I am becoming known as that ridiculous guy around the DC Boards that thinks Geoff Johns is a racist, so why not go for the whole shabang and accuse him of sexism as well? I keed! I keed! Actually, I want to defend Johns. Kinda.
The following solicit came out today:
GREEN LANTERN #57
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art and cover by DOUG MAHNKE & CHRISTIAN ALAMY
1:10 White Lantern Variant cover by RYAN SOOK, FERNANDO PASARIN & JOEL GOMEZ
BRIGHTEST DAY continues as what readers have been asking for finally arrives: a male Star Sapphire in the form of the Predator. But how is this entity unlike the others? And what does it want with Carol Ferris? Meanwhile, the White Lantern is defended by an unlikely hero…
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale AUGUST 25 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Geoff Johns has recieved some negative feedback for portraying the Star Sapphires, avatars of love, as exclusively females. However from the looks of this solicitation’s portrayal it doesn’t look like the first male Star Sapphire is going to quiet the critics. Frankly, I find his ridiculously cartoonish portrayal of love more offfensive or even that unbelievably skanky Carol Ferris constume but I digress.
If you ascribe to the teachings of psychoanalysis it would make sense that the Star Sapphires seem to be mostly women. Jacques-Alain Miller, the primier lacanian psychoanalyst, had this to say about love in an interview with Hanna Waar:
J.-A. M. – To love, you have to admit your lack, and recognise that you need the other, that you miss him or her. Those that think they’re complete on their own, or want to be, don’t know how to love. And sometimes, they ascertain this painfully. They manipulate, pull strings, but of love they know neither the risk nor the delights.
H. W. – ‘Complete on their own’: only a man could think that…
J.-A. M. – Well spotted! Lacan used to say, ‘To love is to give what you haven’t got.’ Which means: to love is to recognize your lack and give it to the other, place it in the other. It’s not giving what you possess, goods and presents, it’s giving something else that you don’t possess, which goes beyond you. To do that you have to assume your lack, your ‘castration’ as Freud used to say. And that is essentially feminine. One only really loves from a feminine position. Loving feminises. That’s why love is always a bit comical in a man. But if he lets himself get intimidated by ridicule, then in actual fact he’s not very sure of his virility.
H. W. – Is loving more difficult for men then?
J.-A. M. – Oh yes! Even a man in love has flashes of pride, bursts of aggressiveness against the object of his love, because this love puts him in a position of incompleteness, of dependence. That’s why he can desire women he doesn’t love, so as to get back to the virile position he suspends when he loves. Freud called this principle the ‘debasement of love life’ in men: the split between love and sexual desire. (read the whole interview here)
Given this view I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that a male represenative of the Star Sapphire, never-mind the predator which is the entity that embodies the source of the Star Sapphire, would be far more likely to give into the more tyrannical urges of love. Of course such a view is unpopular, as gender studies has been pretty much colonized by post-modernists who insist that any difference between males and female is constructed. What these post-modernists fail to grasp is that just because they are constructed doesn’t make them any less real. More importantly understanding the constructed nature of the divide doesn’t help to bridge it.
What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you disapprove of Johns portrayal of the Star Sapphires? Or do you think this creates interesting tensions and individuates them from the other corps?
Filed under: DC Comics, Feminism, Gender, Psychoanalysis, Carol Ferris, Geoff Johns, Green Lantern, Love, The Predator
I just wanted to repost part of this comment because I thought it was pertinent to new comers to psychoanalysis.
By rosy forlenza – There is, I agree, a difficulty within psychoanalytic language at times which is at odds with a post-modern political correctness, but when we deal with fantasy, the unconscious and social construction and discourses maybe there has to be an element of discomfort to keep pace with flux and lack of stability (and as Soler points out, an unmitigated rise in anxiety, but Lacan’s contribution is surely that the question posed is idiosyncratic to each subject, and in my practice, the question that love poses, is an ever recurring one.