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2014 Keeping the 'He' in 'Heroes': A Feminist Political Economic Look at DC and Marvel Film Adaptations Laura Stoltzfus

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] ! FLORIDA STATE! UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION! AND INFORMATION ! ! ! ! ! KEEPING THE ‘HE’! IN ‘HEROES’: A FEMINIST POLITICAL ECONOMIC LOOK! AT DC AND MARVEL SUPERHERO FILM ADAPTATIONS! ! ! ! ! ! By! LAURA STOLTZFUS! ! ! ! ! A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master !of Arts ! ! ! ! ! Degree Awarded: ! Spring Semester, 2014 Laura Stoltzfus defended this thesis on April 16, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were: ! ! ! Jennifer Proffitt Professor Directing Thesis ! ! ! Davis Houck Committee Member ! ! ! Donna Nudd Committee Member ! ! ! The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. !

! !ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS! First of all, I must thank my thesis committee––Davis, Dr. D, and Dr. Proffitt––for the endless support and encouragement offered me during this process. You are all professors who are also mentors, and hopefully friends. None of this would have happened without you three, and I thank you for your counsel and your presence. Dr. Proffitt, thank you for being kind when offering advice and for allowing me to invade your office from time to time and ask you thousands of questions. Thank you for pushing me to submit my work to conferences and journals. Davis, thank you for taking my freshman self under your wing and lighting the spark that resulted in this. My knowledge of Socrates, archives, and cats has grown because of you. Dr. D, your combination of art and academia is inspiring, and I hope you continue to make students broaden their horizons and open their minds. You all are the best committee a student could ask for and !have made this experience a positive one. Dr. Laurents, thank you for believing in me. You were the first Communication professor I met, and I was enthralled. You are like the caring older sister who is a lovely combination of sage and sass, and you helped me discover how fun communication can be. Your kindness has been a !bright during my time here, and I will never forget it. I am also indebted to my family and friends, people who have listened to rants, edited draft after draft, and did not complain about the sheafs of paper littering various tables. Mom, thank you for spontaneously visiting me and cheering me up; Dad, I appreciate your support and encouragement even though you have also been incredibly busy; Nic, you have been a wonderful friend, editor, and throughout this journey. Thank you all for sticking with me and seeming interested in my constant discussions of superheroes; thank you for your patience and goodwill. Prettyface and Chilli Pepper, thank you for breaking the monotony of writing by !demanding food and attention. Lastly, thanks to Ira. From the encouraging notes to Tan’s delivery during busy weeks, you have kept me grounded through this process and words alone cannot express my thanks. You are an !incredible partner.

! !iii TABLE OF CONTENTS! !ABSTRACT ...... vi !1. An Introduction to Heroes and Hosiery ...... 1 !1.1 Purpose of Study ...... 3 !1.2 Significance ...... 7 !1.3 Research Methods ...... 10 !1.4 Looking Ahead ...... 12 ! !2. The Literature of and Their Films ...... 14 !2.1 A Brief History of the Industry ...... 15 !2.2 Female Representation in ...... 19 ! !3. Theory and Methodology ...... 25 !3.1 Political Economy of Media ...... 26 !3.2 Feminist Political Economy Defined ...... 31 !3.3 The Importance of Feminist Political Economy and Superhero Films ...... 33 !3.4 Conducting Textual Analysis ...... 38 !3.5 Textual Analysis Explained ...... 40 ! !4. A Political Economic History of Comic Books and Their Film Adaptations ...... 43 !4.1 A Brief History of Superheroes in Print ...... 47 !4.2 The Platinum Age ...... 47 !4.3 The Golden Age ...... 48 ! !iv !4.4 The Silver Age ...... 50 4.5 Industry, New Technologies, and Synergy: Communication Firms and Licensing from the ! Bronze Age Onward ...... 54 4.6 The Multimedia Superhero Environment in the 21st Century: From Print Properties to ! Silver Screen Sensations ...... 59 !4.7 Taking a Political Economic Approach to Superheroes ...... 64 !4.8 Political Economy and Female Representation ...... 69 ! !5. Analyzing Themes Within the Top Ten Superhero Films Since 2000 ...... 72 !5.1 A Discussion of the Most Profitable Films and Their Characters ...... 76 !5.2 Discussion of Recurring Themes, or the Trap of Tropes ...... 79 !5.3 Darling Damsels and Vexing Vixens: A Dichotomy of Women ...... 81 !5.4 Promoting Hypermasculinity and Demoting Female Masculinity ...... 85 5.5 Males and the Consumerist Weapons-Industrial Complex: Superheroes as ! Caring Capitalists ...... 87 !5.6 Women as Expendable and the Use of Females as Plot Devices ...... 89 ! !6. Research Findings, or Where We Go From Here ...... 91 !6.1 Limitations of Study ...... 92 !6.2 Recommendations for Future Study ...... 92 !6.3 Closing Thoughts ...... 94 ! APPENDIX A: Information on the Top Ten Films ...... 100 REFERENCES ...... 101 !BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 114 ! ! !v ABSTRACT! ! The genre of superhero films has taken the movie industry by force, resulting in over a dozen comic book adaptations within the past decade alone. These films are based on intellectual properties originally appearing in comic books, and most of the adaptations are from DC and

Marvel characters. As DC and Marvel, the two largest publishing houses, are wholly owned by

TimeWarner and Disney, respectively, superheroes are easy and free content for media conglomerates to adapt. Due to the success of the superhero genre and its various offshoots like toys, video games, and merchandise, this work examines the top ten films since 2000 through the lens of feminist political economy of media. Issues like ownership within the comic book industry and the film industry, the inherent patriarchy of hierarchical capitalism, and gender representation in adaptations will be explored.

Concluding that superhero films as a genre of profitable adaptations perpetuate stereotypes of females as dangerous vixens or damsels in distress, and that females have less agency than their male counterparts, I argue that such representations are the result of a media oligopoly and are problematic in nature. !

! !vi CHAPTER! ONE AN INTRODUCTION TO !HEROES AND HOSIERY I was determined to watch Marvel’s the immediately after its first trailer was released in 2011.1 I thought that the lone female Avenger, Natasha Romanov a.k.a the Black

Widow, would be the multifaceted female hero superhero films have been lacking because female fan favorite Joss Whedon was involved. Whedon, creator of vampire-slaying high schooler Buffy Summers, wrench-wielding ship mechanic Kaylee Frye, and determined activist

Echo/Caroline Farrell, is known for creating female characters who are more than physically strong––they are emotionally compelling, interesting characters.2 Thus, I entered the theater with high hopes. As the movie progressed, I began to feel uneasy. Each member of the eponymous team gets an introductory scene to establish his/ her persona. The audience first sees the as

Bruce Banner3 saving lives as a medical doctor in a rural area, while Clint Barton/ is guarding the Tesseract with ,4 and Tony Stark’s is making the world a more eco-friendly place by upgrading pipes deep underwater, safe in his suit. These are clearly the good guys, actively protecting and defending the planet.

And then there is Natasha Romanov. Her first scene is a bit, well… different. The audience sees her tightly strapped to a chair, stockings ripped, shoes nowhere to be seen, wearing

1 Burns, Chris. " the Avengers First Full-length Trailer Released [Video]." Slashgear. October 11, 2011.

2 see Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Dollhouse for more information on these characters.

3 The Hulk is the alter ego of medical doctor Bruce Banner. They have a somewhat tenuous relationship because Bruce Banner is mild-mannered, whereas the Hulk is a literal hulking mass of uncontrollable rage.

4 Hawkeye is a member of the Avengers, and his enhanced vision makes him a good assistant in watching the Tesseract, which is a device that can open portals among worlds, allowing for transportation through them. His superior, and the head of the Avengers, is S.H.I.E.L.D. director! Nick Fury. !1 a skin-tight black cocktail dress complete with plunging neckline. She is surrounded by male

thugs who are obviously up to no good. The audience can deduce immediately what happened:

Romanov used her feminine wiles and spy skills to break into a party or an event, probably

seduced some powerful man, and then happened––or allowed herself–– to get caught. Just as it

seems the scene may take a turn for the worse, she gets a phone call from her boss Nick Fury’s

assistant, spectacularly beats up her captors, and makes a quick escape, grabbing her high heeled

shoes in the process. This scene, while demonstrating that Romanov is a force to be reckoned

with, also reinforces a set of ideologies common in this genre. Nowhere in this film do we see

Hawkeye attempting to seduce a villain as part of his repertoire as a hero, or spot Captain

America dressing provocatively in order to obtain classified information. Their sexuality is not

part of their resume, but for Agent Romanov, it is. The assumption that the audience is

immediately presented with is that female heroes must rely on their sexuality to fight crime,

because men can be swayed by the power of .5 While males get cornered or

trapped in inescapable rooms, females get tied up in compromising positions. The introduction of

Agent Romanov immediately establishes her as a sort of dangerous human, a seductress who has

incredible skill but still must get ahead by using her sexuality.

Female heroes are given few roles in comic book adaptations like The Avengers. When

they are, it is almost always in a highly sexualized way that reinforces the superiority of male

superheroes and captures the attention of young male filmgoers.6 This is evident in the relegation

5 Gray, Richard J., II. "Vivacious Vixens and Scintillating Super Hotties: Deconstructing the Superheroine." In The 21st Century Superhero: Essays on Gender, Genre and Globalization in Film, edited by Betty Kaklamanidou and Richard J. Gray, 75. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

6 Introduction. In Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader, edited by Gail Dines and Jean McMahon Humez, 9. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011.! !2 of , Mystique, and Jean Grey to minor characters in the -Men films; the window dressing that is Catwoman in : The Dark Knight Rises and Batman Returns; and the difference in costumes and dialogue for males and for their female cohorts in every superhero adaptation.

1.1 Purpose of Study

It is my argument that the effects of the current conglomerated structure of the media industry, combined with the rhetorical messages of such adaptations, promote an image of female superheroes as less able to physically defend themselves or take on leadership positions in a group––female characters are relegated to the background as maternal figures or sexually tempting vixens. Articles and essays have been written about how portrayals of female characters as sexual objects or inferior heroes have a negative effect on audience members because of how viewers use films to construct their reality.7 Not much, however, has been written on the structural factors that cause such representations to be made in the first place. Studying these factors through the lens of political economy of media––specifically feminist political economy––can explain how the current system came to exist. As Janet Wasko notes, “Political economy focuse[s] on the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of wealth and the consequences for the welfare of individuals and society.”8 The interplay among resources, power, and information can be used to determine how businesses can create a commercial status quo that can negatively affect citizens.

