Up Front: Wonder Bi
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I bet the original writers never thought for one moment that years in the future she would be looked on as bisexual.
Even if this was true (and it isn’t), I can say with near total confidence that two hundred years ago Jane Austen would have thrown up into her reticule if you’d explained what a “porn parody” is.
OTOH, I’m sure Shakespeare would have been tickled pink to see women playing his female roles – which was illegal in London during his lifetime.
So, yeah. Intentional Fallacy still stupid and dubiously relevant to Wonder Woman being canonically bi- in 2016.
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I've been seeing a fair few openly bi women in TV series recently. Just finished season one of Orange is the New Black (should I continue? It's already bumming me out) and season 4 of Wentworth. But am I imagining it that there is a consistent theme nowadays that "all bis must die"?
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linger, in reply to
Probably a subset of the old favourite “all people who even think about wanting to have sex must die” (see: any teen horror movie).
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James Butler, in reply to
"all bis must die"
Jack Harkness is the ultimate inversion of this trope.
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Just for historical accuracy, the Comics Code Authority as a "voluntary" industry censorship body was created in 1954, as a consequence of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings in that year.
It was helped along the way by the publication of Frederic Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent which "warned that comic books were a negative form of popular literature and a serious cause of juvenile delinquency.... Many of his other conjectures, particularly about hidden sexual themes (e.g. images of female nudity concealed in drawings or Batman and Robin as gay partners), met with derision within the comics industry. Wertham's claim that Wonder Woman had a bondage subtext was somewhat better documented, as her creator William Moulton Marston had admitted as much; however, Wertham also claimed Wonder Woman's strength and independence made her a lesbian. Wertham also claimed that Superman was both un-American and a fascist." ( Wikipedia
Wertham was a fruitbat.
Marston's biography is quite interesting in it's own right. He invented the systolic blood pressure test which lead to the development of the polygraph.
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Emma Hart, in reply to
But am I imagining it that there is a consistent theme nowadays that “all bis must die”?
Why no, you are not. It's a manifestation of Bury Your Gays. Basically, LGBT characters are not allowed happy endings.
I’ve been seeing a fair few openly bi women in TV series recently. Just finished season one of Orange is the New Black (should I continue? It’s already bumming me out) and season 4 of Wentworth.
Yeah, the rules are definitely different for cable/Netflicks etc. Just like they are for arthouse movies vs block-busters.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Jack Harkness is the ultimate inversion of this trope
Perhaps Cap'n Jack should be the 'Face of Bi'
...rather than 'Bo'?
;- )Try Grant Morrison's DC series The Invisibles for a smorgasbord of sexual orientations - available in most good public libraries these days.
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I doubt I'll continue with Wentworth without Danielle Cormack. OK, The Freak and Vinegar Tits are decent characters, and they hung onto the fantastic Frankie beyond her release as a legal advocate, and Jacs was good before she got killed, and Kaz does angry very well, and the psychologist does give me the creeps.
But without Queen Bea, this is a bit like Outrageous Fortune without Cheryl. It takes a full on reboot like Westside to balance out the character interactions.
Yeah, the rules are definitely different for cable/Netflicks etc. Just like they are for arthouse movies vs block-busters.
Seems to me to be where the art is at, these days. But note: Wentworth is on Freeview...
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James Butler, in reply to
I've been seeing a fair few openly bi women in TV series recently
And this is a thing too, right - that if you have a bi character it has to be a woman, because something something consumption by het men?
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Sexual preferences aside, what I really don't understand with this movie 'reboot' is why they have set it in World War One?
The comic was originally created during, and set in, WW II.
I guess canvas covered planes are cheaper to recreate... -
BenWilson, in reply to
because something something consumption by het men?
Pretty sure that's the reason, as is the impossibility of man-man sex ever actually being depicted rudely. But it's at least progress that man-man foreplay is not beyond the pale in mainstream any more. Their actual sex still has to fade to black and re-enter with smoking, like the 70s all over again.
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BenWilson, in reply to
It's probably harder to depict someone bouncing bullets off their bracelets when absolutely everyone is armed with a machine gun.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Basically, LGBT characters are not allowed happy endings.
Unless it’s a Cast Full of Gay. Which is probably why the female prison ones do have characters like Wentworth ’s Frankie, who seduces her psychologist and is eventually released from prison, moves in with her lover, finishes her legal training and is essentially depicted as someone redeemed by the love of a good woman, aided by the majesty of Queen Bea in injecting a moral code into the prison order.
ETA: But this character is exceptional. I guess there’s probably a trope “Some Gays Don’t Die”, which is a corollary of “Anyone Can Die”.
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All this commentary about Wentworth, when the series it was based on -- Prisoner -- was doing the same stuff back in the '70s.
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BenWilson, in reply to
692 episodes to catch up on!
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Paul Campbell, in reply to
I guess canvas covered planes are cheaper to recreate…
invisible ones are cheaper ...
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Miche Campbell, in reply to
Not if you need them to be Just Visible Enough, in which case they cost a fortune in CGI.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Or you could make them out of glass! But no one does that these days.
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Miche Campbell, in reply to
Blimey, that would be ridiculously expensive.
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Emma Hart, in reply to
Blimey, that would be ridiculously expensive.
And think of the maintenance. You'd spend all your time washing it.
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Gatekeepers eh! self appointed guardians of an artificial morality.
have a look at Trumbo and how he got around them
Hedda Hopper was one, Dean O'Gorman does a his best Kirk Douglas impersonation -
Sacha, in reply to
Just finished season one of Orange is the New Black (should I continue?
yes
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Paul Campbell, in reply to
Or you could make them out of glass! But no one does that these days.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
have a look at Trumbo and how he got around them
Puts me in mind of Ed Brubaker's excellent comic The Fade Out (3 issue arc) and the Coen Brothers movie Hail Caesar
But that's a gawd awful accent O'Gorman is putting on... -
Lilith __, in reply to
“ all bis must die ”
Jack Harkness is the ultimate inversion of this trope.
Can we please have a gratuitous Jack Harkness moment?
Another lovable feature of Torchwood was all the staff were bi, and it was so normal that it was never discussed.
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