Keathwick: Breaks from Reality

Spotlight #5: Ōoku

2010-05-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

English Title: Ōoku: The Inner Chambers
Japanese Title: Ōoku (“The Shogun’s Harem”)
Author: Fumi Yoshinaga
English Publisher: Viz Media (Viz Signature)
Manga?: Yes.
Novels?: No.
Anime?: No.

After reading a fairly positive review of Ōoku, I went out and bought it "sight-unseen." Yes, folks, Ōoku is one of those titles that comes vacuum-sealed in plastic wrap (at least at the major chain bookstores to which I have access and for which I have coupons) with a tasteful "PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT CONTENT" notice on the cover. Is it pornographic? Not at all. It's not even properly erotica, despite taking place almost exclusively in a harem. It's also not a "harem" (nor a "reverse harem") title despite taking place in a harem. It does involve sex, violence and plague, though. It is also really, really good. It has even won some critical acclaim, but you have to turn the tankoubon over to see the "Eisner Award Nominee" and "Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize Winner" notices. (Or at least that is the design I came across when purchasing.)

Volumes 1-3 only are currently available in English, so this post is limited to a discussion of those volumes.

Plot / Backstory: In Tokugawa era Japan, a mysterious plague called the "redface pox" has decimated the population of young men. Women take on more and more roles that formerly belonged to their sons and husbands, and girls start to inherit family enterprises. It becomes a major effort to produce family heirs, and men, as rare commodities, are protected and valued for their precious "seed." (This should ring familiar for anyone who has read Wen Spencer's highly enjoyable A Brother's Price.) The shogun becomes a female position, and she is served by a collection of rare, beautiful and frequently ambitious men in the "inner chambers."

Fumi Yoshinaga has received a good bit of attention over the last few years, especially for shounen ai titles like Antique Bakery, which showed up on YALSA's "Great Graphic Novels for Teens List" in 2007. (Antique Bakeryhas also been adapted into an anime, a live-action Japanese drama and a live-action Korean movie.) Beautiful men and food are a pretty common common theme in her work, and she has also produced a number of shoujo titles and period pieces (which seem to be mostly shounen ai). Ōoku, though it shares many traits with her previous work, is a definite change of pace.

Ōoku's art is produced in the mangaka's distinctive, spare style, and exhibits a particular skill in capturing characters' facial expressions, no matter how overt or how subtle. The illustration moves from moments of stylized, 'cartoony' humor to moments of high dramatic tension with a fluidity and grace that is quite possibly unrivaled. The panel layouts are clean, regular and aesthetically appealing, and shadows and highlights are used expertly throughout for emotional emphasis. (There is one panel consisting of nothing but solid black that I found especially poignant.) As far as I can tell from what little I have seen of her bibliography, the mangaka makes more use of backgrounds and patterns in Ōoku than she has in her other works. The books themselves are quite beautiful--slightly oversized for manga trade paperbacks, with a beautifully rendered, off-center color portrait of a central character on the cover of each volume. The front and back covers are folded to emulate the look of a book jacket, and the flaps, when unfolded, continue the covers' images.

The language of Ōoku's English translation is a bit odd. What I assume was originally a "formal dialect" used for dialogue is presented in a stilted, archaic English that at first is remarkably distracting. I was pleasantly surprised (actually a bit astounded) to find that, once I had gotten well into the first volume, the speech had begun to read as natural, and in the end it did not detract from the story at all. Once I became accustomed to it, I realized that it allowed for a few moments of linguistic beauty that might not have been possible had more conventional dialogue been used. I do, however, freely confess that the writing seems over-the-top (and then some) at first glance, and therefore might easily scare aware some potential readers. Narration, unlike dialogue, is given in a comparatively plain, modern style.

The first volume shows the entrance of a young man's into the Ōoku; in this volume, the female-led shogunate is already well-established. Volumes 2 and 3 cover the origin of the new, matriarchal system and the beginning years of the first female shogun's rule. In addition to its setting in a more-or-less matriarchal society, Ōoku goes on the femdom manga list because the main female character is always the shogun and the man male character always her favored "concubine" (so far).

Conceptually, one of the most interesting things about Ōoku is that the rise of a predominantly female work force does little to change the society as a whole. As the culture is already under threat from the "red-faced pox," every effort is expended by surviving characters to maintain Tokugawa-era Japan's economy and culture. Class divisions are scrupulously upheld. Instead of issuing in a revolution, the extreme shift in population causes a desparate clinging to the
past, to the ideals and traditions that will provide the structure necessary for the country's survival in a global context.

Ōoku presents the moving, sometimes painful stories of characters struggling to live and work together in the enclosed, stifling world of "the inner chambers" within the larger-yet-still-enclosed world of an alternate-history Japan that has almost entirely cut off its contact with all other nations.

And I really, really like it.

How I Draw, post #1: The Technical Side of Things

2009-10-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

This post is devoted to describing the process I go through when drawing Familiar Magic.

