The Rape of Barbara Gordon

Enter DEMETRIUS and CHIRON with LAVINIA, ravished; 

her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out

I don't know quite what it is exactly about The Joker and that camera, but for some reason, I can't escape the sense that Alan is trying to tell us that The Joker is impotent

Which is interesting, because it came almost directly on the heels of Frank Miller INSISTING that The Joker was almost certainly gay (in Frank's mind, because he wears lipstick, clearly)

Hang on.... Batgirl isn't even IN The Killing Joke....

I mean, Barbara Gordon is, but Batgirl isn't.

This is NOT going appease any pissed off feminists, which, on some subconscious level is what I think this is..... So she's a "complete woman", and not a "victim" (which she wasn't anyway - she was the SUBJECT of The Joker's cruelty and brutality, COMMISSIONER Gordon was his victim) 

Barbara Gordon is nobody's victim.

Spooky Electric Must Die

"I've got a nice attic in the TARDIS where this lot can scream for all eternity"

The Tenth Doctor reassures The Shaker of the Spear, he can lock All His Nightmares safely and securely away...

As if they will never get out...

I have to keep reminding myself that there IS actually some pretty vile (but non-explicit) Clockwork Orange-type sexual violence in The Killing Joke.

I think because mentally it crosses over and blends together in my mind with Green Arrow : The Longbow Hunters, where everyone ASSUMES there is rape that's taken place because of how it is drawn and Denny O'Neil popped a couple of years later and says "What?! That isn't what I wrote... Is it...?"

These Dark Works have a Life and Ugly Soul of Their Own.

They get hidden away, stuffed away in dark recesses of our cultures, our attics, our memory and our psyche, repudiated, denounced, recanted and unsuccessfully forgotten.

This is the same reason people remain uncomfortable with sex, violence and sexual violence in Titus Andronoicus.

Alan Moore doesn't like The Killing Joke  - He is on record as going out of his way in interviews, saying that of all of his Great Work to date, that is the one working with which he is least satisfied with or comfortable with.

But that's okay - Prince was repulsed by The Black Album, and I am quite sure the Shaker of the Spear (whoever that was) was quite repulsed to be reminded of Titus Andronicus, [his] earliest recorded and performed work.

And it's one of my personal favourites.

Time for Pie.....

It's MEANT to be repulsive. You can't go mixing  in actual lovemaking or consensual sex in there, it taints it.

You can't buy off Women in Fridges  with Women in Stockings, it makes the whole thing seedy and unseemly.

Much imitated by later writers, as you can see.

Barbara Gordon It's no secret and not a controversial point that the treatment of Barbara Gordon in the original book, and everything that happened in mainstream comics between 1988 and 1994 with Kyle Rayner's girlfriend was the driving force behind Gail Simone and her colleagues creating the Women in Refrigerators Hall of Shame for objectified/disposable women and female victims in comics.

Barbara Gordon, I don't actually know whether Gail Simone would call herself a feminist or not, but she is the most influential women in Comics, and I am neither of those things, so I mention it because she knows what she is talking about on those two matters and I don't (being a man).

But being a man, I know that the MEN behind this adaptation will have been aware of the 30 years of baggage this story has in that area and are going to be very conscious of the problems involved in turning in a faithful script in which the only female character (other than The Joker's possibly-made-up wife) gets *spoiler alert* shot through the spine, permanently and gang-raped to drive her FATHER mad.

Barbara Gordon, So, to answer your question - Nothing.

Except that Feminists are also both women and people, they buy DVDs and review them, and many of the, won't like a faithful adaptation of the material.

Because they haven't been comfortable with the material for 30 years. And that's understandable - it's MEANT to make you uncomfortable. REALLY uncomfortable.

But Titus Andronicus has been making people EXTREMELY uncomfortable for over 400 years, and it's exactly the same story.

You don't need a feminist analysis of Titus Andronicus to find it repulsive - it's MEANT to be repulsive.

The thing many feminists especially don't like about the implications of both works is the idea of raping and mutilating a man's Virgin daughter to injure HIM - and I can understand that, but I really think that misses the point. It DOES injure him, that's what they can't seem to get to grips with.

As a man, I can speak to that.  

As for the daughter's plight, I can't, not meaningfully, so I won't try.

But the argument that is always made that the rapist and mutilator who doesn't see you AT ALL, who is looking right through you at the man behind you they are meaning to injure is somehow qualitatively WORSE than the one TRYING to injure, brutalise his victim, just for his own sadistic perversions of pleasure - I don't find that terribly persuasive, I find that suggestion to be profoundly dubious, and I'm not sure why you would even demand that anyone actually go there and begin qualitatively comparing different blends of trauma.

Barbara Gordon, The idea ON SOME LEVEL behind this seems to be "Oh, well, if we actually give Babs some kind of "Normal" healthy (or somewhat healthy) sex-life prior to The Night the Joker Paid a Visit, this will mitigate things and off-set all the awfulness that occurs and make her less (quote-unquote) "a victim", so it won't seem quite so bad, since she's not a virgin and this won't be her (implicitly) first sexual experience with another person".

Whereas, in reality, that actually will make it WAY WORSE....

So, in trying so hard not to really upset some people, they came up with a terrible solution that seems to have upset everyone.

CONTROVERSIAL/OFFENSIVE STATEMENT COMING UP - BRACE FOR IMPACT

The claim is often made - and is generally accepted as being axiomatically true - that Rape is a Feminist Issue. 

Often/Essentially stressed it terms, in various modified forms as being the only Feminist Issue - 

the unconstrained [sexual] objectification, subjugation and exploitation of the human individual on the basis of gender.

[ I would move, personally, to remove the phrase "on the basis of gender", since we can now say in this enlightened age, that this is certainly not true, and generally never was - ask a sailor. ]

"Rape is a Feminist Issue."

It isn't.

It isn't a "Women's Issue" either, whatever that means.

Rape is a Human Issue

and

Rape is a Social Issue
(Which amounts the same thing)

Women and/or Feminists do not have ownership of the issue of rape, not least because that implies and logically follows that they should be the only ones concerned with doing anything about it. 

But we have to get past this idea that the subject or object of any sexual assault is the only victim of that crime, or indeed is always, necessarily the intended victim of the crime.

Shakes-spear knew better.

Someone can be subjected to a crime such as rape without being a victim of it, as any intelligent and honest feminist thinker will tell you.