On Tonal Clashes: Stephanie Brown's Batgirl

[espanolbot]

Spoilers for the new Batgirl: Spoiled miniseries.

Triggerwarning: attempted rape

Published between 2010 and 2011, Stephanie Brown's Batgirl, written by Bryan Q Miller, was something of an anomaly at the time, in being a comic which was about a cheerful young woman who isn't the smartest, fastest or most martial artsy of the Bat Family but she still worked through everything due to being determined, resourceful and ferciously up beat.

The fact that she was pretty much the rubber ball of the Bat Comics (the harder she's thrown down, the fastest she'll come back up) was always something that was part of the character, even as far back as the Spoiler days in the mid-90s. She might not be up there with Cass or Tim, but she's still able to hang around with them as something of an equal none the less.



Indeed, the fact that she was curiously more like Dick Grayson's Robin in terms of attitude also made her team-ups with Batman and Cass in her Robin tenure kind of interesting too.



And when she finally made that break into the role of main character, it was actually kind of refreshing to have a character who didn't treat the Hero Gig as Serious Business, and actually had a person who enjoyed being a superhero and who liked helping people without grumbling that it was a burden or something. It's a part of Steph's personality that, as I mentioned in relation to her being like old school Dick Grayson, makes her seem charmingly retro in places.





Where was I going with this? Well, recently a talented group of people, undestandibly annoyed at Steph being dropped from the DCU despite her fanbase, decided to make a webseries based around the character.

It's well made, but it's also where the titular Tonal Clash comes into play.

Trigger warning: attempted gangrape.





...WHY? Why insert a gang of criminals who monologue about how they're going to gangrape Steph, as a deliberate way of "ruining" her so that she'll remember them in the future? Is that what the "Spoiled" thing in the series title was meant to be a reference to? Are they meant to be making a point regarding traditional supervillains vs. modern ones or something? I mean, what?!?

Don't get me wrong, the episode is well made, but if you're gonna pay tribute to Steph's Batgirl series, having Steph getting the stuffing kicked out of her by a group of guys who then gloat about raping her so that she'll become a living monument to how Badass a group of villains they are... kind of fumbled the ball there. Not even slightly.

Seriously, I'm more than a little kicked off by this. More so than how they introduced the YJverse version of Artemis Crock to the DCnU just to have her die at the end of her introductory issue.

Comments

[q99]

I *Hate* this kind of thing and view it as a perfect reason to not get within a hundred feet of this series.

[superboyprime]

'...WHY? Why insert a gang of criminals who monologue about how they're going to gangrape Steph, as a deliberate way of "ruining" her so that she'll remember them in the future? Is that what the "Spoiled" thing in the series title was meant to be a reference to? Are they meant to be making a point regarding traditional supervillains vs. modern ones or something? I mean, what?!?'

'Cuz it's so edgy and extreme, and hack writers everywhere think that's a good substitute for good writing. You know, as opposed to actually putting effort into their storytelling, but I guess that'd be too much like actual work.

[espanolbot]

Edgy and extreme can be well written, for example Garth Ennis' Punisher Max run, it's when it's done in a lazy manner like this it's bad.

[majingojira]

That's . . . extremely disheartening. Especially with a production this large. NO ONE thought that attempted rape would be a bad idea to START with?

[espanolbot]

As I said elsewhere, it kind of makes Steph look really unprofessional in this (constantly complaining about going on stake-outs, missing with batarangs, etc.) rather than making up for her lack of skill with enthusiasm like in the comics.

I'd imagine the scene happening to her towards the beginning of her career as Spoiler if she was being written by the guy who wrote War Games (who gloated about killing her afterwards in interviews by the way) before she got training by Robin, Oracle, Batman, Cass, Black Canary etc., certainly not when she was Batgirl for crying out loud.

This is like if Mark Millar was put on the book for some reason.

[theflames]

Nice retrospective.

Only thing is her saying 'Don't say anything else' to Robin, hahah, thats so cheesy... teenagers dont talk like that, even when in love.

[espanolbot]

Well she was trying to enjoy a "normal" date with Tim for the first time (they go to see a film in a cinema were everyone was cosplaying, for example) before she had to temporarily retire from superheroics due to being pregnant (not with his kid, that would imply Tim could have sex).

She said "Dont' say anything else" because she wanted it to be a nice night between the two of them before she dropped the bombshell on him about the situation her asshole ex-boyfriend left her in.