In our patriarchal capitalist society, only a few corporations hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, which has a large impact on the citizenry––consumers are presented with a

7 Scott Bukatman, “Why I Hate Superhero Movies,” Cinema Journal 50:3, 122.

8 Wasko, Janet. "Critiquing Hollywood: The Political Economy of Motion Pictures." In A Concise Handbook of Movie Industry Economics, edited by Charles C. Moul, 7. Cambridge:! Cambridge University Press, 2005. !3 sense of false choice The largest media companies have an immense amount of power, and those

with power want to keep it. Ben Bagdikian noted, “the leaders of the Big [Six] are not Hitlers or

Stalins. They are American and foreign entrepreneurs whose corporate empires control every

means by which the population learns of its society.”9 The “Big Six” corporations are Disney,

TimeWarner, Comcast, Viacom, News Corporation, and CBS, and they own 90% of American

media.10 ,11 By promoting certain ideals and portrayals of how gender ought to be performed,

these conglomerates can keep the status quo, for “owners’ views and interests––whether political

or economic––can influence the ways in which [media] divisions operate.”12 As a result of the

bias against any sort of change and unwillingness to take risks, recombinant culture is the

unfortunate yet inevitable byproduct. It occurs when one form of media is lifted by another

medium and the stories, characters, and/or plotlines are recycled.13 For example, using a comic

book character as the basis of a film, video game, or television show can be considered

recombinant as it combines already used ideas in different ways. This practice has its critics, for

it is argued that creativity is reduced when existing ideas are used for inspiration, and that it leads

to more of the same––more reboots, more sequels and prequels, and more similarity among new

releases.14 Writers, illustrators, and film producers can then simply use old stories for new

9 Bagdikian, Ben H. The New Media Monopoly, 4. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.

10 Lutz, Ashley. "These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America." Business Insider. June 14, 2012.; "Who Owns the Media? | Free Press." Free Press.

11 Croteau, David, and William Hoynes. The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest, 77. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2001.

12 Meehan, Eileen R. Why TV Is Not Our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers, and Who's Really in Control, 4. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

13 Angus, Ian H., and Sut Jhally. Cultural Politics in Contemporary America. New York: Routledge, 1989.

14 Croteau, David, and William Hoynes. The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest, 122. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2001. ! !4 publications or new media properties. However, as long as Hollywood has been producing films,

books and plays have been drawn upon for adaptation, and based on the increased number of

sequels and the like in the past few decades, will continue to be used. Therefore, it is important

not only to study the source material and the history of the comic book industry, but to study

which heroes, villains, and stories get adapted; this will reveal what ideals media content

perpetuates. I am not arguing for recombinant culture, per se, or the recycling of ideas, but I do believe that as media conglomerates continue to adapt comic books for the silver screen, there are incredible female characters who exist in the realm of comic books who could carry the weight of a film; Wonder Woman just being one example of how “each comic book series or character has potentially hundreds of stories available.”15 She is a competent leader and has saved the Earth from extensive property damage hundreds of times, yet this character has not been in a starring role in a film as of yet. The superhero movies that are made are based on already profitable characters who have been exposed to fans for decades. Batman and Superman have several films to their name, yet studios have been afraid of adapting Wonder Woman, even though this character is just as famous. The trend has been films about white males, and thus studios will seek other white male heroes deemed ready for the cinema.

The ideas lifted from comic books are ones that have a large pre-constituted audience and recognizable––and marketable––characters.16 Both Marvel and DC are subsumed properties of larger media groups Disney and TimeWarner, respectively, giving their parent conglomerates easy access to their most popular heroes. This combination, along with other members of the Big

15 Smith, Benjamin. Spandex Cinema: Three Approaches to Comic Book Film Adaptation, 9. Thesis, University of Central Oklahoma, 2009.

16 Smith, Benjamin. Spandex Cinema: Three Approaches to Comic Book Film Adaptation, 32. Thesis, University of Central Oklahoma, 2009. ! !5 Six purchasing the licensing rights to comic book characters, has brought about the recent age of

the blockbuster superhero film. As a result of this practice, even lesser-known superheroes are

getting their own films, such as Rocket Raccoon and the Guardians of the Galaxy.17 If this is the

case, then why are female heroes rarely portrayed as being on the same level as their male

counterparts? Characters like Batwoman, Wonder Woman, or Ms. Marvel have yet to be featured

in a prominent role in a feature film, and even when Disney and TimeWarner began mining less

popular comic book series for more films, ones with women in lead roles have been either stuck

in development hell or overlooked. When it comes to this issue in particular, some may argue

that because and Catwoman had their own films, my point is as female comic

characters have had their own adaptations; they just did not do well. However, these two films

would not be considered blockbuster films, as Catwoman’s budget of $100 million and Elektra’s

$43 million budget combined would be equal to the budget of DC’s Batman Begins, which was

released in the same year as Elektra.18

My argument takes a slightly different view than the available literature by not analyzing

the original source material––comic books––but instead turning the eye on the studios adapting

these texts. For example, Mike Madrid's Supergirls explores the history of female characters

strictly within the context of comic books; Jennifer K. Stuller's Ink-Stained Amazons focuses

more on strong female characters, not just superheroes. As the largest media companies either

wholly own comic book studios or own the rights to certain properties, such as Sony’s hold on

Spiderman or Disney’s devouring of Marvel, they choose what gets adapted and what stays in

17 Yes, Rocket Raccoon is exactly what he sounds like––a foul mouthed, gun-toting… raccoon. An actual Raccoon. 18 Box Office Mojo figures on Catwoman, Elektra, and Batman! Begins may be found at boxofficemojo.com. !6 print on the shelves. Thus, it is the owners who have the true power, and it is they who decide which ideologies to promote.19 Some studies have been done on how the content of films has noticeable effects on audience members, but I am interested in exploring how creators of this increasingly popular genre use their power and wealth to perpetuate the status quo. Media effects is an important aspect of studying films, but this thesis will focus on the comic book industry’s history and ownership, how media conglomerates power and wealth affected that market, and how those factors led to superhero films. This work is interested in exploring the political economic background of the superhero genre and the content of the most profitable films as an exemplar of how the largest media corporations are able to disseminate certain ideologies.

1.2 Significance

When reading any form of rhetoric, any piece that is ultimately designed to persuade an audience, the question lurking at the back of one’s mind is “so what?” While comic book adaptations may not seem like a serious, or even scholarly, subject, I believe that they have a significant impact on culture, both in America and abroad, and “the media influence society (and are in turn influenced by it).”20 Millions of audience members flock to theaters to watch the latest superhero film; the characters shown are given ad space, discussed by television personalities, and idolized (and idealized) by children and adults.21

This genre has turned into a moneymaking machine, earning billions of dollars for the parent companies. In turn, there are toys, games, and mobile apps based on the now-recognizable

19 Brummett, Barry. Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 177. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006.

20 Croteau, David, and William Hoynes. The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest, 191. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2001.

21 An example of this was the overwhelming popularity of The Avengers––it made $200 million in 3 days’ time. see Kenny Miles, “The Avengers Box Office: Facts, Figures, and! Analysis,” The Movie Blog, May 8, 2012. !7 characters, from Iron Man helmets at ToysRUs to the Avengers Tower Rush game from Disney.

Whether or not someone is a fan of superhero films, chances are his or her life will be somehow

affected by them, simply due to the inundation of media that surrounds our lives.22 The

ideologies portrayed by heroes and villains are not only physically enacted by children dressed

up as their favorite Avenger for Halloween (or just for everyday fun),23 but more subtly

performed by adults dressed up in their brand-name outfits, complete with Initium Eyewear å la

Iron Man,24 or a Batman shirt 25 for those who are not wealthy but still want a slice of the status pie. Interestingly enough, there were no toys for girls to dress up as the Black Widow; no cool goggles for women to imitate Catwoman’s outfit. Whether this lack of commodification is due to perceived lack of interest in children wanting to be female heroes or fear of parent disapproval concerning those females’ skintight clothes, consumers are not encouraged to spend their money on pretending to be women.

Parents who grew up reading comic books watch these films with a sense of nostalgia, and they drag their children to the films, indoctrinating a new generation as the media “pour their messages into our heads through the ear as well as the eye.”26 Through the films and their associated products, audiences are watching a set of ideologies playing out film after film––male virility, the helplessness of average citizens (especially female ones), the importance of consumer

22 Croteau, David, and William Hoynes. The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest, 30. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2001.

23 Alexander, Jeff. "Where Are All the (Good) Female Superhero Movies?" Ideas.com. August 31, 2012.

24 If you can afford a pair, they run at $295 and can be found on Initium's website.

25 If you are not interested in expensive glasses but still want to be a good consumer, Walmart has $6 Batman shirts that can be found in their stores as well as their website.

26 Harvey, David. Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference, 176. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. ! !8 culture––and yet the formula still sells. As these tentpole movies27 continue to be produced, it is

important to take a step back and really look at their content. What are the most powerful media

conglomerates selling us? What is the rhetoric behind a superhero movie, and how do structural

factors affect the message being sold?

Comic book films are not generally considered high art, but they are popular culture––

these films are the blockbuster, popcorn fare that millions of audience members watch.28 , 29

Studying how one group––females––is portrayed by such films can lend itself to analyzing how

other groups are subject to stereotypes in blockbusters and how we as citizens can help reverse

the trend. For feminist political economists, and indeed feminists everywhere, the argument that

women are oppressed is old news.30

However, the depictions of women in superhero films do not only matter to feminists, but

to both male and female viewers. The structural factors at play here also affect if, and how, other

minorities are portrayed. Even white males must live up to an image of muscled virility as

portrayed by Christian Bale’s Batman or Ryan Reynolds' computer-generated abdominals. Thus,

the media attempt to keep more than just women in their place through on-screen depictions.31 If

27 To clarify, a tentpole production is a film that studios expect to get massive returns on in order to cover the cost of smaller, less profitable films; see Gordon, Ian, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister. Film and Comic Books. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2007. Print.

