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"Grant Morrison, in the Invisibles, can't do race/gender/sexuality to save his life" Discuss

  
  

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Goodness Gracious Meme
16:08 / 04.12.02
That's it basically. I have some stuff to say, but want to see what other people think first.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
16:59 / 04.12.02
Didn't we already do this?

Much as I love you, b.i.p., it strikes me that starting threads with a provocative declaration and no actual basis for this being offered is quite bad form. I could just post "on balance, yes he can", and then someone else could offer "oh no he can't" and it all gets a bit panto (which is seasonal at least). My gut feeling is that on Barbelith the onus should always be on the person starting a discussion to give at least a vague explanation of why they hold an opinion... unless you say what's wrong with the way the characters in the comic who aren't straight white men are written, it's a little hard to refute.

In the meantime... well, firstly, I think you have to consider each area separately, and we're talking about three pretty big areas of discussion when spread over 60 odd issues and a wide range of characters. Other than that, the first thing that springs to mind is that there's an essay online somewhere - will hunt for the link - criticising the portrayal of Lord Fanny: the main argument is that it's never made clear whether Fanny is a transvestite or transexual, or how ze identifies. Now, this struck me as somewhat ironic because in essence it seems to be criticising the portrayal of this character because ze disrupts established gender roles... Fanny should either want to be a woman or be happy as a man, seems to be the implication ("Why don't you just get the operation?" as Jack has it), and since ze blurs the boundary between the two then this is an indication that Morrison hasn't done his research...

That's my first thought, might resurrect that other thread cos I sort of failed to contribute to it at the time but quite want to now.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
17:13 / 04.12.02
Invisible Sexuality: Lord Fanny and the Gender Question.

It's actually a better piece than I remembered, and also reminds me of one of the less well-written interior monologue sequences in The Invisibles. But I still have issues with it... I understand the fact that the author feels Lord Fanny's portrayal may misrepresent transexuals, and get why that would be a bad thing (duh!), but I still feel uncomfortable with the "these are the two options/boxes for this character, and the fact that ze does not fit into either of them unproblematically is bad" aspect, which I do think is there.
 
 
Perfect Tommy
17:14 / 04.12.02
I don't know very many lesbians. But I know zero people in violent activist cells that shoot a lot of soldiers. So while I imagine Jolly Roger isn't a very good example of a "typical lesbian", if she were, she probably wouldn't appear in the story 'cause she wouldn't be shooting people. Therefore, I agree + disagree.

(I'm finding it difficult to formulate a response, too. Is this what you're after?)
 
 
--
18:44 / 04.12.02
Well, I'm gay and I have no problem with the portrayal of Lord Fanny, in fact he's my favorite character. If anything he represents the union of male/female characteristics, bringing to my mind the idea of transexual gods, gods of both genders. Plus he has the best lines and he's attractive (to me) to boot. As a wannabe-crossdresser magician he's definetly a comic book character I can look up to. The article does raise some good points, but it's mostly nit-picking in my opinion. He's not as violent as some of the other characters either, at least not on in the stuff we see (how many people does he actually kill in the series anyway? I think just Orlando (who doesn't really die) and that soilder who's guarding him in the Entrophy arc: well, maybe you can count the hail storm in Black Science too). And I'm sure GM must have done some research, he said in an interview that he went through a tranny period to get into character for Lord Fanny.

I know a lot of lesbians, none of them who are in violent terrorist cells. But, despite Jolly Roger's violence, I still like her as a character, and she gets some great lines too (Like when Jack says the alien language makes your skull vibrate and your nose bleed and she says "Sounds like one of my orgasms"). Brilliant!
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
18:48 / 04.12.02
Short version? If it truly doesn't matter whether Hilde is a boy or a girl then he wouldn't need to wear women's clothes. And it does seem to matter when he's a child. His grandmother 'makes' him a girl, he's brought up as a girl, he doesn't pass the gods because he's a boy, he has to find a way to get round that, by telling the cot death baby joke. The fact ze is a prostitute doesn't matter, because she chooses a filth goddess as her patron.

