hasmoneanbulbasaur:
If You Exist, You’re Staring at Us: Mary Magdalene and Tara
(Left: Mary
Magdalene by Leonardo da Vinci, 1515; right: The Wicked + The Divine #13 cover by Jamie McKelvie and Matthew
Wilson, 2015)
NOTE: LONG POST!!!
Sometime
ago I read issue 13 of The Wicked + The
Divine. A comic book from a
phenomenal series that reflects upon popular culture, celebrities, gods, and
how mere mortals treat gods and celebrities.
The series is written by Kieron Gillen, who’s had multiple credits in
the comic book writing world. Issue 13
of The Wicked + The Divine remains
one of his most poignant pieces. Issue
13 made a profound impact based on the internet’s response to it; Gillen
focused on serious issues within celebrity culture all the while referencing a
certain event on the internet.
After reading this issue, I felt the
same catharsis that all other readers felt after reading it. However, other than the obvious references to
celebrities and internet events, I felt as if the situation presented in issue
13 felt somewhat familiar. I re-read the
previous volumes of The Wicked + The
Divine and then re-read issue 13, this time with my books and materials on
religion and religious studies. I had
found the connection. Tara, the
character which issue 13 focused on, and Mary Magdalene, one of the most
prominent Christian figures, were two women in the same boat.
Before I continue I must clarify a
few things. I will give explanations to
both Mary Magdalene and Tara and the worlds they lived in as I have a diverse
set of followers and readers, and many of them don’t know much about one or the
other. Although I will cite religious
references and am religious myself, I will not write this piece from a
spiritual point-of-view so as not to exclude those who do not follow any
religion or spirituality (I do not know how many people within the Wicked and Divine fandom are religious
or not). This piece is more-or-less from
a philosophical and cultural critic point-of-view. Finally before reading the rest of my piece,
I suggest you read Kieron Gillen’s notes about issue 13, from his own tumblr
blog, and Nyala Ali’s piece about issue 13 on the website Women Write About Comics.
First
off, the plot for The Wicked + The Divine
for those who don’t know it. In the
world of The Wicked + The Divine gods
and goddesses from every religion physically incarnate as teenagers/young
adults. As the back of the volumes say,
these gods and goddesses incarnate every ninety years as these teenagers/young
adults and are treated like music celebrities.
Like regular celebrities, they are loved and hated and even have their
own “cult” followings. However, these
incarnated gods and goddesses only live on Earth for two years, after which the
remaining ones simultaneously kill each other to restart the ninety year
cycle. But not all of the deities make
it through the two year span; often they fight and kill each other or
themselves.
In our contemporary time, the twelve
incarnated gods are the Japanese Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu, the fallen
angel/devil Lucifer, the Egyptian war goddess Sekhmet, the semi-demon Baphomet,
the Roman wisdom goddess Minerva, the Norse god Woden, the Irish war goddess
called the Morrigan, the Greek wine and revelry god Dionysus, the Sumerian
goddess of love and war Inanna, our mysterious Tara, the Ugaritic storm god
Baal Hadad, and the Norse fate goddess Urdr.
To clarify some more things, the gods don’t always incarnate in the ethnic
or racial appearance of the cultures that worshiped them. Baal Hadad, an ancient Middle Eastern god, is
a Black man; the Greek Dionysus is also Black; a White girl is the physical
incarnation of Amaterasu; and heck, Baphomet, which is actually a Latin
corruption of the name Muhammed, is White.
However, the same is true with the gods’ genders. Lucifer is female and Inanna is male;
technically, this Inanna is physically male (sex) but identifies as neither
male nor female (gender).
Anyway, as stated the gods and
goddesses are like teen pop musical celebrities. They have performances which show off their
godly powers and abilities, via some sort of plasma in their heads, which often
sends their audiences into ecstatic frenzies.
They are cared for by an elderly woman named Ananke who was originally a
goddess but gave it up to help find and take care of the gods and goddesses
whenever they returned. The current
twelve gods were at peace, until Lucifer and Amaterasu were attacked by terrorists. Lucifer killed the terrorists through
snapping her fingers- an ability that all the gods use- but that leads to her
arrest and trial.
