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bibliogrammaI read Bitch Planet Volume 1: Extraordinary Machine (which collects issues 1 - 5 of the original graphic series), created by writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Valentine De Landro, because Bitch Planet Volume 2 was nominated for a Hugo, and I figured I needed to start from the beginning to get the full impact. Reading Bitch Planet was a very odd experience. As a graphic narrative, it’s really, really good, and it’s also intensely painful. It’s a very dystopic graphic narrative, one that is extremely well-written and drawn, with excellent characters and a very powerful story. It’s also a story that I didn’t really want to engage with, largely because I’ve read too many novels in which the society is blatantly patriarchal and authoritarian (in Bitch Planet, the leaders are called Fathers) and women are reduced to the role of things, commodities, objects to be used for the pleasure, satisfaction or comfort of men, and those who don’t comply, or aren’t pleasing, satisfying, comforting enough, are punished, discarded, or erased.
And that’s the state of things in the universe of Bitch Planet. Women who don’t please men, who are non-compliant, inconvenient, or in some way unsuitable, are seized and sent to a prison planet known officially as the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost - also known as Bitch Planet, because all women who don’t serve men are bitches, right?
There are of course two ways to present this scenario. There are people, mostly men, who would consider this a utopia, a paradise. It’s very clear that the creators of this comic are presenting this as a nightmare, but one with roots in reality - rather like Atwood’s intentions in The Handmaid’s Tale, a classic dystopic nightmare of this particular genre. The creators are also trying to do some educating along with the storytelling, for each issue of the comic contains real world, here-and-now essays about sexism and feminism (unfortunately, these essays are not included in the trade volumes, which is a pity). There’s also some very powerful reflections on the whole American carceral state here that the reader can easily unpack, plus the parodies of the old-style ads younused to find in comic books and pulp magazines are perfect, and perfectly deconstruct the ways that consumerism enforces compliance. It’s an admirable project, just... not one I really wanted to see yet again, when the real thing is happening in the daily newspapers.
So. The narrative is centred on the Bitch Planet prison system, and in particular on Kamau Kogu, a black professional athlete with a strong will and a distinctly revolutionary attitude. She’s being framed for the murder of another inmate in order to pressure her into participating in a brutal sports event known as Megatron that is compulsory viewing for all citizens (bread and circuses, anyone?) - and a money-making scheme to help fund the prison system. Another key character is Penny Rolle, a black woman of considerable size sent to Bitch Planet for, among other things, “... repeated citations for aesthetic offenses, capillary disfigurement and wanton obesity.”
Meiko, another inmate, convinces Kamua to go along with the prison administration and put together a team - with her advice - in order to gain access to a gathering of the fathers in a location that she has intimate knowledge of, because she designed it. Kamua agrees, but as we learn later, she does so in part because she hopes that the process of assembling this team will help her locate her sister, also incarcerated on Bitch Planet.
Meanwhile, in scenes set on earth, we gain a glimpse into the way this society works and the position of the sport Megatron in the culture. We also see, in the background of panels depicting news shows, hints of some kind of women’s movement gathering around the slogan “Eleanor Lives.”
This is not an easy story to read. In today’s world, where perceived non-compliance can get you killed in the blink of an eye if you are racially marginalised person, where refugees, men and women, are imprisoned and separated from their children fir the ‘crime’ of running from a home that’s become a deathtrap - largely because of imperialistic interference and exploitation by ‘developed’ countries - and where the rights if marginalised peoples are being eroded daily, this hits far too close to home.
And that’s the state of things in the universe of Bitch Planet. Women who don’t please men, who are non-compliant, inconvenient, or in some way unsuitable, are seized and sent to a prison planet known officially as the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost - also known as Bitch Planet, because all women who don’t serve men are bitches, right?
There are of course two ways to present this scenario. There are people, mostly men, who would consider this a utopia, a paradise. It’s very clear that the creators of this comic are presenting this as a nightmare, but one with roots in reality - rather like Atwood’s intentions in The Handmaid’s Tale, a classic dystopic nightmare of this particular genre. The creators are also trying to do some educating along with the storytelling, for each issue of the comic contains real world, here-and-now essays about sexism and feminism (unfortunately, these essays are not included in the trade volumes, which is a pity). There’s also some very powerful reflections on the whole American carceral state here that the reader can easily unpack, plus the parodies of the old-style ads younused to find in comic books and pulp magazines are perfect, and perfectly deconstruct the ways that consumerism enforces compliance. It’s an admirable project, just... not one I really wanted to see yet again, when the real thing is happening in the daily newspapers.
So. The narrative is centred on the Bitch Planet prison system, and in particular on Kamau Kogu, a black professional athlete with a strong will and a distinctly revolutionary attitude. She’s being framed for the murder of another inmate in order to pressure her into participating in a brutal sports event known as Megatron that is compulsory viewing for all citizens (bread and circuses, anyone?) - and a money-making scheme to help fund the prison system. Another key character is Penny Rolle, a black woman of considerable size sent to Bitch Planet for, among other things, “... repeated citations for aesthetic offenses, capillary disfigurement and wanton obesity.”
Meiko, another inmate, convinces Kamua to go along with the prison administration and put together a team - with her advice - in order to gain access to a gathering of the fathers in a location that she has intimate knowledge of, because she designed it. Kamua agrees, but as we learn later, she does so in part because she hopes that the process of assembling this team will help her locate her sister, also incarcerated on Bitch Planet.
Meanwhile, in scenes set on earth, we gain a glimpse into the way this society works and the position of the sport Megatron in the culture. We also see, in the background of panels depicting news shows, hints of some kind of women’s movement gathering around the slogan “Eleanor Lives.”
This is not an easy story to read. In today’s world, where perceived non-compliance can get you killed in the blink of an eye if you are racially marginalised person, where refugees, men and women, are imprisoned and separated from their children fir the ‘crime’ of running from a home that’s become a deathtrap - largely because of imperialistic interference and exploitation by ‘developed’ countries - and where the rights if marginalised peoples are being eroded daily, this hits far too close to home.