Mind the Gap

Via Louise Livesey at The FWord.

It looks like Big Brother is set to be more of a misogyny fest than ever before.

BB returned in the form of a giant hen party last night when producers unveiled an all-female cast in an attempt to revive the tarnished brand. The producers want “flirtation” to replace bullying as the theme of the 14-week series. But it was unclear initially how this will be achieved as 11 women trooped into the house. A “hunky” male will reportedly be introduced tomorrow night, with more men replacing the women as the series continues.

So it was “unclear initially how this will be achieved as 11 women trooped into the house”?

Really? Oh, don’t be so coy. I think we all know what to expect and what kind of “performances” will be expected of the women in the house.

Check out the Sun website for a taster of the sort of media coverage we can look forward to from the Tabloids. Apparently, they’ve been busy categorising the women as “beauties” and “beasts” today.

First of all, I noticed an interesting piece at The F-Word about skin-lightening creams in India (if you scroll down a bit). I have to say, I’m not all that shocked by it, as it’s tied in with the caste system, and has been going on for ages. I’ve also heard from several African women that a lot their richer compatriots spend loads of time and money on hair-straightening and skin-lightening treatments. It would be interesting to know how standards of beauty in India and Africa have changed since pre-colonial times, I have to say I have no idea, but I would guess there was a link. I disagree about the Campaign for Real Beauty promoting the idea that age and beauty are not incompatible though, the campaign may be “pro-age” in name but it still treats ageing like a disease in practice. I think the advertising for the skin-lightening cream is shocking to us because, even though the actual discrimination has been present in Indian society for ages, the advertising hasn’t – whereas in the West companies like Unilever have pretty much embedded themselves in our culture and have had to resort to more and more insidious advertising techniques over the years. It’s also quite sinister how they add new dimensions to existing discrimination by exploiting it wherever they can.

Next up, I’m not sure how many people are familiar with the French band Noir Desir and their lead singer Bertrand Cantat, but basically they were the biggest rock band in France, until Bertrand Cantat accidentally killed his partner the actress Marie Trintignant during a fight in Lithuania. He’s been in jail for manslaughter for the last few years, and he’s looking to be released later this year. What’s bothering me is not so much the fact that he’s being released, but the huge outpouring of sympathy shown to this guy by his fans, and the fact that this sympathy doesn’t extend to people who aren’t rock stars: an immigrant teenager who sets fire to someone’s car is a terrible man who should be punished, whereas a rock star who kills his partner is to be pitied (well, I would hate to have killed a loved one too, but then again I think I’d generally try not to!). Also, I’m finding the willingness of his fans to absolve him of any wrongdoing completely sickening. I really don’t think the fact that he was drunkenly beating his partner when he accidentally killed her by hitting her too hard excuses him, and I wonder how many of his fans would feel the same way if their neighbour on benefits killed his wife in the same way, or even if he dared dispose of his rubbish in the wrong way or parked a rusty car on his lawn. Also, this is a famous actress who was killed, so it makes you wonder who cares when the less famous ones get killed in the same way, and how many people accuse them of being hysterical, then excuse their killers by saying “He’s a lovely guy, but he always had a bit of a temper”. There’s quite a nasty double standard going on there on many different levels.

Finally, Germaine Greer has written an article in G2 about Beth Ditto posing nude on the cover of the NME. What I found interesting about this is that a lot of male rock musicians strip onstage quite regularly –Iggy Pop seems to like to get his little friend out to wave at everyone and hasn’t worn a shirt since 1784, David Yow of the Jesus Lizard used to strip all the time, and the Dwarves only ever wear underpants when they’re being filmed (and presumably when doing their groceries). These are things that women could not generally get away with, but for the men I mentioned it’s something quite non-sexual, and I think it’s being treated that way in Beth Ditto’s case as well. I’m not sure Beth Ditto intends for that to be the case, since she’s obviously promoting acceptance of different body types, but in actual fact her body is being treated as completely non-sexual, and I don’t think it’ll affect the chances of more conventionally attractive women of being able to strip off with the same abandon as a drunken David Yow and remain unmolested. She’s simply being treated as the third sex –as Germaine Greer says, something out of National Geographic.

Anyway, I think that’s all I have time for at the moment, so on that note, “These are the headlines”, etc.

