I. Introduction: Comics as a U. S. Cultural Index
IV. The Invisible=Woman: A Storm and Her Teacup
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IV. The Invisible=Woman: A Storm and Her TeacupThe early-60s mark of the FF comic is equally evident in Reed’s fiancée and later wife, Susan Storm-Richards, a.k.a. The Invisible Girl (subsequently, the Invisible Woman). It is no wonder, therefore, that of all the characters she was the one most revamped in the 2005 film, played by the best-known actress among those involved, and upgraded to a fellow top scientist and a prize of contention between Reed and von Doom. The name alone suggests the textbook case of woman in patriarchy, as “‘Woman’ is that which is assigned and has no power of self-definition.”48 The Invisible=Woman is the blank (i.e., penis-less) spot, as “unrepresentable” as death on which, according to a slew of feminist critics, the phallogocentric empire of the symbolic sign is inscribed and built.49 Her role as “impressionable” tabula permanently rasa is heightened by the age-difference between her and Reed: she was 12-year old when she developed a crush on Reed as a graduate student, so in a sense she is also “consumed” before she is erased.50 Sue is typically “ladylike,” blonde (a hue next to invisible), and usually penciled as Doris Day or June Cleaver—51 that is, an “invisible” original self styled as a copy of the ideal 60s housewife. Most ironically, the sacrifice of her aspirations to movie stardom in order to serve invisibly her “family”’s greater good,52 and her subsequent high-visibility as team lady only reinforces the schema of a woman’s erasure-and-reinscription according to the patriarchal codes of representation. Sue’s auxiliary power to produce invisible force-fields that can briefly envelop and shield the others from trouble makes her the bodily metonymy for the sheltering home which is a woman’s oyster. Her modus operandi is to sneak undetected in or, usually, out of the battlefield, fall unconscious or captive (due to a soft heart and unsound judgment), and then get rescued by the male members of the FF, worrying all the while whether Reed (who usually ignores her pleas, thus making her twice invisible)53 has had his dinner, even when the world is literally coming to an end!54 Sue’s utter devotion and deference to Reed appears to earn her the position of the anima in the Jungian quadripartite division of the personality, that is, “the female element in every male,” especially since Jung describes the anima as essentially a certain inferior kind of relatedness to the surroundings…which is kept carefully concealed from others as well as from oneself.”55 In addition, “the anima appears in her proper positive role…as a mediator between the ego and the Self,”56 a role which Sue fills by always easing the tension between Reed-the Self and her flamboyant brother, the Torch, whom we shall see occupies the ego position. Ostensibly the motivator and “heart” of the team body,57 the Invisible Sue nevertheless also serves the model of the tainted “Eve” of phallogocentric mythos, by developing an attraction for another former foe—later superhero—Namor the Submariner, the amphibian Prince of Atlantis, and thus stands accused of betrayal by her teammates.58 This excess of primal female desire uncontained by domesticity or Reed’s “stretching” is the chink in the armor of optimistic technology that characterizes the FF, their anti-Lacanian “lack” that she makes visible. In another sense, Sue is a domesticated manifestation of the Medusa archetype, the anxiety-inducing symbol of the “castrated” female genitals—59 and it is no coincidence that her invisibility is always depicted as a fading from the waist down.60 Further ironic is the fact that, by necessity of comic-book semiotics, where everything must be imaged, the Invisible Woman is never truly invisible! Usually shown as/in a white cutout, or as a dotted-line sketch (a universal signifier, ironically, for “object missing”), she remains prey to the patriarchal division of “woman as image, man as bearer of the look,”61 but simultaneously invites the reader to reconstruct the missing lady by paying enough attention to her. She is the spectre that haunts observable (ergo, scientific) epistemology. This suggestion might also be aided by the fact that comics are considered a “feminine” genre, not only because the image is considered as the sensory/”seductive” counterpart to masculine logos/text, but additionally because comics subject respectably macho males to gaudy, even garish costumes.62 The Invisible Woman’s later 1994 “liberation”—albeit brief—from her demure 60s full-body costume (with a midriff-less swimsuit featuring a cutout “4” right on her cleavage) may on the one hand obviously serve to titillate the teen male audience, but on the other provides her with enough provocative “naughtiness” to gain central focus: to use Cixous tongue-in-cheek, “women are body. More body, hence more writing.”63 What in fact the play between in/visible and femininity in the case of Susan Storm-Richards makes apparent is how, in its commercially- and culturally- driven quest for beautiful visibility (of which Sue is a model, literally), the authentic image of each woman always suffers, and can be easily erased. What, one wonders, is worse, being prettily normal, i.e. invisible, or being noticed as ugly? In the film the monstrous Thing votes first for the former option, but ends up triumphantly trading it for helpful—i.e, visible—ugliness in the end. Finally, Sue does credit to her surname, Storm, by providing the unsettling natural force which—like the cosmic ray storm—upsets the road to a scientific utopia. For Braidotti, the “monstrous” female body has been the venue of inscription, “progressing from the fantastic dimension of the bodily organism to a more rationalistic construction of the body-machine,” and simultaneously of negation of patriarchal scientific thought.64 In the same way, in the FF Sue produces two children with chaotic potential: her son Franklin, a super-powerful mutant due to his inherited genetics, is set to become in the future either the Savior, or the Destroyer of Worlds, verifying on the one hand the myth of woman as Madonna/Eve, but on the other affirming female (pro)creativity over male techno-creation. Her daughter Valeria, in addition, owes her safe birth to Dr. Doom, who steps in when Reed is unable to help. Susan then lets Doom become the godfather and guardian of her daughter, leading by a regression to an organic and purely bodily path toward a reconciliation of magic and science, medievalism and futurism, evil and good that Mr. Fantastic’s technology, with all its attempts to render woman invisible and supplant her powers with machines, could not achieve.65 Directory: ~cdokou ~cdokou -> Crane, Stephen, 1871-1900. The Open Boat ~cdokou -> The Leader of the People ~cdokou -> What is culture? C/c: civilization, society Download 117.11 Kb. Share with your friends:
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