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| Source: Wikipedia |
In order to celebrate my return to Fangirling Daily, I wanted to show that yes, you can actually write about comic books, fandom, and Batman in a scholarly setting. Comic books aren't just for recreation but academia, too!
To prove it, I wanted to share a selection of a paper I wrote back when I was a graduate student studying English. The course I was taking was called "Gender Trouble" so of course, being a feminist, I enjoyed researching and writing this paper. Being a Batman fan, I loved it even more.
I don't want to post all of it because a) it's entirely too long b) that would be self-indulgent of me and c) as someone who hopes to be a professor someday, I am always nervous about and against plagiarism. Nonetheless, I felt it was too good to hoard to myself, so enjoy my self-important and critical look at Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
The Gender Trouble and
“Homophobic Nightmare” of Batman: The
Dark Knight Returns
Working in Hollywood recently I’ve come to realize how
many prohibitions there really are against even touching one group or another,
to a point where the villain can’t be female, can’t be gay, can’t be black.
…Anyway, yeah, the homophobic nightmare is very much part of the Batman/Joker
mythos. It’s always been there, I just spelled it out a little more plainly.
Frank Miller, 1987 (Sharrett
37)