I'm guessing that Grant had the idea for Fanny before he came up with her backstory. Because a drag queen is a much more outrageous and transgressive, and therefore cooler character than a transexual. But he doesn't explain why Fanny is a transvestite. We don't see Hilde going from being a transvestite at the the time of his intitiation to being a drag queen prosititute during Mardi Gras. This suggests that there is something to the transsexual element he finds appealing. It needed Grant to make it clear that by the time it's a prostitute it's a seperate thing to him than the issues surrounding his intitation. He doesn't so it creates this confusion.

More to follow. Lord tired now.

Oh, and Boy. The token non-white character is the only one who gets just one measly issue for her backstory. And while most of the characters work on cliches, hers are the most obvious, gangsta brother, selling out her people in the uniform of the oppressor... I'm not saying these are completely impossible, but when you have marginalised black characters on the edges of the comic (I'm not even sure if Jim Crow gets more comic time than her. Probably not, but it's close) and the fact she gets written out because Grant has no clue what to do with her, it's also suspicious.
 
 
arcboi
19:11 / 04.12.02
Interesting stuff. I'd also be interested in hearing Bengali In Platform's take on Morrissey as, I assume, you're titling yourself after one of his songs. And that issue will pretty much have a bearing on your opinion on this issue.

I have no problem with Fanny at all. I'd probably agree that GM went for the outrageous idea first, backstory second, but he/she is a great character who works well within the story (and gets some of the best lines to boot...).

I found Boy to be perhaps the weakest character of the main group. She just came across as a stereotypical feisty black female character (see Third World War etc) that you have difficulty engaging or sympathising with. I'm not surprised GM ran out of ideas with her and I think he'd have been better off leaving her out of the story altogether. In fact, Jolly Roger would been a better character to throw into the group. "Just about scared the maxipad out from underneath me..". Brilliant stuff.

Jim Crow - again, outrageous and over-the-top character, but he's still a great character.

I have to say that I don't normally bear these issues in mind when reading comics (or reading books and seeing films etc). The issues of Fanny's and Roger's sexuality to me is irrelevant because GM has crafted the characters very well. I just feel that he somehow falls short with Boy in some ways.
 
 
PatrickMM
19:13 / 04.12.02
On Boy, she is a fully formed character, and, while she doesn't get the attention that the others get, that's understandable. She exists to be uninteresting, to the normal one, and provide a contrast to the magic unreal world that most of the other characters are in. She's actually the first one to see their quest for what it really is, two sides fighting a futile war. She's probably the most intelligent, and least emotion-driven of the main characters. She's complex enough that, except for her origin story, there are very few traces of a cliched black character.

As for the origin story, I can't remember exactly how it went, but I seem to remember that it was in someway manipulated by Cell 23, Oscar, a middle aged white man, like Grant. She has been given a set of experiences that are synonymous with the stereotypical black experience because that is the best cover for her to have.
 
 
--
19:22 / 04.12.02
I liked Boy, I just didn't find her as interesting as the other characters. In terms of black characters I thought Jim Crow was more interesting.

There are characters of other races too. We can't forget Takashi, the Japanese guy who figures out time travel (and thus is an essential element to the story). I always liked Takashi, I can't say why.

I was about to say Grant Morrison is better writing male characters then he is female, but then I remebered what a great character Edith Manning was, so I can't really say that.
 
 
--
19:27 / 04.12.02
In the other thread on this someone commented it was cliche to have a black man being into voodoo. But, weren't white men into voodoo too(King Mob, those evil corporate guys, etc.)
 
 
Jack Fear
19:29 / 04.12.02
I very heartily second the Flyboy's recxo that y'all check out a previous thread on this very topic. Some very interesting points were raised there, and it would be worthwhile to expand on some of them, and expeditious to do so without having to reinvent the wheel.
 
 
some guy
20:09 / 04.12.02
The interesting thing about Fanny to me is that s/he just is. At no point does Morrison attempt to steer her into any sort of portrayal governed by either bigotry or political correctness, and she therefore simply exists as Fanny. The character would have been a train wreck if the writer had been burdened with only portraying her according to the whims of whichever minority group decided she represented them.

Because a drag queen is a much more outrageous and transgressive, and therefore cooler character than a transexual.

Really? I would have thought the opposite were true. Drag queens, after all, are now tame enough to be television presenters etc.

It needed Grant to make it clear that by the time it's a prostitute it's a seperate thing to him than the issues surrounding his intitation. He doesn't so it creates this confusion.