Materials:
-Bristol Board (smooth)
-Drawing Pencil, #3 or #4
-Plastic Eraser
-Pigment liners, 0.5 to 0.7, or
-Technical Drawing Pens, 0.35 to 0.7
-Brush Pen
-Scanner
-Computer + Mouse
-Photoshop

Step 1: I lay out panels with a pencil and ruler.

Some days I actually have ideas about what I will later put into each panel. This, however, is rare. I generally have an overall concept for the page--what it does to the story, who appears in it, etc.--and keep that in the back of my mind while I set up a "grid" that I, at least, find visually pleasing. The geometric pattern of the page almost always comes first.

Step 2: I sketch the comic in light pencil.

This is where the plastic eraser comes in. I sketch, erase and sketch again until I'm satisfied the page does what I want it to do. Bodies and faces are the things that take me the longest and involve the most trial-and-error. Plants give me the least trouble. This is in part because I never check to see if the plants I draw actually exist in our world. I just draw the "tree/flower/grass I want to see there" and call it good.

Step 3: I ink the page.

I take my 0.5 pigment liner and ink all the 'normal' to 'medium' lines (in terms of thickness). Lines from pigment liners smaller than 0.5 have a hard time surviving the journey from my scanner to my computer unbroken. I can go a bit smaller with the technical pens. I use wider pens to color in small sections of black and a brush pen for large sections of black that I don't plan to color on the computer. I also occasionally use the brush pen for hair, feathers, emotional SFX and other flowy, wispy things. I do not ink the panel borders.

Step 4: I clean up the page.

All hail the return of the plastic eraser! I erase stray pencil lines to prep the page for scanning.

Step 5: I scan the page into Photoshop.

I usually scan the page in at 600 dpi, though I've used both larger and smaller resolutions.

Step 6: I clean up the page again. I play around with levels, fills and the magic lasso to make the black-and-white page, well, black-and-white (instead of black, many varieties of gray, white and some other colors that snuck in when the page was scanned). This can get really tedious.

Step 7: I color the page.

This is where I really go to town. I mean, the comic is basically a digital coloring book at this point. What's not fun about that? I use brushes of different sizes and textures--and many, many layers of opacity--to get the effects I want. I play around with contrast/brightness and color settings when I feel the need. My wireless, ergonomic mouse is quite a blessing at this stage.

Step 7.5: I reboot Photoshop, cussing out the program the whole time, and make up my lost work so I can finish coloring. This step only happens for the obvious reason. Fortunately, I usually prefer the final version to the "one that got away."

Step 7.75: I compulsively save my work at near-random intervals, compelled by my recent loss of progress.

Step 8: I add speech balloons and speech balloon tails, guided by a general idea of what the characters say.

Step 9: I add speech. This is when I decide what the characters actually say.

Step 10: I add any verbalized thoughts and SFX that were not added during the penciling and inking stages.

Step 11: I resize the page. All standard Familiar Magic pages are 700 pixels wide, though they vary in length.

Step 12: I save the page in .png (though it was .jpg up until a few updates ago) format.

I then post the page, wait for it to upload, check to see how it displays, update my archives, etc., but all that isn't really part of my drawing/pagemaking process (except perhaps in a broader theoretical sense, as webcomics do not truly stop at the borders of their comic pages) so I will not discuss it now.

Spotlight #4: Twelve Kingdoms

2009-07-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

English Title: Twelve Kingdoms
Japanese Title: Juuni Kokuki
Author: Fuyumi Ono
English Publisher: Tokyopop
Anime Makers / Distributors: Studio Pierrot via Media Blasters
Manga?: No.
Novels?: Yes.
Anime?: Yes.

Twelve Kingdoms is my favorite anime. Some pieces of fiction hit you in exactly the right way at exactly the right time, and this can make you feel close to them, a bit in the same way that you can feel close to a person and a bit in the same way that you can feel close to an idea. Greer Irene Gilman's beautifully dense, painstakingly ornate novel Moonwise hit me in the right way at the right time. So did the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And so did Twelve Kingdoms.

The first time I watched Twelve Kingdoms, it was not my favorite year. Stuff went down, I cried a lot, and I wanted out. Not a permanent out, but just a chance to sit back, relax and breathe for awhile.

I read a lot of fiction and watched a lot of anime that year. Of all the new anime titles that I "discovered" during this period, Twelve Kingdoms is by far my favorite. This review will be focused primarily on the Twelve Kingdoms anime and not on the books upon which the anime is based. (So far, only three of the seven novels have been published in English.)

"Normal high school student" Nakajima Youko is attending her normal high school while some long-haired blond guy called Keiki pledges loyalty to her, gives her a sword, and goes on to be entirely unforthcoming about why Youko and her classmates are being attacked by a bunch of demons from another world. Keiki then spirits Youko (and her two "friends") away to said other world, where Youko obviously has an important destiny awaiting her.

Sounds pretty predictable so far, right?

