Feminist Question: Iron Man vs. Batman
(Spoilers for Iron Man and The Dark Knight.)
Comparing Iron Man to Batman, two of the most testosterone induced movies ever, which is more feminist? Ha, ok, neither. Comic books have a well known problem, women in refrigerators. For those who don’t know it basically means that it sucks to be a woman in a comic book. You don’t get agency (true in much of pop culture anyway) and you end up motivating the hero or villain with your death. This translates regularly into the movies as well. Given that we have two of the more … womanizing? … heros this summer I have amused myself doing a compare and contrast.
In my opinion Iron Man from the comics is historically the more of the womanizing testosterone fest. I mean they have always both been playboy millionaires, but Tony Stark always seemed to get around more than Bruce Wayne. In the movie rendition or Iron Man he certainly still gets around, however the women are (mostly) all self motivated, not just scenery. The one who sleeps with him does it for her own purposes and gets what she wants out of it (modulo a catty back and forth with Pepper). And Pepper not only manages to NOT end up in bed with her boss (I TOTALLY thought they were going twist her around to have her end up with Stark in the end) but she is excellent at her job and even saves the day. Mind you, she is still the side kick, but she is the one who gets the SHIELD good squad, and who operates the Deus Ex Machina. Also, stark is driven by his own past crimes, not a dead woman.
In The Dark Knight on the other hand, all the women do is motivate the men by being held captive or killed. (Or going out with another man and having their own plans thwarted by “well meaning” men.) In my (probably incorrect) memory Batman always had a bit more gender equality than Iron Man, but here the only thing they do is get dangled off of buildings or have knives held to their throats. Or lain out on a boat in almost no clothing to be ogled by dirty old men. No, really. But back to the main characters, a quote from Gyllenhaal herself sort of describes it[1], “Of course, if you’re the girl in Batman, you’re going to be a damsel in distress to some extent but she’s a really great character.” Sad thing is, in the comics, it was just the acid burns that drove Dent insane in the comics as IIRC Rachel didn’t even exist.
Having said all of that, Batman was the much better movie, while Iron Man was a rollicking good time. The acting was amazing, and the tropes didn’t get in the way for me, but these particular issues are not my issues, so YMMV. (Aaaaaand… they appear to have made the Watchmen into a movie!!!)
[1] Totally stolen from Wikipedia, I so do not read that website.
July 21st, 2008 at 12:53
Harvey Dent has a long history of being married in the comics-but you’re right, the thing that made him Two-Face was the acid (and childhood abuse, later on).