Just to make things clear, I’m looking at action heroines in general, trying to take an objective look at each one, I’m not looking for positive role models, I don’t think that would be very interesting. I just love popular culture, and think film-makers and comic-writers should be allowed to portray women or men in any damn way they please - and some might turn out to be completely reprehensible. But do you defeat an opponent with subtle tactics and dialogue, or by playing whack-a-sexist with a giant mallet, sending young feminists in training around a “pounce and whack” course with cardboard cut-outs of Jeremy Clarkson –and if they hit the one that’s actually the Dalai Lama in a Jeremy Clarkson mask, they get a wedgie? Well, admittedly it sounds like fun (except for the wedgies), but it will not cause women to become more liberated. No, as that man said on that Wu-Tang album I like, “a swordfight is like a game of chess”. Anyway, let’s discuss today’s action heroine, Luc Besson’s Nikita, assassin and heroine of La Femme Nikita.

Nikita is a drug addict who’s arrested during a pharmacy robbery that goes horribly wrong . She is then officially killed by the police (believing herself that she is about to receive a lethal injection) and trained by the secret service to become an assassin: she’ll be living a normal life under a new name, but will occasionally receive a phone call and have to carry out an assassination.

I should probably point out that, although in English a femme is a particularly feminine woman, in French it just means woman (although the movie is just called Nikita in French). At the beginning of the movie, Nikita is not exactly conventionally ladylike, in fact she’s completely wild and abusive, and needs to be held down by several police officers lest she injure anyone. She’s also barely coherent and doesn’t seem able to string a sentence together, and is dressed in cut-off denim shorts, big clumpy boots (Dr Martens) and a leather jacket. Later on, in her room in the secret service HQ where she is being trained, she decorates her room to her liking –with spray-painted graffiti in all different colours.

In fact, her training includes martial arts (which she excels at) and basic reading and writing, but it also some interesting sessions with an older woman named Amande (played by Jeanne Moreau), who teaches her not only to apply make-up, but to feel the sensuality of the gesture of applying make-up and the pleasure of feeling beautiful. In fact there’s quite a lot of Pygmalion about the training she undergoes –from uncouth delinquent youngster to the sleek woman in the cocktail dress of the movie poster. Her manner of speech also changes quite a lot, as she goes from swearing and “delinquent-speak” to expressing herself like a nice middle-class girl.

Nikita is, a lot like Rubine, all about binaries: even when she’s completely sleek and dolled up, she’s still quite edgy and potentially lethal. She’s very feminine in her dresses and high heels (although quite childlike in stature and occasionally in behaviour), yet carries a gun and is a ruthlessly precise assassin. Even with all the training, she’s not completely socially adjusted, as is shown in the supermarket scene where she basically throws everything on the shelf into her trolley, the place being completely unfamiliar to her. Yet she meets a boyfriend and has holidays in Venice. All the while, of course, she can be phoned up at any time and asked to assassinate someone, an obligation which she’s never free of. There is a scene where she walks into a restaurant in a huge, ridiculous hat and demands chocolate and cake, and another where she’s wearing a disguise that seems to have no other purpose than to make her look boyish in huge glasses and men’s clothes – since she’s far too slight to actually look like the person she’s disguised as. Officially she’s a nurse, and when her boyfriend asks her why she always smells so nice, she replies “A woman’s secret”, but of course he’s unaware of her real job.

Another thing Nikita shares with Rubine is that she is hiding an innate femininity under a lethal exterior –with an added layer of femininity on top: the training was clearly aimed at bringing out the woman in her as well as the more practical stuff like combat, but it’s clear that it was already meant to be there to start with, even in this kicking, screaming fury.

What do I think of Nikita? Well, it’s a very stylish movie, and hugely enjoyable –certainly by far the best I’ve seen by Luc Besson. It’s also quite interesting in its portrayal of womanhood –and the fact that femininity is not put across through a pneumatic body but through mannerisms and dress, so it’s actually not that clear whether it was innate to start with or whether it has to be learned, or both.

I’ve decided it might be interesting to collect a few links to interesting articles in today’s newspapers. For the sake of diversity and balance, I’ve included some from right-wing papers, and tabloids (well that’s singular, I don’t want to sully my internet history folder with too many of them). I might not get round to doing this every day, but I’ll have a go; apart from anything else it’s a good idea to channel my energy into a series of short paragraphs rather than one big, long rant, I think, and it’s probably more interesting to read.

