I'll have to wait to make any purchases. I was sure the prevailing myth was that Rogan was one of the most difficult comics to get, so I never ventured to Amazon.
As I understand it, Devi is a female "power", like the Holy Spirit with a woman's name, or the Phoenix Consiousness or Godwave or whatever - just that Hindi belief percieved that fundamental "life-force" as female. Devi isn't even necessarily a persona so much as a drive. Now if they're screwing up the names and calling a Durga avatar Devi, that's only sin number one.
Durga herself isn't even sexualized as a seductress. Sure, she's beautiful like a goddess of power ought to be, but I'd guess she's more Conan-esque in her sexual behaviour (see Barda, both mine and Chabon's). To make her a sexy sexy seductress is too sly and not aggressive enough to be Durga. It's too cerebral and beating-around-the-bush. But to make a female heroine "powerful" and "beautiful", she's played as a seductress? That opens a can of worms about sexual desire, power/domination, and expectations of the female. That's sin number two.
But adding the two up is even worse. Devi, the female life-force and source of all power is a sexualized being that "seduces"? I accept that any primordial source of power could bee played up as sexual and fleshy and exhilarating, but I'm getting tired of sex being a game of cat and mouse that every heroine has to have in her utility belt. But to ascribe that trick to a fundamental female source of strength, life and power? To assume that all of womanhood is at its most powerful when it is coy... is reductive and untrue - two things opposite to what a goddess really ought to be.
I'm not sure I'm headed anywhere with this, except that it offends me slightly. Why can't Buffy be squat and brunette, and just plain horny?
I know I'm screaming at the ocean, but I'm hoping those who have read the issues, and/or know more about the Indian pantheon to help me better understand the appropriateness, or inappropriateness of the portrayal.
Ramayana Reborn looks good. That poster is kind of what I wished would have spilled out of Ali in Vimanarama 3. |
