The Header

There are those of you who may be asking, "So, what's up with your blog's header?" I'm glad you asked!

So, I've been taking a film class this semester in which we've discussed "the gaze" quite a bit. In cinema, there are three primary gazes - the camera, the characters, and the spectator. In dominant cinema, all of the gazes are assumed to be male. The people behind the camera, the characters that hold the power of gaze (which I'll explain in a minute), and the spectator are all assumed to be male. This leads to men and women in film to be objectified in very different ways.

Women in film do not hold the power of the gaze. Shots of women frequently work like this: there is a objective shot of a male character, then there is a point of view (or subjective) shot of what he is looking at -the woman. This makes the woman in film have a "to be looked-at-ness" whereas the male has the power to look. The woman is voyeuristically objectified and eroticized for male pleasure.

Men on the other hand, are objectified in ways that allow the male spectator to identify narcissistically with the male on screen (ie. the male on screen is a better version of me). Hence, the male body is on display in action sequences, rather than in a more sexualized/ erotic setting. In films where the male is objectified erotically for the female gaze (like romance films), men tend to become highly uncomfortable becuase they do not know who to identify with. Unlike women who have no trouble identifying with the gaze of the male protagonist looking at the eroticized woman (becuase dominant cinema has made it so pervasive), men aren't used to identifiying with a female protagonist who hold the power of gaze, so suddenly they're placed in a homoerotic viewing relationship with an objectified male - and most men don't know how to cope. Hence the reason why most men don't like films that eroticize men.

Women also aren't given the power of "the gaze" frequently, becuase women are seen as either not having sexual desire, or, when they do have desire, lacking the ability to act. The extreme of this being rape: men can rape, women can't (which is, of course, untrue, but we're talking about dominant ideology here). So this is yet another reason why dominant cinema fails to award the power of gaze to a female protagonist.

This extends beyond cinema as well. The eroticized male (unless in an athletic setting) is almost always percieved as "gay" or "homoerotic" - even when he is eroticized for a female audience. Conversely, eroticized women are always heterosexual. For example, if I, as a female artist, drew a hot chick with big boobs in an erotic position, it wouldn't be seen as "gay" even if I drew it for my own visual pleasure (which would put me in a lesbian viewing relationship with the image). However, if I drew an eroticized male in a seductive pose, it would be percieved as "gay" despite the fact that I drew it for female visual pleasure (which is a heterosexual viewing relationship).

With this frustration in mind, I drew the following images of Superman and Batman

Batman Color by *yumeru on deviantART


Superman Colored by *yumeru on deviantART

I like superheroes, I think they're hot and sexy. However, they are never eroticized in the way that thier female counterparts (Wonderwoman, Supergirl, etc.) are. In fact, they frequently have no genetalia! Signs of their sexuality (the penis) are left out wheras the breasts on a female superhero are enhanced. This is to avoid making them seem homoerotic to the assumed male spectator.

So, I drew Superman and Batman for my own visual pleasure. As a woman, I enjoy my man-meat looking sexy and sultry. But, despite having drawn them for a female audience, most people I've talked to felt they looked pretty gay. In fact - I submitted the lineart for these drawing for "The Sequence", which is a comic book that the college publishes. The editor (despite me having told him that I was drawing these images for a female viewer to CHALLENGE the idea that the eroticized male is always homoerotic) photoshoped them together with a caption saying "Metropolis and Gothom are in ruins... is their love enough to save the world?"

So, seeing as how my debut to the published comic world was not the meaningful social commentary I had intended it to be, but rather a homoerotic superhero smut, I figured, well, if it's going to be smut, it'll be MY smut, not my editor's smut. So, with that said, here's the full image that I turned into my header.


Superman and Batman by *yumeru on deviantART

And now you know, and knowing is half the battle.