[theflames]

Oh and comic talk REALLY doesn't fit in live action... this all sounds terrible.But it's pretty good swell.

On the rape thing. Rape is bad. Calling people a bitch is generally bad.

She is dealing with bad guys -- so I'm not that bothered. Is it a good idea to put it in the first episode? I dunno, probably not. But I imagine you'd be more annoyed if it happened down the line. Bad people do bad things, the really disgusting ones sometimes rape people. If I'm to believe she's in the same city fighting the same crime the Batman does, then I accept that you get some really twisted villains, costumed or not here.

There only crime was not putting a trigger warning before hand.

I'm not a fan of rape, wether or not its in a story isn't really important to me, if it is, it needs to be done 'well'. Superheroes are about triumphing over evil, so it's nice to see the hero fight off the rapists, if thats not the case and the hero *is* raped, the aftermath needs to be handled SO CAREFULLY.

But here, the thing was attempted rape, thwarted by another, so now i need to see where it goes.

But I don't dislike the webisode because of it. Bad guy does something cruel and disgusting, which is in this case rape? As long as he gets what he deserves after - I'm not bothered. So what if he doesn't get what he deserves? Use that as an interesting platform for story telling.

It's all about it being done right I guess. So far, in this piece here, it hasn't been done wrong, not yet.

----------

On an unrelated, but related note -- are you saying that because Steph is all cheesecake and bubbly, the rest of her world should be the same? I'd be annoyed if writers did that, because she *is* in Gotham. Not saying she should be raped, but there should be the acknowledgement that crime fighting in Gotham is a life and death thing.

You said it yourself she's a rubber ball, harder's she's thrown, the quicker she comes back up - so far this webisode has shown her being thrown, perhaps you watch a couple more episodes to see if she bounces back up, and stays true to your description of the character?

(disclaimer: while I am disagreeing with you on the effect this webisode had, I am not saying your opinion is invalid, nor am I dismissing it, just stating my own, which in effect - is different to yours, and therefore disagreeing. I'm not saying rape is good, or that her being raped is a good thing. This is more for the mods than it is for you Espanolbot. Since we've ran into this before.)

[espanolbot]

I'm saying that if they're making it as a tribute to the character, having her getting beaten up and almost raped in the first episode is counter to what the character's series was like.

As well as being in bad taste.

[mesmiranda]

The bad guys always rape women. Men are almost never threatened with rape as part of an angsty backstory or experience.

And frankly, I'm tired of rape getting thrown into every superheroine's canon--new version of Lara Croft? Attempted rape! Stephanie Brown? Attempted rape! It's being reduced to cheap shock value, and it's tiresome and disgusting.

I don't care about it being done 'right', I want writers to knock this kind of thing off.

[sadoeuphemist]

Your mistake is that "done right" doesn't refer to a story's plot. It refers to how a story's told.

You get at it yourself, saying that if someone is raped in a story the aftermath has to be handled really carefully. Why doesn't the same thing apply with the threat of rape, whether or not it is carried out? Simply having the villain fail doesn't automatically absolve the story. If rape is brought up in a crass, exploitative manner, the offensiveness is still there in the story, whether or not it actually comes to pass in the plot.

You actually list a lot of reasons why this is done poorly. You're reducing rape to A Bad Thing that Bad People do (only to women). And that's a grossly simplistic view of the facts. Rapists for the most part are not boogeymen criminals who assault women on the streets. The fact is, roughly two-thirds of rape victims know their attackers. Roughly two-thirds of rapes either take place in the victim's house or the rapist's house. And part of the reason rape is so under-reported and so hard to prosecute is because people have absorbed this idea that rape only happens when you're attacked by a stranger when you're out alone at night.

Rape, the threat of rape, is not some generic evil that superheroes need to triumph over. She's not getting threatened with rape because she's a superhero, she's getting threatened because she's female. And it's crass, and it's offensive, and it's just really ineptly done, particularly to their female audience.

[lieut_kettch]

Batgirl-Steph is usually more competent than this. She's defeated an army of trained schoolgirl assassins-- there's no way a few dozen mooks should be a problem for her.

[mrstatham]

This. I mean, I've seen some people say she was less competent in her actual Batgirl series than she actually was when she initially set out as Spoiler, but I didn't see it. She basically kicked the Scarecrow's ass whilst under the influence of his gas - and that was in her starting storyline - which is usually something that even Batman struggles with.

