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gwenfrankenstien) wrote2010-09-25 09:14 pm
gwenfrankenstien) wrote2010-09-25 09:14 pm
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Femininity and the Role of The Sidekick: The Dark Knight And The Second Sex
On Tumblr, I mentioned having found an essay I wrote in high school, about Frank Miller's Robins and Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and several people said they wanted to see it.
This was the first real essay I ever wrote; I've gone through and moved quotes around, since they were basically just dropped into the beginning or end of paragraphs, but that's all I've changed. I've tried to preserve the run on sentences whenever possible, because 16-year-old me was addicted to commas.
This essay sort of dwells on the fuckery of Frank Miller's weird issues with Robin, if that's the thing you'd like to avoid. (From my journal, you'd get the impression that all I ever do for school is write essays about Robins whenever I think I can get away with it. ...Actually, I do do that, never mind.)
In Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns (DKR) and its sequel Dark Knight Strikes Again, the role of the sidekick is analogous to the struggles young girls face to retain their subjectivity, as described by Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex. DKR, published in 1986, was written as a possible future for the characters of Batman and Robin. The Robin in the story, Carrie Kelley, is the first girl to take on that identity, but her predecessors function allegorically as young women also. They represent the two possible endings for Carrie; either she succumbs to her femininity and (literally or metaphorically) dies, like Jason Todd; or she tries to fight back and is exiled from polite society, like Dick Grayson. She ultimately chooses to take the more widely accepted route and allows herself to become an object. Lara Kent, the Supergirl in the story, takes the opposite path and, through this decision, causes the probable downfall of humanity.
Carrie Kelley is introduced to the reader as a young teenager walking home from school with a friend. They take a shortcut through an old arcade, at Carrie’s insistence. Her friend is worried, having heard stories about how dangerous the old arcade is. Just as Carrie reassures her friend that they’re safe because it’s too bright for anyone to attack them, the power goes out and they’re left in darkness. As Michelle predicted, they are attacked by members of the Mutant gang, one of whom grabs Carrie and draws a knife on her. Luckily for the girls, at this point in the story Batman has recently come out of retirement and he comes to their rescue with his arsenal of technologically advanced non-lethal weaponry. Carrie is in awe; this man seems to her to be exponentially more interesting and exciting than her own life will ever be:
In becoming Robin, Carrie seeks to gain some of Batman’s power over the world. Carrie spends two weeks’ lunch money on her Robin costume; she escapes out her bedroom window as her parents sit and watch T.V. as if they’ve forgotten her. She slowly inches her way along the ledge outside her window and tries to climb up the drainpipe to get to the rooftop. The pipe breaks and she falls, narrowly escaping death by grabbing on to the building’s fire escape. She says to herself “Oh, real good, Carrie. Some Robin.” De Beauvoir's archetypical young girl:
In the beginning, Carrie is a useful partner to Batman; she saves his life when he is almost killed by the leader of the Mutants, she defuses the Joker’s bomb before it kills any civilians, and even into the second book, it is her idea to rally the young people of Gotham to join the fight against the corrupt government. Those around her know this is only a temporary state; they’ve seen it before. Carrie is referred to by Batman as a “monkey wrench” and a “good soldier”, but so were Dick and Jason before her:
In her naiveté, Carrie believes herself to be better than either of her predecessors. They came to untimely ends, but she won’t. Alfred Pennyworth, the oldest and wisest character in the story, asks of Batman, “Need I remind you of what happened to Jason?” He knows that this new girl will not last long, that she will end up just like the others. And it is true; the ending to the second book implies that Carrie has lost her transcendence and her innocence. She is no longer a child sidekick; she is a woman.
