Ugly American: In Defense of Monsters

Since monsters tend to dwell over in these parts, I thought it apropos to defend one of comics’ most notorious creatures; Mark Millar. I’m talking about his recent comments regarding his use of rape in that New Republic article that everybody (except Millar, of course) is so upset about. No stranger to controversy is Mr. Millar, to be sure. I don’t even think it’s accurate to say that he courts these little public relations disasters – frankly, he demands them.

And yet, things are never quite so simple or so base as Millar or his vehement critics would have you believe. There are lots of layers to the onion that is The Crazy Scottish Git, as I am fond of calling him. And there is a lot of context to parse regarding Millar, and Kick-Ass 2, and American culture in general. The Bunnies would have you believe the situation is as simple as “Mark Millar is a rape-obsessed pervert who thinks it doesn’t matter”.

That’s demonstrably absurd.

In order to paint a more rational picture, though, it would be helpful to start at the beginning, with the article that started the The Great Feces Storm. Or maybe even before. Yeah, let’s start before that, even.

All of this hullaballoo is centered on Mark Millar’s admittedly frequent depictions of rape in his comics in general, and Kick-Ass 2 in particular. I clearly remember the Pharisees wailing in the streets and tearing their robes when the Red Mist and his gang did unspeakable atrocities to Dave’s would-be girlfriend Katie in that series. “It’s time to see what evil dick tastes like”, says Mist.

That scene is detestable and loathsome….and it’s supposed to be. Here at the Ugly American we’ve already covered the basic principle of “representation does not equal endorsement”, so I won’t retread that ground here. Suffice to say that the sick feeling in your stomach when you read that rape scene is exactly what Millar intended to be there. These are bad guys doing bad things. Duh. Bunnies don’t get that, though. They just know that things they don’t like shouldn’t exist, and people that do things they don’t like should be silenced. We’ll get to the specific Bunny Briar objections to all this later, I promise.

That New Republic article wasn’t the first time Millar had to field bad press regarding Kick-Ass 2 the film, though. Right about the time Jim Carrey would have had to start doing press for the film, he suddenly grew a conscience. In light of the Newtown shootings, he could no longer endorse the film, yadda yadda yadda, insert wailing in the streets and robe-tearing here.

Mind you, the check still cashed very nicely for Mr. Carrey. No mention of giving back that “blood” money, or donating it to the victims of Sandy Hook, or anything else that would involve actual moral integrity. Like all limousine liberals, Carrey made damn sure he got the best of all worlds with the least cost to himself – he got to profit handsomely, he got his vanity stroked by a cheering throng every time he got in front of a microphone over what a wonderful person he was, and he got to sit at home with all that money while everyone else rolled up their sleeves and did the grueling work of marketing the movie.

What’s interesting to me about that scenario is Millar’s response to the cowardly little two-faced turncoat. Millar’s response was essentially “Love ya, Jim, and wish you’d reconsider, (especially considering you knew exactly what you were getting into when you signed on) but I respect your opinion and wish you the best.” Jim Carrey just took a bunch of his money and then publicly took a poop on his movie, and Millar just smiled and went about his business.

Now….does that sound like a monster to you? Or does that sound like a cat who walks the road of tolerance? Does that sound like a dude with no sensitivity for other people or their plight? Or did he just take a slap in the face that could have jeopardized a multi-million dollar project and then show empathy? We’ll get back to that later.

So…the New Republic article. Here is where context gets awfully difficult, if not impossible. That article was a phone interview combined with research. It was not published in an “I asked this question, then Millar said this in response format”. My point is, we don’t know exactly what Abraham Reisman said to Millar that prompted his much-criticized response. The article makes it appear as though Reisman got a quote from Laura Hudson about Millar’s use of rape in his work, and then brought it to Millar’s attention for a response. Here’s what it looks like in the original article:

Laura Hudson, the former editor-in-chief of the popular blog Comics Alliance and a senior editor at Wired, thought that scene was deplorable, but typical of Millar. “There's one and only one reason that happens, and it's to piss off the male character,” she said. “It's using a trauma you don't understand in a way whose implications you can't understand, and then talking about it as though you're doing the same thing as having someone's head explode. You're not. Those two things are not equivalent, and if you don't understand, you shouldn't be writing rape scenes.”

