reserach paper

T i m N e l s o n

'EVEN AN ANDROID CAN CRY

'liven An Android ian Cn ' is a sbon piece that uses a iriliml cxamindtion oj a full-paqc

iiluslration jrom a Maricl cotiiic bcyok lo explore laraer issues reqarJina the rclaiionships

between superherocs, hoJihiiihlina ond ideas oj masculinity. The piece eonlrasls the ideal

of the hodj builder/superhero as male role model with the more ironic and amhiijuous

approach of the illustration, (/I'lm/ on to wŷ î wf that the version oj masculinity depicted

by Marvel Comics during the I ^60s offered a fuller response to the prohlem of growing

up than tbc traditional approach of the superhero aenre. the piece explicitly refers to

Mark Simpson's arguments regarding bodyhuilding from Male Impersonators, Sam

Fussel's bodybuilding memoir. Musck' and Susan Sontag's '\'otes on Lamp'.

K e y w o r d s Mar\i.'l Comits; supfrhcrocs; Vision; hodvbuilthn^;

The paradoxical heterosexual reassurante/homocrotic enjoyment that the mus- cular male bodv offered popular culture had been a mainstay ot comic strips lor hoys since the I94()s. But Spiderman and Superman were closeted hodvhuilders; they wore bodysuits that decentlv covered their llesh and masks thai disguised their identity; their li-\es were rigidly divided hetween IKKK' less bourijeois respectability and muscular superhero fantasy; they le<i a 'double lile' that noboiU knew ahout and were ne\'er to he seen at the t;\m.

(Simpson, 1994, p. 2 5)

The superhero genre has always provided reassurance for insecure yount^ men, and its connection to the cult ol bodyhuilding should come as no surprise. Superheroes \\A\v rellectcd adolescent conceptions of adulthood, and the 'huilt' bodv has been a major part ol this process. What is interesting is how nuich niure complex the characterisation had become bv 1968, the \ear the Vision was launched in Marvel Comics' Avengers (see figure I). In maii\ wa\s the character still conformed to jienre norm.s: for example, in appropriatin?' a muscular look for a story ahout artificial intelligence. Howe\i'r, e\en through such compromises, 'F\en An Android Can Crv' {Avengers }S. October 196S) hc-tra\s deeper amhi^uities and paradoxes ahout certain ideas of mas<.iilinit\ in America. II recent work on superheroes and adolescence has confirmed comic hooks' role in articulatin^ male identit\, then less attention ha.s been paid to the variety t)! approaches and their e\olution. Mar\el Comics' output represented a re-e\aluatioii of ^ender role models in the wake of the Cold War, ihroutih a satirical approach that forei^rounded the artihtialitv of the existing qenre.

Journal of Gender Studies Vol. 13. No. 3 No•.'•••""•---• - " " i ^ , pp. 251-257

Carfax Publishinq ' ^ ^ ^ 0958-9236 pnnt/ISSN 1465-3869 © 2 • \ Francis Ltd i.,to,if,.no.c-.,up ^ http://www.tanclf.co,Lik/journals DOI: lO.lUrtv;,.'!'.-(riry.-î 3042000287867

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The development ot the Vision took place at an cxtraoi"<linary niDmcnt, as intervention in Vietnam faltered and Americans hc îan to question deejily held cultural mvths. The culture ot the late 1960s saw a renewed concern o\er questions ot identitv and artifice, finding expression in cultural products as chverse as Mike HodtTc's The Graduate (1967), the Mothers ot Invention's 'Plastic People' (on Absolutely Free, 1 9 6 7 ) a n d P h i l i p K. D i c k ' s Do AnJroiJs Dream of Eleanc Sheep? ( 1 9 6 S ) .

The Vision represents another crystallisation oi such concerns. Like the decent and bourgeois superhcrocs mentioned in the opening quotation, the anch^oid 'Vision' did not work tor liis power and a]ipearance. Rather, in the story written hy Ro\' Thomas, the evil and robotic 'Ultron 5' created him, and also gave the Vision the power to alter his density. What Ultron did not predict was that the android would betray his maker to save the Avengers. The character's 'declaration of independence' led to the character's acceptance into MarxeKs premiere super-team, but the Vision would continue to question his origin anti character. The creators seem to have intuited the concerns ot the later t960s in the android's creation: his emotion marks him as authentic, vet he is entirelv artificial, with a literalK' built body.

That an andi'oid could cry was taken as proot ot his humanitv. In the issue in question, it lell to tlie Avengers' scientist Henry Pym, 'Goliath', to voice the Marxel Constitution, when he said 'We ask merelv a man's worth, not the accitlent ot his condition' (The Avenqers SS, October 1968). This neatly tied the artiiicial Vision into a lineage ot outsiders that, in t968, also included the black superhero, the Black Panther. If the Vision reflected the tears of a new generation ot troubled intro\erts, growing up in a plastic world, then he also carried the Marvel promise that such troubles could be overcome, antI tVeedom attained trom the phoney. However, Marxel's format of continuing storylines also implied that such triumphs were never tinal, and the Vision would continue to question his persona! existence. In the j)rocess, he also raised more general issues regarding the relationship brtw een tictiona! rtjie models, such as sujjerheroes, and adole.seent identity.