However, just about as soon as they get to the other world, Keiki is put out of commission, and the three "normal high school" kids are left to fend for themselves in an impoverished kingdom where foreigners are despised and where, for some reason, only Youko can speak the language.

What really makes Twelve Kingdoms is its character development. When we first meet Youko, she is a rather unremarkable complete pushover of a reluctant fantasy heroine. By the end of her development arc, she is competent, confident and mature. (I feel like Twelve Kingdoms is the anime that women should give to their younger female relatives.) However, this is nothing like a smooth transition, and in the intervening time, Youko makes a lot of mistakes and actually gets to learn from them. But the lessons she learns are not the lessons that anime heroes and heroines tend to get in any genre. (How to "train" for the next battle, how to be nice, how to expose yourself to ridiculous and unnecessary risk (which leads to success for boys and failure for girls, more often than not), how to let yourself get walked on, etc. Youko started out the series getting walked on, remember? Happily, this means her big life lesson is about something else.) At the heart of the first arc, Youko learns that the world can be very harsh; even more importantly, and with much greater difficulty, she learns how to maintain her own human decency in a harsh world.

Youko is my favorite anime character. Also, she looks great in drag.

Youko, though central to the anime, is not always the central character. There are arcs toward the middle and end of the series in which she barely appears. Nonetheless, all of the major characters go throgh developmental arcs, and their development is always based on learning, about themselves and about their wolrd(s).

Twelve Kingdoms fits pretty solidly in the category of "femdom anime" as I define it. Keiki is an important enough male character in the show to vie for the position of "male lead." (Another possible contender is Rakushun, the mouse Hanjyuu (half-animal) who befriends Youko.) And (you can see this coming miles away in the show so it hardly counts as spoiler here, but SPOILER ALERT anyway) since Youko is eventually an Empress, the only male characters in the Twelve Kingdoms who could have official authority over her would be the world's actual gods. So, Twelve Kingdoms is femdom anime. What is even more exciting, however, is that it's also feminist anime. Hallelujah.

A short note on the first three novels: They're good. They're solid YA/children's lit fare, with a focus on strong young characters. In all three books, children from our world find their place in the world of the Twelve Kingdoms, where they learn about honor, courage and personal responsibility. Youko is the hero of the first book (and apparently shows up later in the fourth and sixth, which I await eagerly). The young male leads of the second and third books both discover that they are kirin, noble unicorn-beasts with the duty of choosing and serving the rulers of their respective kingdoms.

Why I Draw, post #1: Some reasons haphazardly presented

2009-07-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I said that one of its primary purposes would be to serve as a place where I could discuss why I draw and what it means to me. I realize now that I have been putting this off long enough.

I draw because I love stories, and after I discovered that I love stories told in a graphic medium, I realized that I wanted to create them. I went through one of those near-inevitable downturns in my fiction reading somewhere in elementary school, when I decided that I was "too old" and "too imaginative" (silly, no?) to need or want things like pictures gracing words. (Irony of ironies: one of the things that spurred me to this very adult decision was Gaston's horrified reaction to Belle's picture-free book in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.) So it took me until someone loaned me their prized Sandman trades to realize that I do, in fact, love comics.

I draw because it's new to me. I am new to it. Everyone should have the joy of being able to do at least one thing they are new to and one thing they are accomplished at. I like learning to draw and I've been writing for pretty much all of my conscious memory . . . so, writing and drawing a comic feels wonderful. Frustrating and terrifying and wonderful.

I draw to learn. I have learned so much about comics as a form of expression from the simple act of trying to create my own. Writing a comic is everything and yet nothing like writing a poem or story. And pacing a comic--specifically, a webcomic, which updates one page at a time--is like nothing I have ever tried to do before. My hat is seriously, seriously off to webcomickers who manage to pace their comics well. For me, pacing is the Philosopher's Stone of webcomics.

I draw a webcomic because I like to read webcomics. I check for updates of my favorite webcomics as part of my daily morning routine. I read them archivally when I'm sick or sad. Furthermore, the webcomic is a fascinating and relatively new animal on the creative scene, and I think there's a part of me that just wants to be a part of that, in howsoever limited a way.

I draw for practice and I draw for catharsis. I look at pages from a year ago and I can think "Hey, look-improvement!"--and that's an amazing feeling. I also draw--and write--to work through and learn to accept my ever-changing thoughts and emotions.

I draw for therapy. I like activities that calm me down and draw me out of the world without the use of drugs and alcohol. A good drawing session is like a good cup of tea and soft music, or having a cat on my lap on a rainy day. It just . . . helps.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, page #89 is up at Familiar Magic. Only 11 pages left until I hit 100 . . . which makes me a little bit happy.

Reality Breaks In: Comics Deemed Obscene

2009-06-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog is "Breaks From Reality." Some days I have breaks from reality and some days I need breaks from reality. Some days, however, reality breaks in.

If I had not been taking so many breaks from reality, I might have noticed this sooner:

So, there's this guy in southern Iowa who likes manga. A lot. He collects it. A lot. He orders it from Japan so that, presumably, he can, well, read it.

