Barbarella – Toying with Anticipations. Un/Fashioning Dolls and Androids in the Early Comic Strips of Jean-Claude Forest and Roger Vadim’s Film Adaptation

Abstract

In Jean-Claude Forest’s first Barbarella comics (1962–64), as well as in Roger Vadim’s film adaptation (1968), space agent Barbarella experiences adventures with various species, including dolls, artificial soldiers and an android – some of them erotic, others of a martial nature. Barbarella’s (partial) loss of clothing during these encounters, along with her changes of garments, form caesuras in the visual narration on the one hand, while on the other hand her textile performances are addressed to extradiegetic viewers to whom the heroine is presented as a dress-up doll. Focusing on Barbarella’s interactions with artificial humans, this contribution contextualizes comic-strip panels and film sequences that frame the (partial) unclothings and analyzes their narrative functions. Following on from Donna Haraway’s Cyborg’s Manifesto (1985), Barbarella’s transmedial bodily exposures in comics are interpreted as a form of egalitarian trans-species interaction, while the film is repositioned as comedy/parody.