So there's someone online who claims that ZMallet 'manipulated' his review of Red Sonja's WHAT IF storyline.
Personally I don't think Mallet manipulated the review. I have no idea exactly how he's meant to have done something like that. Is manipulating a review like massaging numbers?
ZMallet posted, with scans, this story where an evil Red Sonja, rapes a guy, then rips off her own baby's head (the resulting child from that rape).
The scans show her saying "You tried to kill me!" to the baby. And the baby has an evil demonic look so it's not as if she's crazy and thinks normal birthing pains are murderous intent.
Whatever the larger story, that this person claims needs to be told and included in any review of this story line, the fact still remains that in it, Red Sonja rapes a guy and kills a baby.
The end result is STILL, yet another story of a female heroine who when turned evil - sleeps with every and anyone she wishes with no discerning grace. Whatever the dissenter's thoughts on the matter might be, the TROPE Zmallet was pointing out still holds true.
Not to mention the secondary tropes of "Get powers from a Goddess, AFTER A RAPE, and the only time you can sleep with a guy is if he can physically over power you. Get Powers from a GOD (an evil god) and flip to the whore side of the madonna/whore complex, so far in fact you force yourself on someone else!"
I'm not sure the person criticizing Zmallet's review got the point he was making. Especially considering that they posted this
Sonja's only reason for raping Osin is because a prophecy said that he was meant to father the Anti-Christ (or the Hyborian equivalent) with her as the mother. That doesn't make it any less icky but it does give Sonja with a motivation past "Well, she's evil - so she must be a slut." - a subtext that I believe was mistakenly (although not, I think, intentionally) implied by mallet's original article.
I REFUSE to get into the arguments about legitimate motivations for rape. I will pop a virtual cap in people's arses if I try.
As for Zmallet's sarcastic "Hey Kids! Comics!" at the end of his post... I first learned about Red Sonja from the movie; Which I saw on tv when I was maybe twelve or something like that. Maybe thirteen.
While I haven't followed the comic since discovering it WAS a comic, that's mostly been because I haven't been sure I wanted to see a strong warrior female in a T&A fantasy setting. Which is all that's come across to me with the various solicts.
Still, if you saw that movie and figured chainmail cold ass bikini or not, you wanted to see if it was like Xena ...
Well, Hey Kids! Comics!
PS:
9:18pm - Looking2daStars posts:
You don't like rape and yet you read Red Sonja? Isn't that a bit like saying that you don't like the idea of children losing their parents and then continuing to read Batman?
I cannot read anything more by this Trilobite. That comparison (which involves BATMAN so you know my wraths been stoked) is just so full of utter I REPLACED MY HEAD WITH MY NUTSACK. YAY NON BRAINS FULL OF SPERM - that I can't think to reply to it. Which works because what could I possibly say to someone who makes that argument given that I do in fact adore Batman because I don't like the idea of children losing their parents.
Huh, that's bizarre. I don't see why Mallet should need to show the entire story just to point out the "ew factor" of rape and beheading an infant, demonic or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteYeesh.
The panels kinda speak for themselves.. I doubt context would lower the 'ew' for me, b/c it's rly what's in the panels that's so .. ew :(
ReplyDeleteSo wait.. then ppl who do like children losing their parents are the only ppl who read Batman? D:
That analogy was made of fail :(
Hi. Trilobite in question here.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy the irony of this. I post a story to defend a comic series and a heroine - which and whom I enjoy most of the time - after someone else posts a commentary that painted a picture of every single Red Sonja comic being just like this.
I attempt to explain the story fully and lend some context that Red Sonja isn't just killing a baby for the hell of it - she is KILLING a demonic being that just tried to kill her.
Then again, I'm of the old CCA school where demon = monster = okay to kill. I score high on the Zombie Survival test too - the one where it asks how comfortable you'd be shooting loved ones who had fallen to the legions of the damned?
I admit: That Batman analogy was not the best. I tried to use irony to prove a point and the point got lost in the shock value.
Apparently I need to say this, so I'll say it: I am NOT in favor of rape. I realize that rape is a VERY BAD THING.
That said, I still do not understand why anyone who has a problem with rape and violent imagery would be reading a book like Red Sonja. If you don't like that kind of thing, fine. You don't have to read it. But by that token, you shouldn't go posting images from a book you don't like and then go treating it like those exact instances are commonplace within that title.
I do think you have a point on how cliche it is that when a female character goes evil, she becomes bloodthirsty and sleeps around. However, in this case, I think it works since Sonja is so well known for being chaste and using violence as a last resort. It's meant to show just how much she changed in the alternate reality. Cliche, yes... but sometimes cliches work.
Regardless, I can't help but think that you didn't read anything else I wrote before you concluded that I had my nutsack used to replace my brain. I'm actually a long-time WFA contributor and have had work published in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Feminist carnivals... including an article about Red Sonja's status as a feminist icon and the issues behind her origin.
I still laugh at the irony: that I try to encourage people to look at the whole of a story before judging it and I now find myself being judged as the next Mad Thinker or anon a mouse by people who won't read the whole of my body of work.
