Tag: batgirl

SDCC: “Batman: The Killing Joke” Screenwriter Explains Controversial Sex Scene

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“The thing about this is that it’s controversial, so we added more controversy,” explained Azzarello. “I think she is stronger than the men in her life in this story. She controls the men in her life in this story.”

“They both make mistakes, but she’s the one who decides, ‘I have to stop. There’s a problem here, and I need to step away from this,’” Liu explained. “I think that comes from an emotional strength. I think she makes the decisions that strong people make.”

“She comes off as a stronger character at the end of that arc,” Azzarello agreed.

Pfft yeah sure. Suuuure. Turning Batgirl and Batman’s relationship to a sexual one is about showing she’s “stronger” and “controls the men in her life” in a story that’s all about how Joker being a monster and shooting her makes the men feel terribad.

I don’t think these guys understand what’s wrong with this picture. Making Batgirl into a bigger prize for the men to feel a sense of loss over isn’t in any way making Batgirl a strong, more fleshed out character. All it’s doing is further establishing the idea that Batgirl’s only value is in her relationships with men, not in who she is as her own character.

Comparison point here. I’ve complained a lot about Capcom’s poor treatment of Jill and Claire in the Resident Evil franchise over the past decade. One of the BIG things I’ve pointed out as a major problem is Jill’s treatment in Resident Evil 5.

In Resident Evil 5, we find out Jill Valentine was tormented and abused horribly by Albert Wesker. For two years, her body was used to make the worst biohazard ever (after a decade of her fighting to STOP biohazards), and then she was body-controlled into murdering her friends at the BSAA and serving Wesker’s interests.

When she finally broke free of Wesker’s control, she outright says she was aware the whole time. She had no control of her body or her actions, and she had to suffer through being used to do horrible things. And you know what all that was done to build up to?

Chris Redfield’s “suffering” over seeing Jill in that state.

The trauma and suffering Jill endured during those two years is brushed aside like a trivial detail. She doesn’t get to fight Wesker for some redemption. In fact, she’s written as “passing the torch” of being Chris’ partner to Sheva, and even tosses a rocket launcher to Chris and Sheva at the end so THEY can finish Wesker off while she just stands back and watches with a smile.

It was all about Chris, the big burly manly man getting to react to what happened to Jill, and then just shrugging it off once the moment passed.

That’s what DC did to Batgirl with the Killing Joke animated film. They doubled down on the notion that what Batgirl suffers through should be seen as important because, oh golly gee, she banged Batman.

SDCC: “Batman: The Killing Joke” Screenwriter Explains Controversial Sex Scene

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*reads and sees gifs about how DC fucked up with the Killing Joke animated movie*

I’m not surprised. Wait, scratch that. I’m surprised only in that DC Comics didn’t decide to make it much, much worse.

To be generous, I’m putting the rest in a Read More cut. Spoilers for what I’ve seen talked about online.

Let’s go back to last year, when DC Comics had Rafael Albuquerque draw that Joker variant cover of Batgirl. That cover emphasized the notion that Batgirl should be seen first and foremost as a victim of Joker, that the most vital and meaningful thing she ever did was make Joker look more dangerous and give Batman more of a reason to go after him.

Albuquerque didn’t choose to make that variant cover so extreme. People at DC Comics prodded him to do so. Higher-ups at the company wanted Batgirl to be seen that way.

Can you really expect that those notions wouldn’t seep into an animated film about Killing Joke, under the guise of giving Batgirl “more of a role?”

So, DC made this big deal about how they’d flesh Batgirl out. Give more weight and power to what Joker did to her. Problem: the source material’s idea of Batgirl’s value is how things that happen to her affect the men. As such, DC was more than ready to take that to the next “logical” step: bumping Batgirl up from Batman’s sidekick to Batman’s fuckbuddy.

Because a woman can only ever want to fight alongside a legendary hero under his theme and banner if she secretly wants to fuck him. Right?

