Been a while. How have you been?

So... This and this have been making the rounds (please read the original blog entries). Not quite in a this kind of way, but enough to make me go "WTF, man?" this morning. Why did I go "WTF, man?"? Because this argument seems pointless to me. Why is it pointless?

Because both Ms. Superheroine and Ms. Hudson are completely right.

I think the issue that many people have with 'Angry Fangirls' on the blogosphere is that there is confusion as to what makes up the content of a comic book.

There's text...

...and then there's meta-text.

ou’re supposed to be disgusted with what happens to Barbara Gordon—and to Commissioner Gordon—because it’s disgusting. That is, in fact, the entire point. It was brutal and pointless and ugly and terrible, and that's why it hurts so much.

That's the text of Killing Joke.

It doesn't take the perspective of a woman into account. It doesn't take into account that some women might be so very disgusted with the book & what happens to Barbara Gordon in it.

That's the meta-text of Killing Joke.

You can review the text of a work. You can't really do that wholly with the meta-text, however, you can certainlyevaluate a work based on its meta-text.

The Killing Joke has been mentioned by Alan Moore as one of his most disappointing works. He states that it is about "nothing". I may be wrong, but I also believe that he did not intend for that story to be necessarily in continuity, and certainly did not intend for this story to be an impetus for getting "rid of" Barbara Gordon/Batgirl. He just needed something that he, as a fan, felt disgusting and offensive enough to actually have been committed by a character like The Joker.

We can't forget the story. The story is the most important part. But we also can't forget that art is supposed to inspire people. Whether it inspires people to make works of art themselves or inspires them to become life-long fans of the character. Even if all it inspires in people is that they should not shoot women in the spine, a piece of art should inspire on any level. Should we be all-accepting and forgiving of the more annoying tendencies of our fanperson compatriots? Probably not, because then most of us comic book bloggers wouldn't have blogs anymore, but we also can't forget that things like this stem from love and appreciation.

Ms. Superheroine was disgusted by The Killing Joke. Not disgusted but inspired like Ms. Hudson, or myself at age 13. In my opinion, that is reason enough for someone to dislike a particular work of art, regardless of whether I share that reaction or not.

The only thing that I would mention to Ms. Superheroine is that The Killing Joke was published in the late 80s (a very, very culturally dark time), before the pictoral abuse of women in comics was as rampant as it is today. This is before "Women in Refrigerators". This is before Stephanie Brown was senselessly and unfairly killed. This was before Brad Meltzer ran off copies of his first novel at Kinkos.

Given its historical context, I would say that Mr. Moore's decision to depict Barbara Gordon being shot might be inspiring. A lot of terrible abuses were happening to Women all over the world in 1988. This is still fairly fresh off the Women's Liberation movement, when we had thought that if we tried hard enough we could eradicate sexism, only to see it all come crashing down with the rise of Heroine Chic and the Crack Epidemic. However, in comics, no one was talking about these things. When Jim Gordon is forced to watch footage of his daughter being abused by the Joker, we're right there with him, because we love Barbara too.

However, given the present day context of Mike Turner variant covers and the legal name change of Dr. Light to Dr. RapeityRapeRape-Rape, yeah, it's uninspired and irritating.

Powered by ScribeFire.