Carrie joins Batman’s side on a whim. She has had none of his training or experience, but she still believes herself good enough to join the fight. She treats her life as an elaborate and extremely dangerous game, which her side will ultimately win. She seems to genuinely believe that life in Gotham will be perfect after the Mutants have been eradicated. She will continue dressing up in the mask and cape until then; she may not be accomplishing much, but this doesn’t bother her at all. What’s going on in the present is somehow less real to Carrie than what is yet to come:
Even into the beginning of the second book, Carrie retains enough of her childlike subjectivity to act as field commander. She uses physical violence to discipline a member of Batman’s army who has broken the rules by killing a man. This may be a war, she tells him, but the man he attacked was only a slave, not the real enemy. The young man doesn’t take kindly to being ordered around by a girl who’s a foot shorter than he is, saying that he could break her in half. She tells him he’s wrong, leaps and grabs him by the neck, knocking him over. She jumps on his fallen body, likely breaking several bones in the process, and assigns him latrine duty for a month, telling the others to “Patch him up. Spare the anaesthetic.” This is comparable to an anecdote in The Second Sex:
Carrie, too, learns this lesson by the end of the second book. Fighting an enemy with regenerative powers, watching as every wound she inflicts on him heals almost instantly, she sees how useless her efforts are. She says to herself “I cut him and I cut him- and he heals back up. He can’t die.” So she gives in and lets him cut her; she knows that she is about to die but she also knows that she is powerless to stop him. Unlike the boy at the beginning, this attacker, former Robin Dick Grayson, actually can break her in half, and he nearly does.
In the future presented in DKR and DKSA, Dick feels himself to be inferior to his successors, Jason and Carrie. They are loved and respected while he is cursed and laughed at; he created the role of Robin only to be fired and replaced by others who were apparently better at it than he was. Jason was Batman's “Good Soldier”, likewise, so is Carrie. Dick was not a good soldier. He was fired because he didn’t follow orders; he was “useless.” He turns against his former allies because he was denied the love and respect given to Jason and Carrie, in an echo of De Beauvoir's girl with an inattentive father:
Dick becomes a twisted, evil being who, dressed as the Joker, attacks Carrie to get revenge on Batman for firing him, for not loving him. As Dick dies, he yells to Batman “Damn you, I loved you! I would have done anything for you!” Batman does not seem to care; he kills his deranged former partner anyway.
In his anger at being fired and replaced, Dick lets himself be genetically enhanced in order to gain superpowers. Throughout the book he’s been killing off Batman’s allies. He breaks in to the Batcave and goes after Carrie; Batman comes to her rescue and sets off the destruct sequence; Dick tries to abort it but finds that the codes have been changed. The destruct sequence turns out to involve the entire Batcave giving way to the active volcano below it. Dick is thrown into this volcano, which can be seen as a gynic symbol, a giant burning vagina. Dick, like Jason before him, is metaphorically brought into the new world of femininity and womanhood by having his childish, subjective self killed; in the end:
The difference between Carrie's actions and capabilities as Robin in the first book and as Catgirl in the second illustrates nicely De Beauvoir's account of the journey from girl into working woman, wherein:
It is likely that, had Carrie in DKSA been as focused on the War as she was in the first book, she would not have been caught off-guard by her now-villainous predecessor. As a girl, Carrie was able to disarm a bomb using only a slingshot; while she was being shot at; standing on a moving, broken down old carnival ride. But when she was in danger in the second book, because her mind was divided, she wasn’t able to do anything to save herself. The part of her which used to help her keep her wits during a crisis was gone, replaced by concerns about her looks and how others must think of her; she was thus unable to effectively fight off her attacker.
In contrast to Carrie we have Lara Kent, daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman, who is the only female character in the story who fits De Beauvoir's definition of an emancipated woman:
While she starts out trying to help the human race, she doesn’t really understand why she has to. It’s interesting to note that Lara does not identify as a human being; she is an Amazon first and a Kryptonian second. But she feels herself to be stronger and better than humanity, and eventually convinces her father of this viewpoint. She treats the whole of the human race like objects; to her Earth is a toy and its inhabitants are like dolls or slaves. Supergirl, through her stubborn refusal to become an object like a human woman, dooms the human race. The book ends with her and Superman, the two most powerful characters in the story, watching Earth from space. He turns to her and says, “What exactly shall we do with our planet, Lara?” She is indeed an active taker; she has taken for herself and her father our entire world.
