Response to Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan's Unruly

What Does It Take To Be A Superhero?
By Bowen Smyth

Heroes—be they super or regular—have been largely absent in my life. Until recently. As a kid, I dreaded the school assignments that required me to identify my hero, draw that character, and then write about them. As a good fundamentalist Protestant kid, I worried about any hero that didn’t go by the name of God or Jesus. At the same time, I didn’t want to seem like too much of a freak, so I pretended that my heroes were people I knew, like grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Extreme fundamentalists like me also grew up without televisions and access to popular culture, so I didn’t even have a flying superhero that I could claim as my own. But I had heard enough about some of these superheroes to feel a little ashamed when comparing my heroes to the heroes of the kids next to me. Pencil crayon drawings of grandmothers and great-grandmothers don’t look very appealing next to colourful, flying superheroes equipped with impressive gadgets and helpful sidekicks.

Lorri Millan and Shawna Dempsey and their multimedia performance piece Unruly caught me up a bit on the superhero culture I missed growing up. Alongside projected images that illustrate her points, the feminist superhero Unruly tells us a brief history about the double lives of orphaned-boy superheroes such as Batman, Spiderman, and Superman. We then get a glimpse into the dominating sexuality of female figures such as Wonder Woman, Cat Woman, and the lesser known, but no less powerful, Unruly. However, in good critical fashion, Millan and Dempsey proceed to deconstruct these beloved characters, just as I was starting to feel a little knowledgeable about the superhero phenomenon I’d missed as a child.

One observation that I took away from this performance is that superheroes are the ones who look so fantastic in skin-tight leotards that they are admired by many. No one throws snowballs or yells “fag” at leotard-clad male superheroes, which seems to be my fate when I wear pants that are quite modestly fitted in comparison. Good thing the snowball-armed boys had no aim. Otherwise they might have had to deal with a very angry fag throwing snowballs back at them.

Unruly taught me that there might be better ways to respond to injustices in this world, super style, by confidently donning leotards that show off even the most unsightly parts of my anatomy and quoting poetry out of my ass. Maybe this wasn’t the main point of the performance, but it’s certainly what stuck in my mind. Picture the superhero Unruly, clad in a red leotard covering her from head to ankle, with a blue and white target on her chest, and black and white tight boots. On the video screen, we watch as a woman walks down the street, unaware of the man behind her who is eyeing her purse. Just before the thief manages to grab her purse, Unruly comes to the rescue with her superhero powers, terrifying the thief and sending him off running. What is her secret power that frightens grown men? Poetry! When Unruly bends over poetic words come out of her ass. In this case she wields words from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” is all that it takes for Unruly to save the day.

Maybe you had to see it to believe it, but poetry spewed from one’s ass surely threatens superpowers as we know them. We’ve become so accustomed to powers that enable heroes to fly, dodge, jump tall buildings, and destroy evil forces, that we’ve come to expect these kinds of feats. Who wouldn’t be able to save the world if they had flying, floating, remote-operated vehicles, the ability to be anywhere at any time, a helpful sidekick to assist or to take blame, and whatever else it takes to ward off the enemy? To do the same with no gadgets other than poetry and your own ass is a power worth calling not just super, but SUPER!!!

And yet the irony is that what Unruly does is something that all of us can do. All we need is some pre-existing poetry making sure we give credit to those who created and shared their words. Or, if quality poetry is in short supply, we can create our own. As Unruly wondered, why do we withhold some of the things we intend to say? We would not have poetry without the people who are brave enough to share their truths and thoughts with us. And perhaps this is the message that Dempsey and Millan intended for us to take home: maybe it is admitting our simple truths, such as “I love you,” or “I’m sorry,” or “I’m afraid,” that will save us.

Which brings me back to heroes. Lately I seem to have a lot of heroes, or at least a lot more than when I was younger. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers still qualify, but they now have some company. And, interestingly, there are many writers among my current heroes: people who have shared their thoughts through poetry and prose, and who inspire me to share my own stories when a million critics inside of me insist that I have nothing to say that is worth being heard.

One writer has given me a superpower that works wonders against a blank page and voices that drown my words before they are heard. If you could see me right now, I’d be wearing a violet leotard suit, and my ass would be spewing these words at the internal critics that threaten to silence me: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost” (Martha Graham).
Whether donning leotards that magnify every physical feature, or sharing words that make one’s inner selves visible, perhaps the real superheroes are those who overcome their fear of revealing the most spectacular and unique parts of themselves to the world.

I am still learning to overcome fears that make me want to hide from myself and especially from others. She-man might sound like a fantastic fictional superhero, but it doesn’t feel very super when I walk down the street in my gender queer body, attracting confused and hostile responses. Most people get scared when they cannot determine whether I am a man or a woman, or when they think that I haven’t quite figured it out. But, like all superheroes, we each have our own nemesis, and although it might not always seem that way, we are also equipped with our own unique set of powers. It just takes a bit of time and practice to discover those powers. And until we feel like confident superheroes ourselves, there are many, like Batman and Unruly, who can inspire us along the way.

In this life, Bowen Smyth is a Dutch-Irish-English-Canadian, good-fundamentalist-Protestant-girl turned feminist-faery-drag queen-trannyboi, who is not having an identity crisis, but believes that crises give birth to new identities. He loves reading and aspires to be a writer, composer, performer, teacher, and healer when he grows up.