Holy Men in Tights! Academic Superhero Conference

Malfourmed writes "The University of Melbourne's Cinema Studies Program, School of Art History, Cinema, Classics & Archaeology is hosting a four day conference (and fancy dress ball and movie programme) on superhoeroes and supervillains. The interdisciplinary conference will address the varying roles, identities, and social functions that these superheroes serve. Topics include censorship; industry and franchise differentiation (eg DC vs Marvel); mythology; the female superhero ("It has been a very much male-centred universe," co-convener Saige Walton said. "They need some more chicks."); ethnicity, class and race; diverse media formats (cinema, comics, computer games, television) ; the resurgence in the cult of superpowers in recent cinema; super-auteurs (eg Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Tezuka Osamu, Grant Morrison); fan culture; the science and physics of the superhero; ancient superheroes; and the 'hero' who isn't 'super'."

Re:Women in comic books

[master_p]

hey have confused (or purposefully replaced) strong with sexy.

Actually 'sexy' means 'biologically strong'. A female is perceived as sexy because her body shape 'promises' healthy children, and thus survival of the genes. The same goes for men.

No radiation involved?

[AussieVamp2]

Superman
Wonder Woman
Green Lantern
The Flash
Hawkman/girl
Martian Manhunter
Aquaman

hmm, maybe the justice league is radiation prejudiced ;-)

Re:Women in comic books

[meringuoid]

otakus

Otaku. One otaku, two otaku, three otaku, four. It's a Japanese word, and so it doesn't change in the plural.

Re:children

[philbert26]

A man is capable of having children with multiple women. For a woman to do the opposite is not as advantageous.

It is if the woman can keep it a secret. In many species, including humans, females will mate with other males while their partner is otherwise engaged. That way they vary the genetic mix of their children, while still keeping a male partner to look after them.

Re:Women in comic books

[Mant]

People like to see attractive people in their entertainment, just look at Films or TV, or even many books. Comic book heroes are drawn to be attractive, both male and female. In comic books people are usually either attractive or disfigured. Unsexy characters of either sex are rare unless they are just supporting characters. Just like TV, books, films etc.

This isn't about women in comics, it is about people in popular entertainment.

Muscular men are usually considered attractive, muscular women are not. So the men get exaggerated pecs and abs, and the women exaggerated boobs and waist. Equal treatment really, emphasise what is considered attractive. I don't see sexy women in comics demeaning women any more than sexy men in comics demeans men. Cheese/Beef-cake all round.

They are projecting attractive/sexy, not "strong", it's just for men that often translates as "muscular". In the superhero genre though muscular doesn't mean much. Physical strength isn't about how muscular you are but superpowers (some super strong characters are muscular, but some aren't), and real character strength is about, well strength of character which is completely unrelated.

Both lots are put in revealing and/or skin tight costumes. Treatment here seems pretty equal, make them look good. The difference is society put more pressure on women to "look good", so guys reading comics don't feel bad about all these toned hunks.

Now it is true that historically female super heroes have been somewhat second string. The big companies Marvel and DC go back a way, and a lot of their heroes are from a time when attitudes between the sexes were different. When female heroes were introduced they were often knockoffs and often sidekicks of male characters (batwoman, batgirl, supergirl etc).

That hasn't been so true for a while though, check out stuff like Catwomen, or Birds of Prey for strong women in charge. Wasp has been chairperson of the Avengers, Storm field leader of the X-Men. Step outside the big two and you can find more independent and strong super heroines, although yes they will look sexy, becuase we expect that of both sexes in our entertainment.

So you expect healthy kids from a MUTANT?

[Moraelin]

Let me tell you a secret: There's a reason the thin models get silicone implants to have big breasts. The reason is human biology.

There is a fundamental problem with the current brain-fucked ideal of beauty (as represented in comics too), namely anorexic with huge breasts. The problem is that it tends not to happen in normal, healthy humans. By the time the body has been forced to eat its fat reserves, or didn't have enough food to build them up in the first place, guess what? It doesn't have enough fat for big breasts either. Those reserves went too.

The current ideal of beauty is something that deviates far enough from the biological average, or from a normal human metaboloism, to count as a _mutant_.

So you're telling me... what? That you're expecting normal healthy kids from a _mutant_? Now I would understand a fascination with mutants in comics as a source of super-powers (after all, most super-heroes are mutants). But as a means of propagating normal human genes to healthy human offspring, it's outright idiotic.

And as was already mentioned, this ideal is very new. In some parts of the world, as new as late 20'th century. (See recent stories about Asian girls ending up with metabolism problem and other illnesses, by starving themselves or making themselves puke, to fit the beauty ideal Hollywood raped their coutries with. Countries where until recently the idea of beauty was a slightly fat woman.)

See, for most of human history, the beauty ideal was actually someone who by modern standards would be considered overweight. And you know the fertility figurines the cavemen made? Now those were seriously overweight.

_That_ was the kind of shape that guaranteed survival the next time there's a famine or you catch a disease. An anorexic wife would most likely have died long before passing those genes along. Someone with fat reserves would have survived.

And then there are other bleeps on the history radar, such as the Greeks and Romans. You may notice that those did have statues of thin women, for a change. They also had tiny breasts. In fact, the Romans are noted as having invented the bra... for the purpose of _hiding_ breasts. In effect, a strip of cloth tied over the breasts to make a woman look like she had none.

Oops, that ideal of beauty was different from ours too.

Or then, yes, were the Chinese, whose idea of beauty was more centred around crippled feet. A woman was apparently dead sexy for them if, before anything else, her feet were crippled to the point of barely being able to walk.

Oops, that differs from our beauty ideal too.

So give me a break. There is no correlation between our current _mutant_ ideal of beauty and survival in anything even vaguely resembling natural condition. And there is _no_ constant ideal through human history to suggest that somehow chasing that idea is built into the species.

Re:Super Heroes

[xTown]

It would seem like the conference organizers agree with you. If you look at the conference schedule, there are a bunch of papers directly targeting the general relation between superheroes and mythmaking. There are also some titles that look as if they address the very questions you raise, like "Theseus Versus Hannibal Lecter: Heroic Quests Into The Labyrinth In Modern Cinema," "Conquerer of Flood, Wielder of Fire: Noah the Hebrew Superhero,"and "Antiquities as Superheroes: (Re)Presenting the Utopian Past in the Athens Olympics."

In general, though, whether earlier myths, legends and stories have any bearing kind of depends on what exactly you're examining. If you're doing a scholarly study on the metaphysical implications of "Crisis on Infininte Earths," then Dumas and Swift probably aren't going to help you too much.