[ SECRET POST #3811 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3811 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.
[resized, not a repeat]











Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 45 secrets from Secret Submission Post #546.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think the argument that people are making is that this is a particularly morally wrong or sexist thing for the fictional character The Joker to do. That's really not where people are coming from.

Intratextually - within the fictional constructed world of DC comics - the Joker is threatening the "bat" in Batgirl not the "girl". That's the motivation of the fictional character within the story. But extratextually - approaching the story as a fictional construct - this event was the result of a decision by actually existing real world people who chose to portray this series of images and to have the Joker target this specific character in this instance. And none of those decisions are really neutral. They're creative decisions made by people in our society with all the foibles and flaws that entails.

That's true within the story of The Killing Joke (and tbh I don't think it's actually all that problematic in the context of TKJ). But it's even more true when we're talking about the alternate cover, which is a single image, entirely shorn of its intratextual fictional context, standing on its own in front of a story that it's not really related to. And considered strictly as an image rather than as part of the fictional story of the Joker, you have to ask what kind of image it is, and I think it's valid to criticize the choices made to present that single image which is an image of violence against women in that particular context. Whatever justification the fictional event might have, the image reproduced on the cover is just an image of the Joker threatening Batgirl, and Batgirl being extremely terrified, in a profoundly gendered way.