On the other hand, we see Hilde out of drag on occasion, and are even privy to a key scene in Volume 2 where we learn more about the connection between Hilde the person and Fanny the mask. I don't think we can separate a general transvestite proclivity from magick when it comes to Fanny - it wouldn't be fair to the character, and wouldn't really jive with what we're shown in the book.

The token non-white character is the only one who gets just one measly issue for her backstory. And while most of the characters work on cliches, hers are the most obvious, gangsta brother, selling out her people in the uniform of the oppressor...

Like Fanny, I see Boy as a triumph over stereotype, rather than a victim of it. Yes, we see the usual gangsta cliches trotted out in her origin story, but on purpose. Boy herself exhibits virtually no racial stereotypes, and in contrast to her origin we can see how fully formed her character really is. I don't see her V2 exit in the critical light some observers do, because in her absense Boy is critiquing the remaining players. She's the one character to "get it" throughout - even Dane, for all his Buddha bullshit, is still playing superheroes in December 2012. She doesn't exhibit the violence associated with the stereotype.

In fact, I would argue that in general the series does an excellent job with racial and sexual minorities, and that the white characters are actually far more negative in their portrayals.
 
 
The Falcon
20:11 / 04.12.02
It's quite clear that Fanny is a TV - she says "I don't want to be a girl", or somesuch, at some point in vol.2 (Counting to None) to Jack.
 
 
--
20:34 / 04.12.02
I agree with Lawrence about Lord Fanny. Besides, no transexual acts the same way as another. I've known enough trannies in my time to know this for a fact. Lord Fanny is not representative of all trans people, just as Boy does not represent all blacks, Roger all lesbians, etc. They're just individual characters and they fit their purpose for the story.

Some stuff on the older thread I'd like to comment on:

Jim Crow is a racist character because he's a black guy who practices voodoo. This is bullshit because, as I mentioned, King Mob is just as much into voodoo as Jim. And, Voodoo is predominantly a black practice, so GM having a black guy practicing it ain't a very odd idea. And how can the book be racist if it portrays an interracial romance? Sure the romance doesn't go anywhere, but still. And just because Boy's good at fighting doesn't mean she's a racist portrayal, as a lot of the characters are good at fighting... In fact she's the one who stops fighting first.

Sexist? I doubt it. The female characters are well fleshed out, especially Edith, who isn't intimidated by anyone in her later years, be it King Mob or De Sade. And I'd argue that King Mob is just as much a sex symbol as Robin or Helga. Face it, when Jiminez was drawing him (hell, even when Bond was drawing him) I thought he was sexy as hell (well, except when Weston drew his backside). Plus he seemed to be either naked or half-naked just as much as Robin, though you never got to see his penis (too bad). Hell, he was naked for most of Entrophy in the UK (granted he had a collapsed lung and an ugly face at the time, mind). I thought Jacqui was an interesting character too, despite her little panel time.

Homophobic? Don't make me laugh! In my opinion there's nothing offensive towards gay people in "The Invisibles". Hell, one of the main pencillers of the story (Jiminez) was gay himself. Sure Lord Fanny had to put up with rape and stuff at first, but s/he was living it up later on... And ALL the characters had to go through moments of personal hell. Plus Fanny ain't some limp-wristed hysterical queen, he can hold his own in a fight (he takes care of Miss Dwyer and Orlando). Despite all the "darlings" and the bitchy remarks I'd say he's a very unstereotypical character.

I still think Helga, Mob, and Fanny had a 3 way sex act in "Satanstorm" too. At least that's what's impled by the text.

As for all the "bad guys" being ugly: Miss Dwyer was sexy in a schoolmaster/dominatrix kinda way, and I'd say Sir Miles was handsome in a regal British upper-class gentleman kinda way, though that depended who was drawing him. Hell, if I were a gay upper class British guy in my 50's/60's I'd be all over him!
 
 
Char Aina
20:41 / 04.12.02
Really? I would have thought the opposite were true. Drag queens, after all, are now tame enough to be television presenters etc.


dana international won eurovision, remember.
 
 
The Falcon
21:55 / 04.12.02
Sypha, as per, has hit the nail on the head - the very idea that there's a way to 'do' non-straight/non-white/female characters seems a bit silly and presumptuous.