Killing Joke the animated film was never going to come anywhere close to attempting to rectify everything wrong with Killing Joke the story. You can’t build a sturdy mansion on a shoddy, crumbling foundation. It doesn’t matter how badly you like one specific corner of that foundation, if the rest isn’t up to the task, it won’t work.

The one thing I can say positive about the Killing Joke animated film from what I’ve heard thus far: at least they didn’t make what Joker did to Batgirl even worse. I sincerely expected they’d do something as extreme as making her have full out sex with Joker, Joker’s hyenas, or possibly even her dad. Killing Joke’s claim to fame is how “edgy” it is, after all, and when you have something “edgy” this old, the natural line of thinking is that it’s too stale and needs to be made even “edgier.”

Or maybe I’m speaking too soon. Maybe we’ll see one or all of those things happen at some point. Between that Joker variant cover last year and everything they’ve done to Harley Quinn, I wouldn’t put it past them.

Companies using female creators as shields for poor female character treatment

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I don’t do a lot of ranting about this on Tumblr, but I’ve done it on Twitter. There are a LOT of situations where a female character is treated poorly or radically changed that annoy me lately, but and I notice a trend: it’s treated as suddenly acceptable the instant a woman is made into one of the most prominent creators involved in the project.

For the supposed Tomb Raider “reboot,” its version of “Lara Croft” was rightfully panned as inappropriate to who Lara Croft is as a character… until Crystal Dynamics revealed and emphasized the fact they had Rhianna Pratchett writing the script. And as soon as Rhianna Pratchett started really pushing that treatment of her as somehow good and a step above. Special note: Rhianna Pratchett being the script writer was announced and turned into a big news story immediately after sites jumped on a producer’s remarks about “Lara” getting nearly raped and how it makes the player supposedly want to protect her.

Likewise, with Harley Quinn, throwing away her entire harlequin theme as a character and turning her into a female Joker knockoff was rightfully panned when it was Adam Glass. Then, as soon as Amanda Conner got involved, everyone started building it up and promoting what DC was doing to Harley Quinn as The Best Thing Ever.

In neither case was the intent and plan actually something spearheaded by the prominent women attached to them. The “Tomb Raider” “reboot” was done, with its plan for a beaten down and traumatized Lara Croft as a way to throw away the heroic badass Lara Croft, entirely because a male exec at Crystal Dynamics saw the popularity of Nolan’s Batman films and wanted to force that concept on Lara Croft. Throwing away Harley Quinn’s entire theme as a character, what is to her what bats are to Batman, came because a male exec at DC Comics saw the popularity of Arkham Asylum’s costume change for Harley and thought that meant Harley needed to have her costume changed everywhere.

It is in much the same way as what happened to Barbara Gordon. A male editor decided Batgirl needed to be tossed aside and her crippling via Killing Joke was a way to do it while promoting the men. Everything that happened with Oracle wasn’t planned, it was women salvaging a character that a man had no respect for.

In essence, what we have is female creators used as a smoke screen for poor decisions made by men. Ideas that would garner massive criticism and complaints with a man at the helm suddenly get praise and accolades with a woman placed front and center. The success or failure of an idea forced on a character by a man also becomes the duty of a woman; if it fails, the blame can be pinned on her instead of the real problem that was forced on her.

This situation forces female creators to have to do things that are good for their careers at the expense of the female characters they’re working on. It forces them to convince people, including themselves, that what they’re doing is a good thing. It seems like a “when you have lemons, make lemonade” scenario, but it’s really not.

The great work done with Oracle as a result of Barbara Gordon’s poor treatment via Killing Joke is constantly used as a reason for why Barbara Gordon shouldn’t be Batgirl again. There were objectively a lot of great things that happened with Barbara’s development and character as Oracle, and she added meaningful disabled diversity… but it comes at the cost of trying to deny Barbara the chance to be Batgirl.

Great work done by women making good things out of a bad situation is weaponized as an excuse to continue reinforcing the original bad idea, and deny any and every possibility of setting things right.

