Danielle Alexander
Futurism is an art movement developed during the early 20th century. It’s first major work, the Futurist Manifesto is considered to have started the movement and outlines the key ideas behind it. Some of these include idolizing aggression, speed, violence, and contempt for women. These aren’t all their values, but they are a few I wanted to specifically react against.
Marinetti imagined an ideal future containing these values, and my comic shows the negative effects of this ideology. I gave these traits to my main character Uberrta. She should be the ideal person in Marinetti’s world, but because she is a woman, she will always be seen as inferior. She tries to compensate this by being stronger, louder, more aggressive, so the world don’t see her as just a weak woman. She needs to prove to herself and others that she is just as strong as a man. In trying to better herself according to the values of her society, she develops internalized misogyny as well, further fueling her insecurities and self-hatred.
In attempt to relieve these tense emotions, she challenges a man whom she deems to have all the traits she wants, strength, power, and respect. She dehumanizes him, and sees him only as a symbol of redemption, never referring to him by name. When he attempts to console her, two things happen. He shows his humanity, show’s that he doesn’t care about being superior or the hypermasculine traits that Uberrta values. He also insinuates that she can’t be naturally tough because she is a woman, and that it is all an act.
His consolation breaks her worldview. She no longer sees him as strong, but weak. It angers her that someone she idolized doesn’t conform to her ideals, and she projects her own feelings of inferiority onto him. She attacks him, and when she finally kills him, it proves she is stronger than him, and in a way, she kills her own feelings of weakness as well.
https://sites.google.com/view/danielle-alexander