28 Gibson, Mel. "Wham! Bam! The X-Men Are Here: The British Broadsheet Press and the X-Men Films and Comic." In Film and Comic Books, edited by Ian Gordon, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister, 108. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

29 According to the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc., in 2012 at least 225 million people went to the theatre at least once, in “Theatrical Market Statistics 2012”.

30 Meehan, Eileen R. "Gendering the Commodity Audience: Critical Media Research, Feminism, and Political Economy." In Sex & Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, edited by Ellen Riordan and Eileen R. Meehan, 220. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. 31 Brummett, Barry. Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 178. Thousand! Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006. !9 audience members perceive some sort of lack, we will be better consumers, more willing to take

a chance to buy a product associated with a superhero so that we, too, can feel empowered.32 , 33

1.3 Research Methods

I will be using a two-step process to analyze comic book film adaptations. The first is to

explore structural factors that affect character development and film content through the lens of

feminist political economy of media, as defined by Ellen Riordan and Eileen Meehan in their

book, Sex & Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media. By examining how

ownership, media concentration, and a rigid patriarchal capitalist system shortchange minority

groups who have been “othered,” I will argue that audiences many actually have little to do with

why certain types of characters have not been given their own adaptation. We do not live in a

buyer’s market; we live in a seller’s market––the “Big Six” media conglomerations make films

and shows and games, and citizens consume them, indoctrinated into a system in which we are

used to taking what is offered, for that is better than nothing at all.34 In this type of system, the

largest companies have an enormous amount of power and wealth and want to get even more,

leading them to take fewer creative risks and instead stay with what has sold in the past. As Ben

Battistelli states, “Hollywood [is] seemingly focused on funding projects that follow the

conventions of previous financial gains.”35 This means that we are watching formulaic films with

32 Wasko, Janet. "Critiquing Hollywood: The Political Economy of Motion Pictures." In A Concise Handbook of Movie Industry Economics, edited by Charles C. Moul, 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

33 Introduction. In Film and Comic Books, edited by Ian Gordon, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister, xi. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

34 Osgerby, Bill. Youth Media, 39. London: Routledge, 2004.

35 Battistelli, Ben. Cinematic Superheroes: A Study of Image and Narrative Comprehension in the Contemporary Comic Book Film Adaptation, 6. Thesis, Chapman University,! 2004. !10 familiar characters and story lines.36 Fewer women are prominent characters because there have

not been successful comic book films starring them. Faulty logic then exploits the poorly

produced Elektra and Catwoman as arguments that films about women just do not make a profit.37 As I mentioned earlier, the films did not have the production or marketing budget of more successful superhero films. In addition, the female characters were not well-rounded, and the resulting portrayal was one of one-dimensional, sexualized women. This creates a vicious cycle in which risk-averse conglomerates continue to avoid superheroines, and rely on tropes because those are what have worked in the past.

The second step of the process, after explaining how those with power in the media use media messages and consumerism to promote the status quo, is to conduct a textual analysis of the top ten-grossing superhero adaptations from DC and Marvel properties. Such an analysis of these films’ content will explore the argument that the minimal presence of females characters, along with unsettling portrayals of females and performed femininity, is an effect of media ownership and the current media oligopoly. I will be examining them to determine the ideologies being disseminated by such films and how they construct rigid gender roles within superhero film adaptations.

The specific superhero movies I will be analyzing are the ones that have caught the eye of the largest number of citizens, and so would have a bigger impact on the public consciousness.

The analysis will be composed of exploring the ratio of speaking male characters to speaking

36 Meehan, Eileen R. Why TV Is Not Our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers, and Who's Really in Control, 49. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.; David Croteau and William Hoynes, The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2006), 122.

37 Jennifer K. Stuller, Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, (New York, NY: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2010), 3. ! !11 female characters, male characters with powers to female characters with powers, and male

active/passive acts to female active/passive acts. In superhero films, it seems at first glance as

though there are more male characters than female characters.

Superhero adaptations of the caliber of the most profitable ten films would not be

possible without their corporate parents, and so the ideologies being perpetuated are especially

important because they represent the ideas those with power and wealth want to share. By

exploring the history of the comic book industry's ownership concentration and its subsumption

by larger media conglomerates, an analysis of comic book adaptations can be made. Political

economy of this field will lay a foundation by which to study the content of these blockbuster

films to determine the ideologies being perpetuated, and how those ideologies relate to gender

roles and norms.

1.4 Looking Ahead

The next chapter of this thesis offers a literature review of previous work done in this field and situates this current study within the existing literature, explaining differences and similarities among what has been written. Chapter 3 outlines the methodology that will be used: feminist political economy and textual analysis. I also provide definition and clarity as to what these methods are, and the importance of their presence in this thesis. Chapter 4 explores the political economy surrounding comic book films adaptations, from recombinant culture to ownership to media structures, and how such factors determine what gets the green light and what goes on the chopping block. In Chapter 5, a textual analysis of the top ten most profitable films will illustrate the effects of the current patriarchal media system via the portrayals of women, and the rhetorical ideologies being perpetuated by such content. In the conclusion, the ! !12 findings will be discussed and recommendations for how this information can be used will be made, as well as a discussion of the limitations of this study and how this thesis can be a springboard for future research. In addition, the final section will include evidence that increasing awareness can potentially reverse this trend.

! !13 CHAPTER TWO

THE LITERATURE OF COMICS AND THEIR FILMS

Before completely delving into the world of who owns what and the messages set forth

by them, some important background in this area is needed. The history of comic book

adaptations, especially as they concern women, must be explored. In addition, contemporary

literature on this topic discusses how females are portrayed and the observable changes in

portrayals through time, and highlights the distance we have yet to go until there is truly equal

representation. First, a history of the medium of comic books is explained, and the key critical

research done in relation to female characters will be noted. Second, I discuss film adaptations of

comic books in general and how they have changed through time––particularly the last decade––

and the research surrounding such films. Finally, the role of women in films is contrasted with

that of their comic book versions and the male characters alongside them.

When studying how films are adapted, it is important to know other perspectives

regarding how they came to be. There has been an enormous amount of scholarship concerning

comic books, their adaptations, their characters, and their rhetorical messages.38 There has also

been scholarship on political economy of media as it relates to various shows, newspapers, and

films.39 However, I was unable to find articles or books bridging the two interests to produce a

38 see books Gordon, Ian, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister. Film and Comic Books. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2007. Print.; Brown, Jeffrey A. "Gender, Sexuality, and Toughness: The Bad Girls of Action Film and Comic Books." Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture. Ed. Sherrie A. Inness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 47. Print.; Dines, Gail, and Jean McMahon Humez. Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011. Print.

39 see books Angus, Ian H., and Sut Jhally. Cultural Politics in Contemporary America. New York: Routledge, 1989. Print.; Bagdikian, Ben H. The New Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon, 2004. Print.; Bettig, Ronald V., and Jeanne Lynn Hall. Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Print.; McChesney, Robert Waterman. The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004. ! !14 feminist political economic look at comic book film adaptations, or a textual analysis of how

females are portrayed in this genre. The literature, therefore, serves as a jumping point––a

springboard––from which to further explore what happens before a film even hits the theaters.

Comic books, their adaptations, and their portrayals of women have a long history and have

changed throughout time; understanding them will place my analysis of contemporary films

within a larger historical context.

2.1 A Brief History of the Comic Book Industry

The comic book industry is older than its Hollywood counterpart, and to understand what

has been written about this genre a brief history is important here. Comic books have been

around for decades, perhaps even centuries. It is debated as to what exactly constituted the first

, but the beginning of the twentieth century saw a rapid rise in comic books, following

an action-adventure format, that appealed to young people. 1867 saw the release of the first

superhero comic, in the form of gadget-wearing Spring Heeled Jack, whose success guaranteed a

slew of others would follow. Youth culture was on the rise, and young people after the Great

Depression had a few pennies to rub together.40 Boys of any class could buy a comic book and watch as their favorite hero beat the baddies over a series of highly-colored pages. As Paul

Gravett notes in the introduction to 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, “there can

never be one history or one experience of comics. Each of us has a specific and personal

relationship to these myriad stories depending on our circumstances, language, geography, and

taste.”41 To those who grew up as the comic industry grew larger, comics played an important

40 Osgerby, Bill. Youth Media. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.

41 Paul Gravett. 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die: The Ultimate Guide to Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and . 8. New York, NY: Universe Publishing, 2012.! !15 role in shaping how they viewed the world around them.42 Comics offered an array of heroes and

villains––archetypes that were used to promote certain ideologies like self-determination

(Batman), honesty (Wonder Woman), or patriotism (). In the books Superman

on the Couch and Women Women the authors describe superhero comics as being born out of mythology, which allowed readers to identify with familiar character types updated to reflect the modern world. Superheroes were not just human; they were more than human and stood closer to a rhetorical Mount Olympus than Earth. Just as myths tell moral tales or give lessons on humanity, the superhero comic informs readers on how to be a good guy in everyday life.

This effect of comic books on readers boosted the market, and during World War II, the war effort consumed even young people.43 Buying comics offered them a way to figure out how their heroes were helping. Wonder Woman was introduced at this time, a strong woman who despised the Nazis. Superman pitched in to save America as well, and comic books became catharsis––a way for even the young or helpless to defeat the Axis Powers. From the end of the war, comic book sales stayed strong. New characters were launched and old characters were updated, given sidekicks and new technology, and the industry continued. Batman gained his young sidekick Robin to keep young fans interested and the Marvel and DC universes both expanded. As time passed, however, and television gained prominence as the premier form of media, comic book sales began to decline. Even now, the popularity of comic book film adaptations cannot fully cover the drop in mainstream imprints. At the height of comic books, more than one million copies of Superman were being sold per month. Now, DC is happy to sell

42 Russell W. Belk,"Effects of Identification With Comic Book Heroes and Villains of Consumption on Materialism Among Former Comic Book Readers," Advances in Consumer Research 16, 1989: 414-419. 43 Raviv, Dan. Comic Wars: Marvel's Battle for Survival. Sea! Cliff, NY: Heroes Books, 2004. !16 100,000 copies in the same period of time.44 However, there is a different way to look at this––as

comic books have been pushed to the margins by more prominent media, have

been given a chance to thrive, and some say the industry as a whole is undergoing a type of

renaissance period marked by heightened creativity.

