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Pruitt, Dwain Carlton. "It rhymes with lust? Matt Baker and the ironic politics of race, sex and gender in the golden age." Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 7. (2016): 197–209. Added by: joachim (6/15/20, 6:33 PM) Last edited by: joachim (6/15/20, 6:37 PM) |
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| Resource type: Journal Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2015.1135470 BibTeX citation key: Pruitt2016 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "Phantom Lady", Baker. Matt, Ethnicity, Gender, USA, Wertham. Fredric Creators: Pruitt Collection: Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics |
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In Seduction of the Innocent, Dr Frederic Wertham famously described Golden Age comics as pornography that fostered juvenile sexual deviance, anti-social behaviour, misogyny and racism. In singling out Phantom Lady #17 as an example, Wertham ironically implicated one of Golden Age comics’ only African-American artists, Matt Baker. This study considers the roles that Baker’s race and sexual orientation played in his work. Contextualising Baker’s life experience within the general sweep of African-American history and gender studies, this essay asserts that Baker’s contribution to Good Girl Art were shaped by the unique African-American expressive and visual culture of 1930–50s Harlem. This, in turn, affected his representation of the female form and his attention to drawing racial minorities. It further suggests that recent scholarly models interrogating gay writers and readers’ engagement with superheroines provide intriguing insight into aspects of Baker’s art.
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