How do you write 'them' (the fabled 'Other') correctly, then?
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
22:20 / 04.12.02
okay, apologies for not checking out other thread first; didn't know it existed, will go check it out.

and fly, yeah, I know it's bad form, I was in a bad mood. apologies also. but not for provoking discussion.
 
 
Murray Hamhandler
22:55 / 04.12.02
Doing race/gender/sexuality badly vs. avoiding the issue altogether: which is the lesser evil? Even if you believe he did them badly, does he not deserve points for trying? How many trannies have been lead characters in mainstream/semi-mainstream titles? Points to ponder, perhaps...
 
 
Dave Philpott
23:13 / 04.12.02
To stir the pot a little, didn't GM say in an interview that magicians of old wore women's clothing to work their magick? I think he gave this as a reason for making Fanny a tranny.
 
 
The Falcon
23:19 / 04.12.02
I bet Alan Moore still does.

But, yeah, a tranny in a lead role is pretty cool. Especially at DC comics - it's the handling of Rebus I'm concerned at. That was all wrong.
 
 
Mr Tricks
23:32 / 04.12.02
Just out of curiousity... Did anyone think the portrail of TAKASHI racist?
"A Japanese technicial Wiz kid inventor who lives in San Fransisco?"

Thankfully he didn't know martial arts eh?

I though Boy was treated very well, though GM can't seem to write ebonic to save his life....Knowat I'm Sayin' BOUYEEE?

I alwasy figure Fanny's Backstory made sence. She was raised as a girl to follow a tradition of witches. After her initiation sHe learns to transend that gender roll seeing beyond the "mask" that would demand such a gender role. I've known some trannies in my time but I still could say Why Fanny prefered it...
The individual charactor's choice.

For all his Abserdity JIM CROW said himself that he was adopting those same stereotypical masks as a source of power...
Compare to PAPA SKAT another obviously accomplished Voodoo "master"

But I seem to have veared from Sexuality to Race...

I agree that King Mob, Fanny & Helga had a threesome... what else could
"Anyone up for a Knees up?" mean?

But really was there even 1 "traditional" sexual relationship in the whole story?
 
 
--
03:30 / 05.12.02
Why am I aroused by the thought of Fanny and Mob doing it?

I'm interested if there are any other gay/women/black Invisible fans here and what their stance on the issue at hand is.
 
 
Tom Coates
10:03 / 05.12.02
On Boy - I think it's interesting that Jolly Roger gets to say things like the Maxipad line where Boy doesn't. It feels like there's an anxiety surrounding her - that she shouldn't be misrepresented, that her experience should be authentic. As such it feels a bit like he's tip-toeing around her issues and concerns for fear of appearing like he's stereotyping.
 
 
--
11:05 / 05.12.02
I dunno, I think it's kind of an insult when you have a minority character and you instantly wonder if that character is a stereotype or not. Like Fanny for example, the notion seems to be that if you do a transexual character it should be done a certain way to fit someone else's notion of how a transexual should act. Thinking like this ignores diversity in people and fails to acknowledge how complex individual humans are. Characters like Boy should not be seen as representatives of the entire black race.

I mean, why doesn't anyone mention other stereotypes? Like, ain't Sir Miles kind of a stereotype of an upper-crust blue-blood English guy ("The game's afoot, what?")
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:47 / 05.12.02
Absolutely. I think we shoudl put a stop to all this nonsense about Grant Morrison not being able to write non-white/non-straight characters. Sypha is quite right: Grant Morrison can't write *any* characters.

Sorry, was that not the point?
 
 
some guy
11:53 / 05.12.02
Grant Morrison can't write *any* characters.

I know it was in jest, but I actually sort of agree with this. Cod Claremontian accents aside, his characters do all basically speak with the same hipper-than-thou voice.
 
 
The Natural Way
12:06 / 05.12.02
Not always. Jean Grey? Charles Xavier? Scott Summers? Greg Feely?

Whilst I do accept its a bit of a theme that runs throughout his most recent stuff, it hasn't always been the case. I'd hardly describe any of Grant's late eighties to mid-nineties characters as "hipper than thou".
 
 
The Natural Way
12:39 / 05.12.02
One thing that I don't like about this type of thread is the inevitable reemergence of unexamined Barbelith cliches like: "Grant dumped Boy because he couldn't work out what to do with her."