In Film and Comic Books, a history of adaptations is outlined, and editors Gordon,

Jancovich, and McAllister note in the introduction that “production deals for comic book

character-based movies have multiplied rapidly… critical acclaim has flowed for many of the

recent efforts.”45 The editors argue that due to the visual nature of both comic books and film, it

is somewhat simpler to make a movie based on a comic than, say, a novel. Adaptations have also

proved advantageous because “comics have core audiences of fans that engage with characters”46

over many years, and there is sentiment attached for particular incarnations of fans’ favorite hero.

Throughout this book, the essays explore how filmmakers have historically had trouble adapting

films in order to please those who were already fans while still including those unfamiliar with

comics but interested in the new Hollywood version of a given character.47 Furthermore, as time

progressed, the “intermedia opportunities of comic book properties have been excessively

plundered”48 due to the subsumption of DC by TimeWarner, and of Marvel Studios by Disney.

44 Weaver, Tyler. Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld. Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2013.

45 Gordon, Ian, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister. Film and Comic Books, viii. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

46 Gordon, Ian, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister. Film and Comic Books, xi. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

47 LeFevre, Pascal. "Incompatible Visual Ontologies: The Problematic Adaptation of Drawn Images." In Film and Comic Books, edited by Ian Gordon, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister, 7. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

48 Gough, Kerry. "Translation Creativity and Alien Economics: From Hollywood Blockbuster to Dark Horse Comic Book." In Film and Comic Books, edited by Ian Gordon, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister, 37. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. ! !17 This relationship changed the course of comic books, and characters and their history were

changed to be more marketable.49 An example of this is the history of . Originally, he

was a character in Marvel’s X-Men, a bestial anti-hero with excessive body hair and a short

temper. Over time, and after the X-Men had a film adaptation featuring Wolverine as a more

important character, Wolverine became more streamlined and attractive. Marvel, to promote a

sense of continuity among its media, tailored the Wolverine in its comic books and

merchandising to appear similar to the film version.50 Thus, this collection of essays

demonstrates how Hollywood and comics have long been intertwined, but that the increasing

power of media companies has not only made changes to adapted source material, but has

changed the source material––comics––itself. Comic books are a highly visual medium, and as

soon as films started gaining popularity as a form of entertainment, comics became source

material. Their panels were similar to storyboards, and the characters and plots were laid out,

providing a strong groundwork for (lazy?) filmmakers and studios eager to exploit the built-in

audience.51 Thus, while comic books have been around longer than the film industry, they have

been constantly reimagined in a different medium through adaptations. The first commercially

successful superhero film was that of Superman, released in 1978. This film capitalized on forty

49 For an in-depth analysis of how Marvel’s Wolverine character was shaped up, made more attractive, and turned into a major character, see Johnson, Derek. "Will the Real Wolverine Please Stand Up?: Marvel's Mutation from Monthlies to Movies." In Film and Comic Books, edited by Ian Gordon, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister, 69. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

50 Johnson, Derek. "Will the Real Wolverine Please Stand Up?: Marvel's Mutation from Monthlies to Movies." In Film and Comic Books, edited by Ian Gordon, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister, 69. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

51 Meehan, Eileen R. ""Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!"" In Cultural Dimensions: Ideology, Identity and Culture Industry Studies, 312. London [u.a.: Routledge, 2004. ! !18 years’ worth of costumes, villains, and adventures. After this movie was a hit, more followed,

and slowly the superhero film became a Hollywood mainstay.

2.2 Female Representation in Superhero Comics

As we can see, comic books have been a popular industry for much of the 20th century,

and so have provided a way to study how women and gender roles have been portrayed––or

changed––throughout the century. Concerning female representation in comics, Mike Madrid’s

The Supergirls outlines a chronological history of comic book heroines, beginning with the

1940s and finishing up at the beginning of the new millennium. In this book, Madrid discusses

how female superheroes have changed over the decades to reflect changing opinions in society.

This is important because it shows how comic books have adjusted based on ideological shifts

during each decade, such as World War II, the first and second wave of feminism, the Civil

Rights movement and the free love era, and the increased awareness and inclusion of minorities.

The author argues that heroines like the Black Canary or Storm52 have been granted more agency

as the decades wore on, and that female heroes became something more than window dressing;

they became heroes in their own right, independent of male superiors. While he acknowledges

that the industry is not truly equal yet, the depictions of women over time offer hope that a

positive trajectory will continue. His history is important when it comes to analyzing how female

characters are represented in adaptations, and how empowered they are portrayed as being.

Take, for example, the character of the , a member of Marvel’s team the

Fantastic Four. She was originally named the Invisible Girl, even though she was a full-grown

52 The Black Canary is a DC hero who is a competent fighter with a voice that produces sonic bursts, incapacitating villains. Storm is a Marvel hero and member of the X-Men who can control the weather, and also one of the few African-American women placed in leadership roles within! the Marvel universe. !19 woman. This was in contrast to her team member Mr. Fantastic, who was never called the

Fantastic Boy or anything to suggest a childlike persona. The Invisible Girl’s name immediately

marked her as more childish and naive than her cohorts. As time went on, and the gap between

male and female characters shortened Sue Richards became the Invisible Woman, now marked as

a fully-formed adult, just like the rest of her team. This transition mirrors the rhetorical

transformation of other female superheroes during the same time.

Female characters started off by being love interests for male heroes or superheroines

who still needed to be rescued frequently. They were attractive (as they still are) and not very

bright, assistants to the men who were the real agents of various do-goodery. My favorite

example of the reflection of sexism in comic books was the creation of DC’s Justice League.

The League was comprised of a somewhat fluid group of superheroes, but the core members

were Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, the Green Lantern, and Aqua

Man. Wonder Woman, despite being an intelligent, fully-formed hero in her own right, became

the group secretary relegated to taking notes at meetings and manning the headquarters when

Batman and Superman left to fight crime.53 This highlights the rigid gender roles that even

fictional characters in comic books had to abide by. However, females are depicted very

differently in modern popular comics. Instead of the blatant sexism that coursed through comics

before the second wave of feminism, there are more subtle undertones as to how women should

look and act. The use of female sexuality has been one way to manage female behavior. When

the Invisible Girl debuted, she was cute yet naive. Her name implied a sense of innocence.

When she made the transition to the Invisible Woman, however, she carried with her all the

53 Flanagan, Kristy. "Resources." WONDER WOMEN The !Untold Story of American Superheroines RSS. !20 aspects of womanhood––sexuality, self-awareness, and independence––which could be seen as

threatening for some male readers.54 Thus, female sexuality became a way for gender roles to

remain very clearly defined. Sexuality became both a strength and a weakness, a way for women

to get ahead yet also act as dangerous temptresses for male protagonists.55 In modern comics,

this use of sex and sexuality as a way to portray women is accompanied by the old tropes of

damsel-in-distress and woman-as-love-interest, which perpetuates the idea that superheroines,

even if incredibly strong or smart or capable, still need men to rescue and/or love them.56

However, there have been some positive shifts in ideology in respect to the modern mainstream

industry and how female characters are portrayed, even though this happened due to the profit

motive of the publishers. In DC’s New 52, Batwoman––an intelligent, sassy heiress––is a lesbian in a relationship with a police officer.57 This is a huge leap forward from typical representations of women. Marvel Comics also recently introduced a young Muslim girl as a new superhero, which is another sign that mainstream comics are moving forward.58 The difficulty with huge

industries like the comic book world is that they take much longer to respond to fans’ requests

than smaller, more personable firms. As the two largest publishing houses are part of a

conglomerated system, they respond to the needs of their owners before the needs of their

readers. This results in the recycling of characters and storylines, which can limit creativity and

54 Beauman, Ned. "Superheroes Need Rescuing from Sexism." The Guardian. September 07, 2003.

55 Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519-31.

56 Ditum, Sarah. "Message to Catwoman: High Heels May Hobble Your Future Career Prospects." The Guardian. August 19, 2012.

57 Hedley, Caroline. "Lesbian Batwoman Is DC Comics' First Gay Superhero." The Telegraph. February 11, 2009.

58 Walker, Tim. "Marvel Comics Introduces 16-year-old Muslim Girl as New Superhero." The Independent. November 06, 2013. ! !21 progressive expression of different characters. In spite of the slow-moving media behemoth,

characters do change, and slowly some are changing to better reflect the diversity of their

audiences. Modern comics may not portray women as women truly are, but some are beginning

to offer more diversity in ethnicity, sexuality, and personality type.59

Along that same vein of thought is the book Action Chicks, edited by Sherrie A. Inness.

A series of essays built around depictions of strong women in popular culture explores the

relatively recent phenomenon of women as being “tough”60 in television and film. Various

definitions of female toughness and the “complex uncertainties––the blurry instability––of

current cultural understandings of gender and sexuality”61 are discussed, because superheroines

have entered traditionally masculine signifiers such as muscles, fighting skills, or the ability to

use weaponry. Characters who have taken that leap have too often been masculinized––forced to

leave their femininity behind to be accepted by their peers and audience members––or highly

sexualized, with secondary sexual traits being exaggerated as a way to compensate for the

female’s masculine deeds.62 This distinction is important because it highlights how even tough

women have been placed into small boxes, and how this history places the lack of equality in

superhero films in context.

