun" visions can't be approved selectively.

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