美国国家公共电台 NPR The Unsung Heroine Who Helped Shape 'Suicide Squad'

The Unsung Heroine Who Helped Shape 'Suicide Squad¹'

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The summer's final big comic book movie opened today. "Suicide Squad" is not an ordinary superhero movie. For one thing, it's about supervillains. And its original story was conceived by a rather extraordinary couple. NPR's Neda Ulaby reports.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE³: "Suicide Squad" was not much more than a title owned by DC Comics when it was pitched to writer John Ostrander in the 1980s.

JOHN OSTRANDER: And my first reaction was "Suicide Squad?" What a stupid name.

ULABY: But Ostrander soon took to this idea. "The Dirty Dozen" meets "Mission: Impossible" with supervillains.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SUICIDE SQUAD")

VIOLA DAVIS: (As Amanda Waller) Complete the mission, you get time off your prison sentence. Fail the mission, you die.

ULABY: Both the movie and comic are intended to maximize weak intellectual property, says author Grady Hendrix, who loved "Suicide Squad" as a teenager.

GRADY HENDRIX: DC Comics had been inventing all these really stupid B-list supervillains for, you know, Batman and everyone to fight, like, you know, Captain Boomerang, who throws boomerangs or Slipknot, who ties really good knots.

ULABY: Or Deadshot, whose superpower is shooting a gun. He's played by Will Smith in the movie. The comic was rare in its extremely diverse cast, including many characters of color and extremely powerful women.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SUICIDE SQUAD")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) This is Katana. She's got my back. She could cut all you in half with one sword stroke just like mowing⁴ the lawn.

ULABY: That diversity is partly because the "Suicide Squad" comic books that inspired the film were co-written by a woman. Kim Yale was John Ostrander's wife. She died in 1997 of breast cancer. Ostrander says the two of them loved taking these goofy minor⁵ villains².

OSTRANDER: And we flushed them out. We tried to give them more depth, more background, explain them a bit. We made sure that you knew them and that were able to identify with them.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SUICIDE SQUAD")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Amanda, we have hostiles up ahead.

DAVIS: (As Amanda Waller) Flight, get out of there.

ULABY: Ostrander created the supervillains' boss, a short, 200-pound African-American woman. In the movie, she's played by the far more svelte⁶ Viola Davis. She's a top-secret government agent who makes these bad guys fight for good.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SUICIDE SQUAD")

DAVIS: (As Amanda Waller) For those of you who don't know me officially, my name is Amanda Waller. There's an event in Midway City.

ULABY: Ostrander credits Kim Yale with safeguarding "Suicide Squads⁷'" female characters. And Yale was one of very few women even writing comics, says Heidi MacDonald, herself a former editor for DC.

HEIDI MACDONALD: There was only one or two other women who were doing it at Marvel⁸ or DC at that time.

ULABY: At DC, Kim Yale helped revive a totally minor character, Batgirl, who'd never been more than just a sidekick. Then she got shot, paralyzed and likely raped⁹ by the Joker. DC benched Batgirl. But Kim Yale and John Ostrander dug her out of the archive and reinvented her. Ostrander says Yale used Batgirl to build a believable story about trauma¹⁰ and resilience.

She created a complex superhero who uses a wheelchair realistically.

OSTRANDER: Kim wanted to show how difficult it was to move from a wheelchair just into a car. And she wanted us to detail in every panel, the whole page, the difficulty.

ULABY: She talked, he said, to people about what using a wheelchair is like.

OSTRANDER: And she wanted to make sure that we got it right.

ULABY: When Kim Yale died, she was only 43 years old.

MAGGIE THOMPSON: (Reading) In the three months since I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I've lost both breasts and learned my cancer packed its bags and traveled to my abdomen¹¹ and pelvis.

ULABY: Those are Kim Yale's words but not her voice. I could not find a single recording¹². But Yale wrote a column for a trade magazine called Comics Buyer's Guide shortly before she died. I asked her editor and friend there Maggie Thompson to read them. Yale's columns were about being a feminist¹³ in an industry that did not then care about female readers.

She wrote about diverse heroes long before their importance became part of the cultural conversation. And she wrote about her cancer for readers of a genre¹⁴ that valued breasts mostly for their size.