The treatment of Robin, Catgirl, and Supergirl in Dark Knight Returns and Dark Knight Strikes Again is problematic because of the way these books are regarded as classics of the superhero genre. DKR in particular is one of the superhero books most often picked up by non-comics readers. Carrie Kelley and Lara Kent are nominally heroes, just like Superman and Batman are. Yet in the end they are only allowed to be sweet and feminine victims or evil and inhuman villains.
Frank Miller’s work has influenced nearly every Batman-related story published since. Along with several contemporaries, Miller introduced a darker, serious tone to comic books (often called the “grim and gritty” style) that unfortunately has led to many female characters being depowered, killed, or raped, often to further the storyline of the male hero. Miller's Girl Robin grew up to be sexualized, attacked, and nearly killed just for existing; in 2005 another female Robin was introduced, a girl named Stephanie Brown. Stephanie was shown in “sexy” poses as she was tortured to death with a power drill. If this is what happens to our heroes, what hope do regular young women have of achieving anything?
This was the first real essay I ever wrote; I've gone through and moved quotes around, since they were basically just dropped into the beginning or end of paragraphs, but that's all I've changed. I've tried to preserve the run on sentences whenever possible, because 16-year-old me was addicted to commas.
This essay sort of dwells on the fuckery of Frank Miller's weird issues with Robin, if that's the thing you'd like to avoid. (From my journal, you'd get the impression that all I ever do for school is write essays about Robins whenever I think I can get away with it. ...Actually, I do do that, never mind.)
In Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns (DKR) and its sequel Dark Knight Strikes Again, the role of the sidekick is analogous to the struggles young girls face to retain their subjectivity, as described by Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex. DKR, published in 1986, was written as a possible future for the characters of Batman and Robin. The Robin in the story, Carrie Kelley, is the first girl to take on that identity, but her predecessors function allegorically as young women also. They represent the two possible endings for Carrie; either she succumbs to her femininity and (literally or metaphorically) dies, like Jason Todd; or she tries to fight back and is exiled from polite society, like Dick Grayson. She ultimately chooses to take the more widely accepted route and allows herself to become an object. Lara Kent, the Supergirl in the story, takes the opposite path and, through this decision, causes the probable downfall of humanity.
Carrie Kelley is introduced to the reader as a young teenager walking home from school with a friend. They take a shortcut through an old arcade, at Carrie’s insistence. Her friend is worried, having heard stories about how dangerous the old arcade is. Just as Carrie reassures her friend that they’re safe because it’s too bright for anyone to attack them, the power goes out and they’re left in darkness. As Michelle predicted, they are attacked by members of the Mutant gang, one of whom grabs Carrie and draws a knife on her. Luckily for the girls, at this point in the story Batman has recently come out of retirement and he comes to their rescue with his arsenal of technologically advanced non-lethal weaponry. Carrie is in awe; this man seems to her to be exponentially more interesting and exciting than her own life will ever be:
“The girl, since childhood, has looked to the male for fulfilment and escape... he is the liberator, he is rich and powerful, he holds the keys to happiness, he is Prince Charming.”While her more timid friend hides her face while Batman fights off their attackers, Carrie cannot bring herself to look away.
In becoming Robin, Carrie seeks to gain some of Batman’s power over the world. Carrie spends two weeks’ lunch money on her Robin costume; she escapes out her bedroom window as her parents sit and watch T.V. as if they’ve forgotten her. She slowly inches her way along the ledge outside her window and tries to climb up the drainpipe to get to the rooftop. The pipe breaks and she falls, narrowly escaping death by grabbing on to the building’s fire escape. She says to herself “Oh, real good, Carrie. Some Robin.” De Beauvoir's archetypical young girl:
“throws herself into things with ardour, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; […] the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate.”Likewise, Carrie's apparent failure makes her try even harder; she desperately seeks to impress her idol with her skills. Carrie keeps on training herself until she feels she is good enough to reveal herself to Batman.