[darkknightjrk]

I was thrown off at the very beginning, when she was acting so...bratty during the stake-out. I mean, that wouldn't even sound right from when she was SPOILER, let alone as Batgirl.

[espanolbot]

Sounds like they're into this interpretation of the character,

[zechs80]

Yeah the episode lost me the moment things took a turn for the graphic. I don't even mean the attempted rape part but the moment Steph started getting beat up real bad. I was thinking, "Why are we going down this path?" Then the head mook's monologue ugh.. that was beyond awful. A shame though since it had such a promising start.

[maseiken]

I like the Faux-Nolan theme in the intro, if I had to guess, I'd say their production meeting went something like this.

A: I'd love to make a web series about Batgirl, the third one.
B: OMG LIKE A CHRIS NOLAN REBOOT? GREAT IDEA!
A: No, I mea-
C: IT'LL BE GRIM AN GRITTY AND mostimportantlyofall... SUPER REALISTIC.
B: YEAH, like, what if there was REALLY a Batgirl?
A: That's not really the comics OR the movies ar-
C: QUICK, what's a SUPER REALISTIC thing to happen to a costumed superheroine to start the first episode with a SHOCKING twist?!
B: OMG BEST IDEA EVER YOU GUYS...

and thus, a terrible idea was made. Because anything other than mandated perfection means a Bat-character is a Victim, and they should suffer.

[ablackraptor]

Well, this is disappointing. And it looked so cool at first too, with such a big budget for a project like that.

If only someone else could make something like this and not let that happen.

[ablackraptor]

Reading the youtube comments makes it worse. While there's plenty upset about it, there's far too many trying to defend it and make out that its not as sexist as they're claiming, or that its sexist to complain about it.

I sometimes really, really hate this planet.

[onceaskrull]

I read one comment that said, basically, "if you change it [the attempted rape], then I will no longer watch just because you caved to those people's complaints."

To which I'm thinking "good riddance". How DARE we have issues with their use of attempted rape as a plot device? Even if someone disagrees, the idea that listening to our criticisms would ruin the show is just... Well, I have to wonder what that user was getting out of it in the first place.

[lieut_kettch]

I have trouble believing that the Steph portrayed here, who was overcome by a few dozen street thugs, is the same Steph in the image below:

[big_daddy_d]

While it is disappointing to have an attempted rape scene, I think this is a way of suggesting that while the series will have the lighthearted moments, there will be times of darkness. Hopefully this is the series at its darkest. Plus these guys are what? Low level scum who got in a lucky shot due to a clown who likes to swing a sledgehammer? Not really surprised they'd go so low. Weird thing is, I thought, if they were smart, the plan to kill her would be better anyway. Why? Because...in either scenario you risk the wrath of Cassandra Cain and Tim Drake, but better believe, if you "ruin" her, there is no place you can hide, that they won't get to and you better pray that they don't.

Overall, the episode wasn't bad. Yes the scene was uncomfortable, but the woman portraying Batgirl is really good. I genuinely laughed when she mocked Penguin and it shows she can be the perfect Stephanie Brown. I do hope that the really dark moments are few. The fight choreography is good too. You can tell there's inspiration from the Arkham games. The show has the potential to be great and let's hope it reaches such a status and more.

[eyz]

Personally I'd fear if the current DC put her back into the books (New 52) that's the same kinda tone they'd use actually...

Where's the fun in that?!

Seriously, where's the fun? It's all so gritty...dark... "over-the-top"-ly mature =/= mature. Just... so 90s!! EXTREME!! that's the word I was searching for!

[ablackraptor]

That's my main problem. Stephanie Brown's known for being a lighthearted figure in a gritty setting. Putting her into these situations doesn't fit with the character.

A bit meta

[salad_barbarian]

I was thinking about this on my way home this morning and I realized that if DC had done something like this in their comics I wouldn't be as disappointed.

Don't get me wrong I despise this twist* but I expected better from these folks.
I can't tell if it's because fan made stuff has been getting better or official stuff has gotten worse. :(


*Can't think of a better word.

Re: A bit meta

[ablackraptor]

I think its because, as a fan project, we expected them to care more about the character and know not to bring this in. If DC did this, it would be another case of an unthinking writer and/or editor using something they don't understand. But fans who know the character and care enough about them to make a web series about her, we expected them to understand what to really do with the character.