In 2006, some customs officials open his mail and find--OH NOES--porn! And not just any porn, but "Seven books of manga" with "cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts" and some "bestiality" to boot (quoted text from David Kravets's May 28 Wired article on the subject, found here).

In May 2009, Christopher Handley pleaded guilty to:

1) the mailing of obscene matter and
2) possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children

He was being charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which, while by-and-large designed to actually protect children, also prohibits the mailing and owning of "obscene" materials (including drawings and statues) that depict minors doing sexual things. And how is "obscene" defined, exactly?

That's just the thing.

It isn't.

There is no national standard that defines obscenity; whether or not something is "obscenity" is officially defined by the community rather than the country. The closest thing we have to a national standard is the SLAPS test, which asks the "community" in question to judge whether a work has any Scientific, Literary, Artistic, Political or Scientific value.

Which community, you ask?

Weeeeell, that's just the thing. That's not really defined either. Based on this particular trial, one can only assume that the community designated to judge whether or not a work is obscene is the same community in which you are caught and charged with the possession of obscene material.

Let's all let that sink in for a bit.

So, there's this guy, and he's the first person to be charged under the Protect Act for the possession of cartoon art of any kind. When officials searched his home, they found no evidence of any child pornography, either in hard copy form or on his computer. The "obscene" material that he owned was part of a larger collection, most of which was not "obscene."

So, who, exactly, did Christopher Handley hurt in ordering naughty manga from overseas?

Children? In other "child pornography" cases, the prosecution argues for the defense of the abused children being used as models. Which does, after all, make sense.

You don't need actual child models to draw lolicon. (Lolion and yaoi were the two genres most frequently referenced in descriptions of the case.)

The community? Perhaps manga of this sort is seen as inherently corrupting.

As far as I know, he was not trying to expose his "community" to the "obscenity," just himself. Hmm, is self-corruption a crime, now?

Of course it is! Hasn't it been scientifically proven that looking at dirty pictures makes us do the things in them because as human beings we have no free will? Which is, of course, why every last person who has ever had an immoral, perverse or harmful impulse has immediately acted upon it?

No, wait, that doesn't sound quite right . . .

And even if our control of our actions were truly so terrible, we still have no proof that the erotic manga in this case was being read erotically. After all, the guy had both lolicon and yaoi in his collection, and that's a pretty unique overlap.

I don't know Christopher Handley. I don't know if he is a good person or a bad person. I don't know anything about him other than what was covered in the reports on his trial. I do know that he is a man who is being charged, at heart, for--of all things--the unacceptable taste that his community has judged him to have.

This is an attack on all otaku.

This is an attack on Americans' freedom, not only to speak, but to read.

A good chunk of manga is, let's face it, pretty gross. Even the stuff that gets categorized as "okay" to sit on bookshelves sans plastic wrap can be quite vile. Some of it has even made me feel physically ill.

When I first saw a description of this case, that's exactly how I felt: physically ill.

And this obscenity is going to take me a lot longer to get over.

Related Links:
Neil Gaiman's comments early in the case.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund on the case

Spotlight #3: Ultimate Venus

2009-04-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

English Title: Ultimate Venus
Japanese Title: Kyuukyoku Venus
Author: Shigematsu Takako
English Publisher: Go!Comi
Anime?: No.
Summary: Yuzu is poor and her mother just died, so she does what any sensible homeless teenager would do and starts camping out in a playground. Kagami, Yuzu's rich, estranged granmother's all-purpose employee/servant, picks her up and takes her to her grandmother's honest-to-goodness palace, where Yuzu is basically kidnapped and forced to start training to become the Shirayuki heir, or at least one of the main candidates for this position.

Now, there are a lot of rags-to-riches stories where some loser kid gets picked up and whisked off to some amazing life of wealth and luxury only to whine, moan and cry about missing the good ol' simple days, and these stories can be tough to take. And Yuzu moans plenty. With Yuzu, though, the whining is actually pretty understandable: after kidnapping her and locking her up in a room that's basically an opulent jail cell (Seriously: it has bars and everything. Those wacky rich people!), loving Grandma Mitsuko and Kagami proceed to confiscate all her possessions, and (deliberately) try to throw out everything that reminds her of her deceased parents. Not to mention that Kagami slaps her within the first thirty pages of volume one.

This goes on the femdom list because, even though Yuzu herself gets pretty much manipulated by the household staff, Kagami and the rest are technically, at least, responsible for serving her and looking out for her welfare. It also goes on the list because Yuzu's grandma has her own freaking harem. That's right: a bonafide harem of pretty boys who lounge around being pretty but (of course) double as an equally pretty security force of elite bodyguards. Oh, and her palace is maintained by a staff of pretty young boy "maids" (sadly without any frilly apron cosplay; their uniform, while not screeching of masculinity, is more or less 'boy-appropriate'). So . . . I gotta say . . . good for Yuzu's grandma. I have to wonder what that hiring process is like, though.