These questions were originally and most effectively raised in the picture reproduced tor tigure t. Such pages were known as 'sjilashes', and carried a visual impact beyond their narrati\e intention. This 'splash' was inked by George Klein (better known lor his work on Supcnuan), and pencilled by John Bu.scema. Comic- book critics Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs assort in The Comic Book Heroes (1997) that Buscema combined 'the power of Kirby with the naturalism and fluidit\' ot the elegant D.C artists to give a new sense of weightiness and emotional depth' (Jones & Jacobs, 1997, p. 131). Ho\\e\er, design excellence also served to point up some inc(jngruities between the assei'ti\e and positive mvth ot the superhercj and the ambiguous message ot the android.

The Visicjii looked like a muscleman, but was reallv an iiitellet tual. Phis incongruity was signalled by the contrast between his red face and green bodv, the choice ot colouring heightening the contradictions. There was a turther gap between the contemporary idea of the android and the rather dated collar and cape. The Vision's golden belt w as not unlike a corset, onlv just holding together the contradiction.s between character and appearance, audience and protagonist, authen- ticity antI artitice. The Vision turned out to be something ol a sad clown.

Such inconsistencies were inherent in the irony ol sensitive comic-book readers eonsiiming macho lantasies. The Vision retlected the increasingly sophisticated

• E V E N A N A N D R O I D C A N C R Y ' 2 5 3

F I G U R E 1 'Even A n A n d r o i d Can Cry', Avengers 58 {Marvel C o m i c s , November 1968).

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anxieties of his audience, while still contormin^ to museular tvpe. For ail his subtlety and interest, the character is something oi a compromise, both on the level of visual

c- I

design and narrati\e. Whereas Philip K. Dick forced us to question our own identitv in Do AnJwiJs Dream of Electric Sheep?, the comic-book Vision became formulaic, his major concern whether he was able to lo\e the Scarlet Witch, a super-heroine and fellow team-member. The Vision's more tliihed aspects pointed him in the direction of Camp, and his Hnal conformancc to the maeho tradition re\ealecl just how Camp superheroes had been all along. According to Susan Sontat̂ 'the pure examples of Camp ai-e unintentional; they are dead serious' (Sontag, 1966, p. 282). In 'E\en An Android Can Cry" the Vision's tapering torso turned pathos into bathos, hintini^ at the g'-'iire and i^ender sub\ersion of The Rocky Horror Picciirc Show (1975).

If the Vision's muscular body showed just how central a built bodv was to the fantasies of superhero fans, then it also reflected the \erv problematic attitude to male displav in contemporary America. Since its inception, bodybuikling was seen as 'perverse . . . . Unlike "proper" sports, bodybuiidintj does not displace the interest in the male bodv into activity: instead it tocuses unabashedly on the corpus virile^ (Simpson, 1994, p. 2 3). Buscema's picture sought to disguise this, since the Vision was notionally clothed in a 'skin-suit'. Visual euphemisms such as these were commonly used in the comic books, and this partial censorship retlectod deeper denials; as Wardell Pomeroy's 1968 studv, Bojs and Sex, showed, for hovs to show an interest in their <n\n IKKIV was thou^ht by some to lead inexorably to homosex- ualit\, 'The male bo<,lv was considered so attractiye that it had to be denied, eyen b\- those who possessed one' (Simpson, 1994, p, 2i). The superheroes' version of masculinity had been drawn from bodybuilding, but was discretciv covered up, with skin-suits and morality tales.

"I'he connection between bodybuildintJ and comic book superheroes went be\<)n(l the iconic characters themseKes. Comics, too, had been percei\e<l as an unhealth\ pleasure, if not exattl\- jiromotinir \anity, then certainly unhealthy identification. Comics, too, were a shady, marginal business that had often been accused of exploiting the young. And these close links between comics and bodybuilding were most strongly confirmed by the ubiquitous Charles Atlas advertisements that ran for several decades and promised to make the reader 'a new man', through a scheme of 'dynamic tension'. Charles Atlas's real name was .'\ngelo Siciliano, His advertise- ments foreyer fused the world of bodybuilding to the superhero genre in the popular mind.