59 Gray, Richard J., II. "Vivacious Vixens and Scintillating Super Hotties: Deconstructing the Superheroine." In The 21st Century Superhero: Essays on Gender, Genre and Globalization in Film, edited by Betty Kaklamanidou and Richard J. Gray, 75. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

60 Inness, Sherrie A., ed. Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, 1. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

61 Greven, David. "Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Defiant Women, Decadent Men, Objects of Power, and Witchblade." In Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, edited by Sherrie A. Inness, 125. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

62 Brown, Jeffrey A. "Gender, Sexuality, and Toughness: The Bad Girls of Action Film and Comic Books." In Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, edited by Sherrie A. Inness, 47. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ! !22 Further exploring tough women and their mythologies as told through the pages of comic

books is Jennifer K. Stuller’s Ink-Stained Amazons, in which she discusses how serialized comic

books have their own narratives that combine classical (usually Greek or Roman) tales and

archetypes with contemporary settings.63 Although such stories are important in our culture,

Stuller stresses that female heroes are relegated to the sidelines as mothers, love interests, or

temptresses; the vast majority of comic books still focus on the hero’s journey, not the heroine’s

journey,64 and that distinction may make it easier for conglomerates to choose characters similar

to the properties whose adaptations have been profitable in the past. Her book also raises the

point that audience members will consume media about heroic women––if they are written

well––and gives examples of Xena: The Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as

strong, intelligent superheroes,65 a sentiment echoed by other writers who are perplexed as to

why females in comic books and their adaptations are not more developed, such as Mike Madrid

in Supergirls and Sherrie Inness' Action Chicks.66

As we can see, women have played an important role in the history of comic books, even

though female characters have been marginalized, sexualized, and abused. Despite this, more

superheroines are getting written, and the rise of alternative comics has pushed multifaceted

females to the fore. When it comes to blockbuster adaptations of this medium, however, the

63 Stuller, Jennifer K. Ink-stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, 5. London: I.B. Tauris &, 2010.

64 Stuller, Jennifer K. Ink-stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, 4. London: I.B. Tauris &, 2010.

65 Stuller, Jennifer K. Ink-stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, 70. London: I.B. Tauris &, 2010.

66 Madrid, Mike. The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines. [Ashland, Or.]: Exterminating Angel Press, 2009. ! !23 female characters change––and not for the better. Studios have their choice among hundreds of

storylines and characters, yet they inevitably choose those that focus on a strong male lead,

relegating women to the background. Female characters then become either mothers, love

interests (either good or bad), or plot devices. This has been the trend ever since the release of

Superman back in the 1970s, and there are no signs of it stopping. Characters who would be

elderly in real life are still actively fighting crime in the comic book universes to which they

belong, and their values may be in need of modernizing. However, as studios have followed the

formula of adapting films featuring a strong male lead, they may be wary of using a female for

fear that their loyal audiences will boycott the adaptation. Comic books are still targeted at young

boys, and the adaptations are marketed for a male demographic.67 As such, adaptations with a

female lead might be too risky for a large studio to undertake.

Through knowledge of the history of comic book characters and their printed personas to

their adaptation as silver screen superheroines, establishing a background is important. After

perusing the existing literature surrounding this field, I realized the changes that have occurred

over the past several decades, as well as the continual problems presented by depictions of

women as either overly masculine or excessively feminine. Despite the changes surrounding the

comic book industry and its representations of female characters, the history of both comics and

films demonstrates that there are still ongoing problems as to how women are portrayed. In the

next section, I will discuss the methods through which the top superhero films will be analyzed

and why it matters.

67 Maslon, Laurence, and Michael Kantor. Superheroes!: Capes, Cowls, and the Creation of Comic Book Culture. New York: Crown Archetype, 2013. ! !24 CHAPTER THREE THEORY AND METHODOLOGY! Before I can delve into an analysis of ownership and a textual analysis of film content, these two methods, or ways of critically conducting an investigation, is explained. First, a history and definition of political economy and its offshoot, feminist political economy, is discussed and an example of how feminist political economy works is outlined. Next, textual analysis is explained in the context of Hollywood film. These frameworks are particularly useful for exploring why comic book film adaptations follow a certain format and why their content lacks diversity. I am using these two methodologies because of their emphasis on how messages get made and the underlying structures that influence what we read, hear, and see.

Political economy allows for an exploration of the media industry itself, while textual analysis is the methodological tool used to deconstruct the messages the media give us. By using these two methodologies, I aim to then show how organizational causes have affected first the comic book industry and eventually the adaptation of comic books into films; I then analyze the ten most profitable DC and Marvel superhero movies within this genre to illustrate how their content contains ideological messages that the audience consumes, and why it could be a problem. These two methods are used because they offer insight as to how the media industry is structured within the United States and how that structure affects content.

The theory and method of feminist political economy tells us why content is made a certain way, and then textual analysis helps to figure out the ideologies the content is perpetuating. Thus, the combination of feminist political economy and textual analysis is a fitting one in regard to the thesis being put forward that structural factors influence content in comic ! !25 book film adaptations. The analyses of both those that make the films and their ensuing products

will reveal what gender roles and norms are being perpetuated.

3.1 Political Economy of Media

Political economy of media is a way of analyzing the relationships among power, wealth,

and knowledge. It is concerned with who owns the means of production and distribution of

wealth as well as who has power under the political structures of a nation and who controls the

media. Political economy looks at how power and wealth shape knowledge and was born out of

the societally-bound economic model outlined by Adam Smith in his book Wealth of Nations.

For early economist Adam Smith, the study of economics also dealt with social and political issues, and thus was called political economy; this label reflected the importance of social factors within this field of study. Smith defined political economy as the study of how wealth is distributed, and how “mankind arranges to allocate resources with a view toward satisfying certain needs and not others.”68 To Smith, the effects to society as a result of how resources were distributed and consumed were just as important as their cause––production. These early political economists studied political systems as well as economic ones, thus studying “capitalism as a system of social production.”69 He went on to describe that an ideal market has many buyers and many sellers, thus giving citizens a choice between many types of products, not just many products. If there were only a single seller or a few sellers, buyers would have a much more

68 Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. London [u.a.: Dent, 1977. Print.

69 Wasko, Janet. "Studying the Political Economy of Media and Information." Communicacao E Sociedade 7 (2005): 26. Print. ! !26 restricted range of products; this would turn the market into a seller’s market instead of a buyer’s

market, and choice between products would become something of an illusion.70

Soon, the ‘political’ aspect of political economy was dropped, and economics became a

field simply concerned with markets and how they worked. Political economic scholarship,

however, still existed, and still concerned itself with how economic institutions affected social

class, politics, and the exchange of power.71 As the field broadened and scholarship continued, political economists called into question the ideals of a capitalist system; they realized that

Smith’s idea of a free market with many buyers and sellers was not a reality, and that competition

was limited due to the regulations surrounding the marketplace and corporate ownership.72 Thus,

because of these economic failures of capitalism, political and social structures were affected;

political economists seek to improve “upon the problematic processes within political and

economic systems of the times.”73 It is really a branch of moral philosophy, because it deals with

how systems should work in order to better help the citizenry, creating norms about what should

be done to make political and economic institutions more egalitarian.74

As the study of political and economic structures widened, political economy of media

was born in order to examine how those same institutions affected the dispersal of

70 Meehan, Eileen R. Why TV Is Not Our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers, and Who's Really in Control, 19. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

71 Mosco, Vincent. The Political Economy of Communication. London: SAGE, 2009; Wasko, Janet. How Hollywood Works. London: SAGE, 2003.

72 Meehan, Eileen R. "Understanding How the Popular Becomes Popular: The Role of Political Economy in the Study of Popular Communication." Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 3 (2007): 161-70; Wasko, Janet. How Hollywood Works, 3. London: SAGE, 2003; Hesmondhalgh, David. The Cultural Industries, 33. London: SAGE, 2002.

73 Cox, Nicole. "Femme Dysfunction Is Pure Gold: A Feminist Political Economic Analysis of Bravo's the Real Housewives." Diss., Florida State University, 2012. 14.

74 Norris, Vincent P. "The Political Economy of Communications: An Exploration of Fundamental Concepts." Working Papers: School of Communication, Penn State, 8.! 1990. !27 knowledge.75 , 76 Media have always been a way to share information, whether through a

newspaper or a news program, and studying who owns the media is studying who has the power

to spread knowledge.77 Political economy of communication focuses on how the market structure

of media and ownership affect content and the ideologies being passed on to consumers.78

Scholar Vincent Mosco defined political economy, specifically as it relates to communication, as

“the study of the social relations, particularly power relations, that mutually constitute the

production, distribution, and consumption of resources.”79 Political economists also explore how

competition works––or does not work––in the media industry; how much diversity exists in the

field; and whether the current media structure gives the citizenry the tools needed to be an

informed society.80

The base of political economy is concerned with the interplay between wealth and power, and adding media means analyzing how wealth, power, and knowledge interact with each other in a capitalist society such as the United States.81 The media industry is a profit-driven one, and

so media owners care about increasing their bottom line and gaining a larger percentage of the

available market share, just like corporations in any other field. The difference between those

75 McChesney, Robert Waterman. The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008.

76 Splichal, Slavko, and Janet Wasko. Communication and Democracy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub., 1993.

77 Sut Jhally. "The Political Economy of Culture" Cultural Politics in Contemporary America. , 1989. 65-81.

78 Bettig, Ronald V., and Jeanne Lynn Hall. Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

79 Mosco, Vincent. The Political Economy of Communication, 25. London: SAGE, 2009.

80 Mosco, Vincent. The Political Economy of Communication. London: SAGE, 2009; Garnham, Nicholas, and Fred Inglis. Capitalism and Communication: Global Culture and the Economics of Information. London: Sage Publications, 1990.

81 Norris, Vincent P. "The Political Economy of Communications: An Exploration of Fundamental Concepts." Working Papers: School of Communication, Penn State, 1990.! !28 other corporations and media corporations is that the media sell ideologies.82 Media or

communications institutions are the norms concerning “who may say what, to whom, under what

circumstances,”83 and because those who own the media have both political power and economic

power, they can impact social norms and distribution of wealth more so than the average

individual.84 They produce the means by which humans make sense of the world––newspapers,

television shows, books, films, etc.––and so understanding the underlying motives and structures

involved with media organizations is especially important.85

As discussed by Sut Jhally, there are two major ways in which the current media system

perpetuates the ideologies of consumerism and maintaining the status quo: through the

consciousness industry, which works through the consent of the dominated; and culture industry,

which ideas are bought and sold and our culture is up for purchase.

Consciousness industry forwards the argument that “groups that benefit from the existing

distribution of power...work for stability.”86 In a society with increasingly concentrated

ownership, this means those with power and wealth attempt to maintain the status quo by gaining

consent of those without wealth and power. For example, it is unlikely that a large media film

will produce adaptations critical of capitalism or the political system, as a “hypercommercial

Hollywood seems to tolerate sex and violence more than political edginess and character

82 Norris, Vincent P. "The Political Economy of Communications: An Exploration of Fundamental Concepts." Working Papers: School of Communication, Penn State, 4. 1990.