During her trial, she playfully does
the snap, after which the judge’s head explodes. What followed was the main protagonist Laura trying
to figure out whether Lucifer was innocent or not. Eventually Lucifer breaks free and destroys
part of the town and the other gods attack her.
She backs down and decides to live “underground” with the Morrigan, but
Ananke kills Lucifer at the last minute.
Despite all of that, Laura did not find out who the two terrorists were
from before.
She
continues the investigation on her own with the help of Inanna. She discovers that the two killers were
Lucifer’s fans. After that Inanna fights
and is killed by Baphomet struggling with his own demons. Laura discovers that she’s the thirteenth
god, the goddess Persephone, but is killed almost immediately after by Ananke
for unknown reasons. As a result, Baal
and a reporter named Beth decide to investigate what it all means.
That is the story of Wicked and Divine up until issue
13. Tara did not appear in the issues
prior except for on the cover of issue 5 and in a poster that appeared
scattered throughout. Issue 13 was
Tara’s debut, but also her final (at least so far) appearance. Tara dies at Ananke’s hands at the end of
issue 13, but asked Ananke to do it unlike Lucifer or Laura. Tara did this because she was hated by her
“fans” whenever she did not use her powers in a performance; received horrible,
misogynistic, and explicit threats on twitter; and because no one cared about
her true self.
It is not even known which goddess
Tara is. Ananke had told her in the past
but she forgot and Ananke would not repeat herself and Gillen himself is
leaving it ambiguous on purpose. Before
her appearance, Tara would almost always be referred to by others as “fucking
Tara”, to express their annoyance at her reclusive and “eclectic” behavior. Upon Tara’s death, some of those who tormented
her on twitter seem to have had a last minute change of heart, possibly
realizing how awful they were to her, although hateful comments continued
without remorse. Her past life was no
different before Ananke unleashed her god powers.
Tara received sexual comments from
some of the men around her. She even got
it as an eleven-year-old! When she was
at the premiere for a movie, some interviewers pointed their camera directly at
her breasts. When she tells them to
speak to her face they ask creepy questions about her body to which she turns
and walks away and gets the “fucking Tara” remark. Both women and men eventually grew to hate
Tara because she wanted to express her true self and not become what they
wanted her to become.
Now that we’ve fleshed out who Tara
is, let’s turn to Mary Magdalene before I give my exegesis on the two’s
similarities. Mary Magdalene is one of
the most prominent women of the New Testament and Christianity. She is often times simply called The
Magdalene to help distinguish her from other women named Mary, including Jesus’
mother. In the New Testament, she first
appears in chapters 27 and 28 of the Gospel of Matthew where she is among the
group of women who witness Jesus’ crucifixion and watch him be buried in the
tomb. After the Sabbath (Jewish day of
rest), Mary Magdalene goes to Jesus’ tomb with another woman where she sees an
angel who tells her that Jesus is alive.
She and the other woman run to tell Jesus’s other followers and on the
way Jesus greets them after which he tells her to tell the apostles (Jesus’
twelve most inner disciples) about his resurrection.
She then appears in the
Gospel of Mark 15:40-16:9 which pretty much tells the same scenario; although in Matthew the other women with Mary Magdalene have
more names given to them. The Gospel of
John 19:25-30 and 20:1-18 tells the same thing, but with Mary
Magdalene outright proclaiming to the apostles that she saw Jesus resurrected;
but there is another moment that I will mention in a bit. Also in both Mark and Matthew’s gospels it
mention that Jesus exorcised seven demons from her. However, it is with the Gospel of Luke that
Mary Magdalene’s image and story becomes different to the other gospels. Luke also mentions the seven demons and Mary
Magdalene being present at the tomb, but there are two other moments that are
conflated with Mary Magdalene.
