viz. - costumes

Superhero Footwear Part 2: Do Stilettos Have a Point?

clsloan — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 13:36:30 +0000

Look closely. There's blood spattered on Black Canary's stiletto. The splash of red suggests that immediately before launching herself into this flying kick she put the heel of her fashionable shoe right through some villain's skin, intentionally using the deadly-looking point to her advantage. Juxtaposed against the Batwoman cover I used last week, it's difficult not to notice a few things about this action shot. For one, Black Canary's trademark fishnets are in full-throttled evidence, drawing the line of sight away from the kick itself and down to her immaculately posed, well-endowed torso. I had to look at this image several times to even notice the blood on her shoe. Batwoman, comparatively, seems a bit more clunky, more roughshod, more loyal to the demands of physics. Black Canary, here, is idealized, positioned in an anatomically unfriendly, spine-twisting way in order to showcase her breasts, hips and legs. The stilettos, perhaps, add to that sense of idealization: the very pinnacle of what's possible for the female body appearing in toto with Black Canary's pose. Neither the idealization of the female body or superhero high heels, each exemplified in this image, can be considered an isolated incident. The TV Tropes Wiki examines the popular trend of “combat stilettos” in superhero fiction, and a future blog post will discuss how the female body has been traditionally represented in comics. The heels, however, demand our attention today.

In Christopher Nolan's most recent Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, Catwoman also sports an incredibly wicked pair of combat stilettos.

Image Credit: Batman-news.com

Nolan's Batman films already walk the line between the campy comic-book universe of highly saturated colors and the practical reality of the everyday, coming down somewhere in the middle with a dark realism he constantly struggles to assert against the unlikelihood of superhero culture. For example, the Batmobile, that iconic, somewhat silly symbol of bat-justice, becomes the gritty lovechild of a tank and a humvee, the product of Wayne Enterprises weapons research for the military. I half-expected Nolan to give Catwoman a costume that emphasized pragmatism and fit in with his drive for realism (in other words, complete with flats), but instead Anne Hathaway made her Selina Kyle debut with heels roughly as long as the film's midnight showing lines. Interestingly enough, Nolan gestures towards a realist explanation for this choice. In one scene, a thug sneeringly asks Catwoman whether such impractical footwear makes it difficult to walk. She snidely thwacks him with her heel and playfully asks, “I don't know. Do they?” The audience's takeaway from this scene is that these heels are basically specialty weapons. They're impractical the way any armament is impractical; they require certain skills.

Girl culture, then, has become a powerful weapon, one requiring great proficiency and talent to wield. Granted, there are critics who remain concerned about the physical cost of some of fashion's demands, for superheroes and citizens both, but Hathaway's brand of strength, symbolized by her deadly shoes, adds a distinctly feminine twist to the male-dominated world of crime fighting. Perhaps where Batwoman make the concession of giving up outward girl culture in order to adopt a masculine martial style, Catwoman's heels signal the validity of interests culturally coded as feminine. All of a sudden, stilettos seem less a hindrance or a mark of weakness than a respectable symbol of both physical mastery and feminist pride.

The connection between girl culture and superhero strength even takes a real-world, physical turn in Anne Hathaway's own comments at a press conference for Nolan's movie. USA Today's Bryan Alexander reports, “Hathaway credited her breakout role as a magazine editor assistant in 2006's Prada as fundamental training her for the required action in Dark Knight. It gave her the leg up on the skills needed to kick right alongside Batman (Christian Bale)...'The Devil Wears Prada was really good training for that,' Hathaway said at a press conference on Sunday. 'I kind of ran all up and down Manhattan then. Now I just ran up and down Gotham.'” The leap from an editor's assistant to supercrook-turned-hero isn't all that large, provided you're wearing the right shoes.

Mashups and Misreadings: “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume” Revisited

Lisa Gulesserian — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Image credit: STARS

I know that we just survived another Halloween, so you’re probably already on to thinking about your Thanksgiving plans. Humor me as I ask us to think about Halloween again. While perusing Colorlines, a daily news site about contemporary racial justice issues, I stumbled upon a fantastic visual campaign by Ohio University’s Students Teaching about Racism in Society (STARS) organization. The campaign, “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume,” is smart, scathing, and to the point. It’s everything I ever wanted in a campaign to raise awareness about the everyday racism that is often shrugged off in moments of embarrassment and frustration. As expected, the campaign has garnered national attention, but its message has been mocked by mashups posted all over the Internet. We need to think critically about the messages about racism in both STARS’ campaign and in its Photoshopped reiterations. Something’s askew in the mashup world, if you ask me.