First of all, Zoe Williams, in one of her moments of not causing me to shake my head in despair, has an interesting article on the dietary advice given to pregnant women. As she correctly points out, a lot of the advice, from right-wing papers in particular, is an attempt to shift all responsibility for birth defects onto the mother and remove the need for more doctors, midwives, etc. She does mention in passing that the most medical advice she has access to, while pregnant, is a midwife, unless something goes horribly wrong. If this is the case for a Guardian journalist, I daren’t hope what the case would be for a woman of lesser means. Clearly, the most important thing is to provide more medical advice and safety nets for pregnant mothers, and not to bombard them with guilt trips over the odd glass of wine. And cheese? Perhaps this is a bit French of me, but I was kind of surprised to see it among the prohibited foods at all.

Elsewhere in G2, I found this nice little story by Lucy Mangan on a diet book written by two former LA models, which has recently been purchased by Victoria Beckham, and as a result is now among the top 10 bestsellers in the UK. Apparently it refers to coffee as “crack cocaine” and categorises all women as “skinny bitches” and “fat pigs” –the former category being, of course, preferable. I’ll let you judge for yourself whether to laugh, cry, or combine the two in a cathartic explosion.

In The Times, Libby Purves muses on the secrets of a happy marriage, and the marital advice given in various books over the years. I found little to foam at the mouth over in her opinions -plenty in the books on the other hand. The thing that bothered me, though was Ms Purves’ conclusion that the most important thing in a marriage is to remain kind and gentle at all times -I won’t go into the reasons why this isn’t always realistic, or even advisable. I’d rather have a good shouting match when necessary, myself, after all conflict is an unavoidable reality when two different people share a living space. Well, that and the fact that she seems to think that women who are the main breadwinner of the family should be extra-tactful about it. And she does focus on middle-class women, but after all, this is the Times, the newspaper of a universe where, as Mark E. Smith would put it, in his unique way, “There are twelve people in the World, the rest are paste.”

Finally(and I’m sure there are several of these every day but I generally shelter myself from them), our beloved National institution The Sun is terribly concerned about the fate of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. You’ll be aware of the reasons if you’ve queued up in Boots or a news agent recently, so I won’t go into them. But it’s interesting to note the reasons for their fall to the deepest depths of Hell. It’s not the expectations heaped on young, female celebrities which very often cause them to go off the rails, no, celebrity, on the contrary, is some kind of dream which we all aspire to, and should be bloody grateful for once we get it (the reasons for this have always seemed nebulous to me). The reasons for their fall are the following: the wearing of inappropriate garments such as skimpy bikinis and fishnet tights, the lack of a sense of responsibility towards their kids, and the fact that some of their parents have divorced. It’s interesting how The Sun don’t actually give you information, they just set up scenes, very visually (with details of clothing and so on), where the narrative conventions of their newspaper generally demand that the young heroine be cast into a fiery pit of infamy. The article concludes:

“The city of Los Angeles, which translates as “The Angels”, now has its own trio of fallen angels.”

Not only do the kind people at The Sun give helpful advice to floundering starlets, they do Spanish lessons too! I wonder what the careers of their less famous Page 3 Girls look like after they’ve had their two seconds of fame?

Anyway, have a good read, and remember to take your peace pills first or you may end up smashing something you’d rather not. As a greater mind than me would say, “These are today’s headlines; oh god how I wish they weren’t”.

From The Angry Black Woman.

In other words, if you are White, 99% of the time Racism doesn’t affect you. Therefore, you may not see nor understand Racism when it happens.

If you are a Man, 99% of the time Sexism doesn’t affect you. Therefore, you may not grok Sexist behavior when it occurs nor will you always see Sexism when it is plain to others.

This goes for any -ist or -ism or -phobia you can think of. This goes for you, even if you’re a minority, when it concerns people who are not like you.

What does not affect you personally often will not impact on your consciousness unless you’ve trained yourself to see and understand.

Therefore, the next time you feel yourself declaring something “not racist” or “not sexist” or “not offensive”, think about whether you feel that way because you’re not the one on the receiving end of racist, sexist, or offensive behavior/words/actions/images.

Everyone should read this blog.

The female / feminine opposition in French

It has occurred to me that the difference between “female” and “feminine” is slightly different in French to what it is in English.