Obviously, the strict, cold, 'Kagami-san' is destined to be Yuzu's one true love, and I suppose it's a relief that he's more reserved with her than ever actively mean (despite the aforementioned face-slapping). It comes out fairly early on in the series that the poor boy (He's older than her but younger than me; it's weird that I'm older than even some 'grown-up' manga characters these days.) harbors secret affection for Yuzu and wants more than anything to help her and protect her, but can't tell the recently-orphaned young girl that he gives a damn about her for some Mysterious Reason (TM).

I like this series for two reasons. The first and most obvious reason: Mitsuko's harem. Shoujo titles with harems of lovely guys in them are the necessary counterbalance to all those loser-guy-gets-the-girls shounen titles. Or so I declare. The other reason I like this series is that, despite her obvious destiny to become the romantic interest of about every significant guy in the series, I actually quite like the protagonist. Yuzu can be pretty intimidated by Grandma and Kagami, but every so often she snaps and says or does something a bit 'aggressive' and 'inapprorpriate' (at least for a high-class-lady-in-training, I guess). And, despite this being shoujo manga, she is not always punished for such displays of unladylike temper. And a manga that lets girls know it's okay to get angry is not a bad thing.

Spotlight #2: Captive Hearts

2008-11-25T14:12:00.000-08:00

English Title: Captive Hearts
Japanese Title: Toraware no Minoue
Author: Hino Matsuri
English Publisher: Viz Media
Anime?: No.
Summary: Kuroishi Megumi's family has been cursed to serve the Kogami family since the Muromachi era. As the Kogami family's been missing for fourteen years or so, no one bothers to tell unsuspecting Megumi about the curse until Kogami Suzuka shows up. Megumi has fits of intense servility around her; Suzuka has fits of non-curse-induced shiness around him. The two spend their days being dumb and adorable at each other.

It has finally happened. I've waited not-so-patiently as Merupuri, Vampire Knight and even Wanted cropped up on the shelves of my local bookstores, and Hino Matsuri's Toraware no Minoue has finally been licensed in English.

Toraware no Minoue, or Captive Hearts, was one of the first "femdom" manga to catch my attention back when it first started making the scanlation/fansite circuit. Intrigued, I ordered the five tankoubon online and taught myself kana by trying to translate the first few volumes from Japanese to English on my own. (I'm, uh, still working on that . . . yeah.) For this reason, I have a fairly strong personal attachment to the manga, though I suspect that my (blind) admiration for the work predates my days as a discerning manga consumer, so I'll do my best to try to remain objective in this "spotlight."

Art: The art is pretty and technically well-done, though it's clear that the mangaka was still getting a feel for the look of her characters, especially in early cover and filler art. Hino Matsuri tends not to focus much on differentiation in character design. The primary cast of Captive Hearts is thankfully small enough (1 adult male, 1 young male, 1 young biological female and 1 transgender female) that eye shape and hairstyle are usually sufficient as distinguishing features. (This is a different story than in, say, Vampire Knight, where the huge cast of bishounen vampires should really come with a chart or something--actually, this being shoujo manga, they may very well come with a chart. I will have to double-check.) The page design is busy to the point of looking a bit frantic, but this suits the rather slapstick humor that the series occasionally delves into, and I find it a nice change of pace from the more standard shoujo images of wide-eyed closeups and flowery backgrounds.

Plot: The servant's curse is a nice twist on the standard shoujo "boy meets girl" fare, and I like that we see the action from both Megumi's and Suzuka's points of view. Thankfully, the romance picks up pretty quickly, so we don't have to wade through the "Now I like him now I don't, now he likes me and I don't like him, now I like him but he stopped liking me, etc." mood swings that a lot of shoujo titles have fun tormenting us with.

Characters: Suzuka is sweet as a puppy, cute as a puppy, innocent as a puppy, enthusiastic as a puppy, and probably about as smart as . . . you get the idea. Megumi is ever-so-slightly more complex, and would probably be a pretty unbearable Standard Issue Bishounen Jerk(TM) if his curse had never shown up (though we only see a scant few pages of his life before Suzuka, so nothing is certain on that front). Megumi's overly enthusiastic father is pretty enjoyable, though he's mostly used for exposition and recurring "discipline" gags in the first volume.

Side Stories: The first volume has two side stories that take up too many pages for my taste. These are more or less Standard Issue shoujo stories, and lack the imagination and sense of fun that make the main plot so enjoyable.

Captive Hearts has romance, an ancient Chinese curse, an ancient Chinese dragon, and just enough bondage gags to qualify as femdom fanservice. All in all, it's a fun little title that touches briefly on the relationship between service and love, but mostly just takes its "servant curse" premise and runs with it.

What's Not on TV: an Armchair Feminist Take

2008-09-12T20:52:00.000-07:00

There are many other things I could be doing. There are many other things I should be doing. However, at the end of a very busy week, what I somehow want to do is blog about TV shows. TV shows have been haunting me lately. I look at a piece of feminist theory these days, and it inevitably invokes a kind of feminist TV nostalgia.

