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The Odinson is Now a Daughter. Deal.

The Odinson is Now a Daughter. Deal.

 

Article by: Liana Kerzner

"Liana Kerzner is a media personality, pop culture critic, and lover of all things related to video games. She’s best known for things connected to Ed the Sock or cosplay. Follow her on twitter @redlianak"
Marvel comics announced this week that the new Thor will be a woman, and the internet blew up. Of course, the sexist comments from nerds who didn't know they were sexist piled up faster than cat poop in a neglected litter box. So let's get some things out of the way right off the bat, to make this article shorter.

Yes, it's a stunt. It's Marvel.

Yes, it's not permanent. It's Marvel.

Yes, it's inherently stupid. It's Marvel.

Marvel is frequently and repeatedly full of crap. It's Marvel.

Marvel zombies have a unique relationship with Thor, which is why I cackled like a supervillain when I saw the headline about the newest nerd bait... I mean creative development. Thor is, to many geeks, a giant, blond, penis extension. There is no character more white and more male than Thor. But the Chris Hemsworth films have awakened a new crop of Thor fans, and they're female. Most notably, they're female cosplayers. There's something about Thor and Loki that cross-players just love, and like those cosplayers, this comic book Thor isn't She-Thor and she isn't girl-Thor, she's just Thor.

As stupid, nonsensical, and utterly temporary as this is, I love it. And I love it for the reasons that a lot of angry online people hate it: because it's Thor.

First off, I need to declare my purely selfish reason for this: I think that female Thor and Loki cosplayers are sexy as hell. So more reasons for women to dress like Thor pleases me greatly. Piggish moment out of the way, let's move on.

Online fans are right: Thor is not, nor has ever been, female. However, Thor has been other things. Which brings us to a very simplistic counterbalance for the anti-Fem-Thor outrage:

 photo FrogThorCrop.jpg

The idea that Thor must be the blindingly white, hyper-masculine hunk of meat we're used to is undermined by Frog Thor, as well as numerous other not-Thor Thors who have wielded Thor's hammer. So why are people freaking out now?

Because... get ready for it... even when he was a froggie, Thor had a penis.

Thor. Has lost. His penis.

Since Thor is a penis extension to so many nerds, this means they have lost their extended edition penis.

Never get between a man and his penis.

I find it odd that no one (but me) complained when Loki went from a tragic but well-developed second son in the first Thor film to a misogynistic, cardboard god nazi in the Avengers, only to go right back to being a likeable, sulking mommy's boy in Thor: The Dark World. Very few people batted an eye at the misogyny and rape culture in the Avengers film because... it's Marvel. Marvel has a women problem. Good for them for trying to take steps to fix that, even if it is, in large part, a publicity stunt.

This whole Thor dust up should have been met with a collective yawn. We know it won't last. We know she'll never be seen as “the real Thor”. We know that this is a hiccup in Marvel's ultimate plan for comic book world domination, which is “take everything DC does, but do it louder, more shamelessly, and about six months later, so Marvel fans can say how much better it is.” But Marvel is extremely good at getting under their fanbase's skin on the comic book end, while giving them exactly what they want on the film side. The fact that what they wanted was three movies with Black Widow in them before they figured out who she was as a character is a topic for another time.

Marvel does have a particular problem with representation where women who punch things really hard are concerned. They have Ms Marvel, She-Hulk, and... not much else. Marvel has plenty of non-powered ninja ladies, but that's not the same as a Power Girl, a Wonder Woman, a Supergirl or a Big Barda. This Thor thing is, perhaps, testing fan tolerance for the idea of female heroes who are a bit more butch, as opposed to their origins of silver age creators basing female characters on their wives and girlfriends. That's cute, but unless your girlfriend isn't afraid to punch stuff, you're not going to get much superheroing.

And that brings us to the debate regarding so-called legacy characters – characters who assume the mantle of pre-existing heroes – versus original characters. I'm not, as a rule, a fan of legacy characters, but I've been sensitized to their importance by friends of mine who like the idea of an African American Superman. As its been explained to me, they like being able to believe that they could be Superman as much as a white guy, and that makes complete sense to me.

So what does it mean that a whole lot of gals seem to want to be Thor? Well, it seems to me that the obvious answer to that is that there's a desire to invert the patriarchy. It's a strong symbol that women finally feel confident enough to say “We are comic book fans as much as anyone else.” And that's a powerful idea. It's also scary to a lot of geeks who are actually, legitimately, afraid of women. I'd love to be able to say that we're not that scary, but I'd be lying: many female comic book geeks tend to be a lot more “assertive” than the average gal. In the days before digital comics and tablets, we had to be, to tolerate the numerous awkward moments we had to suffer through in comic book stores. I think those experiences, more than anything else in my life, made me the asshole I am today.

We all know what Thor does in awkward moments: something loud and possibly violent. The idea that a woman would have these characteristics and not be a trophy of some kind is the seething geek's worst nightmare. It's okay for women to be badass, as long as the lioness turns into a kitten the minute a penis and an IQ over 120 walks in the room. That's not Thor. A female Thor is, quite frankly, the closest to Wonder Woman that the Marvel universe can get. The daughter of a god is not going to accept the patriarchal double standards of our world. She's not going to do anything to impress a man. She's not going to date any guy who doesn't understand that she is very much in charge. This is a rare breed of male. The most poignant line for me in the George Clooney/Jason Reitman flick “Up in the Air” was when Vera Farmiga's character said “Please let him earn more money than I do, you might not understand that now but believe me, you will one day. Otherwise that's a recipe for disaster.”

War Goddesses are inherently privileged characters, so they're always going to outrank the mortal men in their lives... or else. What so many comic book readers and writers miss about these women is that they're going to, first and foremost, choose men that are okay with being Mr. Wonder Woman, and the Justice League Animated cartoon nailed it with their depiction of Steve Trevor.

Furthermore, War Goddesses would not see the point of tarting themselves up in any way to be more “appealing” to men... or other women. They would be accomplishment-oriented, because no one cares how pretty you are in battle. The long hair on the female Thor is fine because male Thor is a walking shampoo ad, but if this woman is worthy of both Thor's hammer and his name, she's going to care about her kill death ratio.

It's times like this that I think about interviewing Greg Rucka, who made the Question a woman and made us all fall in love with Batwoman. He said of Batwoman, in his typical blunt-but-loveable style “She's female. That matters. She's Jewish. That matters. She's queer. That matters.” What Marvel has done making Thor a woman, albeit temporarily, matters. Now, to quote Ubisoft Montreal's higher ups when I asked them about the Toronto studio contributing to huge franchises, “They'd better not eff it up.”

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July 21 2014



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