Image discourse analysis 500 words task 3

Kate Beaton, strong female characters: 2011

This image is one of Beaton's many online comics inspired by everyday stereotypes and exploring them. Her work has ranged from people who exist to fictional self made characters for her comics. This example explores feminism as well as sexism, and by doing so she then shows power, gender roles, attitudes, inequality and societal means in her work. It is very obvious that this particular piece is strongly influenced by her own opinion on sexism, and how she views the taboo subject, as the style and presentation of the females seems to be a very natural way of portraying women in her case. This is shown throughout alot of her work involving the female sex, as the sexualised  parts of the body are very prominent with no attempt to hide or restrict said features.

The way her comics, inparticular "strong female characters", are created small scale using inks and pens, accompanied by very strong, fluid, line quality. As most of her works are set out in this minimalistic style it forces the viewer to interperet what colours the characters would be wearing, subconsciously. When i look at the image i see them wearing dark leathers clothing, with hints of colour which to me shows their strengh, therefor allowing the people analysing the image to establist their own view on the subject. As the image is monochrome is avoiding being more steriotypically femanine which yet again enforce power to the characters, and a representation of their strengh.

As feminism and the ongoing fight to eradicate sexism is very strong in todays culture throughout most parts of the world, this work has become popular in its views of one ideal of sexism, the view that seemingly mocks how feminism is seen, but at the same time as portrays strong semi naked ladies it doesnt seem to objectify them which is usualy the reason to reduce clothing on female images.

The quote "sexism is over" is also present in this image, making the meaning of the comic finalised. However as it states that sexism is over, we all know that sexism has never been resolved, therefor showing that it is not an accurate representation of our world. With it been within a speech bubble it also shows that it is an ideal of the writer herself using the characters to show this.

There is also a mocking aspect to her strong women, as in modern society strong women in fictional stories, be it comics or even videogames, they are commonly heavily sexualised with their features and personalities being very stereotypical. Such as the common concept art of video games following a pattern of less and less clothing to attract the male audience. Kate Beaton seems to have used this in her visualisation in her versions of female protagonists, and managed to twist this to benefit her view on sexism, which intentionally or unintentionally makes her work seem to mock perceptions of females.

To add to this theory i further looked into the character personalities themselves and found a rather humerous result, the names of the three protagonist women are "Georgia O'Queefe, Queen Elizatits,and Susan B Assthony" found at http://comicsalliance.com/strong-female-characters-webcomic-kate-beaton/. It aslo showed me that the women also tend to have their reers as well as chest facing the viewer in an unrealistic set of poses the human body would severely damage itself doing.


(will be updated including quotes and image refrences in later post)