Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Mixed Up Media

I just noticed after walking by yet another flyer for the Feminist Action League's on campus demonstration protesting hate speech and violence against women that was sparked by a death threat against a female columnist in the campus paper that the large graphic image they are using on the flyer is in the style of Japanese manga. Actually, it looks like an image that was taken from a manga. I guess the protest organizers don't realize that you'd have to search pretty long and hard to find a mass media genre more accepting of misogyny. I spent years commuting on trains in Japanese cities watching men read manga full of big-breasted, tiny-waisted, full-hipped, doe-eyed women getting fucked in just about anyway you can imagine, often with the dialogue bubbles full of protest. (I know, it's not nice to read over people's shoulders, but sometimes there's not much else to do on a train.) I guess whoever made the flyer just thought the image of a screaming woman wearing a collar looked cool and tough.

2 comments:

Pam said...

That's exactly what I thought. I actually stopped walking and stood there looking at the flyer to make sure I was really seeing what I thought I saw.

Pam said...

But Bob, you could take 'em down. You're a trained martial arts expert! :)
I stopped and looked at the fliers when I was out on campus and even after I got back to my office and was writing the blog entry I wanted to go back out and make sure it really was what I thought it was. But then my TA showed up and I didn't feel like explaining the whole thing to him, so I didn't.
Anyway, I'm glad it's not just me who found that a strange choice of image for their cause.