In the beginning, Carrie is a useful partner to Batman; she saves his life when he is almost killed by the leader of the Mutants, she defuses the Joker’s bomb before it kills any civilians, and even into the second book, it is her idea to rally the young people of Gotham to join the fight against the corrupt government. Those around her know this is only a temporary state; they’ve seen it before. Carrie is referred to by Batman as a “monkey wrench” and a “good soldier”, but so were Dick and Jason before her:
“Demanding much in her dreams, filled with hope, but passive, the young girl evokes a pitying smile from adults; they expect her to become resigned. And in fact two years later we find the once queer and rebellious child calmed down and quite prepared to accept the life of a woman.”
In her naiveté, Carrie believes herself to be better than either of her predecessors. They came to untimely ends, but she won’t. Alfred Pennyworth, the oldest and wisest character in the story, asks of Batman, “Need I remind you of what happened to Jason?” He knows that this new girl will not last long, that she will end up just like the others. And it is true; the ending to the second book implies that Carrie has lost her transcendence and her innocence. She is no longer a child sidekick; she is a woman.
Carrie joins Batman’s side on a whim. She has had none of his training or experience, but she still believes herself good enough to join the fight. She treats her life as an elaborate and extremely dangerous game, which her side will ultimately win. She seems to genuinely believe that life in Gotham will be perfect after the Mutants have been eradicated. She will continue dressing up in the mask and cape until then; she may not be accomplishing much, but this doesn’t bother her at all. What’s going on in the present is somehow less real to Carrie than what is yet to come:
“…Not as yet bound to any duties, irresponsible, at liberty she none the less views the present as neither empty nor delusive, since it is only a stage; dressing up and flirting still seem but a game, and her dreams of the future hide its futility.”
Even into the beginning of the second book, Carrie retains enough of her childlike subjectivity to act as field commander. She uses physical violence to discipline a member of Batman’s army who has broken the rules by killing a man. This may be a war, she tells him, but the man he attacked was only a slave, not the real enemy. The young man doesn’t take kindly to being ordered around by a girl who’s a foot shorter than he is, saying that he could break her in half. She tells him he’s wrong, leaps and grabs him by the neck, knocking him over. She jumps on his fallen body, likely breaking several bones in the process, and assigns him latrine duty for a month, telling the others to “Patch him up. Spare the anaesthetic.” This is comparable to an anecdote in The Second Sex:
“a young girl… who thought she was as strong as a man; though she was very pretty… she was quite unconscious of her femininity… and she had a boy’s hardihood, not hesitating to intervene with her fists in the street if she saw a child or a woman being molested. One or two unpleasant experiences, however, showed her that brute force is on the side of the males. When she had become aware of how weak she really was, she lost most of her assurance.”
Carrie, too, learns this lesson by the end of the second book. Fighting an enemy with regenerative powers, watching as every wound she inflicts on him heals almost instantly, she sees how useless her efforts are. She says to herself “I cut him and I cut him- and he heals back up. He can’t die.” So she gives in and lets him cut her; she knows that she is about to die but she also knows that she is powerless to stop him. Unlike the boy at the beginning, this attacker, former Robin Dick Grayson, actually can break her in half, and he nearly does.
In the future presented in DKR and DKSA, Dick feels himself to be inferior to his successors, Jason and Carrie. They are loved and respected while he is cursed and laughed at; he created the role of Robin only to be fired and replaced by others who were apparently better at it than he was. Jason was Batman's “Good Soldier”, likewise, so is Carrie. Dick was not a good soldier. He was fired because he didn’t follow orders; he was “useless.” He turns against his former allies because he was denied the love and respect given to Jason and Carrie, in an echo of De Beauvoir's girl with an inattentive father:
“If the father’s love is withheld, she may ever after feel herself guilty and condemned; or she may… become indifferent to her father or even hostile.”
