Friday, February 15, 2008

Paper Topic

Well, I already discussed my amorphous paper topic in class, but I forgot to post it here... so without further ado...

For my paper I'd like to focus on gender in "Botch Town," and how, while the realm of the youthful is mostly dominated by boys, Mary is able to fit almost seamlessly into their society by remaining rather androgynous. Mary is a "medium" in that she can both calculate the future (using the male and female techniques of her grandparents) and remains in between genders. Her alternate persona, Mickey-Who-Has-All-The-Answers, is never assigned a gender and could easily fit in either category.

Also, the feminine seems to be targeted by the peeping Tom in the neighborhood. While Jeff is not androgynous, he does look a bit effeminate next to his macho brother, Jeff. Thus, after the super effeminate Charlie (that's his name, right?) goes missing, Jim is the next target. Similarly, most of the window peeping incidents include screaming women (or a screaming Mary), and macho men trying to chase down the perpetrator in vain. Also, the two siblings who don't fit decidedly into one gender category are the ones who "see the devil" in the nun and the man in white.

Right. So it's rough, and it needs some trimming, but that's what I have so far.
Any suggestions?
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2 comments:

Andy Duncan said...

There's an old belief that the angels themselves are sexless or androgynous -- whether as a manifestation of their great power, or as a cause of their great power, I dunno. Kevin Smith plays with this idea in his movie Dogma, and in the movie of Constantine, Tilda Swinton plays Gabriel.

(Swinton also played the title role in Sally Potter's movie of Woolf's Orlando; that movie and that book -- which Woolf maintained was a biography, but which typically is shelved in fiction -- might be relevant, too.)

The most obvious sexually ambiguous (though sexually enthusiastic) characters in comics are Neil Gaiman's Desire (in Sandman) and Alan Moore's Orlando (in the later League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes).

You have plenty to work with just with "Botch Town," though, so don't feel the need to drag other texts into it. Looking into the anthropological or cultural tradition of the powerful androgyne may be helpful, though. (I just thought of another example: Tiresias.)

February 20, 2008 at 7:50 AM
Andy Duncan said...

And, just to underscore the obvious: Tiresias, like Mary, was a seer.

February 20, 2008 at 7:51 AM

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