Y'know, maybe it IS as Grant says and he genuinely felt she had no place - no role - in vol 3. She's definitely the earthiest character (which may or may not be problematic, but is another question entirely) and wouldn't exactly go in for the whole "disintegrating pop overdrive" thing, would she? I mean, I really feel it was important and valid for one of the characters to "get off the wheel" and Boy was the obvious choice - being far too down to earth for Rex Mundi and the MeMebeasts and, y'know, not crazy (the rest of them, apart from Jack who's a bit of a bridge, are completely fucking nuts). Healed. In some respects this stuff makes her more human than the rest of them, doesn't it?

I admit, she's not the most well drawn of the cell (and her backstory is a bit lame), but I always dug Boy. And I LOVE 'American Death Camp' sooo much (but I know that's beside the point).
 
 
PatrickMM
14:14 / 05.12.02
Grant didn't only abandon Boy in Volume III, he abandoned just about every established character for most of it. Mob was in for a lot of the volume, but other than that all of the main characters were relegated to the background. Dane, despite being the messiah, is pretty much put in the background after the end of Volume I. Robin appears slightly more than Boy does, and Fanny has barely any role. Mason barely appeared, and I don't think Takashi even had a line. I don't think that was because he couldn't handle the characters, it was because they had no place in the story he had created, same goes for Boy. The only role I could see for Boy was taking Jolly Roger's place, but that would have left Roger with nothing do. If you look for stereotypes in the characters you'll find them, if you just accept them as characters, you'll enjoy the work more.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:21 / 05.12.02
Oh, (am still digesting previous thread) fly, can see it didn't come across that way, but I didn't post anything further in starting the thread because I didn't want to direct/define the thread with my own big ideas, but rather to offer a broad question and find out what other people thought before laying My Big Worldview on the discussion...
 
 
rizla mission
15:30 / 05.12.02
To briefly address one piffling side issue - I still reckon the Boy origin story is really fucking good.

It's not ..particuarly.. cliched, certainly no more so than any other white guy who's written 23 comic book pages about black people, and basically I think it's an extremely effective little story than could well have been spread out over a greater length, were it not for the mountain of other crazy shit that was going on in the comic..
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
16:27 / 05.12.02
Wasn't impressed with his portrayal of Jolly Roger either, to be honest

Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunce, don't see much difference between someone saying "Grant dumped Boy because he didn't know what to do with her" and "Grant says he genuinely felt she had no place" but then that's just me.

Laurence- Didn't the Invisibles get published before Lily Savage started on the Big Breakfast and Dana International won Eurovision? It was certainly in to the second series before the former.
 
 
Aertho
16:30 / 05.12.02
I have Anarchy for the Masses... in it, Grant says that he's aware that JR, LF, KM, Boy, JC, and all the other characters (1920's Edith, Division X, Sir Miles) are stereotypes. So there.

He goes on to say that everyone is a goddamned stereotype. He says he's the perfect stereotype of an Aquarius. I know I'm the perfect stereotype of a Sagittarius. I'm probably the perfect stereotype of an Aquarius, too. You might say he's perpetuating stereotypes with the use of them in the Invisibles. But the use of stereotypes is deliberate, which means they are a misdirect.

The point of all these steroetypes is that they are only roles we play in our interactions with people. Which means that who-we-actually-are is much more substancial than any of these paltry fluid personality constructions we "define" as stereotypes.

Language was always the enemy in the Invisibles. Stereotypes are just another language code that to be destroyed. That's what the White Flame meditation was all about. E-Prime English. When we see a stereotype, we force ourselves to see past it.

Maybe I'm not contributing anything new, but that's what I wanted to say while reading all of this.
 
 
some guy
16:41 / 05.12.02
Didn't the Invisibles get published before Lily Savage started on the Big Breakfast and Dana International won Eurovision?

When did RuPaul get her show? Actually, I'd suggest that the date is irrelevent, since she and Dame Edna had been an accepted part of the pop culture for for some years. I'm not going to argue that transvestitism is accepted, but I think it's definitely nowhere near as "outrageous" as transexualism.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
16:53 / 05.12.02
Sypha Nadon Homophobic? Don't make me laugh!

No-one was even suggesting this before you brought it up, so unless you're trying to link gender presentation with sexuality I don't see it's relevence here.
 
  

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