Dick becomes a twisted, evil being who, dressed as the Joker, attacks Carrie to get revenge on Batman for firing him, for not loving him. As Dick dies, he yells to Batman “Damn you, I loved you! I would have done anything for you!” Batman does not seem to care; he kills his deranged former partner anyway.
In his anger at being fired and replaced, Dick lets himself be genetically enhanced in order to gain superpowers. Throughout the book he’s been killing off Batman’s allies. He breaks in to the Batcave and goes after Carrie; Batman comes to her rescue and sets off the destruct sequence; Dick tries to abort it but finds that the codes have been changed. The destruct sequence turns out to involve the entire Batcave giving way to the active volcano below it. Dick is thrown into this volcano, which can be seen as a gynic symbol, a giant burning vagina. Dick, like Jason before him, is metaphorically brought into the new world of femininity and womanhood by having his childish, subjective self killed; in the end:
“the girl rebels against her [...] enslavement; and her vain outbursts, far from loosing her bonds, [...] serve only to tighten them.”
The difference between Carrie's actions and capabilities as Robin in the first book and as Catgirl in the second illustrates nicely De Beauvoir's account of the journey from girl into working woman, wherein:
“…The woman who works wishes to reconcile her professional success with purely feminine accomplishments; not only does this mean that she must devote considerable time to her appearance, but, what is more serious, it means that her vital interests are divided.”
It is likely that, had Carrie in DKSA been as focused on the War as she was in the first book, she would not have been caught off-guard by her now-villainous predecessor. As a girl, Carrie was able to disarm a bomb using only a slingshot; while she was being shot at; standing on a moving, broken down old carnival ride. But when she was in danger in the second book, because her mind was divided, she wasn’t able to do anything to save herself. The part of her which used to help her keep her wits during a crisis was gone, replaced by concerns about her looks and how others must think of her; she was thus unable to effectively fight off her attacker.
In contrast to Carrie we have Lara Kent, daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman, who is the only female character in the story who fits De Beauvoir's definition of an emancipated woman:
“The emancipated woman [...] wants to be active, a taker, and refuses the passivity man means to impose upon her.”
While she starts out trying to help the human race, she doesn’t really understand why she has to. It’s interesting to note that Lara does not identify as a human being; she is an Amazon first and a Kryptonian second. But she feels herself to be stronger and better than humanity, and eventually convinces her father of this viewpoint. She treats the whole of the human race like objects; to her Earth is a toy and its inhabitants are like dolls or slaves. Supergirl, through her stubborn refusal to become an object like a human woman, dooms the human race. The book ends with her and Superman, the two most powerful characters in the story, watching Earth from space. He turns to her and says, “What exactly shall we do with our planet, Lara?” She is indeed an active taker; she has taken for herself and her father our entire world.
The treatment of Robin, Catgirl, and Supergirl in Dark Knight Returns and Dark Knight Strikes Again is problematic because of the way these books are regarded as classics of the superhero genre. DKR in particular is one of the superhero books most often picked up by non-comics readers. Carrie Kelley and Lara Kent are nominally heroes, just like Superman and Batman are. Yet in the end they are only allowed to be sweet and feminine victims or evil and inhuman villains.
Frank Miller’s work has influenced nearly every Batman-related story published since. Along with several contemporaries, Miller introduced a darker, serious tone to comic books (often called the “grim and gritty” style) that unfortunately has led to many female characters being depowered, killed, or raped, often to further the storyline of the male hero. Miller's Girl Robin grew up to be sexualized, attacked, and nearly killed just for existing; in 2005 another female Robin was introduced, a girl named Stephanie Brown. Stephanie was shown in “sexy” poses as she was tortured to death with a power drill. If this is what happens to our heroes, what hope do regular young women have of achieving anything?