Recently, there's been some... Offense taken to the handling of Harley Quinn by DC Comics. On top of the two years of outcry regarding the New 52, there's the now infamous fan contest. Long story short, DC was having a competition for a fan's art to be featured in Quinn's series. The page they were to draw featured a variety of suicide attempts by the villainess, with the last panel depicting her naked in the classic "toaster in the tub" scenario.
While the signs point to it being part of a gag (as per the character's morbid humor), the page's script was released out of context, inciting accusations of character derailment and "sexualizing suicide." All of this was exacerbated by bad timing: it fell just after the controversial decision to ban marriage in the comics and just before National Suicide Prevention Week.
As far as Suicide Prevention Week goes, it's hard to blame the company. This writer is someone with a history of depression, and even put on a short suicide watch, but had only the vaguest idea something like that existed, let alone when it was. Every week is "something" awareness, so it can be hard to keep track. However, that's no doubt of little comfort to those who have been affected by the tragedy of suicide. Plus, DC is a big enough company that they should maybe have someone in PR who knows this stuff.
The tragedy of suicide is another point, here. When the defense of the contest is "It's a joke," the counter is often "Suicide's not funny." Now, since comedy is so subjective, that's really an individual point of view problem, rather than a company-wide belittlement issue. Also, given that Harley is a bit of a dark prankster, the joke falls under her purview rather well. Quite a few bloggers have leapt up and essentially said "DC should have thought about how groups of people might have taken this out of context," which fanslates to "I should have been personally consulted about this idea." Look, if DC needs to think about how each and every person is going to be offended by something, maybe they shouldn't have given Batwoman her own series. Embracing gays sets quite a few people off, that doesn't mean they're right.
Then, of course, there is the alleged sexualization/exploitation of the offending panel script. I'm not quite sure what anyone means by this, but "sexualization" is a broad term, so it could mean a couple things:
- The fact that she's naked. Proclaiming that the female (or male) body is sexualized just because it's bare is an idea so stupid, that it doesn't even deserve a response. It's not like they're slimming her already tiny waist or upping her already impressive (especially for a girl who's supposed to be a gymnast) bust size, so it's just the same body with fewer clothes. Considering the outfit Harley's been strutting around in recently, the fact that she'll be in the water means you'll likely see less skin.
- It's degrading to the character (like a submission fantasy). Isn't sexuality, like humor, subjective? This writer finds nothing arousing about a woman trying to kill herself. Probably 99% of men (and women and so forth) feel the same way. Suicide attempts don't particularly indicate anyone getting blood flow to their nether regions, but they do indicate mental illness, of which, holy shit, Harley Quinn has a shit ton.
So, if pretty much everyone's in agreement that there's nothing inherently exploitive about nudity or anything sexual about suicide, where's the problem? Yes, it's easy to point at Batwoman's marriage debacle and throw out accusations of DC being sexist, but you have to look at the events individually. The Batwoman thing is part of a larger initiative against all marriage, according to Dan Didio. Is it wrong-headed? Yeah, it's pretty stupid. But really, aren't there just as many stories to tell about single heroes as married ones? It's just that broad generalization that's wrong, which is exactly what fans are doing. They're ignoring great stories that DC is publishing about and by females, like "Wonder Woman," "Batgirl," and "
Furthermore, this is kind of an issue Harley Quinn fans in particular are ranting about. They're holding her up as this empowering character that's an innocent trickster in the DCU. This thought process disregards most of her history. On "Batman: The Animated Series," her debut, she often made innuendo towards the Joker ("Rev your Harley"), and in her pre-52 comic, she was a flat out murderer. Some authors have stated that she doesn't know what she's doing, and thus not culpable for her actions, but given that she was not-too-long-ago an accomplished psychiatrist, this demonstrates a profound lack of insight as to how mental illness works. That said, even if she's not aware of her crimes, what she's doing is still wrong. Harley Quinn is a dangerous psychotic. So much for empowering. This is still overlooking her origin: a naïve therapist corrupted by a madman. Her entire existence is defined by a relationship to a man. This isn't like Batgirl, where she was just inspired to action and used her own inherent qualities to motivate her. No, she was molded into a villain by the Joker. So much for independent.
This is why it's so baffling that this contest incident is getting this kind of attention. Fans of Harley claimed she was relatable: she's peppy, she's got some man troubles, but her friends (Poison Ivy and sometimes Catwoman) are there for her. Now they're mad she's got a more revealing costume and is meaner. What they seem to forget is that her peppiness comes from being not in touch with reality, her man troubles are actually a physically and psychologically abusive relationship, and her friends are an equally disturbed eco-terrorist and and thief who basically gets off on danger (though to be fair is one of the saner inhabitants of Gotham City). Most of all, they seem to forget that she's a fucking supervillain. She's a bad guy and hurts people. Is that someone who's relatable? Someone to whom you aspire?
Also, real quick, I want to weigh in on the Batwoman controversy. First of all, of all the Bat-family, Kate Kane seems the best fit to a married life, certainly more so than Bruce Wayne (who in my opinion should never be married, being the father role of a man, as opposed to Superman's husband role). However, the New 52 has been going on for only two years. Translating that into comic book time means it's even shorter. That seems like not a long dating period before an engagement.
Of course, you can throw out the old joke about how quickly lesbian relationships move, but if DC did let Batwoman marry, wouldn't that possibly invite accusations of stereotyping? I don't know, I can't remember off the top of my head how advanced Maggie Sawyer and Kate Kane's romance was before the 52, so I could be wrong about how long they've been dating.
Also, RE: the title of this post. I personally think Harley Quinn is an awful character, but you're not actually stupid for liking her. OK, a little bit.