“Barbara Gordon can’t be Batgirl again, you’re robbing the world of an important disabled character if you do that!”

“Lara Croft can’t be a badass heroic icon again, you’re undoing progress toward video games in general having more realistic female characters!”

“Harley Quinn can’t have her harlequin theme back, you’re taking away her whole troupe and team-up storylines with other characters!”

And so on, and so forth, as if a team of builders doing the best they can with a horrendous foundation somehow makes the foundation good.

What Crystal Dynamics is calling “Lara Croft” right now could have been an entirely brand new character for a new IP. She could’ve had a long line of successes in her own right, and eventually had a crossover game with the actual Lara Croft.

Harley Quinn could’ve had a troupe and team-up storylines that kept her harlequin theme intact, and even built upon them more. Instead of looking like a female Joker knockoff, there could’ve been a variation on the jester concept.

None of this is in a vacuum. Without putting any thought into it, the Tomb Raider “reboot” might look like the best thing to ever happen to Lara Croft, and Harley Quinn losing her jester theme may appear like the start of her breakthrough. It only looks that way because these companies are pulling out all the stops into making people accept a terrible direction, heavily promoting it while making women responsible for its success or failure.

But the truth is, what we see is much less than what could have been, and it comes at the cost of lost opportunities elsewhere.

When it comes to Tomb Raider, one of my favorite examples of just how wrong the “reboot” is comes from Resident Evil 4. The director, Shinji Mikami, had all these ideas ranging from psychological horror to supernatural horror. He eventually realized those ideas had absolutely no bearing on Resident Evil and turned it into an entirely new franchise: Devil May Cry. Devil May Cry became a huge success, resulted in the creation of brand new character Dante as a major respected gaming protagonist, and Resident Evil 4 still became a huge breakout game that revived the franchise. Crystal Dynamics celebrated the “Tomb Raider” “reboot” reaching 3 million sales worldwide in a month, yet Resident Evil became so successful that Capcom considered 5 million sales for Resident Evil 6 in the same time span to be bad sales.

Just because something looks better than it was doesn’t mean it’s better than what it could have been. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug, and it narrows the mind to potential alternatives.

Lastly, notice that the exact same things rightfully continue to be criticized when it’s a male character. Snyder’s idea of Superman in Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice has been constantly torn to shreds. “Dante” from DmC also kept getting complaints for radically changing his entire nature and theme as a character. People have no problem spotting what’s wrong and calling it out when it’s a male character. They have a problem doing it when it’s a female character with a prominent female creator involved.

I really hope that some day, we’ll see Lara Croft and Harley Quinn again. I hope people start to see through this form of corporate trickery toward making people accept bad ideas. I hope corporate stops using women as shields against having their bad ideas taken to task and undone.

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perrohunter:

“@sommariva @davidyardin do an awesome #harleyquinn #batgirl #sketch! #art #drawing #artist #illustration #draw #artwork #original #sketchbook #artsy #comics #arts #sketching #drawings #comic #starwars #batman #dc #marvel #superman #hero #spiderman #dccomics #joker #harley #manga #anime Contact artist for pricing info!” by @comicconsketches on Instagram http://ift.tt/1NbE80i

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Got in a discussion on Twitter about this a bit ago, then saw news on it: the idea of Killing Joke getting cut from DC canon.

I think Killing Joke never should’ve happened and should be cut from two completely different angles.

First and more obvious: the intent behind Killing Joke was terrible. Its whole purpose was to get rid of Batgirl, and use the act of getting rid of her to build up the narratives of other male characters. The editor behind it literally told Alan Moore to “cripple the bitch.” Everything concerning Barbara built up as Oracle was not planned, and happened mostly to salvage the character in the aftermath.

That’s as far as I feel I need to say on that angle, because I think it’s been covered extensively by other people.

