Monstress #1 cover. Image source

(Note: since the text was in Dutch, this short quote is my own translation attempt. It probably does not correspond with the official English translation of "The Second Sex")

“In contemporary stories, much classical like myths and legends, men are the privileged heroes (…)

In adventure novels, boys are the ones who travel around the world (…) Everything of importance happens because of men.”

(Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex).

 

“Listen, we have millions and millions of stories about men and power and masculinity and power. But we don’t have that many stories for women. Every day, girls are forced to fight — forced to fight to be heard, to be seen, to make space for themselves and society is always trying to deny girls these things.”

 

 

“Liu says she's also tired of seeing television shows that focus on men, or have larger ratios of men to women. Monstress, she says, is a direct response to that, with a world primarily populated with women. "No, men have not been destroyed, there are still men in the world," she says, "but they're background in the same way that women are so often background in stories that are told about men"’’.

(Marjorie Liu on Monstress, sources: http://www.cbr.com/image-expo-marjorie-liu-creates-a-monstress-new-series/ and http://www.npr.org/2016/07/22/487078939/graphic-novelist-marjorie-lui-on-how-rejection-shaped-her-writing ) 

 

In the part of The Second Sex we read, Simone de Beauvoir shortly refers to the influence of fiction. The quote immediately put me in mind of more current discussions on representation and diversity in, among others, film, literature and TV. Because Liu was partially motivated by the similar concerns (as quoted), I’d like to use Monstress and the above quotes as a starting point to reflect on these issues (I should mention here that, even though the De Beauvoir quote comes from her chapter on childhood and upbringing, Monstress is a dark, violent story that is not aimed at or appropriate for young children. Don't let the talking cats and cutesy animal-children fool you).

  

Monstress is an ongoing comic series written by Liu, with art by Sana Takeda. It is published by Image comics and the first volume (collecting issues 1-6) came out this year. The story takes place in a land torn apart by war and oppression. It follows a young woman named Maika, who has a (very literal and very hungry) monster trapped inside her, which makes her both incredibly powerful and very dangerous to herself and those around her. What is relevant here, is that the hero (or anti-hero) is female, and so are a lot of the characters who help or threaten her. Unlike in the stories De Beauvoir discusses, the narrative is moved forward by, for the most part, women. As illustrated by the quotes, this was all intentional. Even in this day and age, it still felt a bit odd. Fantasy especially tends towards male-dominated casts, but so do many other genres. Most of the (relatively few) exceptions I can think of are either very heavily targeted towards women (and even those tend towards 50/50-ish) or have a plot that motivates or explains the amount of women. 

Source

Of course, one could argue that it is only the half/half ratio we should go for, since it’s equality, not superiority we want. The last part is true, yes, but nonetheless the suggestion seems extremely limited. Most of the important shows, books and movies that I can think of that are considered classics, are populated by largely male casts. The same goes for a lot of the things I’ve read/watched and loved. The only reason that this changed in the past few years is that I started making a genuine effort to diversify my reading and viewing habits both in terms of characters and stories as well as creators. And even then a story like this feels odd sometimes, in a way that those “normalized” stories with male-dominated casts of characters do not. I find it troubling that even I still have a knee-jerk skeptical reaction to such a reversal, even though I think it is important to try and balance the scales a bit. Those “classic” stories shouldn’t be erased or forgotten (which is more what superiority would look like in my opinion. Just look at all the female authors who weren't discovered until feminist theory started researching female writers? Or the struggle many writers/artists of color face... oh, and the publishers and studios that reject stories with LGBT+ content... are you starting to see my point?) - but they should be supplemented and criticized by different narratives and diverse voices.

 

   

One of the most important male(ish) characters. Think of that what you will.

 

  Last but not least, I want to pay more attention to the fact that Monstress is a comic, and therefore relies an visual storytelling as much as on writing. An important difference between a visual medium and literature, is that the reader has much less room to interpret (or misinterpret) what the characters look like. The fact that a majority of important side characters are female is inescapable, as is the fact that Maika (and almost every other character) is a person of color. This goes for the multicultural world (both the art and the world-building have their roots in a variety of - mostly Asian - cultures, histories and traditions, which Liu discusses in the interviews linked above) as well. The reader in this case is also very much a “viewer”. 

We have mostly discussed the gaze of the movie-going audience, but I think a case could be made here at least for the look of identification. I tend to think about the relationship between audiences and main characters in terms of empathy or sympathy rather than narcissistic identification (where one would like to be more like the lead character). However, I believe that that is one the things that make diversity within stories (both in terms of character as what kind of people – men, women, minorities – get offered what type of story or arc) is very important. In this case, Maika might be an anti-heroine, but most readers will still feel for her, urged on by both the writing and the art to understand her. Literature has it’s own strong points, like the ease with which you can “look into someone else’s mind” for quite a long time. However, I think that one of the traits much more exclusive to comics, film and other visual media is that you can normalize certain people in certain roles, by literally showing them as capable of fulfilling them. It possesses, as I mentioned, a certain “inescapibality”. 

Source

 

One could of course also argue against or in favor of this particular comic with regards to voyeuristic elements by looking critically at the way it portrays violence, torture, slavery, nudity, and whether there is enough body type diversity or not. Obviously I do not have time to go into this now. I hope my blogpost provided some food for thought (and even if it didn’t, I still had a chance to recommend one of my favorite reads of the year :) ).