For instance, in English you would talk about a “female football team” or a “women’s football team”. Well, in French, saying “une équipe de football composée de femmes” is completely unwieldy and impractical, and saying “une équipe de football femelle” is downright hilarious: in fact you’d be implying that the football being played is female in sex. In French you say “une équipe de football féminin”. But thinking about it, that’s not much better, since it implies that the football played by women is more feminine –and, even though everyone knows what it means, it would be possible for a team of men to play “feminine football”. What would that involve exactly? Would they carry handbags and talk in high voices? Or else you could say “une équipe féminine de football”, which implies that the team is feminine, which would inherently make their football more polite, gentle and subtly sexy. Truth be told, I don’t think French women’s football teams are any more feminine or feeble than anyone else’s, but the implication is right there, ingrained in the language. In fact the only French word for female is used purely biologically, mainly for animals: if you call a woman “femelle” you’re pretty much reducing her to her animal characteristics.

Problems with the words “feminist” and “woman”

Another linguistic question is bothering me. I’ve talked before about how I don’t like to use the label “feminist” to describe myself. This has nothing to do with the feminists of the 60s and 70s and how they got a negative image etc. etc., because I believe the opposite, and like to associate with first and second-wave feminism. It has more to do with the ghettoisation of feminism online –and is probably a sign that I need to get involved in more activism offline. I also notice that I don’t have any trouble in self-applying the label “socialist”, or indeed, “socialist feminist”, as long as it doesn’t mean I have to listen exclusively to feminist music, read feminist books, and can’t enjoy a good Tarantino movie.

But I’m starting to notice that I’m having a similar problem with using the word “woman”. This is partly due, I think, to seeing it bandied about in a slightly confrontational way as a badge of honour (“I am Woman, hear me roar! Grrr!”). And let’s face it, no one likes to be called “girl”, and “love” or “babe” or “darling” are even worse, and I have ideological issues with the word “lady”, even though I actually do use it quite a bit, and have even been known to use the word “bitch” in a neutral manner, through hip-hop associations I guess. But I practically never refer to men as “man” either, it’s always dude, bloke, gentleman, person, or, you know, fuckface, or “shiznit”. Why are there no neutral informal terms for women? Or rather, if there are any, what are they, and can I use them without sounding like a nipple?

Problems with names, body language and how they reflect roles

Similarly, I see a lot of patients’ names at work, and I can tell with about 80% accuracy what decade a woman was born in from her first name, whereas I can’t do that with men at all, there are Johns and Georges throughout the century, whereas there weren’t always Veras or Pamelas. This is interesting, because I’ve often seen complaints about women only having a limited roles they can play (from birth, by the looks of it), and I’ve complained about it myself. Now I realise that the problem is that women are consigned to roles, full stop; men don’t have them. I saw the light while I was watching Playtime by Jacques Tati (I might do a post on him later), during the restaurant scenes: all the men are in plain suits, whereas the women have all different outfits of varying peacockery, depending on their age group, whether they’re wives, daughters, sisters, aunts (maiden or scandalous), ageing chanteuses, glamorous young things, etc. I guess this is going into body language rather than pure language, and the clothing is only the outer shell of a whole set of body language. Still, it’s quite clear that men just have to be men (although there are constraints to this masculinity of course), and largely just get on with eating, getting drunk, and the business of socialising in a restaurant, whereas the women are just there, being all these different things. I a way, I don’t know why we only ever talk about the glass ceiling in a work environment, because it’s quite clearly present on a much more general level, and it comes with a whole glass maze.

Which brings me to my last linguistic quandary about things being “imposed” on women; women are less free precisely because things aren’t “imposed” on them. We are guided towards them, and severely penalised if we don’t choose them, again not in a direct way which is much worse, because we end up in a situation where we’ve chosen them, and end up being accountable for them.

Well, that’s enough para-linguistic blathering for me for one night, besides which I’m about to miss my bus.

Today’s action heroine is Professor Jocelyn Mabel Peabody, who appeared in the 1950s science-fiction comic Dan Dare, as a prominent member of the crew of the pointy-eyebrowed space pilot.

Dan Dare was published in The Eagle, a boys’ magazine run by a clergyman. It had all the colonial overtones and racial stereotypes you might expect. Even Wigan native Spaceman Digby is heavily stereotyped: among his greatest achievements is resisting the Mekon’s powerful mind-reading equipment by keeping his mind on Lancashire hotpot.

So it’s quite surprising to find a character like Professor Peabody here. A botanist, nutritionist, linguist and Doctor of Philosophy, she keeps calm in all situations, often more so than the men. But that’s far from the extent of her achievements.