Like Superman and Spiderman, the Vision is one of the genre's 'closeted bodybuilders'; he has not worked for his povyers or physique. This approach was perhaps in keeping with an inci-easin^ly sedentary readership. Bv combining a narrati\e concerninij artifiiial lite with a \isual look that stronalv emphasised his muscularity, the Vision implicitly raised questions about the values ol bocKbuilding, and superheroes, and theii" relationship to the comic book aucMence. Like Spiderman, the Vision was one of Mar\el Comics' new wave of 'heroes with problems' who found their superpowers a burden ratber than a simple pleasure. Mar\ers new- approach was a reflection of the increasinii complexity of growing up in 1960s America, and a measure of the genre's itureasin^ sophistication.

The year 1968 marked a high-water mark for the introyerted superhero. Like the pacifistic Silver Surfer, who appeared in his own title the same year, and w\is also drawn bv Buscema, the android Visioti was a verv bourgeois romantic, w ho struggled

' E V E N A N A N D R O I D C A N O R Y ' 2 5 5

not with the world but with his supposed lack of emotion, flowever, this did not stop him from fit̂ htinti alongside his fellow team members. The cerebral Vision was an exception that also ser\ed to pro\e the links between siiperberoes aiid boclvbuildinir. SubsequentK, the aftermath of Vietnam saw comic book su|)ei4icM"oes mo\ c awav fi'om such emphases on irony and ambiguitv.

If mort' radical characters like the Vision had (|uestioned moti\ation and action, and su^^esterl a more thoughtlul apprcjach, then the neo-conser\ ative heroes, inspired by Diriy Harry (1971), arirued that America had lost its guts. Mar\cTs launch of WoKerine and the Punisher, botb in 1974, reflected this trunij-ho trend for the comic books. This trend also saw a new acceptance of bodybuilders in mainstream Holly\vooc!, most notably with Sylvester .Stallone and Arnold Schwar/encgger, Sylvester Stallone providc'd the' breakthrough with Rocky (1976), and has since intermittently sti"i\en for a more realistic characterisation. Howe\ei", his portrayal of a Vietnam \et in tirsl Blood II: Ramho (1985) was more charactei'istic of his action movies, and represented a new obliteration of cinematic depth. The film also reflected the new centrality ol muscle to America's popular liie.

Unlike Stallone, Arnold Sc hw ar/ene^tjer alwavs embraced simplistic fantas\. In the l9S0s, he became extremely effecti\e in portraying violent heroics as tiood clean American lun. Schwarzenegger had the grace to wink at his own poor acting, but was always serious about his body, which has functioned as a symbol of in\ulnerability, and eyen modelled for a rival to Charles Atlas in the comic books, in Robert Altman's The long Goodbye (1974), he played a goon who strips on demand in oi-der to intimidate Marlowe (plaved b\' F.lliot Gould), Contrasting sharpK with Marlowe, Schwarzenegger's jihysical ease almost disguises his character's amorality. L\en more than Stallone's, Schwarzenegger's career mai'ks the rehabilitation ol bod\buiicling into mainstrc'am c ulture,

Schwarzenegger's Hrst star \ehicle, Comm the Barharttm (1980), was an adaptation of Robert F.. Howard's 19 30s pulp cbaracter (the script was bv neo-consc'r\ati\c' scriptwriter John Milius). 1 low e\ cr, it was the 197()s Mai-\el adaptation that proyided the film's model, thanks once again to artist [ohn Buscema, whose style had thrown progressiyely more conserv ati\e in the decade after 1968. He and Conan's writer, again Roy Thomas, built Conan's character on seeminijly rock-solid machismo, of a pragmatic, indiyidualistic nature. Conan was a red-blooded male who loved, stole and killed without qualm, yet was possessed of innate nobility. Hovve\cr, the frequent cover images of Conan \vith submissive females and sadcMiiasochistic c)\ertones implied some strain on this supposc'illv ideal masculinitv. In the film, Schwarzenei'L'er's 'acting' received poor critical notices, but his leaden approach nc\ crthc'less pro\ed to be the actor's forte, and his career revived ciramaticallv after Termindtor (1982), where he pla\ed a robot.

Both the comic-book adaptation of the barbarian and Schwarzenegger's post-Co- 7j(in career were e\idence of the nevy conser\atism of heroic fantasy, as well as a nevy willingness bv mainstream culture to admire the muscular bodv, if not alwa\'s embrace it. Both Conan and Schwarzenegger rellect in diluted form the hypcr-aggress- ive masculinity (jf the real bodybuilder. In Male Impersonucors, Mark Simpson notes the paradox of boHybuildinir, in that 'its use as a way of socialising^ younc males into hetcrosexuality is utterl\ predicated on its homosexual appeal' (Simpson, 1994, p. 29). Boilybuilding 'emplovs the desij-e for the manly bodv oijuinst homosexuality.

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For thi.' masculine attributes to be erotifi.scd, in otlier words lor them to remain masculine, it requires the banishment ol homosexuahty (although its potential remains like .1 spectre haunting the proceedings)' (Simpson, 1994, p. 29). By manairinir to be camp and bomophobic at the same time, Sch\\ar/enetjirer's Commando (1985) is also an excellent example of this strange mix of tk'sirc antI rejiression.