83 Norris, Vincent P. "The Political Economy of Communications: An Exploration of Fundamental Concepts." Working Papers: School of Communication, Penn State, 13. 1990.

84 Norris, Vincent P. "The Political Economy of Communications: An Exploration of Fundamental Concepts." Working Papers: School of Communication, Penn State, 13. 1990.

85 Fusfeld, Daniel R. Economics, Principles of Political Economy. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1982. 86 Sut Jhally. "The Political Economy of Culture" Cultural !Politics in Contemporary America. , 1989. 68. !29 complexity.”87 The consciousness produced is not one of derision for the current system and can

provide clues as to why many films and shows all seem to mirror each other. As our media

conglomerates function as an oligopoly, the ideologies they seek to promote are in favor of

consumerism, patriarchy, and free market capitalism.88

Culture industry explains what happens when culture is turned into a commodity and

bought and sold. Under modern capitalism, much mass culture and art are first and foremost

commodities to make a profit, and that underlying current of consumption dominates popular

culture.89 This profit-driven culture is then imposed on consumers, and the media and art become

ways for citizens to become consumers rather than a citizenry that is actively involved in the

process of creating and critiquing media. It also allows a way for consumer-citizens to escape

from their day-to-day life.90 In this way, we are sold a set of ideologies that constitute our

culture, and instead of the masses creating culture, media conglomerates repackage cultural items

to sell back to citizens. Culture becomes a commodity, a status symbol, and culture becomes just

another part of material production and capitalist consumerism.91 Citizens then only have to buy

the right products or the right symbols in order to be seen as trendy, wealthy, or desirable.92 !

87 McAllister, Matt P., Ian Gordon, and Mark Jancovich. "Blockbuster Meets Superhero Comic, or Art House Meets ?" Journal of Popular Film & Television 34, no. 3 (2006): 114.

88 McChesney, Robert Waterman. The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-first Century, 177. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004.

89 Held, David. Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

90 Sut Jhally. "The Political Economy of Culture" Cultural Politics in Contemporary America. , 1989. 65-81.

91 Sut Jhally. "The Political Economy of Culture" Cultural Politics in Contemporary America. , 1989. 74. 92 De, Botton Alain. Status Anxiety. New York: Pantheon Books,! 2004. !30 3.2 Feminist Political Economy Defined

From this definition and understanding of a political economic framework, feminist

political economy of media stresses how media place gender relations, males, females, and

minorities into very small boxes to maintain the status quo. Political economy was historically

interested in studying class relations, but feminist political economy adds gender and race

relations to the mix to determine how different groups are disempowered by political and

economic organizations through portrayals in the media. According to Sex & Money: Feminism

and Political Economy in the Media, “a feminist political economy interrogates issues many

women relate to, such as identity, subjectivity, pleasure, consumption, as well as visible and

invisible labor, and looks at them through the lens of [traditionally masculine] capitalism.”93

While political economists acknowledge that change is needed in media systems to create a more

democratic and informed society, feminists want this change to also include women and

minorities and reflect the experiences of those who have been oppressed by society.94

Feminist political economy of media, therefore, follows a long tradition of examining

power structures in order to change these systems in favor of those who have been

disempowered or silenced by them. When it comes to studying how the media represent and

respond to females, it is important to note that patriarchy and capitalism have been intertwined

since the origins of the United States as its own independent nation.95 Therefore, the media, as a

patriarchal, highly capitalist structure, have always leaned toward men being the valued audience

93 Meehan, Eileen R., and Ellen Riordan. Sex & Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, 9. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

94 Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory, 7. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1983. 95 Brummett, Barry. Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 219. Thousand! Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006. !31 because men are the ones in society who have historically made more money and held more

power.96 As a result, the media discriminate “against anyone outside the commodity audience of white, 18-to-34-year-old, heterosexual, English-speaking, upscale men.”97 Feminist political economy of media is concerned with studying how the distribution of wealth and power within this capitalistic media system has affected women specifically, as well as analyzing how media perpetuate rigid gender roles and attempt to keep culture, and consumers, predictable. “Women’s sexuality is in flux and is constantly being negotiated in our culture.”98 Rarely is it that women are presented as being fully-formed beings reliant on no man, unless such a depiction could help sell a product. Women’s sexuality and their status of sexual beings are up for grabs in a consumer culture, providing both an example of how the culture industry works while also pointing out how female bodies are portrayed as objects of male consumption.99 Feminist political economy seeks to explain the structures underlying these practices and seek to provide alternative routes.

In my analysis of superhero films, feminist political economy provides the foundation for how powerful and wealthy corporations seek to hold on to their power while promoting certain consciousness in audience members. This branch of political economy is most useful in highlighting how gender roles and norms within superhero films are part of a larger trend within media conglomerates to perpetuate the status quo and avoid controversy.

96 Meehan, Eileen R. Why TV Is Not Our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers, and Who's Really in Control. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005; Dines, Gail, and Jean McMahon Humez. Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2011.

97 Brummett, Barry. Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 221. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006.

98 Brummett, Barry. Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 234. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006.

99 Bordo, Susan. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. ! !32 As I will be looking at the comic book industry as well as its later adaptations, literature

from the entire field of political economy of media must be applied as well. For political

economy of media and its feminist offshoot, the books The Problem of the Media, Why TV is Not

Our Fault, the New Media Monopoly, The Business of Media, and Sex & Money are the most helpful, all outlining how corporate strategies and ownership quell creativity and create a culture that may be less democratic than many of us would like to think. As we live in a media-filled society, the images we see most certainly effect us. In Janet Wasko’s Critiquing Hollywood, she mentions why issues like ownership and concentration matter: “For a political economist,

Hollywood works as an industry that manufactures and markets commodities. Although these commodities are often engaging and exciting entertainment products, it is still important to understand the process by which they are produced and distributed.”100

3.3 The Importance of Feminist Political Economy and Superhero Films

This is important because unlike other industries, mass media are produced by those with both power and wealth and therefore are able to dictate the ideologies that get sold. The media produce our news, our entertainment, and our political coverage; the largest media firms do not simply make movies, they make the entire media atmosphere. Citizens are immersed in this media-filled world and are subject to the social and political ideologies of those media owners with the most power and wealth.101 Wasko goes on to say that “Hollywood films have become more commercial through product placement, as well as spawning new commodities such as

100 Wasko, Janet. "Critiquing Hollywood: The Political Economy of Motion Pictures." In A Concise Handbook of Movie Industry Economics, edited by Charles C. Moul, 11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 101 Bagdikian, Ben H. The New Media Monopoly. Boston: !Beacon Press, 2004. !33 merchandise and other media products.”102 Due to the rise of commodity culture and hypercommercialization, consumers seek to identify with the products their favorite characters use. By promoting consumerism and then offering the goods to go along with it, media owners gain more than just viewers––they gain dedicated fans who will continue to buy even when outside a movie theatre. Bill Osgerby continues this train of thought by discussing how

“companies worked increasingly hard to invest their products with cultural values that would appeal to particular groups of buyers.”103 The increase in profits made by attracting as many affluent audiences as possible boosts the overall profile of the corporation, resulting in higher dividends for the shareholders and more opportunities for growth.

Scholarship concerning political economy clearly outlines how the largest companies gain and maintain their economic and political power. “From a film’s inception as an idea or concept to its distribution to a wide range of outlets and locations, film industry insiders explain that the motivating force is the bottom line.”104 These companies have grown through the past few decades, assisted by governmental policies and an American belief in free market capitalism, and are focused on turning a profit however they can. Unfortunately, it means that often the films we see have an underlying motive: to gain profit for studios and to gain future consumers of related products. The studios that produce such fare also want to reduce risk by making films they know will make money.

102 Wasko, Janet. "Critiquing Hollywood: The Political Economy of Motion Pictures." In A Concise Handbook of Movie Industry Economics, edited by Charles C. Moul, 12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

103 Osgerby, Bill. Youth Media, 39. London: Routledge, 2004.

104 Wasko, Janet. "Critiquing Hollywood: The Political Economy of Motion Pictures." In A Concise Handbook of Movie Industry Economics, edited by Charles C. Moul, 15.! Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. !34 By adding a feminist bent, Eileen Meehan and Ellen Riordan, in the collected essays of

Sex & Money, political economy of media also becomes a study of how “the overvaluing of a male audience reflects the sexism of patriarchy as surely as the overvaluing of an upscale audience reflects the classism of capitalism. Each practice is rooted in the illogic of prejudice,

that is, in the ideologies naturalizing the oppression of women and of working people.”105

Therefore, feminist political economy studies how the relationships between capitalism,

patriarchy, and conglomeration affect minorities. While it is labeled “feminist,” this type of

scholarship is really focused on any group of people who have been oppressed by the dominant

forces in power, and pushed to the margins by the status quo. An example of how feminist

political economy is used to analyze media practices can be seen in Nicole Cox and Jennifer

Proffitt’s article on how Bravo's The Real Housewives perpetuates the stereotype of "women as

shoppers [and] that spending equals happiness."106 The authors used the show to underline how

the patriarchal nature of capitalist society causes a lack of equality for all genders and that Real

Housewives is to be viewed by women as an ideal––a world in which women are not the primary

wage earners and consume products without question. Women who are depicted as fulfilling the

traditional role of wife and mother as opposed to executive or entrepreneur are privileged, and

feminist political economy is used to explore how media want viewers to continue consuming,

even if that means depicting women in stereotypical roles.

105 Meehan, Eileen R. "Gendering the Commodity Audience: Critical Media Research, Feminism, and Political Economy." In Sex & Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, edited by Ellen Riordan and Eileen R. Meehan, 220. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

106 Cox, Nicole B., and Jennifer M. Proffitt. "The Housewives' Guide to Better Living: Promoting Consumption on Bravo's The Real Housewives." Communication, Culture &! Critique 5, no. 2 (2012): 295-312. !35 In Chapter 4, I use feminist political economy of media––itself both a theory and a methodology––to analyze the media industry in regard to comic book film adaptations. By using the framework outlined by Meehan and Riordan in Sex & Money, as well as the general political economic framework for studying ownership and conglomeration as discussed by McChesney,

Bagdikian, and Croteau and Hoynes, I examine how media ownership and the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few affects the choices made by studios concerning which comic books deserve adaptations. In addition, this theory and methodology will explore how recombinant and commodity culture have an impact on the storylines chosen, and how such creative choices change the way women are represented in subsequent adaptations. In order to have concrete examples of how the largest firms operate in terms of their output and ideologies, the ten top-grossing comic book film adaptations are examined.