She first appears when the crew have to travel to Venus in order to find food for starving Earth people, and she goes along as a botanist and nutritionist. Controller Sir Hubert Guest is sceptical about women being allowed to partake in such dangerous missions, but even he has to admit, with much harrumphing, that she is “a very brave woman”. Later on, when the crew go to Mercury, and are all busy bounding around shouting “Suffering satellites!” and uncovering yet another nefarious plot by the Mekon to enslave the natives and ultimately rule the universe, Professor Peabody has been living among them and learning their language, speaking perfect Mercurian in a matter of weeks. She also keeps a space station full of mutineers under control during the Red Moon crisis, by turning the artificial gravity off and then on again -although admittedly, anyone with cursory knowledge of sci-fi conventions would have thought of that. Also, people call her Professor unless they’re actually on first name terms with her: this isn’t a woman who would put up with being reduced to a cute monosyllable.

While questioning some of the subtexts in the comic (well, it is quite conservative and the capital of Earth is London, and the whole galaxy seems to be aspiring to good British values or else they’re bad guys), I have to admit that I’m impressed that they included a character like Professor Peabody. Only one complaint: her hair should get a bit more tousled sometimes, as she’s probably destroying the ozone layer with all the hairspray necessary to keep those blonde locks in place throughout jungle explorations, battles with aliens and long periods of captivity at the hands of the Treens.

It’s interesting that such a character appeared in a boys’ comic. I haven’t seen the Eagle’s sister magazine Girl, but according to my mum, who read it as a girl, it was all school stories, so I doubt if there were any such characters to be found there -maybe though, you never know.

Another thing: I’ve just noticed that a CGI animation of Dan Dare is in the works. Just to register my disapproval: kill ‘em centurion.

This is another chapter in the saga of “Tell me what the hell Zoe Williams is on these days, so I can avoid it at all costs”. I’ll try to be brief and proceed in orderly fashion, regularly wiping the spit from my computer monitor.

The target of my ire is this article on the Size Zero debate. Now, I was pleased to see what I thought was going to be a refreshing perspective on the whole thing, because it is a debate that tends to grossly oversimplify the problems of the modelling industry at best, and at worst I think gets used to obscure all of the others in an excuse to continue pigging out on plenty of chocolate fudge, and other feminine, curvaceous foodstuffs.

This is why the enquiry into the labour rights and working conditions of models is really welcome, and a refreshing change from the usual twaddle that gets spouted on the issue. But not for Ms Williams: for Ms Williams, it’s not an issue, since the rights and the laws already exist. Yes, Zoe, but that is not the point. The point is that the labour force in the modelling business is largely young and impressionable. Having known some girls as a teenager who wanted to be models, they really, really wanted to be models, and would have done almost anything for a taste of glitz and glamour and a validation of their looks (which they were often insecure about). This is what makes it easy for people in the fashion industry to break the law. “Breaking the law” is that thing that rich, powerful and unscrupulous people, such as those who work in the fashion industry, can get away with quite easily, thus rendering the law ineffective. But no, according to Ms Zoe Williams, actually investigating the fashion industry is misogynistic because it assumes that women are infantile and need to be protected. Next up: unions actually a capitalist plot to make working class people out to be monkeys. Collective action and labour rights actually promoting a “culture of victimhood”. Sound familiar? Next thing you’ll be saying we shouldn’t need a nanny, like some kind of State, to make sure the rights of the most vulnerable people in society don’t get thwarted.

But that’s not all. Ms Williams goes on to state that the only people influenced by the ubiquity of size zero models are, basically, teenage girls, who naturally feel crap about their bodies anyway, and those who are so vain as to have sneezed their brain out in the process of applying too much nose powder. In short, she has managed not only to oversimplify the issue even more grossly than it was before, but also to blame the whole thing on “stupid people. How elitist, not to say misogynist. Aren’t you glad not to be one of the stupid women who fall for such frivolous twattery? Yes, I think we should disassociate ourselves completely from those women.

I’m disappointed in her because I’m not a huge partisan of the view that “Oh no, they’re destroying our self-esteem!” either, seeing as (a) a necessary step on the way to women’s liberation is women being entitled to take responsibility for their own lives, which I think Zoe would agree with, so yes treating them as perpetual victims isn’t so good, and (b) there are so many more things wrong with the fashion industry that focusing on whether they ruined my self-esteem would be a tad, well, self-centred.

