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A review by 600bars
The Complete Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist by Diane DiMassa
2.0
As the title suggests, Hotheaded Paisan is a Homicidal LesbianTerrorist who spends all her time isolating in her house chugging coffee watching TV and getting so furious at the media that she works herself into a frenzy. If she ever goes outside she engages in extreme cartoonish violence toward nearly any man she sees. I get that the over the top violence is cathartic and cartoonish (she does things like pull dude’s spines out of their body through their asshole) but it does get pretty repetitive. Hothead isolates herself and only feels anger, because she doesn’t really have a community or anywhere positive to channel her (justified) anger at the misogyny and homophobia of the world. She gets so angry watching TV that she paralyzes herself. She has one friend, Roz, a friendly older butch who is blind, who constantly tries to get her to stop watching TV and go touch grass. Obviously I get why Hothead’s so enraged all the time, there are so many -isms in the world. She doesn’t feel she can do anything about the problems of the world other than despair, with occasional moments of catharsis through violence. Hothead is reminded by Roz and by a little lamp that represents her superego that this defeatism is what the powers that be want and she’s playing right into their hands. Hothead is the precursor to people who sit on twitter all day and work themselves into a frenzy of anger that goes nowhere and helps no one. (I’m occasionally guilty of this! We all are)
I try to keep in mind that this was made almost 30 years ago and gender discourse is very different and this is supposed to be over the top etc etc, but I was uncomfortable with some things here. The misandry is VERY focused on penis mutilation. Near the end of the collection she meets Daphne and they begin to fall in love. I thought this was going to be a real turning point for Hothead, because she was in dire need of love and friendship. I thought the implication was that Daphne was a trans woman and I thought that was going to throw a wrench in Hothead’s whole anti-penis biology based hatred. Daphne’s gender is intentionally left ambiguous, but I read after finishing that the author has made some womyn-born-womyn comments so I think my interpretation might be wrong. Hothead has such contempt for femininity that she often sounds just as misogynistic as the men she hates so much. The superego figures, the lamp and the 4th wall breaks with the author, and Roz, all criticize Hothead pretty often for the fact that she frequently replicates the same type of hatred she ought to be fighting against. So it’s clear that Hothead is meant to warn against becoming so isolated and angry that you can’t function. Alas I wanted to like this much more than I did, I mean Hothead is demonstrating an important lesson about how/why the oppressed can oppress, and I like the drawing style, but it became pretty tedious to have Hothead get violent over and over again, learn from Roz/Lamp etc why that outburst was unproductive, and then never change in the next installment.
I try to keep in mind that this was made almost 30 years ago and gender discourse is very different and this is supposed to be over the top etc etc, but I was uncomfortable with some things here. The misandry is VERY focused on penis mutilation. Near the end of the collection she meets Daphne and they begin to fall in love. I thought this was going to be a real turning point for Hothead, because she was in dire need of love and friendship. I thought the implication was that Daphne was a trans woman and I thought that was going to throw a wrench in Hothead’s whole anti-penis biology based hatred. Daphne’s gender is intentionally left ambiguous, but I read after finishing that the author has made some womyn-born-womyn comments so I think my interpretation might be wrong. Hothead has such contempt for femininity that she often sounds just as misogynistic as the men she hates so much. The superego figures, the lamp and the 4th wall breaks with the author, and Roz, all criticize Hothead pretty often for the fact that she frequently replicates the same type of hatred she ought to be fighting against. So it’s clear that Hothead is meant to warn against becoming so isolated and angry that you can’t function. Alas I wanted to like this much more than I did, I mean Hothead is demonstrating an important lesson about how/why the oppressed can oppress, and I like the drawing style, but it became pretty tedious to have Hothead get violent over and over again, learn from Roz/Lamp etc why that outburst was unproductive, and then never change in the next installment.