Hypothesis: Even though we pretend that modern-day entertainment media is progressive, egalitarian and so Girl Power that we might as well just sit back and enjoy the show(s), television serials have actually been getting less feminist in the last ten years, and instead of addressing this problem, we close our eyes and think of England (that was for you, Shadowedge). Buffy is just the exception that proves the rule.

Things I miss in/on television:

Girls who talk to each other about things other than sex, men, fashion and the main (usually male) character of any given series. Now repeat the previous sentence, replacing "girls" with "women." I also miss the presentation of "women" in television. You know, women with problems beyond stinky relationships with men.

Once upon a day, from the mid-80s to the 90s, we had TV shows that offered things that are no longer being offered on "mainstream" cable television.

Allow me to submit the following evidence for the court's consideration:

Kate & Allie (1984-1989)
Who's the Boss? (1984-1992)
The Golden Girls (1985-1992)
Designing Women (1986-1993)
Myrphy Brown (1988-1989)
Caroline in the City (1995-1999)

What do these shows have in common? 1. The women have lives. 2. The women have (or have had) jobs. 3. The women are the main characters, and speak to other women about things that are not necessarily guys.

Just for fun, let's try a little "Then and Now" exercise using Designing Women and the comparatively modern (and by now, thoroughly mainstreamed) hit Sex and the City:

Julia = Miranda
Mary Jo = Carrie
Charlene = Charlotte
Suzanne = Samantha

How new and progressive does Sex and the City seem now, really?

Alright, so maybe that's a little unfair to late-night TV's favorite PR agent, but it still matches up pretty well: you've got your uberfeminist, your "normal" girl, your innocent damsel and your Queen Bee.

Now, just for kicks, let's try it again with The Golden Girls:

Blanche = Samantha
Rose = Charlotte
Dorothy = Miranda/Carrie
Sophia = all the recurring snarky people (mostly gay male friends)

It's a shame that I can't much up the four women in one show with the four women in the next, but Bea Arthur's character provides both the "normal person" glue of Carrie and the "no nonsense edge" of Miranda in one convenient package, while Sophia exists to add a lot of pointed one-liners that do not usually have an impact on any episode storyline, no matter how silly.

Is this a sign of stagnation in the televised presentation of women in groups? Maybe so, maybe not. Perhaps any fictional group of approximately 4 people needs an innocent/idiot, a "strong" character, a "glamorous" character and an everyman/woman. Someone should look into it. At this moment, I'm not volunteering, but I am willing to start:

The bi-gendered, uber-formulaic Will & Grace gets awfully close to the above formula, only with two everypersons (Will & Grace), one Queen Bee (who pulls double duty as an idiot, triple if you count her breasts as well) and one standard-issue idiot. Will & Grace may get mad props for trying to make it "okay to be gay" on plain old mainstream American television, but its utter lack of strong female characters, strong gay characters, strong characters of any kind and successful, long term gay partnerships makes it something I would not recommend to, well, anyone. Do self-respecting women see themselves or an acceptable role model in Grace? In (gack!) Karen? Are the men in the show any better, as role models or fictional stand-ins for anyone, no matter what gender or sexual orientation? If I want to look at a televised interior designer and think "role model," I'll take Dixie Carter over Debra Messing any day.

I hate Will & Grace and I am not a homophobe, at least as far as I know. If there is a petition out there for "Please, please, you Hollywood jerks, make a sitcom about a gay couple rather than a heteronormative show that just includes gay people who never get to have fully developed love lives or even on-screen TLC," let me know and I will rush to sign it. I would love to see that show. (Queer as Folk does not meet this criterion for me. If you are, whether bi, gay, straight, narcissist, omni or whatever, watching that show for a reason other than the hot guys, you confuse me.) Actually, if that petition does not exist, maybe I should create one . . .

But back to presentations of women. Some more of the positive: Murphy Brown.

Murphy Brown does some things that I'm not sure have ever been done since. Murphy defines herself through her career rather than her sexuality, but manages to still be a sexually active woman who does not spend all of her time freaking out about whether she can ever find Mr. Big--I mean Mr. Right. Yes, she is a stereotypical ball-busting feminist. (I would love to argue that she transcends stereotype and embodies an Archetypal Feminist, but that might be more of a fun intellectual exercise than anything else--and I would have to watch the show again.) She can be mean, scary and rude. At the same time, there is something absolutely wonderful about a woman who can express anger openly without facing Dire Consequences every time that she does. Sure, Murphy's over-the-top, but when so many women were (and still are) taught that it's Wrong to express desire, frustration, anger, themselves, a little on-screen pushiness that does not instantly turn a woman into a social untouchable becomes a blessing in and of itself.