Luke
8:2 repeats the seven demons exorcism, however just prior in 7:36-50, is the
account of the penitent woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and hair
and then anoints him with oil. Due to
the exorcism happening just after the tears and feet, many believe that it was
Mary Magdalene who did it. Back to John,
in John 8:1-11 the Pharisees are about to stone a woman who was caught in
adultery- some say prostitution instead- as per Jewish law. Jesus says that anyone who has not sin should
throw a stone. Disgruntled because he is
right, the Pharisees and the others who were to stone her leave. Jesus helps the woman up and tells her to go
on.
Much like the feet washing scene,
Mary Magdalene was assumed by many to be the prostitute in the John scene. The view of Mary Magdalene being a repentant
sinner of sexual vices began with the Syriac Church Father, Ephrem the Syrian
who stated that Mary Magdalene was brought to the sinful condition of the seven
demons due to the lust of her flesh (1).
This view finally became official between 591 and 593 A.D. during the Forty Homilies on the Gospels by Pope
Gregory I. In his thirty-third homily,
Gregory said that Mary Magdalene was both the prostitute and the woman washing
Jesus’s feet stating that the oil she used to anoint him was previously used in
her sexual acts, but as a sign of repentance she used it to anoint Jesus (2). The Church
Fathers are the men who became the next influential leaders of the Church after
the apostles died; the Church Fathers wrote down most of the Church’s main
theology and philosophy.
Mary Magdalene as a prostitute was
not universally accepted by Christians in the past. The Eastern Orthodox outright rejected it
while a few Western theologians over the years rejected it. It wasn’t until 1969 when Pope Paul VI
revised the General Roman Calendar that Mary Magdalene was no longer associated
with prostitution. After that, scholars believe Mary Magdalene, the washing feet woman (Mary of Bethany),
and the prostitute are three different people; and most Christians today,
regardless of denomination, do not see them all as the same woman. Their conflation has been called the
composite Magdalene by scholars. Despite
this, there are numerous depictions both new and old of Mary Magdalene as a
prostitute or sexual woman.
So what does this have to do with
Tara? Anyone who has read issue 13 or the
above information will know just how sexualized Tara was by the media and those
around her. Even the god Woden gives her
a passing comment which could be rendered as such. One of the main themes of Wicked and Divine is that the gods and
goddesses are based off real life celebrities and how fans of said celebrities
worship and deify them. As Nyala Ali
pointed out in her article, all the gods, Tara included, are objects for fans’
pleasure. The whole view of fans
worshiping and deifying their favorite celebrities has been deconstructed and
laid out on the table in front of us.
Mary Magdalene is in much of the same
boat as Tara. Due to the errors of
Ephrem the Syrian and Pope Gregory I, Mary Magdalene has forever been sexualized
by artists, writers, theologians, and others despite Paul VI’s fix. According to official Christian scripture,
Mary Magdalene was never a prostitute yet whenever the label “sinful woman” is
found in scripture almost all if not most educated readers immediately assumed
that her sin was sexual promiscuity. The
same happens for women in the secular spheres; when it is discovered that a
woman has committed some sort of unethical action or vice society almost
immediately assumes it’s sexual. Like
Mary Magdalene, Tara did nothing wrong or sexually explicit to warrant her
sexualization yet she got it anyway.
It is true that many people adore
Mary Magdalene and believe her story, whether it’s the official one correct by
Paul VI or the prostitute one, is inspirational and comforting; after all she
was even made a saint, one of the highest honors that anyone could receive in
those days. However like Tara, Mary
Magdalene has become an object for many peoples’ pleasure, most notably
artists. During the Renaissance period,
many artists sought to capture the beauty and sexuality of the goddess Aphrodite/Venus,
however some of their commissioners and clients did not want a pagan goddess to
be portrayed so they went with Mary Magdalene due to her supposed sexual
history. Mary Magdalene was the closest
Renaissance artists could come to the profane Aphrodite/Venus within in a
religious context; some artists even tried to make her religious ecstasy akin
to sexual orgasm (3). Out of all the
gods in Wicked and Divine, it is Tara
who appears the most sexual to the fans, and out of all the saints in
Christianity it is Mary Magdalene who appears the most sexual.