Because both Conan, and Arnold seem to [)orti"ay masculinity as something fixed, rather than a Hux, their quest tor perfection seems to tiji oxer into its opposite. The macho bero becomes a passi\e object of dispiav and bodvhuiklinjJ becomes a health hazarti. Sam Fussel outlined the limits to this kind of masculinity in his personal memoir of bodybuilding, ,1/II.\T/C (1992): 'I'd become a bodybuilder to be comfortable with a self I'd in\ented. I had counted on the securit\, the simplicity of the mask, tbe armor. But once I'd manufactured all the muscles and the pulferx, I felt trappeil inside this I'olossal Irame' (Fussel, 1992, p. 198). Fussel'.s skill in bis memoir was not only ill conxeyinij how this pursuit ot perfection coultl become a disease, but particularly to show ho\y his physical ahuse was r()ote<l in emotional crisis.

Schwarzenegger's commeriial abilit\' v\as to elide the problems associated \\ ilb tbe muscleman's pursuit ol tbe perfect body. Tbese skills took bim all tbe \yay to tbe Goyernorsbip ot California in 2003. Tbe allegations of sexual misconduct tbat surlaced durintr the campaign (some of which were cf)nceded) a^ain suggested tliat Schwarzeneijtier's priyate hehayiour was predicated on the locker room. This jiri\ate, bullying yersion of masculinity resonated with the exaggerated, aggressiye qualities of steroid addicts described by Sam Fu.ssel. If Schwarzenegger's career has been a celebration of the meelianical, on several knels, then more ircneralK, the rehabili- tation of muscle men has been on behalf of a militaristic and conser\ati\e culture wbiih has failed tf) ackno\yledge the sell-barm associated with the .sport ol bodybuild- ing.

As a fantasy hero, Schwarzenegger was xery different to the ambiijuou.s Vision, whose characterisation pointed up the artifice oi both superheroes and bodybuilders. Tbe anilroid's yisual acknowledgement both of the secret appeal of bodybuikling (the desire for the perfect male body) and the limitations of machismo (the denial of emotion), pointed a \yay beyond the sterile pursuit of perfection. The android superhero may be crying because his perfect body is artificial and his emotional life empty, but by acknowledging his artifice, the character con\'cyed more genuine emotion than Schwarzenegger has e\er managed. In his display of emotion, intro\er- sion and his relentless search for an authentic- human i^esponse, the Vision was a leminised hero, offei-inî a fuller response to the problc-m of orow ino up than the steroid fantasies that supersedetl him.

Maryel's ajipeal to readers was in ]<\rQy part based upon tbe acceptance of outsiders, ainl in the I 968 comi(.-book \ersion of the American Dream the existential Vision cried because he found acieptani'e despite bis artificial creation, ft migbl not be so mischieyous to sujjgest that the android was also cryin[T because he had been unable to break free of the restrictions of the superhero genre, and most deeply, because the masculinity conferred upon him was a sham. If f̂ bilip K. Dick's no\el, Do Amiroids Dream oj Electric Sheep? poses questions regardintj the ambiguous nature of identit\, then 'Eyen An Android Can Cry' sought to answer that no\el affirmatiyeK. Where f)ick's no\ el had us (|ueslioninti our own tears. Marvel simply sutjgested that such emotion is proof of bunianil\' and authentitit\. While this ma\ ha\e seemed

' E V E N A N A N D R O I D C A N C R Y ' 2 5 7

populist or sentimental, il was no small niatlet" thai the >in(h'oi(l pr()\e(l his heroistTi

th^^u^h a tcai", iMtluT ihan a clenched tist. The Vision's slorv sounded a nolt- ol ironv

and anil)iauit\- loi- a comic-book audii'nLe imaginint' a mow huinaiie Amei-ita.

References

Tussel, S. ( 1 9 9 2 ) MiisJc, Ahaciis, L o n d o n .

J o n e s , G. & J a e n h s , W . ( 1 9 9 7 ) The Conm- Hook Heroes, Priina, LIS.

S i m p s o n , M . ( 1 9 9 4 ) Male Impcisontilors, C'assel, L o n d o n .

Sontaii, S. (19f)6) ' N o t e s on C a m p ' , in Aifdinsl ImcrpraLiiion, Vinlaiif, I o n d o n .

r h o n i a s , R., R u s t e m a J. i-i ul. ( l 9 h S ) ' f . \ e n An A n d r o i d Can C r v ' , Aieiiijcr'^ ~>S, M a r \ e

N i ' u Y o r k .

Correspondence address: Tim Nelson, 30 Penrhyn Crescent, London E17 5BH, UK. E-mail; [email protected]