Pathetic Little Man

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

I honestly roll my eyes at 90% of fandom's "Jason is being victim-blamed" claims.

Like, I agree that the comics that try to argue Jason was a "bad seed" who was destined to meet a sticky end because of his upbringing or bad attitude or whatever are wrong and also kinda mean and dumb. But that's a Doylist problem of narrative framing, not anything that can or should be placed on any of the in-world characters.

But it's not "victim-blaming" to acknowledge that Jason got himself killed, ie, that he made the pivotal choice which led to his death. Bruce ask him to wait. Jason chose not to. If he had, he wouldn't have fallen into the Joker's trap, and he wouldn't have died. Like with Steph and War Games, it's taking his agency away to claim otherwise, all in the name of making them "perfect" victims.

It's also not "victim-blaming" to acknowledge his reasons and motivations for making that choice. Jason needs to be in control of that moment, because that's the real core of the tragedy. It wasn't inevitable, he wasn't somehow "destined" for a bad end, but his circumstances and choices combined to put him on that path anyway. It's the culmination of his rocky relationship with Bruce and Jason's own trauma and hang-ups about parents, specifically mothers, coming to a dramatic end that both plays into and deconstructs the tropes of the kid superhero genre.

To paraphrase an old John Green video, the core struggle of being a teenager is that of being pulled in many directions by the world around you, while also desiring to live fully and fearlessly and maybe a little foolishly. And the occasionally tragic thing is that, as a teenager, you are just grown-up enough for those understandable, natural desires to get you killed.

If that happens, it's not "your fault," but it is the result of your choices, and it's insulting and infantalizing to pretend that it's not.

In that regard, Jason's role in Tim's story, as the ghost who hangs over his adventures reminding him of the price he can and will pay if he makes the wrong decision, makes perfect sense. What people who call it "victim-blaming" are actually mad about is that the story isn't about Jason. It's not about his tragedy, it's about how his tragedy affected the people around him, the people who were left behind to continue on and the people who came after.

There's a smart post going around stating that one of the things you really have get used to -- or better yet, learn to enjoy -- about superhero comics is that there will be times when it's just plain not about your fav. And you will have more fun if you learn to embrace that, to enjoy seeing them in different lights and from different perspectives.

But some people can't or don't or don't want to do that, and so they get mad at the stories that aren't centered on their fav's feelings and perspective. And they use loaded psychiatry language to express that.

The true nature of Jason's tragedy is that it was preventable via three different sources outside of the Joker if they'd made different decisions - via Bruce, via Sheila (this one noteably the Bats wouldn't know about, which I think some of these people also forget), and via Jason himself. Guess which one the next Robin would concern himself with. Which one he would be worried about. The only actions he can directly control are his own. It's not about Jason being responsible for his own death, it's about Tim not wanting to be responsible for his own.

(via @katanahime )

Even disregarding whether or not Jason is actually to blame in some sense for his death a lot of the examples people cite of this are pre-UTRH Tim just, like, thinking internally about the risks of being Robin and it's pretty disingenuous imo to use the language of "victim blaming" (something that connotes using social pressure to shame a person for the abuse or violence they've suffered) when Jason is a dead person that Tim has never met. Tim isn't demeaning Jason for what happened to him or engaging in blame calculus to determine who's "really" at fault, he's trying to survive being Robin by looking at what the previous one did, and going "okay, let's not do that." Jason fans take this very negatively because to them Jason is a protagonist they've come to empathize with, and they know he's going to come back, so they read this as an element of a relationship between characters that they are taking a side in. But from Tim's perspective, there's no relationship in the first place, because Jason is a dead stranger. Tim thinks about Jason and his life insofar as it is relevant to Tim (i.e. largely as a lesson).

(via @mothemotics )

#disagree only on the point that the ‘bad seed’ rhetoric is purely doylist. it is absolutely in character for certain characters (alfred) to#frame it that way especially in grief. even in ditf before jasons death alfred is armchair psychoanalyzing him#and i think it makes sense to read alfreds classist biases and excuse of a moral decay as something not ooc for him in particular#but otherwise agree.#semirelated is the really bizarre way many have latched onto the language of the ‘perfect victim’ as if that is a real status one could#achieve. and that jason is somehow being denied by people?

(a fair point from @getanshi )

#I think that to truly constitute victim blaming it would have to aim some level of absolution at the perpetrator#because that’s what victim blaming is for: displacement of fault from victimizer to victim#the fact that Jason made a bad choice is never used to make the joker less culpable for his death

(via @fredricwertham )

#it would be victim blaming to say Jason's actions absolve the joker for killing him#it's not victim blaming to say someone undertaking a dangerous activity made a mistake which led to their death#the cave diver who gets turned around#the electrician who doesn't check that the power's out#the mountain-climber who doesn't pack the right gear

(via @ceescedasticity )

And finally, a good summation of points from @trekkele

examples:

John William Waterhouse official site

Lawrence Alma-Tadema on Wikipedia

Luis Ricardo Falero on Wikipedia

Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant on Wikipedia

William-Adolphe Bouguereau on Wikipedia and his .org

Jacques-Louis David on Wikipedia

Artemisia Gentileschi on Wikipedia

Alexandre Cabanel on Wikipedia (yes, it's the Lucifer crying guy, but his other stuff has more whimsy)

Francesc Masriera on Wikipedia