Ah well. Your choice.
Dear Trilobite Of The Stars,
ReplyDeleteIt's all well and good to pull out your feminist credentials at the right moment. This is not the right moment. You sound a lot like a white guy who goes 'But I've read Frederick Douglas and Malcom X and I got an essay published in an African American magazine. I can't be racist or full of privlege.'
ZMallet was pointing out a trope, one you just agreed with in your comments to me - Female heroine turns evil, wears black, sleeps around, kills indiscriminately.
His post points out that trope storyline is a WHATIF. His context makes it clear the storyline is not one he finds appealing as a story OR as a whatif.
He has comments to someone else who went 'eew, I so agree to the eeewh'wherein he points out this isn't standard for the comic or the regular writers. But oh yeah, this one shot is full of eewh.
And then you get up on your podium and begin to say that he manipulated things in order to point out the eewh, and the trope and you use words like 'motivation for the rape' and then wonder why the women you know, or who know about you are all cutting their eyes and telling you to crawl back into your cave and pick off your own fleas.
If you act like a Mad Thinker, even once, you get treated like a Mad Thinker. And you get thought about differently. Show your ass in public and people will label you a baboon and baffoon and other b words, like bastard.
But you had individuals willing to talk to you, to point things out. I'm not one of them, but they did exist. Yet you continued to defend said action and to treat the women who were trying to point out the fallacy of your argument as if they were hysterical, irrational or too traumatized and squeamish about rape to listen to any point. And so you ended up talking to an audience of one, yourself.
Now it's very egalitarian of you to treat Zmallet as you then treated those women, or perhaps it was you treated those women as you treated Zmallet; exactly even, precisely and with no difference. But I believe a jackass brays just as loudly to anybody.
Maybe this isn't the right time to bring up my Feminist credentials. The thing of it is - given my track record - I didn't think I HAD to bring up my Feminist credentials in my original post and the only reason I did so here is because
ReplyDeletea) I've never spoken with you before and you don't know me.
b) you obviously hadn't read any of my other pro-feminist work.
I'd always assumed that the people who said there were some female comic book fans who couldn't be reasoned with were idiots. But by your own words ("But you had individuals willing to talk to you, to point things out. I'm not one of them, but they did exist.") you have proven them right.
You have admitted that you have no intention of hearing me out or of trying to talk with me on a reasonable level.
As you say, I tried explaining myself to Kali and Ragnell. I offered to send Kali a copy of a Red Sonja issue I thought was good since she said she enjoyed the movie and wanted to like the character concept. She declined. And that's fine.
Ragnell said she disagreed with me on my belief that Mallet was manipulatory. I stuck to my guns and she respectfully said she didn't want to talk about it anymore. That's fine. I'll still read her blog and enjoy their work even if they no longer feel like talking to me.
You think I'm a caveman and you know what - that's fine too. You can go back to ignoring me and I'll go back to my blog and stop bothering you.
Because I know who I am. My readers know who I am. And they know that your assumptions about me are untrue.
Looking2dastars:
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing before we all go to our respective corners.
I don't care about what your readers think of you. I care that my introduction to you was you behaving in a certain manner and my continued interaction with you is you not owning up and taking ownership of your actions.
* It doesn't matter if every other night that Bob drives he's sober, if I meet him when he's driving drunk.
* It doesn't matter if every other time Bob has faced disappointment, he's owned it, if when I meet him he's all 'fucking N*******'
* It doesn't matter if every other time Bob dated a girl, he respected the word no, if when I meet him, he's just left some girl passed out, underwear around her ankles, sperm down her legs in the corner of the party.
* It doesn't matter if every other night Bob's shouted but never hit his wife, partner or child, if when I meet him, their cheeks and skin show red and bruises.
The point is when I met you, you were acting like an ass. You made this big hue and cry claiming something had happened that clearly hadn't. Then when your strawman argument was pointed out, you polished your feminist cred and tried to show me your shiny badge. When that didn't work, you've decided to call me an unreasonable female.
None of your actions so far have said to me that ANYTHING you did in the past wasn't but so much bullshit, hot air and a clammering for attention and some sort of free pass in gender issues.
Kalinara and Ragnell know you and took the time to go over to your journal and discuss things with you. I didn't set foot in your journal. I had no wish to talk to you in any attempt to tease out what you really meant or understand you better. I, from the start, have had no investment in you and you've given me no reason to want one.
I never promised you a rose garden. I never claimed to give you a clean or clear slate to convince me of anything. I responded to your point of view with my own. I said I thought you were wrong. No one I respect, via their words and actions, has disagreed with me.
I've been following this conversation and frankly, I think you've been far nicer and more respectful to looking2dastars than he deserves. He used "I score high on the Zombie Survival test too" as some kind of credential, for corn's sake.
ReplyDeleteStacia:
ReplyDeleteFor corn's sake sounds like something Clark Kent would say when agitated. Cool!
As for the Zombie reference " In a test about a fake disaster about unreal monsters, one of whom may be my mother transformed - I would shoot her in the head to protect my own life. So you see, I'm a practical guy."
*rolls eyes*