THOMPSON: (Reading) Before I went down to surgery for my left mastectomy, I couldn't resist flashing the Upper East Side as I changed from my clothes into a hospital gown. A sun-rising bronze struck all of the buildings stretching north from 67th and York Avenue. And I wanted to show the world how beautiful I was at sunrise.

I also taped onto my gown a note over my left breast, which read, it's the left breast, guys.

ULABY: Her friends remember Kim Yale as a trailblazer. But even within the comics world, she's not super well-known. For a while, an award was named for her that honored female cartoonists. When Lark¹⁵ Pien won it in 2004, she'd never heard of Kim Yale. Now she's grateful to her.

LARK PIEN: I think I would have liked to meet her.

ULABY: Pien says accepting the Kim Yale award at Comic-Con meant meeting dozens of women cartoonists.

PIEN: It made me feel included. And my respect for the larger community grew.

ULABY: Many of the "Suicide Squad" characters created by Kim Yale and John Ostrander are not in the new movie. Some were added after the couple stopped writing it in 1992. Still, Ostrander assured his late wife would be first in line for tickets.

OSTRANDER: Oh, God, she would be so excited about it. I'm sure wherever she is, she's bouncing up and down going, I want back in. I want back in.

ULABY: What Kim Yale did, besides shaping one of the most interesting comics of the 1980s, was helping¹⁶ to build an in for the women cartoonists who followed her. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.

1 squad   

n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组

参考例句：

• The squad leader ordered the men to mark time.班长命令战士们原地踏步。
• A squad is the smallest unit in an army.班是军队的最小构成单位。

2 villains   

n.恶棍( villain的名词复数 )；罪犯；（小说、戏剧等中的）反面人物；淘气鬼

参考例句：

• The impression of villains was inescapable. 留下恶棍的印象是不可避免的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Some villains robbed the widow of the savings. 有几个歹徒将寡妇的积蓄劫走了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 mowing   

n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The lawn needs mowing. 这草坪的草该割了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• "Do you use it for mowing?" “你是用它割草么？” 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

5 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。

6 svelte   

adj.（女人）体态苗条的

参考例句：

• The countess was tall,svelte and very pale.伯爵夫人身材修长，苗条优雅，面色十分苍白。
• Her figure is svelte.她身材苗条。

7 squads   

n.（军队中的）班( squad的名词复数 )；（暗杀）小组；体育运动的运动（代表）队；（对付某类犯罪活动的）警察队伍

参考例句：

• Anti-riot squads were called out to deal with the situation. 防暴队奉命出动以对付这一局势。 来自辞典例句
• Three squads constitute a platoon. 三个班组成一个排。 来自辞典例句

8 marvel   

vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事

参考例句：

• The robot is a marvel of modern engineering.机器人是现代工程技术的奇迹。
• The operation was a marvel of medical skill.这次手术是医术上的一个奇迹。

9 raped   

v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的过去式和过去分词 )；强奸

参考例句：

• A young woman was brutally raped in her own home. 一名年轻女子在自己家中惨遭强暴。 来自辞典例句
• We got stick together, or we will be having our women raped. 我们得团结一致，不然我们的妻女就会遭到蹂躏。 来自辞典例句

10 trauma   

n.外伤，精神创伤

参考例句：

• Counselling is helping him work through this trauma.心理辅导正帮助他面对痛苦。
• The phobia may have its root in a childhood trauma.恐惧症可能源于童年时期的创伤。

11 abdomen   

n.腹，下腹(胸部到腿部的部分)

参考例句：

• How to know to there is ascarid inside abdomen?怎样知道肚子里面有蛔虫？
• He was anxious about an off-and-on pain the abdomen.他因时隐时现的腹痛而焦虑。

12 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

13 feminist   

adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的

参考例句：

• She followed the feminist movement.她支持女权运动。
• From then on,feminist studies on literature boomed.从那时起，男女平等受教育的现象开始迅速兴起。

14 genre   

n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格

参考例句：

• My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
• Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看， 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。

15 lark   

n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏

参考例句：

• He thinks it cruel to confine a lark in a cage.他认为把云雀关在笼子里太残忍了。
• She lived in the village with her grandparents as cheerful as a lark.她同祖父母一起住在乡间非常快活。

16 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。