Tara
and Mary Magdalene’s focused sexuality even presents a conundrum in the worlds
they were apart of. Inanna, who is the
incarnation of the most sexual deity in history, did not get the remarks that
Tara did nor the hatred of the fans.
Mary Magdalene is not the only Christian or saint to have been marked
with a promiscuous background. St.
Augustine of Hippo, one the Church Fathers and most influential Christian
philosophers and theologians, is known for his sexually active young adult life
prior to his conversion; of which he shares in his works Confessions and City of God. Both Inanna and Augustine had their sex lives
and received no threats or derogatory comments, yet both Tara and Mary
Magdalene were complete virgins who were damned by the people around them.
Ali points out that Tara’s ascent to
godhood affirms her as an object of desire, the complete opposite of what she
wanted. Mary Magdalene’s establishment
as saint and favorite Renaissance art piece coupled with the misattributed
prostitute background affirms this fate for her as well. Augustine of Hippo’s past promiscuity has
never been brought up in art or literature unless his backstory is being
described. No paintings of him
sexualized or objectified seem to exist.
Then there’s Inanna.
As stated, Inanna is physically male
but does not identify with either male or female but it is safe to say that
Gillen, the cast, and readers note Inanna’s masculine side. The original Inanna worshiped by the
Sumerians was known for her promiscuity of which Wicked and Divine Inanna inherits.
Yet even he is not objectified.
The closest we have is at the end of issue 12 where Inanna is shirtless
and being interviewed. But it isn’t much
of anything.
Women throughout many cultures have
almost always been seen as the more sexual ones. This was an idea that was perpetuated by Western
cultures, mostly the Greeks and the Romans, and later on used to describe
Eastern cultures. Towards our more
modern times this idea became apart of Orientalism, a patronizing and even
racist set of ideas that views Eastern cultures as inferior, promiscuous, and
irrational. Both the Indian and Jewish
cultures- which Tara and Mary Magdalene were a part of respectively- were
victims of Orientalism. I bring this up because
Wicked and Divine, whether
intentionally or unintentionally, brings this up as pointed out by Ali.
Tara is dark skinned (she is
Anglo-Indian as confirmed by Gillen) and curvy and scantily-clad sometimes,
whereas Lucifer- one of the only female characters who is sexually active but
yet still receives no threats or gawking- is white and thin and always dressed
head-to-toe in a suit. This dichotomy is
reminiscent of the Orientalist views of sexuality among women which Ali herself
points out in her article. White Western
women are properly dressed and control their sexuality whereas Eastern women
are sexually promiscuous and dress very little, and they sometimes might even
worship a goddess of love and fertility.
Although Mary Magdalene is most often portrayed as White in Renaissance
artwork, almost anybody knows that an ancient Palestinian Jewish women wouldn’t
look like that. The closest example of
what Mary Magdalene would’ve looked like would be Amber Rose Revah’s portrayal
of her in the 2014 film Son of God. Interestingly enough Revah herself is
partially East Indian descent.
The Jewish people, or Semites, have
also been victims of Orientalism. Their
race and religion have been targets of prejudice since late antiquity; even the
Greeks and Roman saw their culture as bizarre and their sexual ethics on women
outlandish. As Eastern women, Tara and
Mary Magdalene are almost immediately sexualized due to their cultures being “strange”
and “exotic”. What also affects them is
how they dress. Both of them seem to
quite fond of the color red.
(Left: Tara in The
Wicked + The Divine #13, art by Tula Lotay, 2015; right: The Magdalene, by Carlo Dolci, 1660s)
The color red has been associated
with love and sexuality for a long time.
The above depictions of Tara and Mary Magdalene can be considered quite
modest however they are more famous for their scantily clad depictions (see the
first picture in this piece). For Mary
Magdalene’s scantily clad body I have often heard “She was a prostitute. No duh she’s going to look like that and get
looks.” In issue 5 of The Wicked + The Divine, Lucifer
practically echoes those words when she defaces a poster of Tara mocking her
for wearing a “crotch-deep cleavage” meat dress. Lucifer states this is reason people stare at
her in reference to her “If you exist, you’re staring at me.” quote.
