Todorov 1

Emil Todorov

Ms. Lisa Orta

English 123

22 May 2017

Boy or Girl?

In the graphic novel, Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine, there are a lot of examples of

feminist criticism, meaning the ways that women are being oppressed by our culture, where it is

male dominated. In the three scenes that I went over, women are portrayed more as tools, than

human beings, In all the scenes they are either taken advantage of by men, or are oppressed by

them in some sort of way. Gender roles are one of the biggest themes in this book.

In the first scene that I chose, Miko and Ben are driving home from the Asian-American

Digi-Fest, Miko is the driver, and Ben is the passenger in this situation. Ben is being the

oppressor in this situation, because he is being really rude towards Miko, and you could see in

his facial expression that he is angered, or sarcastic with her. The whole tome Miko just tries to

calm him down and agrees with him, even though you could see it in her face that she is kind of

disappointed at him and feels under appreciated since she is the one that helped put the festival

together and put a lot of hard work. The gender roles that are presented in this scene are pretty

clear. Miko is the driver of the car, which is not a feminine thing to do when there is a gentleman

with them. Another thing that follows the gender roles is when Ben is the one starting the

argument and is completely putting Miko down, this is more acceptable for a man to do than a

woman, the women is usually the resolver of the problems, not the starters of them. Which plays

out well later in the scene, because she tries to agree with him and tries to calm him down by

stating, I guess it was kind of corny, but yea (Tomine 11). This shows that she is trying to
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fulfill the gender role as a woman because women are supposed to be nice and always happy

and have to be smiling all the time and are not supposed to start arguments.

In the second scene that I chose, it starts with Miko making the dinner on the stove, and

they are first talking about the festival, and Alice looks excited about the subject, but Ben is just

whatever about it because he says words like wow and uh-huh when she is explaining it to

him, so Miko changes the subject about Alice and how she is doing, but Ben starts talking about

her in a very negative way, he says, Im still waiting for her to show up some day with herpes

all over her mouth (Tomine 18). In the final part of the scene Ben is watching TV, and Miko

walks up to him and tries to be seductive, but Ben completely blows her off and says, maybe Ill

come to bed in a little bit. I still have a couple other discs I want to check out (Tomine 19). The

scene does start out with a typical gender role for a woman, which is cooking dinner, but later on

it turns around, because in that case, Miko is playing more of a gentlemans role, because she is

the one calling the man to go to bed and although it is not said, it is easy to say that they are

going to have sex. This is not really a woman role, because the man is usually the one that tries

to seduce the girl, instead of the other way around. This scene is from the book is odd due to the

fact that in this book, the male tends to be the ones that are using the woman in order to benefit

themselves. But really when you look at it closely the woman is still being oppressed by the man.

Everything has to go the way that the man wants it, and the woman is being used. Like the

beginning of the scene Miko is the one making the dinner, but when she wants something from

Ben, he refuses.

The next scene that I chose was the one where Ben and Alice are standing outside the bar

towards the end of the book, and Ben is telling Alice that he is just going to pack his bags and

leave the next day. Some ways that the gender roles are playing out in this scene is that Ben
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states, I cant move 3,000 miles to be with someone Im not having intercourse with (Tomine

106). This is a more masculine quote from Ben because men are supposed to not have feeling

and all they think about is sex. This does play out well in this scene because he is saying exactly

that, that he will not go live with Alice because he is not having sexual intercourse with her.

Another thing was when Alice states, now am I finally allowed to talk shit about her? (Tomine

107). This shows more of a feminine side because women are usually the ones that are

gossiping about other people.

In another scene Ben and Miko are talking on the phone with each other. The relationship

between them is portrayed as shaky since Miko traveled to New York and they are physically

distant from each other, and they are arguing again. The power relationships between the man

and woman is that, Ben is in charge of the situation which is a masculine thing to do, while

Miko is really just sitting there and kind of taking it and trying to resolve the problem, which is a

feminine thing to do. The male and female roles are defined by the fact that Ben is in control and

is the oppressor, while Miko is just trying to resolve the situation. The way that these characters

embody these traits is that Ben seams really mad and is yelling at Miko, while miko is seams

concerned at first and is just sitting there trying to calm him down.

Finally, the category that fits my analysis the best would be, the first one that says,

women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically.

Because all of my analysis show the man always being the oppressor, such as when they are

driving back from the festival, and Ben is putting Miko down by completely disregarding all of

the hard work that she put into that festival. Also when they were in their apartment, and Miko

asks Ben to go to bed with her, but refuses in order to keep on watching his shows. Another part

was outside of the bar and Ben and Alice are talking about getting Ben to move to New York.
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Also the scene where Ben sparks an argument with Miko over the phone. Finally, the final scene

that I analyzed was the one where Ben was at Mikos new apartment, and he is completely guilt

tripping her for moving out with this guy to another state, although the whole time he was the

one that was not treating her well, and was using her to his advantage.

Work Cited

Tomine, Adrian. Shortcomings. Place of Publication Not Identified, Faber And Faber, 2016.