Justice League Ulimited versus The Gaze

My reaction, upon seeing the first episode of Justice League (over a decade after it originally aired, MY BAD), was of huge excitement. There were two- TWO- lady characters! Not only was there the classic standard (/token non-white-dude) Wonder Woman, but also the totally hard-hitting badass Hawkgirl? AND John Stewart, the one non-white-dude Green Lantern, too? You're kidding me! Heart won, Justice League.

Only...

Despite the unusual number of minority representations, something was way off. My feminist sense was tingling! (I tried to find a cool picture of Spider-Woman, but it appears her only powers are Being Busty and Posing Sexily :/)

This is not the post I originally intended to write- THAT post was way longer and more laborious and I before I was finished, I got distracted by Very Important Work (Mass Effect). The post that follows is more of a discussion of the wonky, gender-lame visualizations that happen in Justice League Unlimited. I'm focusing mainly on where the show goes wrong, rather than where it goes right, because where it goes right is pretty obvious (and fairly superficial). I mean, not only two female characters who kick butt, but ONE of them gets to wear PANTS?

I also want to note before we jump in that I love JL and JLU, despite its flaws. I just can't watch more than about two episodes of it in a row before I get so frustrated with the gender politics that I have to quit. That's bad, because I'm definitely a binge-viewer, and it's taking me a really long time to get through the show because of... okay, well, because of the things I'm going to talk about! Let... let's just dive in.

From JLU S3E1- "I am Legion"

So there's this thing in visual media known as the "male gaze." The phrase was coined by film theorist/badass Laura Mulvey in 1975 (although it existed as a phenomenon looooong before that). The male gaze is the assumption that the viewer is a straight male who will take any opportunity to ogle female body parts (a.k.a. a creeper). More specifically, it positions women as objects to be looked at, and pervy heterosexual men as the controller of the point of view/the point of identification for the viewers. And if you identify as a straight dude, you must want to objectify women at every opportunity, right? RIGHT, MEN?

Throughout JLU, we the viewer get shots like the one above- The Flash directs our gaze to Fire's bust and the image lingers there BEFORE moving up to her face. What if I didn't WANT to objectify Fire? TOUGH SHIT. The visuals of this show are basically saying "If you don't want to reduce a woman to a pair of breasts before acknowledging she might be a whole person, you're watching the wrong fucking show, sugartits."

The male gaze is hugely present in comic books, too (okay, and in video games, movies, advertising, TV shows...). Basically, when you see an image of a woman and she's scantily clad, or bending over so you can see her cleavage, or twisted around in a ridiculous and impossible pose so you can look at her breasts and butt at the same time, the male gaze is being expressed. When you watch a movie and the camera pans over a woman from her feet to her breasts- pausing lovingly so you get a full view of her most important assets- up to her face, that's the male gaze. When a woman bends over and the camera pans down to get a shot of her butt, yeah, that's the male gaze, alright.

The screencap above is a pretty mild example, in that we're seeing The Flash ogle Fire at the same time we are force to ogle her, so there's an aspect of comedy in it too. This comedy doesn't save it, of course, because we're still being forced to ogle Fire the same way Flash is. Also, there are plenty of times in the show when we JUST got a shot of breasts or a butt instead of the whole tableau (I just couldn't find my screencaps for them. Consider it a game! Next time you watch, try to spot the male gaze!)

Furthermore:

from JLU S2E1- "The Cat and the Canary"

In fact, JLU doubles down on the male gaze by having tons of Between The Legs shots- so much so they have a listing on TVTropes making note of it (warning; author not responsible for afternoon lost if you click that link). What's the connection between the male gaze and the between-the-leg shots? Well, you'll notice above that we're basically getting a POV for Black Canary- both she and the audience are looking at the piles of dudes she just totally beat the crap out of. So we're almost having a point of identification with Black Canary- but we don't get to identify with her because we're positioned behind her, in prime-ogling position. Between-the-legs shots are a way of showing us the POV of a female character, while allowing us to distance ourselves from identifying with her.

But why CAN'T we identify with Black Canary in this episode? She literally spends 22 minutes kicking the ass of every badguy she comes across. No, no, I know why we can't identify with Black Canary- because the viewers of this show are 100% hetero males and the show is just saying "Don't worry, bros, we got you; there is no chance you might identify with a female character. We know that's the worst possible blow your manhood could take."

from JLU S1E4 - "Hawk and Dove"

from JLU S2E11 - "Panic in the Sky" - this screencap came from a YouTube video that was just the fight scene where Galatea beats the crap out of Supergirl, all the dialogue cut out, shown over and over again, in slow motion. It was disturbing.

JLU does this over and over again, notably only with female characters- we NEVER get a BTL shot of Batman or Superman. I'll give JLU this credit, though; Usually BTL shots also include the butt so we can get the bonus objectification angle, but so far in my viewings, JLU has resisted this urge. So, that's... something?

To sum: There's something especially insidious about this given that JL and JLU were intended for children/young teens. You're basically training your audience to look at women this way- where women are objects to be gazed at and judged at your leisure, and never to be identified with. (Also, perpetuating the assumption that people who don't want to objectify women also don't want to watch awesome superhero cartoons, which, you know, fuck you, DC.)

[Side note: you'll notice that my examples in this post come from JLU and not JL. I don't have an elaborate point to make about that, I just think it's weird. I mean, JLU was made because JL was so popular, so they created a show that is more inclusive character-wise but less inclusive in style. Was DC like "This show is popular- instead of continuing to do what's been working, let's narrow the focus to the young male audience." Is that what's going to keep happening to female characters I like? Unpopular = put in refrigerator, Popular = super objectified? :( ]


That's it- FOR NOW. Consider this the first post in a series. The second post- which I'll totally write later/get off my back- will discuss Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl as characters, with some possible bonus discussion of aliens, race, and Othering. The third post is about Paradise Lost, pt 1 and 2. They are the Justice League Wonder Woman-focused episodes and they are, spoiler alert, super rapey.