As Ali points out in her article, this
the “asking for it” attitude. Yet everyone
knows that neither Tara nor Mary Magdalene are asking for it. Whenever Tara tries to express her true self,
her real music and not her goddess powers, she dons a mask and says she wants
people to see anything other than the obvious.
When Mary Magdalene was given her sainthood- her halo- it is certain
that she wanted others to know about her virtue and accomplishments, not her
body nor the sexual acts attributed to her that never occurred. Tara and Mary Magdalene wanted to be their
true liberated selves and those around them objectified them and wanted to use
them for their own personal interests.
However,
as multiple people have pointed out, we are also a part of that objectifying
group. With Tara, we were set up to
believe that Tara was some reclusive and pretentious artist who thought highly
of herself. We merely thought that just
by the other characters saying “fucking Tara”.
With Mary Magdalene, we mostly believed that she was a prostitute just
because most writers gave in and used that false identity relentlessly. “Oh, she used to be a hooker, so it’s natural
to have paintings and stories of her as a prostitute.” seems to be the line of
reasoning that we followed.
The one different between Mary
Magdalene and Tara is their deaths. From
what we know, Mary Magdalene died through natural causes whereas Tara had assisted
suicide help from Ananke to end her pain.
Tara began to experienced her pain from her tarnished identity in her
life; Mary Magdalene’s identity would be tarnished postmortem, unless we
consider the Gnostic Gospels as canon. Despite
this one difference, Tara and Mary Magdalene’s similarities rejoin in what
follows after their deaths. After Tara’s
death, a website known as Clickholy releases the following news statement: “The
“God” known as Tara’s body was found at her London Penthouse following a fire.
It does not say “Tara was found dead”
or just “Tara’s body was found”, but the “God” known as Tara’s body. Even after her death there is more focus on her
body rather than who she was. In Gnostic,
medieval, and even contemporary legends Mary Magdalene’s eroticized body is a
focus. Those who wish to find it want to
immediately look at her womb to see if she had sexual relations or bore
children. There is more concern for Mary
Magdalene’s womb than her virtue.
Finally there is Tara’s suicide
note, where she acknowledges that she wasn’t able to become what everyone
needed her to be- their goddess- and what happened whenever she tried be
something else. She tells everyone to be
kinder because they have no idea what others are going through. To be their goddess, Tara would have to give
in to their desires; if Mary Magdalene became the Aphrodite/Venus that so many
saw her as then she would have to have given in too. Mary Magdalene’s story and life can be seen
as warning about objectifying someone just because of who they are or what they might have or might have not done. And
Tara’s story is practically a recreation of Mary Magdalene’s story, but taken
to the next level where the objectified one loses all hope and decides to end
it all.
Objectification is not solely
sexualizing, although it is a part of it.
Objectification is literally making someone out to be a non-human object
to satiate your desires. It can be done
to anyone, even goddesses or saints.
Looking now, Tara and Mary Magdalene’s near equal lives and fates are
heartbreaking and are perhaps wake-up calls to the rest of us. So, as Tara said, try to be kinder to others…
both women practically had to live, suffer, die, and then suffer after death
just to get that message across.
1.
Martín
Hugo Córdova Quero, “The Prostitutes Also Go into the Kingdom of God: A Queer
Reading of Mary of Magdala,” in Liberation
Theology and Sexuality, 2nd ed. Ed. Marcella Althaus-Reid
(London: SCM Press, 2009), 86.
2.
Susan
Haskin, Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor
(London: HarperCollins, 1999), 95-97.
3.
Olwen
Hufton, The Prospect Before Her: A
History of Women in Western Europe, 1500-1800 (New York: Vintage Books,
1998), 34.
Was going to reblog this earlier, but wanted to read it properly. Always interested to see people take the characters apart like this.