Millar is of the exact opposite opinion, saying they are equivalent, and that his depictions of sexual violence are all part of his ongoing quest to push boundaries.

“The ultimate [act] that would be the taboo, to show how bad some villain is, was to have somebody being raped, you know?” he told me. “I don't really think it matters. It's the same as, like, a decapitation. It's just a horrible act to show that somebody's a bad guy.”

OK, bear with me now, because I’m going to do a little literary forensics. I believe that the Millar quote was actually created first, based upon a question the reader isn’t actually privy to, and that Laura Hudson responded to the Millar quote.

Here’s why I think that. The key element for me is this:

“It’s the same as, like, a decapitation.”

What that sounds like to me is Millar making an argument on the fly and searching for an abhorrent equivalent to rape, not referencing a quote just shared with him.

The other thing that just doesn’t jive with me is the phrase “I don’t really think it matters”. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to call rape the ultimate taboo in one breath and then minimize the act directly after.

Here’s what I think really happened, and I’ll freely admit that I am now engaging in reasoned speculation, and not any kind of factual knowledge. I wasn’t there for the interview, so only Reisman and Millar know how things actually went down. But given the tone and the subject matter of that article, what if Reisman asked Millar something along the lines of:

“You sure do have a lot of rape in your stories – are you just a skeevy perv, or what’s that all about?”
Now, I’m sure my hypothetical question was posed a bit more diplomatically, but that’s the gist. At that point Millar is forced to do one of two things – A) tell the interviewer to go fuck himself or B) walk the interviewer through an explanation of why his usage of rape is about story mechanics and not a personal fetish.

I think that there is an implication of psychosis (the article’s headline flat-out calls him comics’ sickest mind) in a lot of the questions Millar is forced to field, and that response is about saying “Hey, I’m not a rape freak. It’s a story technique to make villains as bad as they can possibly be so that you care about the hero’s plight. I’m not interested in rape, I’m interested in drama, and that’s about the most dramatic thing I can imagine, because it’s terrible.”

That’s what I think happened. I can’t prove it, but it makes sense to me. Certainly a lot more sense than Reisman bouncing the Hudson quote off of him and then inexplicably focusing on the equivalency part of the argument. I would think if the Hudson quote actually came first, he would address the part where she implies he shouldn’t be allowed to write stories about rape if he doesn’t understand it properly.

We shouldn’t just gloss over that part, by the way. One of the more obnoxious tendencies of the Briar Patchers is the insatiable need to be the arbiters of things. Bunnies get to decide who is allowed to do what. If Mark Millar doesn’t think like Laura Hudson, then he shouldn’t get to write things on those subjects where they disagree. Bunnies are fascist dictators by nature. But it’s always for your own good, so you’ve got that going for you.

Hudson gives no indication about who is qualified to write about rape, how often it should come up, or what a proper rape portrayal should look like. We only ever get the negative – sexist male writers (and they’re all sexist, don’t you know) shouldn’t get to write about rape, it happens too much in comics, and it only happens as a plot device to upset the male lead.

I find it very odd that the Bunnies never have a template to point to. There is never a silver lining in the grievance cloud, there is only victimhood and the inevitable clapping for the “courage” these Bunnies show in defying their oppressors. You would think that in the history of comics, one person would have gotten their rape depiction right, even if just by accident. The comics medium has travelled across a myriad of time periods, and have been constructed by a wide variety of creators. Many of them, dare I say, with philosophies very Bunny-centric in ethos. In fact, if you’re paying attention at all, the medium is currently LOUSY with them.