Okay, well, I’m glad I got that off my chest. Now I can resume not foaming at the mouth and waving a pointy stick around.

As promised, a post about heroines of non-gravity-defying proportions. This time I’m going to focus on the three main female characters in Katsuhiro Otomo’s epic manga Akira. The (fairly masculine) main plot involves the conflict of power between best friends (and now enemies) Kaneda and Tetsuo, with Tetsuo developing devastating psychokinetic powers and losing control of them, or at least that’s the beginning of it. The plot is very epic (it goes on for six volumes over thousands of pages), and involves Tokyo being destroyed twice by a psychic event ressembling a nuclear explosion, military experiments involving extremely wrinkly kids, gangs of fifteen-year-old bikers, a terrorist organisation, various religious cults, and a post-apocalyptic Tokyo empire. There is a lot of blood, especially in the wake of Tetsuo who makes people’s heads explode whenever he’s in a foul mood (which is a lot of the time), but there is also Akira, a child with unimaginable psychic powers, who feels such empathy for his friends that if any of them are being hurt, anywhere in the city, it causes a reaction in him that destroys the entire city.

I’d like to focus on the three female characters who are completely central to the plot: Kei, Chiyoko and Lady Miyako.

Kei

Kei is a member of an anti-government terrorist group, and the female lead character.

Kei gets saddled with Kaneda early on in the story and can’t stand him. She’s a couple of years older than him, and as far as she’s concerned, he’s just a nuisance, and makes a mess of everything, and as if that wasn’t enough he’s attracted to her, even needing the occasional slap in the face as a reminder that she’s not interested –and to be fair, his chat-up lines aren’t exactly subtle, after all he is a fifteen-year-old juvenile delinquent. They do eventually become friends and allies, but he has to earn her respect first.

There are several things I like about Kei. First of all, she’s pretty and stylish, but not in an overly gendered way, she just likes to dress sharp. In fact, even though she’s quite feminine (mainly through her big eyes and long lashes, you can’t really pick her out among the boys in some pictures), her anatomy isn’t a huge part of her identity –she’s drawn with breasts because women have them, but they’re not overdone, and she’s the closest thing to a sex bomb in the whole manga, yet she’s not built like Jessica Rabbit and she wears practical clothes. She’s not afraid of inappropriate male attention, just contemptuous. More importantly, she’s a full member of an anti-government terrorist organisation, not just someone’s girlfriend or a sidekick. She has a part in their decisions, and she’s definitely more professional about it than the clumsy Kaneda –then again, he’s very professional about his role as leader of a biker gang. She also turns out to have some psychic powers of her own, as a medium, and ends up (spoiler warning here, but if knowing the plot ruins a book for you, screw you) being the one to take on Tetsuo in battle.

Chiyoko

Chiyoko is a member of the same terrorist organisation as Kei, and seems to be in charge of supplies and ammo. She’s described as Kei’s aunt, but it’s unclear whether she’s any relation. There’s no question that she’s a seasoned warrior (though it’s not exactly drummed in either), even though she spends the first half of the story wielding heavy artillery in a dress and apron, but puts on something a little more practical to scrabble around in the ruins of Neo Tokyo later on. There is a comradely bond between her and Kei – there are a couple of instances of Kei nearly getting gang-raped, and when that happens Chiyoko is instantly there with her rocket launcher, dispatching the impudent bastards. She isn’t subject to the same kind of attentions herself –more often than not she gets called a “damn ox” by the men she’s battling against, as though a woman has no right being that big and strong, although they mainly seem offended by the strength of her uppercut and regretful at having tangled with her. But there’s more to her than her muscles. Nothing is really said about her background, but she obviously has huge amounts of wisdom, intelligence and life experience, though mainly fighting-related.

Lady Miyako

Lady Miyako is one of the main religious leaders in Neo-Tokyo, and later on becomes the main rival of Tetsuo’s Great Tokyo Empire, although her religion seems to involve more feeding people and curing diseases than securing lots of followers, though there is an element of power struggle there too, but not for its own sake. She is a psychic, and has a team of psychic monks and some teenage girls she has trained to wield the powers she learned as a guinea pig in a military experiment. Much like the other psychic children, she is stunted, though she can just about walk, and has the appearance of an old woman rather than that of a wrinkled child. She is also blind, but her mind can see more than most people’s eyes.

