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Hello! It won't have escaped your notice that this is not, in fact, Wednesday. Apologies - the honest truth is that having been away last week there was an enormous amount of work to catch up on that got in the way of getting the blog up on time. "What's on the Rack?" was late for the same reason. Speaking of which,
Now, on with the news and such.
BATMAN FAILS ORAL TEST
OK. Let's deal with the innuendo in the room first. This is an all ages blog. But we have to address the thing that's trending on social media regarding the thing that DC insists that heroes on general, but Batman specifically will not do with their girlfriends because the various social medias have been alive with it for the last couple of days. So we're going to be cryptic. If you don't get it, good - that means you're too innocent and you'll understand when you're older... If you do get it, you probably know all about this story already, but here we go!
My degree is in linguistics, and I'm quite sly by nature. I am therefore, by training and inclination, a Cunning Linguist. The makers of the animated Harley Quinn show wanted to have Batman show Catwoman what a Cunning Linguist he was. But the suits said "Nope, Heroes don't do that, because it might affect toy sales." And so Batman will not ever demonstrate his cunning linguistic abilities on Catwoman.
My favourite response, of all the ribald responses to this nonsense on Twitter was from somebody who pointed out that as a billionaire Batman must surely be able to afford to eat out every night.
At this point you're either clutching your pearls, chuckling along or utterly clueless. Either way, you're welcome. In all seriousness it kinda blows my mind that what is really a not particularly unusual story about the people making a show wanting to push the envelope in terms of explicit content and the more cautious people in the corner offices reigning them in for fear of negative reactions from consumers has blown up in quite the way this has.
A story about the censorship of the bedroom antics of Batman and Catwoman has been featured in the Hollywood Reporter and even the Daily Mail! I dunno - this is a story I never expected to be covering for any number of reasons, and it'll probably be the subject of a full on Waffle at some point in the future because the way the sexuality of characters like Batman is portrayed has changed beyond recognition in the last few years and it does raise some interesting questions.
STARGIRL SEASON 2 EXTENDED TRAILER DROPS
Season One of Stargirl was one of the highlights of last year. Did not expect to love it anywhere near as much as I did, but I really did love it. If you have access to Amazon Prime I really do suggest you go and check it out - and given the way I feel about Amazon as a company (like most independent booksellers I'm not a fan) believe me that I really wouldn't encourage you to do that if it wasn't something that would seriously improve your life.
It's a show that dances along the very fine line of having real, high stakes and sincerely powerful emotional themes while at the same time being completely self aware about how ridiculous it is and being absolutely determined to have as much fun as is humanly possible. It's completely awesome.
And now the second season is imminent and it looks as though they're going to build on the foundation they laid so well in season one. Take a look!
See?
GAZE
We've talked about the "Male Gaze" and the "Female Gaze" in comics and art in general in various Waffles and on the Podcast several times. This brief comparison of Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad (Male Gaze) and Birds of Prey (Female Gaze) from Media Chomp caught my attention this week and pretty much explains the difference.
OK, I'm still running late, so We'll leave it there for now. Back to normal next week - we'll look forward to seeing you then!