"We want to her to be a really powerful female character, you know, a role model for young women. What you got?"

"I think you're gonna love her, sir.  Check her out."

  

"I like what I see there, Ferguson, but she doesn't really seem powerful.  She needs—"

"A more muscular physique?"

"Don't talk crazy, Ferguson.  She has to be sexy."

"So you need her to be more powerful, but also still sexy."

"Why don't you give her one of those things?"

"You know, one of those things."

"I don't follow."

"Sure you do.  One of those things."

"I feel you now.  You mean like this?"

  

"Perfect!  Still sexy, but now that she has a thing, she's powerful too.  Great work, Ferguson!"

Because, as we all know, female characters can't be powerful unless they have a thing, as the good folks at Detective Comics took pains to remind us this month: 

 

Unlike the other example above, her thing isn't even a psychoanalytic surrogate for a thing and its thingly power.  Her thing is shaped like a thing and is used for stabbing.  I have nothing more to add but this: please stop publishing comics that make me think of Lacan.

Comments

[Mike]

Wouldn't it be funny if your recent foray into visual rhetoric forced you to retract (or just rethink) your previous criticisms of psychoan?

[Ahistoricality]

Is it humanly possibly that the artists don't realize what they're doing? Can someone really draw that ... thing and not realize?

There's things all over that cover.

[Caritas]

Why didn't you post this at LGM, too? Have we not proven our love for the visual rhetoric stuff?

[Kit Ebersbach]

How about a nipple?

[Andrea]

"please stop publishing comics that make me think of Lacan."

Amen to that, brother!

[tomemos]

I did an exercise in a high school class recently where students had to design an advertisement that would convince people to fight in the Revolutionary War. One drew a man with an American flag, and the flagpole sprouting at a 45° angle from between his legs. The caption was, "Be a Better Man … Join the Army!" Neither the student nor anyone in her group had any awareness that there was anything … going on in that ad.

After that experience, I'll never say that there isn't *something* to psychoanalytic theory.

[The Necromancer]

Sometimes a thing is just a thing...

[Josh]

Manhunter's a role model for young women? Explains some of my students.