The analysis discusses who owns the film and comic studios of those properties, why those specific properties were chosen, and the underlying structures that affect what gets made and why. Of these top films, all were made by a large media conglomerate that also has creative stock in the comic book industry, which would make adaptations easier because those firms could simply self-cannibalize to get new film content––they did not have to look outside of their conglomerated media corporation or generate original content. The online presence of these firms will provide ownership information, and press releases by these corporations will make it easier to track which characters were chosen for adaptations and why. I also look at the profits made by this genre of film and its associated merchandise, as well as the marketing surrounding the release of each film. In addition, with the release of films such as Spider-Man and The Dark

Knight, media owners focused their efforts on creating as many media properties as possible to ! !36 reach as many consumers as possible. The creation of video games, advertisements, clothing, and

toys is known as synergy, and results in the commercial brand being present in a variety of

markets. The exposure and buzz generated by such ubiquity insures that even people who do not

normally watch superhero films will become familiar with the brands and characters. All of these

factors have resulted in the multimillion-dollar industry that is the superhero film genre. One

example of the money involved in the process is that of The Avengers, the Buena Vista film

released in 2012 and based on Marvel characters, cost over $200 million to create and brought in

over $1 billion in profits globally. A spin-off television show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., was created

as well as toys and clothing. This synergized brand can then be changed for each medium and

market, bringing in additional profit for the corporation without creating new content.107

Let us go back to the 2004 film Catwoman for a moment. It had a marketing budget of

$35 million.108 Batman Begins, which was released around the same time and also about a comic

book character, had a marketing budget of $100 million.109 This huge disparity in the amount

spent to advertise for the film highlights how some films are given priority and others are

released without much fanfare; marketing budgets reveal which sets of ideas media owners want

to become popular and profitable. Studying who owns what and how they adapt certain

properties is an important step in deconstructing the adaptation game and figuring out what

ideals are being promoted, especially in regard to gender. The combination of money spent on

107 Proffitt, Jennifer, M., Djung Yune Tchoi, and Matthew P. Mcallister. "Plugging Back Into The Matrix: The Intertextual Flow of Corporate Media Commodities." Journal of Communication Inquiry 31, no. 3 (2007): 239-54. doi:10.1177/0196859907300955.

108 Roehner, Bertrand M. Driving Forces in Physical, Biological and Socio-economic Phenomena: A Network Science Investigation of Social Bonds and Interactions, 110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

109 Turner, Graeme. Film as Social Practice. London: Routledge,! Taylor & Francis Group, 2009. !37 creating the film and adapting the property from its original state and advertising for it provides an accurate representation of the hoped-for success of a given film.

3.4 Conducting Textual Analysis

Now that an historical background of comic characters has been established, and the literature on political economy of media and its offshoot, feminist political economy, has been discussed, the final area of writings pertaining to this subject is textual analysis and the associated theorems as it relates to comic book adaptations. The importance of this literature cannot be stressed enough––any existing textual analysis of comic book films, superhero films, or even action/ adventure movies can provide a template for which to conduct this study of content as effect.

Chapter 5 contains an analysis of the ideologies contained within comic book adaptations. Ideological textual analysis will be used to examine how gender roles and relations are represented in films and their importance. Due to the nature of the media, I am interested in exploring whether superheroines are given the same treatment as their male counterparts––or whether females are portrayed as one-dimensional beings. By closely analyzing the top ten films, all of which are properties of huge media firms,110 as those films have had the most viewers and are the properties that are most popular, a textual analysis will be able to connect common ideological threads. I am only looking at DC and Marvel films, and of those only the top ten grossing films. The reason for this choice is due to the status of DC and Marvel as media companies that belong to larger conglomerated companies. As such the films adapted from those properties represent an echo of the original comic books while also being representative of

110 See Appendix A for a list of these films, their studios, and! their adjusted gross. !38 corporate interests and ideologies. Conducting this kind of analysis will assist me in determining

what ideas and ideals are being perpetuated––that is, what are the common themes and

depictions in this genre? I hope to deconstruct these visual texts and reveal the underlying

meanings housed within them, which in this case is the potentially problematic portrayal of

female characters and a reaffirmation of keeping the status quo.

Texts have power, and popular culture is worth studying because those texts reach many

eyes and ears. Superhero films may be seen as mere popcorn fare, but the cultural assumptions

put forward by them are not. We as audience members––consciously or not––pay attention to the

characters in films, and will want to identify with them (which may help explain the plethora of

online quizzes with titles like, “Which Avenger are you?” or “What superhero are you?”). Due to

this, it is important to explore how characters are written, acted, and dressed in films because

those fictional characters really can have an impact on our day-to-day reality.

While I will use feminist political economy of media to discuss how ownership and

conglomeration of media corporations have affected representations of women, analyzing the

content of those films will further my argument that the current media system is partly

responsible for the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women. Textual analysis

concerns itself with how people interpret the texts––film, books, television, etc.––that make up

our everyday existence.111 In the beginning of the 20th century, textual analysis took hold as a way to study formal features of texts. In the 1940s, scholarship focused on text as “a repository of finite (albeit ambiguous) meaning.”112 Thirty years later, however, textual analysis was

111 McKee, Alan. Textual Analysis: A Beginner's Guide, 7. London: Sage Publications, 2003.

112 Stern, Barbara B. "Textual Analysis in Advertising Research: Construction and Deconstruction of Meanings." Journal of Advertising 25, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 62; Young, Thomas Daniel. John Crowe Ransom: Critical Essays and a Bibliography. Baton-Rouge: Louisiana State University! Press, 1968. !39 thought of as a way to deconstruct texts that housed multiple conflicting meanings.

Deconstructing text involved discovering what was present as well as what was absent––

those things not present could reveal what information those in power did not want made

public.113 In this way, texts and the symbols housed within them were markers for was

knowledge and ideologies were privileged––their suppressed opposites were depowered. This

interplay is what textual analysis is concerned with today, for production, content, and

interpretations of texts are a reflection of both power structures and dominant ideologies of a

given culture.114

3.5 Textual Analysis Explained

We are surrounded by texts, and the ways in which we interpret them help us to construct

our reality. Our interpretations also affect the way we look at ourselves, e.g., our sense of self-

worth.115 Therefore, textual analysis is more than describing a text; it is a way of interpreting a

text by examining the content contained within it and the ideologies espoused by it.116 I am using

the framework of textual analysis to unpack the meanings both blatantly and subtly expressed by

comic book film adaptations.117 Political economy describes how media structures affect content;

113 Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

114 Stern, Barbara B. "Textual Analysis in Advertising Research: Construction and Deconstruction of Meanings." Journal of Advertising 25, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 64.

115 McKee, Alan. Textual Analysis: A Beginner's Guide, 34. London: Sage Publications, 2003.

116 Kellner, Douglas. Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern, 37. London: Routledge, 1995. 117 Kellner, Douglas. Media Spectacle. London: Routledge,! 14. 2003. !40 textual analysis interrogates how production both influences and is influenced by ideals and

issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality.118

An ideological textual analysis is particularly helpful for feminist political economic research, as it argues that media produce an image of the world reflected through a funhouse mirror: it presents a distorted view of reality that warps how audience members think social relations should be constructed.119 Ideological analyses focus on how this perception produced by mainstream media by conglomerated corporations creates a set of beliefs that benefit only some groups––those who seek to gain by conserving the status quo.120 This particular type of textual analysis is especially relevant for this research, as discussing how females are portrayed in comic book film adaptations is necessarily concerned with issues like gender, and ideological textual analysis is concerned with such media representations.121 This methodology “provides a means to examine the research questions concerning the values and beliefs about gender”122 that are perpetuated by comic book film franchises. According to Bettig and Hall, textual analysis

“begin[s] by analyzing the content within which the sender operates, how meaning is shaped at the point of production… by treating the making of meaning in phases, we are able to concentrate on both the context of production and the messages we find in the texts.”123 In this

118 Cox, Nicole. "Femme Dysfunction Is Pure Gold: A Feminist Political Economic Analysis of Bravo's the Real Housewives." Diss., Florida State University, 2012. 54.

119 Creeber, Glen. Tele-visions: An Introduction to Studying Television, 32. London: BFI, 2006.

120 Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. [New York]: Herder and Herder, 1972; Newcomb, Horace, and Paul M. Hirsch. Television as a Cultural Forum. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2000.

121 Creeber, Glen. Tele-visions: An Introduction to Studying Television. London: BFI, 2006.

122 Cox, Nicole. "Femme Dysfunction Is Pure Gold: A Feminist Political Economic Analysis of Bravo's the Real Housewives." Diss., Florida State University, 2012. 55.

123 Bettig, Ronald V., and Jeanne Lynn Hall. Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economics, 11. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. ! !41 way, one can explore how what we see, hear, read, and even think about are affected by the

media structures that created it.124 In the realm of comic book adaptations, this means that an

exploration of the structure informs any analysis of the texts, hence the presence of a feminist

political economic examination of the media in Chapter 4 before the deconstruction of the films in Chapter 5. I am looking for the ways characters are presented––the amount of dialogue a given character has, his or her costume design, the agency of a given character, and overall character development––to decipher how gender roles are either subverted or reinforced in this field of media; such choices made by the studios, writers, and directors betray their own ideologies and how they want to disseminate them to a wider audience.

Analyzing the texts around us gives us, the audience members, the consumers, an opportunity to delve deeper than an initial viewing and critique the underlying ideologies and messages in a given media. With comic book film adaptations, this is particularly important because these films are marketed to a wide range of audiences, from the adults who grew up reading comic books and have a sense of nostalgia to the twenty-somethings who like action flicks and special effects to the children who want to see the ‘real’ versions of their toys. The media we consume have some effect on our lives, even if we do not wish to acknowledge it.