Murphy also acts (and dresses) professionally without gratuitously (yes, I'm looking at you, Samantha) showing off her "assets" (what a horribly mercantile term for parts of our own bodies). We know that Murphy, unlike many modern-day heroines, does not need to and would not exchange sexual or sexualized "favors" (even favors so relatively tame as glimpses of cleavage given Erin Brokavich-style) to get what she needs to get in order to get her job done: she would never shtoop to conquer.

I love Murphy Brown. I grew up with her, and the zaniness of the cast's adventures never really registered with me. I thought the show was "realistic," and I think that in the end this was a boon, because it meant that I thought a strong, aggressive woman with a high-powered job and, eventually, a child that she raised on her own was realistic. I thought that I could be powerful, aggressive and single, with no Cinderella makeover, and still be "successful" when I grew up.

Where are all the modern shows about women in jobs that focus on women in jobs and not on the sex lives of women in jobs?

The most recent show on my Feminist Nostalgia list is Caroline in the City, and even though it offers up veritable mountains of ridiculous, I can't help but love it. Reason I love it the first: Caroline has a male employee. As you can probably tell from the general nature of this blog, I am a big sucker for the femdom/malesub dynamic in fiction.

Reason the second: it's about a female cartoonist. ::swoon:: Not only does Caroline have a job, but she has a job on my short list of personal dream-jobs. That comes complete with a cute male assistant. Female fantasy, anyone? Wish fulfillment that might actually appeal to women for once? What a concept.

Seriously. What a concept. It may seem obvious, but so many current TV writers and producers are missing the boat on this one.

Speaking of female-targeted wish fulfillment: Aside from the overall cheesiness that reaches and then surpasses critical mass in its later seasons, all that Who's the Boss really needs to apologize for is its name. Who's the Boss? is not a legitimate question; the two main characters have an employer/employee relationship (though Barney's answer in How I Met Your Mother certainly has the ring of truth--so perhaps it is a legitimate question, with the rivals for the title being Angela and Mona rather than Angela and Tony). Be that as it may, the show has a lot going for it. Yes, yes, I'm far too easy on shows with female employers and male domestics, but I think they're important, if only because they constitute such a small force to stand up against the scads of shows with female domestics (Will & Grace, Two and a Half Men, The Nanny (which does offer compensatory butler-service, but sadly has women relegated to the position of only employees and children--at least until marriage) Arrested Development, even Sex and the City, etc.). And while the witty butler is an enjoyable trope, he generally only shows up in technically male-dominant shows and relationships (Nanny, Fresh Prince). To the Manor Born makes a lovely exception, but we had to import that.

A side note: I remember seeing previews for a sitcom about a divorced man who became the butler to his ex-wife and family. Did anything ever come of that? It looked pretty terrible, and it was hard to watch even the previews without feeling just a little too humiliated on his behalf, but I would be interested to see how the power dynamics played out.

Anyway, Tony is not a snarky butler. He starts the show as a "man's man," and one of the show's many (cheesy, not wrong) after-school-special messages is that he can be a "man" and a homemaker at the same time. He may lose some machismo points in the pursuit of his job, but the message from day one is: If you're man enough, you can take that kind of thing. While many modern women might think twice before inviting Tony Danza into their homes (he's one of those fascinatingly iconic, perpetually typecast TV actors who we tend no longer to envision as Real People), we can choose to accept the show's premise that he's a cute, dumb, friendly guy. Hmmm . . . a cute, friendly guy who waits on a "high-powered executive" woman. Affectionately. Where are there other TV shows like this? Is there even porn like this? We look at it now, and we can complain about the name. "We could never make a show like that now," we think. "It would be offensive to build a show on the 'female employer/male employee' dynamic as if it were something unusual and strange."

Well, fine. We got rid of the shows that offered that dynamic as an offensive "exception," but where are all the shows that offer it as the norm?

Spotlight #1: Hayate the Combat Butler

2008-08-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

English Title: Hayate the Combat Butler
Japanese Title: Hayate no Gotoku
Author: Kenjiro Hata
English Publisher: Viz Media
Anime?: Yes.
Summary: Protagonist's good-for-nothing, debt-ridden parents sell him to the yakuza and he ends up working as a butler for the rich girl who rescues him with money.

I have nothing against a boys' harem manga when it's done well, and Hayate is harem manga done well. The main male character is actually the kind of clueless sweetie you can see girls (and by "girls" it's possible I mean "me") falling for and the female characters cropping up left, right and center happen to be interesting and sympathetic (or at least funny enough that you don't care how horrible they are). To add frosting to this cake of sensible characterization, there are significant male characters in the story who are not the protagonist!

For those of you have have read widely in the harem genre, I'll give you a moment for that to sink in. For those of you who have not and are wondering why I think that's such a big deal, please see Kagetora, Maharomatic, Hand Maid May, Hanaukyo Maids Tai, He is My Master and/or Kage Kara Mamoru for reference, and you'll see my point.

Wow, just think of it: a world not limited to one guy and a bunch of girls! And while a lot of the girls are, inevitably, falling for Sweet But Clueless, the guys in the mix are just as capable of harboring their own secret crushes.