Initially she’s an enemy of the main characters, as she wants Akira to be kept at her temple rather than with the terrorists (understandably as she doesn’t trust their motives), but she becomes an ally later on. Whereas Tetsuo and the other psychic kids who are in the hands of the military largely rely on drugs for their powers, her monks and young girls seem to keep their power under control just through self-discipline. There is a very strong Buddhist undercurrent to her philosophy, and she is herself very strong-willed and disciplined. Not really an action heroine (although she does have an active part in the final battle against Tetsuo, since it’s her that Kei is channelling), but a very interesting female character nonetheless.

What’s interesting about the female characters in Akira, is that their femaleness seems almost incidental, they’re caught up in the action like anyone else. There is also a depiction of female comradeship which you don’t see very often. They are underestimated sometimes because they’re women, but mainly by the power-hungry, weak-willed characters like Tetsuo’s henchman, or some of the creatures prowling the ruins of the city with erections the size of beanpoles. Unlike Rubine, they don’t have anything like a feminine fragility hidden under a cynical outer shell. There are no binary oppositions involving them (although there are others). And seeing a female character who looks like Chiyoko but doesn’t have any character traits to try and balance things out (for instance, muscular women are often depicted as stupid and monosyllabic) is hugely refreshing.

Following Winter’s recent post on movies, I thought it might be fun to do a series of posts looking at some female fictional characters who do get to tote guns, wield psychokinetic powers, and generally kick arse.

I thought I’d start with the Belgian comic book heroine Rubine, who’s a detective in Chicago , and spends most of her time fighting crime.

There are some obvious objections to the character of course. For a start, I get backache just looking at her, she seems to be so strangely-proportioned that she has to lean over forwards and stick her bum out constantly in order to walk erect. And she seems to spend most of her time outside of work at the massage parlour or the beautician. The back of the books is usually the picture of her getting weighed with the tag-line “one eye on the bathroom scales, the other on the scales of justice”. There is usually a shower scene in every book, i.e. a scene where she’s having a nice steamy shower at the end of a hard day, when suddenly some bad guys break in and she has to shoot or arrest them draped in only a towel. Interestingly, a recurring theme on the front cover seems to be Rubine looking very alert with a cocked gun with the huge shadow of a man with a gun towering over her, the exception being the first book where she looks almost taller than a skyscraper, leading her tiny, nerdy, skinny brother in a rooftop chase.

When she’s not showering / worrying that her thighs look too fat / at the beautician’s, however, she’s usually watching westerns or cop movies on TV, having very unsatisfactory dates (that usually end up with her chasing Don Juan away at gunpoint), or going to bars or painting exhibitions with her colleague Shirley. She also usually get a phone call from her mum at some point, complaining that she isn’t married yet.

In spite of the drawbacks, I still really like Rubine. The most obvious flaws –her appearance and beauty regimes- are only superficial. The feminine stereotypes tend to stop there. She’s fairly stroppy but always cool and in control, and is nonchalant in the face of anything, whether it’s an impudent seductor or a dangerous criminal. You get the impression she’s channelled most of her anger into growing a huge mane of red hair. She’s also not vampish or anything stupid like that, and she’s not delicate in the way she goes about her job, in fact quite the opposite, borrowing cars and crashing them into pizza parlours, being stubborn as hell and arguing with her boss –almost fulfilling that old movie stereotype of cops only being able to do their job after they get sacked from the force.

Rubine’s not subtle, but it has huge B-movie appeal (Tarantino or the Coen Brothers could probably do a good job of filming it), and it’s very entertaining, and I think in spite of its flaws the portrayals of women are quite positive, if cartoonish. If there is anything I’d object to it’s the assumption that women don’t get assaulted if they have a penis substitute (the gun) to point at potential rapists. But I don’t think it’s meant that way, it comes across more as the bastards getting a sharp shock when they think they’re dealing with a feeble woman. And there’s always the danger of assimilating the traditionally masculine activity (being a cop) with actually having a penis –it happens with rock’n roll too, where it happens to be practical for a guitar to have a long, thin fretboard and –boom! you have a prosthetic ding-dong. Or not.

Anyway, if you don’t mind hideously unsubtle binaries and you read French or most Northern European languages (I don’t think it’s been translated into English), you should find Rubine pretty entertaining. That said, I’ve only read the first four, I can’t vouch for the contents of the next ones.

EDIT: Had to remove the last picture because it appeared to be buggering up the page.