Here’s the second, less obvious angle: Killing Joke isn’t even a good story for any of the characters, including Joker, and it doesn’t go far enough.

**SPOILERS for Batman Beyond below**

If you’ve seen the original cut of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, you know what happened to Tim Drake. The Joker kidnapped Tim and tortured him for weeks, until Tim finally snapped. The entire premise was turning Tim from Robin into Joker Jr., which Joker succeeds at.

it demonstrates who the Joker is and how terrifying he can be on multiple angles. This is a guy who is willing to torture children to turn them into a twisted parody of himself. His actual method of torture is representative of who he is. Harley’s willingness to help shows how abusive and persuasive Joker is. It demonstrates the risk of Batman taking on children, both for the harm that could come to those children AND for all the secrets someone like Joker can get out of them.

Everything that happens to Tim Drake, happens because it’s inherently unique to Joker. All of the threats I mentioned a moment ago aren’t just threats. They’re threats laced with Joker’s specific brand of insanity. They were all focused on the goal of taking one of Batman’s kids away from him and turning that kid into a Joker knockoff. Similarly, Tim Drake’s identity as Robin is crucial to this telling. His superhero identity matters.

Tim Drake killing Joker with a gun is uniquely terrifying on so many levels. Not only because it goes against Batman’s code, or because it’s a kid committing murder, or because it’s how Bruce’s parents were killed. It’s all of those things plus the fact Tim Drake is about the same age Bruce was when Bruce’s parents were gunned down. In killing Joker, Tim Drake is a twisted young Bruce murdering the murderer.

The horror of Joker here isn’t how brutal he can be. It’s how his brutality can home in on the psychological weaknesses of his targets and destroy them inside.

**END SPOILERS**

Now look at Killing Joke.

Joker does nothing to prey about the psychological weaknesses of Barbara, Commissioner Gordon or Batman. He didn’t target Barbara because she’s Batgirl; he targeted Barbara because she’s Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, and Joker merely played on how any good father wouldn’t want to see his daughter suffer. It doesn’t prey on Batman’s relationship with Commissioner Gordon either, because even if Batman didn’t exist, Gordon would still be Commissioner and still have to face off with Joker.

The exact same thing would’ve happened no matter where Batman was. The only difference is Batman’s existence meant Gordon got saved by someone.

It doesn’t even say much about Joker. It does nothing to represent his identity through his actions or the unique danger he poses. The closest Joker comes to that is framing Barbara’s crippling like pornography, but that’s only a representation of how twisted his worldview can be.

When you get right down to it, Killing Joke isn’t even a good Joker story. Literally any character could’ve done what Joker did. Any random criminal could’ve shown up at Gordon’s house, knocked on his door, blasted Barbara in the spine and taken photos to really fuck with Gordon’s head. You can almost imagine one of Falcone’s men doing exactly that to send a message, in much the same way as the infamous Godfather horse head.

The absolute best anyone can ever say about Killing Joke is that it’s brutal and may have inspired some good content, but even the latter may not be true. For all we know, we might’ve had even better stories if Killing Joke never existed.

If DC Comics is serious about providing good stories and characterization (which is a big assumption; they still haven’t given Harley Quinn back her namesake harlequin theme, and they’re still pushing Man of Steel), they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by ditching Killing Joke. Most people I’ve seen in heavy support of Killing Joke do so exclusively because they like “edgy” brutal content and have convinced themselves it’s crucial to Joker’s development without really thinking of what it does(n’t) do for Joker as a character.

In sum: there’s no reason at all to keep Killing Joke canon. It may have become an iconic Alan Moore and Joker story, but it was created with poor intentions and does nothing for any of the characters involved. If DC’s going to have something like Killing Joke in canon, it needs to be more psychologically extreme and character-driven than this. “Joker shot Barbara in the spine, took porno-style pictures and showed them to a crawling, leashed and naked Gordon before Batman saved him and arguably killed Joker” isn’t enough.

