The Superhero Fashion Show

[kent_allard_jr]

On Saturday I went to the Metropolitan Museum with friends to see Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy. It was OK -- if nothing else, it was cool to see the costumes from Hollywood superhero movies -- but as I noted in my comment to trinityvixen, the text was Oh-Fucking-God awful, an appalling bastard child of Anna Wintour and some pretentious English-department windbag. There was nothing about the technique behind comic illustration, no historical context, no information of any kind, really, just a combination of banal observations and silly conjectures that would've been laughed off the walls if they weren't filled with $5 words. Seriously, the museum should be ashamed of itself for associating with such stupid nonsense.

It was too bad, because there were lots of issues the exhibition could have addressed but seemed to be beneath its notice:

• They could have compared comic-book superheroes with their predecessors: Zorro, the Shadow, the Lone Ranger, and other masked vigilantes of radio and pulp fiction.
  
• They could have told us what inspired Superman's costume, pointed out that it wasn't part of Schuster's first sketches.
  
• They could have discussed the ways costumes changed -- and in many ways became more uniform -- as time progressed. The Golden Age costumes weren't always skin-fight, as you can see by looking at the Golden Age Flash and Green Lantern. Why did this change in the Silver Age?
  
• There have been experiments in abandoning costumes all together; the original Fantastic Four just wore street clothes, for instance. Why did the FF change?
  
• They could have written about color issues, both aesthetic and technical. Mentioned that Robin was introduced to add bright colors to a comic filled with blacks, blues and grays, and told us why the Hulk shifted from gray to green.
  
• They could have also talked about the way Hollywood's depictions have changed over the years. Batman's costume in the TV show looks a lot like the comic, but Tim Burton abandoned it for a kind of rubbery armor that's now standard for the character. Why the change?

There was plenty the curators could have talked about, as you can see, instead of comparing the Hulk to a giant erect penis. Too bad it was run by a pack of morons.

Comments

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Compare the Reeves, Reeve, Cain, and Routh costumes. Hell, compare the hair styles.

Book length treatises could be written about the above.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I have a book that does that. It's about the art of Superman Returns. It's pretty brilliant, and gorgeous, and they discuss why they went with the costuming choices that they did.

But I think that's also a point about what you can address in a book and what you can address in an exhibit. A book can get into the details and have a picture-plate insert to help you along. At an exhibit, you're not looking to read a textbook-length dissertation--you're looking to look. To appreciate the detail of what you've only ever seen glossed over in a movie or a magazine. The point of an exhibit is to demonstrate a theme, impart some information to the less informed and hopefully encourage them to seek out more details. As far as the museum is concerned, they'd like you to be more interested in fashion that in superheroes--the fashion they're keeping; the superheroes are there for a limited time only.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that you're attacking the exhibit for not being more interested in the superheroes than the fashion. Like I said, this is about the fashion and its inspiration. As far as fashion is concerned, the history of the comics is less important than the aesthetic. Superhero costumes are different and varied, but they still obey an aesthetic that Michael Chambon revealed in his essay and that easily translate to fashion even if the reference isn't always clear. (The plastic dress has what to do with the Flash again?)

Again, I think the book did address the questions you have--why the change in costumes for Batman? Because people don't look imposing in tights that bunch at the armpits. Because the rubber is sexier. The colors--which communicate patriotism, which difference, which post-modernism? Answer: red, white, and blue (and sometimes black, white, and gray so long as the shapes are right); anything covering the skin that isn't skin colored--green, blue, red, etc.; and black and chrome, for the most part.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Well again, I liked the Chabon article (at least I did in the New Yorker) but my objection was not to his piece, but to the pretentious free-associative crap on the walls of the exhibition itself. The concrete issues you raise -- like the problems expressing superhero costumes on the screen -- would've been interesting to read about. The curators largely ignored them, however.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The curators didn't have the space. It was already a tight exhibit, and the problem with couture is that the entire thing needs to be seen to really be experienced. They also didn't have the props. They couldn't go through all the Batman costumes when they only had the one. They couldn't track changes from Fantastic Four through the ages when they didn't have any and didn't have any fashion analogues to compare it with.

I still think you're hammering at the exhibit from the wrong angle. You're wishing it was about the costumes and it was instead about the fashion. I'm not saying that a display of costumes through the ages wouldn't be great, but that wouldn't be fashion. That would be a very limited form of costuming that mostly would show that older costumes had less money and variety of materials to throw at the problem of translating superheroes from drawings to reality. The show was about fashion. Not as in "What are the X-Men wearing this season?" but as in "What do the archetypal heroes teach us about the body and how do we apply that to clothing in a non-literal way?"

(In fact, I had a problem with the designers who just reused the Superman S on clothing. That's cute, but it's not couture.)

I'm sorry it wasn't the retrospective that you would have preferred, but it never pretended it was going to be a fashion show of superheroes only a show of fashions indebted to the superhero for its look.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

The thing is, they could've had an interesting exhibition on the fashion. They could've told us a little about the designers and the influences on their work (and if comic books were their inspiration, which characters or media inspired them?). Whatever the subject matter (and the emphasis, to me, seemed a lot more on the comics than the boardwalk, but no matter), they should have conveyed some information. They didn't.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You might also be giving the couturiers more credit that they ought to have. They do their research, sure, but they're not reading comics regularly for inspiration (unless it's a personal interest). They did the best they could with the inspirations but mostly they showed the repetitive motif. In the Spider-Man exhibit, they demonstrated quite clearly that the borrowing of the spider motif in no way was intended to associate the product with Spider-Man himself. (Except for the Spyder athletic gear which I think very consciously borrows on the character because it's also skin-tight spandex.) The penetration level is so deep it's not always conscious but the motifs are the same--the use of the spider, for example, to knit together (no pun intended) a draped, webby look.

And no one wants to read the designers' quotes. That's why the webpage has quotes only from the film costume designers. Because they have to write about what you want to know--how to translate the comic to screen. The couturiers aren't thinking about that. Given some of their product, I'd be impressed if they could put into words what they think about fashion.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Hulk as giant penis probably has some reality, but nearly as much as the TV Ad Mr. Clean as giant penis. Especially the 1960s/early 70s Mr. Clean.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Wow... hearing your comments about it (and Trin's responses) just makes this entire exhibit sound impossibly tedious to me.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Well it wasn't that long, for one thing, so you probably wouldn't have time to be bored by it. Plus, some of the costumes really were interesting. My problem wasn't so much with the displays as with the text that accompanied them.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

If you ever want to hear a fascinating talk on the history of superhero comics, get in touch with womzilla.