So why do Hudson and her ilk never have a positive example to point to and exclaim “less like Millar, more like that?” One, because there would inevitably be disagreement on the issue, and that would put the infallibility of the Bunny doctrine into question. Can’t have that. Easier to just declare it all rotten and enjoy the applause from the cowards in the peanut gallery. The Bunnies end up eating their own in that manner, by the way. Can you imagine what it must have been like to be Judd Winnick and Scott Lobdell catching flak for their sexism when the New 52 first launched? No, even the feminists are sexist in the 21st century.

The truth is there will never be a “correct” portrayal of rape in comics, because in the bizarro 21st Century we gain cultural capital through victimhood, not victory. No matter the facts or reality, there will never be any (admitted) progress in comics because then you have to relinquish your victim status, and that’s where all the power is. If you’re oppressed, you can whine and change the books, save characters, you can even make sure that Orson Scott Card never works again. That’s power!

If you’re a victim, everybody in public is afraid of you. The trick is to always be a victim. How admirable.

As to the frequency of rape in comics, I have no data to say that it happens too often or not enough. I don’t find a lot of rape in my comics, but then again, I’m only reading about 25-30 a month. I also don’t find any female characters acting only as window dressing, waiting to be abused so that male characters get mad. I read about Carol Danvers,

and Alana from Saga, and Arcadia Alvarado from Saucer Country, (who might have been probed…but so was her estranged husband) and Officer Dana Cypress of Revival. No wilting lilies or damsels in distress waiting for men to take revenge there. How about Rachel from Rachel Rising or Cassie Hack or Hazmat or X-23 or Harper Row or Casey Blevins or Kate Bishop or Carlie Cooper or…need I go on? It’s not that I don’t find a lot of the sexist stereotypes I’m told are completely dominating comics….I can’t find ONE.

One thing I do find, and find curious – so many of Millar’s detractors cite statistics indicating that rape is everywhere, and that nobody escapes unscathed. It’s going to happen to you, or someone you know, they say, and that hardly seems like the case for decapitations, MARK! I believe in those statistics.

Well, fine, but doesn’t that make the case that rape should come up in comics, and with relatively high frequency? If that’s reality, why bury it? I think the danger would only be in promoting rape, and I hardly think Millar’s comics qualify. In Millarworld, rape is something villains do in order to prove their supreme villainy.

Listen, Millar is a showman, a carny in the old school style. His comics are over-the-top, and absurd, and if you wanted to make the case that his cartoony depictions of violence diminish the horror of it all…I guess I could listen to that argument. I still don’t think the answer is censorship, but I’ll listen. I don’t believe for a second that anyone at any time picked up a Mark Millar comic and said to themselves “I didn’t think rape was cool before, but now I think it’s awesome.” That just doesn’t exist. Quite the opposite, I would say. So relax, people.

Mark Millar is not a monster. He’s a guy with a mother, and a wife, and a daughter. He’s not promoting or minimizing rape. I don’t know why supposedly educated adults don’t get that. You know who gets it? A 16 year-old girl. Here’s Chloe Moretz, also known as Hit Girl:

"It's a movie," Moretz recently told a reporter. "If you are going to believe and be affected by an action film, you shouldn't go to see 'Pocahontas' because you are going to think you are a Disney princess."

"If you are that easily swayed, you might see 'The Silence of the Lambs' and think you are a serial killer," Moretz said.

"It's a movie and it's fake, and I've known that since I was a kid ... I don't want to run around trying to kill people and cuss. If anything, these movies teach you what not to do."

Amen, sister.

By the way, can you guess Millar’s response to this latest storm of feces? There hasn’t been one. I love that. I love that he’s smart enough to understand that he’s never going to change the mind of a Laura Hudson, so there’s no point in feeding the troll. I love the fact that he understands that the people who count know that a “monster” who takes the high ground isn’t much of a monster at all.

But most all, I love the fact that he didn’t apologize. I’m so deathly weary of good people apologizing for things that aren’t crimes, simply to appease inflated sanctimonious egos. Keep fighting the good fight, you Crazy Scottish Git!