“True Fans,” Fandom, and Gatekeeping

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If you’ve been active on social media at all, or even taken part in something that would get a lot of spread on social media, you know how volatile people have become.

A lot of people are getting their names and reputations dragged through the mud, receiving harassment and death threats online, and some have even been SWATted (where a fake threat is called to police to get a SWAT team to raid someone’s house – which can result in actual physical harm and threats) and essentially chased out of their homes.

All of this activity can ultimately be traced back to one thing: the concept of a “true fan”, and attempts to dominate fandom and control who is or isn’t considered a fan.

As much as I’ve been active on Twitter, I haven’t been nearly active enough about this on Tumblr, and it’s time for me to say something here.

There is a lot of loaded language wrapped up in this concept, so there’s no perfect place to begin. We have to just jump right in and elaborate from there.

We’ve seen a lot of volatility as of late in fandom everywhere. There’s GamerGate, full of people who insist they’re fighting for ethics in games journalism – when really, the language of most GGers is stilted in things like “fighting the SJW menace” and “exposing <insert female critic, developer, research, etc>’s lies.” Many GGers insist the people they target are “not real gamers.”

When the Batgirl cover referencing the Killing Joke came out, and many people complained and criticized it (I believe rightfully so), many people insisted demands to pull the cover amounted to censorship… and some of the people who demanded the cover be pulled received harassment and death threats, and calls that they weren’t “true comic book fans” or “true Batman fans.”

I’ve experienced this first-hand, of course. Nowhere near to the same degree as so many others have received it. But practically any time where I’ve criticized a company or product or shown concern that something bad might happen to something I love, there will be someone who comes along with this insistence they’re a “true fan,” and that I’m not because I said something they didn’t like.

So here’s the critical question in all of this: what makes someone a “true fan”?

If I buy absolutely anything and everything a company makes, even if they openly insult me as a consumer and all the things I care about – am I a true fan?

If I buy absolutely nothing, never have and never will, and say something needs to radically change into something else before I’ll buy it – am I a true fan?

We know the dictionary definition of a fan, but there are so many individual, personal semantic definitions. One person thinks you’re not a fan unless you defend a company and what it does to the death, no matter how bad it is. Another person thinks you’re not a fan unless you mercilessly criticize everything and show no appreciation. Still another person thinks neither route is correct, that you need a mix.

Or is it something else? Are you a true fan if you play X number of games or read X number of comics featuring something? Are you a true fan if you paid to commission fanart, or write fanfiction?

Depending on your definition, who counts as a “true fan” changes.

Suddenly, a person who’s read comic books about their favorite character for years and bought countless comics and art commissions isn’t a “true fan” because they’re willing to complain about the company that owns that character’s rights.

Suddenly, a woman who makes experimental video games or cares about better representation for women in video games isn’t a “true gamer”, while a man who’s never played a game before and has regularly insulted gaming as a whole is an “honorary gamer” for supporting certain people and playing a little bit of one video game.

Suddenly, people who deeply love and respect something “don’t count” as “true fans.” And here’s the reason: power.

Fiction has cultural power, and whoever has the loudest voice gets the most say in its shape. Whether explicitly or implicitly, most people are starting to realize this.

Want a character to get raped? Silence all dissenting voices, and it might happen.

Want a certain person to quit the video game industry? Send him or her enough death threats, make up things like “she has sex with dogs” or “she’s a rapist”, hack his or her bank account, all sorts of nastiness, and it might happen.

That is the shape “fandom” is increasingly taking right now: smear jobs, character assassination, real life harassment even to friends and family just for being associated with the intended target.

It’s all gatekeeping. It’s all an attempt to take possession of the keys, and then dictate who’s allowed to have them. “You’re not a true gamer unless you accept games as they are.” “You’re not a true Batgirl fan unless you accept her being presented first and foremost as Joker’s victim.” “You’re not a true Polaris fan unless you never complain about Marvel and never worry they might do something bad to her.”

