Analyzing Batman’s “Dilated Anus” Controversy: A Critical Look at Comics and Gender Dissidence

2024-03-08 16:14:16
Manuel Adorni once once more referred to the controversy of Batman’s “dilated anus.”

This Thursday the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, once once more referred to a controversy that seemed to be buried. In response to the letter signed by 68 Nobel Prize winners, who expressed their concern regarding the elimination of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the dismissal of CONICET employees, he assured: “It will not be spent on investigations into Batman’s sexual orientation ”.

That article had already been referred to by the vice president during the debate between candidates, following Florencio Randazzo – then Juan Schiaretti’s running mate – questioned her regarding the closure of the scientific organization: “We are interested in CONICET investigating the hard sciences and things that will give prestige to our country. Investigating Batman’s anus, Ricardo Arjona’s songs, Victoria Villarruel’s thoughts, the Lion King movie, or whether Star Wars was messianic or not, is definitely not science and is not something that the Argentine people should pay for.”

Video: Manuel Adorni answers regarding the situation at Conicet

But the story actually goes back to 2019, when the journalist Eduardo Feinmann presented the article “Queer memory and anal comics: when the comic opens our asses (and we like it)” by Facundo Saxe during the broadcast of his television program. , CONICET researcher with a doctorate in Letters and specialized in queer theory – a field focused on gender and sexuality dissidence. At that time, he displayed Saxe’s personal social networks and proposed that scientists and researchers invent their own organism called “Ñoquicet.”

Facundo Saxe, CONICET researcher with a doctorate in Letters and specialized in queer theory (Facebook capture of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences)

Two years later, the presentation “Batman’s dilated anus: notes for an investigation into archives of hate and erasure of sexual-gender dissidence”, by the same author, would put the controversy back on the agenda.

In the summary found on the organization’s website, Naxe begins with a warning: “I’m going to say this in case any haters find it and read it. This is not a finished investigation, it is a presentation, a presentation is not an entire conference nor a complete thesis nor a closed investigation. It is part of a research in progress, a kind of work in progress. In this case, I am interested in sharing at the University Comics Congress some notes on certain drifts of Batman’s sexuality, or rather, certain effects of the character on certain people and its link with the idea of ​​hate archives.”

Feinmann presented the article “Queer memory and anal comics: when the comic opens our asses (and we like it)” during the broadcast of his television program (CONICET Capture)

In September of the year, the author gave an interview to journalist Franco Torchia, where he not only explained that both his presentation – the famous “Batman’s dilated anus” – and the work presented on the superhero – “Anal comic” – had no financing from CONICET, but he also recounted the distressing situations that occurred following the exhibition: death threats, disclosure of his real address and even, he said, in certain areas of La Plata there were armed groups once morest some researchers whose work was related to gender and sexuality.

“We are going to literally die, too, because I practically have to go out and explain that I am not working on Batman’s anus, because that is exactly what is ridiculous. That? Should I travel to the United States, look for Adam West’s body and investigate his anus? I mean, it doesn’t make the slightest sense,” defended the doctor of Letters.

The website that ignited the controversy (CONICET Capture)

And he developed: “There are books by an Argentine writer, called Osvaldo Bossi, in which he writes poems regarding the homosexual relationship of Batman and Robin or writings in prose in which the subject who speaks is Batman to Robin and uses images of the series. That is connected to that erased homosexual Batman imaginary. So, it’s not as literal as looking at the physical anus, it’s something else that has to do with that anal philosophy. I am connecting all of this with a legend of Argentine culture around mandatory military service that says that if they marked you as homosexual in the medical examination, they would give you the acronym AD.”

The article “Anal comic” was a work for Kamandi Magazine. “The use of “anal” comes, among other possibilities, from Paul B. Preciado’s concept of the castrated anus. This allows me to decenter not only the sex-gender binarism but also cultural binarisms deeply rooted in disciplines of the human and social sciences,” indicates the summary found on the organization’s website.

According to the author of the article, his proposal is to think regarding the comic and its reading “from the anal”: “In my particular case, as a queer reader, in my personal life trajectory, reading Wonder Woman allowed me to establish certain identifications linked to sexual dissidence.”

In another fragment, Saxe develops how the “conservative turn” of the 1950s was felt in superhero comics, when “The Seduction of the Innocents” by Frederic Werthman – an author who pointed out that Wonder Woman was a lesbian and that Batman and Robin might leading children to the path of homosexuality – “unleashed a campaign” once morest comics.

Anyway: the main theme would seem to be a critical look at reading comics and not, as at first glance would suggest, a literal investigation into the “anuses” of comic book characters.

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