According to Jorge Rivas' post on Colorlines, the Ohio University organization behind the campaign, STARS, created the images after the organization’s president, Sarah Williams, saw a person in black face at a Halloween party last year. To bring attention to the insensitivity of many Halloween costumes, Williams holds an image of a woman completely covered in black body paint, wearing a chain around her neck and a baseball cap on her head.

Image credit: STARS

The young woman points to her obviously false teeth (another key part of the costume) while a man wearing a vampire costume feigns going in for a bite on her neck. It’s all fun and games, right? Not to African Americans, like Williams herself, who are being mocked. Everything about the costume is a stereotype—the chain, the hat, the fake teeth. If we’re now “post-racial,” as some commentators have argued since the election of Barack Obama, this image seems like it’s out of time. In fact, it is. This is blackface no matter how hard we try to shrug it off. We see Williams’ serious face, and we know it’s not just a joke, a harmless costume. Her somber face and dark clothing contextualize the image she’s holding. We can’t help but agree with the words above the image: “This is NOT who I am, and this is NOT okay.”

Despite these visual cues as to how to read the campaign, some viewers seem to have taken Williams’ and STARS’ message lightly. On The Chive, “home to the best funny, viral and interesting photos from around the world,” the campaign is seen as a “FAIL.” In a post called “C’mon guys, let’s take Halloween seriously,” Mac the Intern collected 21 mashups of the campaign, using fictional characters, animals, and movie stars.

Images credit: The Chive

With these Photoshopped images, the tone and power of the original STARS campaign is completely ignored and, I would argue, diffused. Yes, it’s funny that people dress in dog costumes. But, when we see that this humor is pointed out using the exact format of the original campaign—the dark background, the orange “We’re a culture, not a costum” banner, the “This is NOT who I am, and this is NOT okay”—we only see the campaign and its creators suffering a fate similar to the one that they would suffer when seeing someone dressed up in a racist costume. Like the creators of the campaign who, embarrassed and ashamed, were forced to stifle their anger and hurt because they’re in a public setting, these images stifle the strong message of STARS’ campaign. We’re supposed to shrug it all off. Halloween’s a time of jokes and treats. But I can’t help but feel tricked.

So, as you’re thinking about roasting a turkey and falling into a contented slumber, know that we’re not done with Halloween yet. There are still all those Facebook Halloween pictures to look at.

"Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet..."

Andi — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:28:36 +0000

H/T: The New York Times

I found that I just couldn't resist finding some possible posting that connects to Halloween and it didn't take me long to stumble across an article in the New York Times that focuses on grade school guidelines for appropriate costumes. Apparently several elementary and secondary schools across the county are urging (or requiring) students to limit their choice of costume to selections that are not scary, not offensive, not violent. While it seems completely understandable to restrict students from wearing costumes that rely on offensive stereotypes, I wonder where these schools draw the line on what exactly is appropriate. Restricting children's costumes raises several provocative questions: is Halloween a tradition that does/should celebrate horror? Are children already exposed to too many violent images (in other words, is a zombie scarier than Grand Theft Auto)? What should be the role of the parent in policing appropriate costumes? the role of the school in policing appropriate dress?

The article includes the details of a memo circulated by Riverside Elementary School in Southern California elaborating on the parameters for costumes including "no costume should depict gangs or horror characters, or be scary" "no weapons, even fake ones" and "no fake fingernails." This memo also suggested that no costume should be demeaning with respect to race, nationality, gender, or ability. Now prohibiting fake fingernails seems less obvious to me, and I can't begin to know how exactly "scary" will be defined, but restricting costumes that are demeaning seems a no-brainer. A quick scan of the collection of children's costumes online yields many ridiculous choices.

Screen capture: HalloweenCostumes4Kids.com

The first website I looked at has an "Indian Running Bull" costume for young boys and Princess Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin for girls. These costumes certainly have the Disney-esque about them but many scholars and critics have slammed Disney for its demeaning depictions of race, ethnicity, gender. These costumes are not "scary" but I wonder whether we would really categorize them as "positive" (a costume characteristic called for by several Texas schools). Are young children remaking themselves in the image of their favorite television character any less "scary" than ghosts, goblins, or ghouls?