And while it looks recent, this has actually been going on for years. Probably far longer than I’m even consciously aware.

When Anita Sarkeesian launched her Tropes vs Video Games Kickstarter in 2012, she received a wave of harassment and threats simply for the IDEA of criticizing video games through a feminist perspective, suggesting that as great as they are, they can be better.

When a woman working for Bioware said video games should permit a “skip gameplay” option to be able to enjoy only the story, also back in 2012, she received a swarm of harassment for daring to suggest games don’t need gameplay.

This behavior looks new, but it’s not. It’s been a very gradual escalation across several years. It only looks new because most people weren’t watching the horizon and what was slowly spilling over it.

The more people who think this is the right approach to fandom, the more extreme people will become when they get desperate. Right now, GamerGate laughs off the idea that any of the people they target will ever get killed. But is it really so laughable? In the span of 3 years, we’ve gone from internet harassment and some online death threats to women like Anita Sarkeesian, to people getting SWATted, and smeared as supposedly being rapists or fucking dogs or selling their kids for drug money.

All in an attempt to become the gatekeepers of fandom, and terrorize and chase out anyone who disagrees with them. If 3 years is enough for people to turn out like that and think it’s perfectly acceptable, what will 3 more years bring us?

Any time you see the words “true fan”, always, ALWAYS ask: who’s using them, how, and why. We can’t afford to not ask those questions when lives are on the line – right now, professional lives, the ability to actually get a job. But perhaps some day, the ability to continue living at all.

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zelusbound:

hmmm still not sure i agree

https://theravensravings.wordpress.com/

Once again, this is not a “double standard.”

Batman isn’t treated like being drugged, raped and thereby forced to become a father is the biggest, most important thing a person needs to know about who Batman is as a character. His identity is not defined by Talia having raped him. And even completely disregarding Batgirl, the narrative of Talia having raped Batman didn’t exist exclusively to make Batman a mere prop in the service of making Talia look more threatening for another woman to have to face her.

None of the above can be said about Batgirl. What Joker did to Batgirl in Killing Joke, her moment of victimization, is treated as THE most defining aspect about who she is and what she’s about, more important than her origins or her identity… and it existed solely to make the Joker look more threatening for Batman and Jim Gordon. With Batman, we know his parents’ murder fueled becoming Batman, we know Bane broke his back, we know Talia raped him, we know he took Robin in, and in all of that the emphasis is on how he struggles and triumphs over those tragedies… while the emphasis for Batgirl is on how she suffered, and still suffers.

As exemplified in the cover that was rightfully pulled by DC, at the artist’s request because people criticizing it were getting attacked. The Joker variant cover does not show Batgirl resisting, fighting back, pushing to triumph over what he did to her. That cover is all about emphasizing Batgirl as a victim first and foremost, not as a hero who fights and struggles to overcome such adversity and horrors to be her badass hero self.

There was literally no reason for Batgirl to be depicted that way. Joker did not need her depicted that way. He would have been just as threatening if the cover allowed her to have an angry glare and perhaps signs of trying to break herself free. That’s literally all it would’ve taken for the cover to be okay with most people: a simple sign that Batgirl is her own character with her own personality that deserves to be treated as such, after far too many cases of being defined purely as a symbol of how dangerous the Joker can be.

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virtualcara:

“Labyrinth” is one of my favorite movies of all time. Towards the end, Our Heroine Sarah realizes that her adversary-slash-paramour Jareth The Goblin King has only a silver tongue and esteem damaging words in his arsenal. With the magic words (above), she breaks his magic crystal ball of spying and Jareth disintegrates in a flashy fashion fit for David Bowie. 

What does this have to do with comics you ask?  I was struck by how much imagery Labyrinth and Barbara Gordon shared (clocks, shiny round lenses, goblins, ect), and really wish they shared just a little more.

Lineart in Manga Studio, color in Photoshop. I will have text free 11×17 prints of this image at East Coast Comic Expo next weekend. I’m also available for commissions.