Marvel Analysis
We are wondering what made the Marvel series so popular? How does the ideology of white supremacy, American exceptionalism, and paternalism shape people’s perceptions towards stereotyped villains? Where in those superhero movies or comic books can we see suppressions due to race, gender and class? Through analyzing movies such as “Iron Man,” “Batman,” “Avengers,” and “Capitan American: Civil War” we are able to conclude that superheroes’ main functions are to provide support for white supremacy and Manifest Destiny, and as a working process in constructing and perpetuating the common American dream.
Project Proposal
We will create a video that consists of related clips from each part of the movie. We will first start with analyzing race issues in superhero series by comparing and contrasting the race identity of superheroes and their enemies. For gender, we plan to include evidence of male superheroes’ masculinity to contrast with female superheroes’ femininity. For class issues, we will compare scenes that indicate how superheroes obtain their superpowers with scenes that show how their enemies gain their “superpowers” to illustrate the idea that only higher class intellectuals and a few middle class Americans can have the chance to succeed easily.
Project Analysis
The superhero movies have become a cultural representation of America as visual media emerges as the prevailing tool of our lives. Textual analysis may be able to reveal the hegemonic essence of the superhero culture where the racialization, the gender formation, and the class formation of the society shape the background, the characters, and the plots of the superhero movies. The intended audience of this project is the fans of sci-fi movies, or generally the teenage to middle-age generations. The project should show the audience how Marvel has taken advantages of the ideology at different times and how superhero movies propagated white supremacy, male supremacy, and class supremacy. Our hope is that people would take more thought into the daily propagandas that they are submerged into and pay more attention to the preconceived ideologies or even hegemonies that they may have appallingly gotten used to.
We believe this project has successfully analyzed the dominant superhero ideology of America and the hegemony of the superhero culture by investigating the intersectionality of the characters and plots, superhero movies against women, colored people, and people with low class status. In revisiting the Marval movies, we realized that the Marvel movies packaged themselves in a way that appeal to the younger audiences, but under the layers of the heroic and powerful characters, there lies the problematic and hegemonic culture.