As far as fanservice goes, Hayate is delightfully and unapologetically equal opportunity. There are definitely some cute maids around (please note the prevalence of maids in the harem titles listed above), but the "maid-service" is happily balanced by, well, "butler-service," provided mostly (but not exclusively) by Hayate himself. Explicit fanservice elements include things like Hayate in a (female) "neko" costume and his "ojousama" in maid costume.

The series also tweaks the concept of fanservice a bit: since Hayate and his coworker Maria wear their butler and maid costumes on an everyday basis, it becomes a form of "fanservice" pretty much anytime they put on anything else, like street clothes or school uniforms.

However, the quite tame fanservice elements of the story are, thankfully, not the point (see that list of other harem titles again to remind yourself why that's so important), as Hayate the Combat Butler is, of course, a comedy. And in this case, that's not just a generic distinction used to keep from having to call it proto-porn (which it's not, just to be clear, but stuff like He is My Master makes me die a little inside); Hayate, unlike far too many of its fellow harem titles, is actually funny.

Aside from the highly adorable Hayate, the character who puts this series on my Top 10 manga to Take to a Desert Island list is the female lead, Sanzenin Nagi. While she is the short, cute, bossy, violent rich-girl stereotype, she somehow manages to be really likable at the same time. And while this could be because she's prone to the occasional random act of generosity, maturity or kindness, her likability is probably largely due to the fact that she is a complete otaku.

Nagi is the kind of fangirl who writes her own frenetic, poorly drawn and plot-less action/fantasy manga (We see several examples of it throughout the series, and it's a treat!) and sends it to contests expecting to win. She is also the kind of enormously rich fangirl who has different rooms for different game consoles. And while she is as "girly" (in the frills-and-knee socks way) as girly can be in terms of looks and dress, her taste runs towards the kinds of action-packed manga and video games that would normally be considered boys' fare. She also has a combination of skewed pragmatism and aggressive laziness that I don't feel I see often enough in female manga characters, or female characters in general.

This goes on my femdom list, obviously, because the primary pairing is female master/ male servant. It gets high marks on that list partly because both characters really embrace these roles and think (inasmuch as characters in this genre "think") about the responsibilities they have towards one another within this dynamic. Hayate, grateful to his rich young savior, goes about trying to please his "ojousama" with an attitude of puppy-like devotion. The ojousama in question, for her part, does her best to think about what her duties as Hayate's "master" are and tries to do right by him.

And if all that's not enough, there are giant robots.

"No Soy un Artista"

2008-08-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

In one of the many Spanish classes I took during my formative years, we were required to write short bios for historical figures and deliver them to the rest of the class. Instead of dressing in costume, we were to make and "wear" (they were mostly poster board glued to popsicle stick handles) a mask of our persona of choice. One girl shyly held up her mask and announced by way of apology, "No soy un artista" before beginning her speech.

So what? It was a language class after all, right? And yet none of us were immune to the compulsion to compare our skills as "artists," to decide whose mask was beautiful, whose sketchy, whose wretched. It was a competition with all judges and no prize.

So many times, I see my friends and colleagues drawing, for one reason or another, and then apologizing for it. Offering disclaimers: "I'm not an artist." "I can't draw." "No soy un artista."

I started to think that this was what I was supposed to do . . . that this was what I had to do . . . I had no real formal training, no publications, no dazzling portfolio, no proof I was an artist. My work did not look sleek, polished, professional, as-good-as-this-guy's-or-that-guy's, so I ought to be apologizing for it, right? Forgive me. Lo siento. It's not very good. "I can't draw." And the more I said it, the more true it became.

I fell into this habit once more not too long ago, and the gentleman I was speaking to said something along the lines of, "You see, I don't accept that. I hate it when people draw and then say they can't draw." I hated it too. Honestly. Fervently. Passionately. So why had I apologized, yet again, for something that I love to do?

I suppose my desire to stop verbally negating what I create in a visual medium is one of the reasons I've ended up posting so much of what I draw. It's an attempt to step aside, offer what I can do and have done, and do my damnedest not to apologize for not being better. It could always be better. I could always be better. Without the possibility of improvement, what would we artists strive for?

Why this blog exists

2008-07-16T05:49:00.000-07:00

This blog is for me to discuss why I draw, what I read, what I love and what I fear. It will also include a regular spotlight on anime and manga in which the girls are on top. I will be posting quasi-philosophical commentary on what drawing means to me, quasi-academic responses to "femdom" anime & manga titles and rants on why "femdom" titles are important. I will also examine non-femdom titles in the context of their presentation of gender dynamics and treatment of female characters.

For the purposes of this blog, I'm defining a "femdom" title as any work in which the primary female character has actual authority over the primary male character. While female-over-female power dynamics could also validly be defined as femdom, I will not be categorizing them as such, for the simple reason that they tend not to invert the traditional power structure found in most available manga & anime in the same way.