Thus, an exploration of both how the films get made in the first place and what ideas are being pushed reveals the inherent goals and messages of those conglomerates with enough power and wealth to control what information gets promoted. !

124 Bettig, Ronald V., and Jeanne Lynn Hall. Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economics, 11. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. ! !42 CHAPTER FOUR

THE POLITICAL ECONOMIC HISTORY OF COMIC BOOKS AND THEIR FILM

ADAPTATIONS

The history of the comic book industry and its various offshoots, imprints, and owners is as long and complicated as the characters born by it. Throughout the years, this medium has waxed and waned in popularity and profitability. In recent years, the rise of computer-generated imaging (CGI) technology has allowed another medium––that of film––to realistically bring to life the incredible feats of childhood heroes.125 As media companies have expanded their control of various art forms, comic books have become mines for film and television show adaptations of recognizable characters. DC and Marvel, the two largest publishing houses in the comic book world, belong to the large media firms TimeWarner and Disney respectively. The vertical integration and conglomeration of the current media climate began soon after comics became popular, but it was not until the 1990s that corporate parents began viewing comic book properties as we know them now––first as film heroes and second as print heroes.

Today superheroes are recognized by their adventures in film. In a recent conversation with a friend who does not, and has never, read comic books, she mentioned how cute was.

Without any context as to who this character is and how he came to be, my friend––part of the

18-34 target demographic––viewed superheroes like other action stars. When comic book characters are lifted from their texts and turned into commodities in and of themselves, the tradition of which they are a part is left behind. No medium is identical to others, and something is always changed in the process. Due to superheroes’ long history in print, the hope is that the

125 Bushby, Helen. "How Cinema Boosted Marvel's Fortunes."! BBC News. April 07, 2003. !43 characters themselves would grow and develop, echoing the changes occurring in society at the

time of a film adaptation. However, any adaptation will not go against the grain of the “Big”126

media groups who have a vested interest in the status quo, because the status quo is safe; it will

keep consumers buying and profits high, even if that means representing gender roles in a

stereotypical manner.127

Issues like ownership, concentration in certain markets, and the political atmosphere all

affect how people carry out their lives in a media-inundated society.128 Studios can use the same

stories over and over again without radically changing character types, and the result will still be

large profits. Audiences will flock to superhero films, even if the characters are almost identical,

because there are countless plotlines to be used or tweaks to be made. A perfect example of this

was Sony’s 2012 reboot of the Spider-man franchise. Spider-man 3, released in 2007, was a critical flop even though it garnered income. When Sony realized it would lose the rights to the

Spider-man property unless it continued making films, one was released––just five years later–– and The Amazing Spider-man grossed over $750,000,000 worldwide.129 The quick turnaround of

Sony to produce more superhero films is indicative of the current Hollywood climate, in which a glut of comic book adaptations and action-based superhero films are being released. Even though a Spider-man trilogy was finished a few years ago, Sony will still profit by continuing to make these movies.

126 Bagdikian, Ben H. The New Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.

127Angus, Ian H., and Sut Jhally. Cultural Politics in Contemporary America. New York: Routledge, 1989.

128 Mosco, Vincent. The Political Economy of Communication. London: SAGE, 2009. 129 For figures on the total production budget and gross of the! Spider-Man films, see Box Office Mojo's website. !44 This is an easy-to-point-out use of existing stories and characters by a corporate parent in order to gain profits. The new Spider-man films are not featuring a different Spider-man; they are featuring the same caucasian Peter Parker with a helper aunt and sweet girlfriend. The sequels and prequels and reboots do not offer audiences anything new: they are repeating the same tales that have been told for decades, perhaps updating the technology or adding a few creative pieces, but the core of the messages remains the same. Superhero films are a fantastic venture for corporations because of their perceived low risk and the availability of existing stories.

Audiences, then, are bombarded with a variety of films from a few studios that are seemingly quite different, but really quite similar.

This industry has had much trouble being taken seriously as an art form and a literary form, as its popularity was due to the scores of young children reading superhero comics week after week during the second World War. Therefore, adaptations of superhero comics are inherently different from their more scholarly prosaic cousins. These adaptations have ranged from the camp of Adam West’s 1960s Batman television show to the much darker Tim Burton

Batman film reboot. It was not until the 1980s brought a grittiness to the comic book world that had not been explored, and the medium began to be seen as more adult. Frank Miller turned the

Caped Crusader130 into a haunted, haunting menace and the term ‘superhero’ began to become looser. Graphic novels and comics for adults filled more shelves in bookstores, and DC and

Marvel became larger and larger, buying up smaller imprints and making their brands the most recognizable. Heroes became properties, marketable. Comic book characters leapt from the

130 This is a nickname for Batman, although it has been used for other superheroes as well. Batman’s cape, however, has played such a large role in his identity as a superhero that! he best fits this moniker. !45 pages and into other markets, generating more income for their parent companies.131 Adaptations occurred before DC and Marvel were purchased by TimeWarner and Disney, but the wealth generated by those companies ramped up production and allowed for the blockbuster superhero film we know today to be made.

Ownership in this particular market became increasingly concentrated, but the big two knew where they stood. Reboots and recombinant culture do not only happen in television; it has been part and parcel of the comic book industry for years. In this chapter, I lay out a brief history of the comic book industry, illustrate how this particular medium caught the attention of larger media conglomerates, and move through time to the present day, when the major properties of the comic book industry are simply another part of a media giant. This ownership concentration and the efforts to generate profit off of well-known characters stymies creativity and focuses instead on the importance of an easily identifiable brand. I employ the framework of political economy, particularly feminist political economy, to study how ownership and increased concentration in both the comic book industry and the film industry affect content. “Political economy assumes that the ideal media system for a democracy would have certain characteristics, including content diversity, open access, and political relevance… this perspective often argues that what may be in media organizations’ best economic interests is not always in society’s best democratic interests.”132 Indeed, the economic interests of comic book publishers and their corporate parents represent a narrow set of values and people types, as will be discussed in this chapter.

131 Casteele, John. "The Marvel/DC Comic Book Movie War Intensifies." (DIS, TWX). January 28, 2014. Accessed February 06, 2014. 132 McAllister, Matthew P., Edward H. Sewell, and Ian Gordon.! Comics & Ideology, 16. New York: P. Lang, 2001. !46 5.1 A Brief History of Superheroes in Print

Much like other industries, the comic book industry can be split up into different stages throughout its own timeline. Usually different periods of history are referred to by different metals. The Platinum, Gold, and Silver Ages lasted from the 1920s until the 1970s. The naming of each time period first started with fans and then was adopted by the Overstreet Price Guide to help sellers differentiate between older and newer comics.133 After the Silver Age came the

Bronze Age, during which the industry suffered from a comics boom and bust and difficulties

with ownership; and this led ultimately to the Modern Age, where we are currently. Each stage

brought with it different creative and economic challenges, and as the fledgling industry found

itself, publishers began realizing that allowing properties to be adapted into films and television

shows could be profitable. Through each of the ages, the comic book industry can be viewed as a

microcosm of the greater economic issues that were going on in the United States at the time.

This industry has been reflective of the social, political, and economic climate and has dealt with

many of the same issues other media have.

5.2 The Platinum Age

DC Comics was founded in 1934 by Malcolm-Wheeler Nicholson and was first known as

Detective Comics. The popularity it found in its cheaply published material spurred the creation

of Timely Publications (now Marvel Comics) by in 1939. During this time period,

known as the Platinum Age, comic books were seen as quick reading, sensational graphic

narratives thought to be just a hair above pornography in terms of artistic merit.134 Superhuman

133 Ashelford, James. "New Readers...start Here!: Glossary of Comic Book Jargon." New Readers...start Here!: Glossary of Comic Book Jargon. April 11, 2011.

134 Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America, 4-7. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. ! !47 characters saved attractive women from danger and beat up bad guys either with their fists or

amazing abilities. This medium proved popular partially because it could show what radio could

not––comics illustrated what the characters were doing during a given story.135 The stories inked

were simple and straightforward; they set a standard of storytelling that is still used today to

fulfill readers’ expectations. Strong white males rescued citizens from villains who posed a threat

to some American value––a storyline that has changed little over the past seventy years. These

pathos-filled books, printed on low-quality pulpy paper, were available from many different

publishing houses and found buyers. This new industry made a name for itself and decided to

stay. Issues like bureaucracy and ownership were not yet problems during this stage of comic

book history as there were many small publishing houses like Timely, DC, Comics Monthly, Dell

Publishing, David McKay, Wilson and Company, Whitman, and Kellogg’s.136

5.3 The Golden Age

The Golden Age of comic books began with the first release of Superman in 1938, and

was coined thusly by Richard A. Lupoff in the fan magazine Comic Art in 1960.137 While there

were other superheroes at the time of his conception (like the female Sheena: Queen of the

Jungle), Superman proved to be a smash hit.138 DC’s success with this character inspired many

imitations, including Marvel’s Captain Marvel. Young readers enjoyed these fearless heroes and

snapped up copies, which created a positive feedback loop and led to the creation of many heroes

who still lead comic sales today, including the Green Lantern and Wonder Woman. Then, when

135 Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America, 14. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

136 “Comic Books in Platinum Age,” My Comic Shop website.

137 Lupoff, Richard A., “Re-Birth,” Comic Art 1: April 1960. 138 "About DC Entertainment." DC Entertainment. Accessed! April 16, 2013. !48 World War II broke out, comic sales spiked due to their ability to provide both cheap

entertainment for soldiers and inspiring role models for children.139 Over “30 percent of all

printed material mailed to military bases were comics. Superman was selling 1 million copies an

issue. Captain America Comics was… turning in over a million copies a month.”140 Superheroes could do what ordinary humans could not, giving readers a much-needed escape from their day- to-day lives during a time of rations and fear. These characters were used to aid in the war effort, shown selling war bonds.141 Through this, superheroes became widely known and respected properties; DC and Marvel made considerable profits from the war-based story lines of their patriotic male heroes.142 Other than Wonder Woman, comics offered a distinctly masculine escape, for the pages of comic books were adorned with godly men and meek, pretty women.

Male readers both young and old could enjoy something different, be it a respite from primary school or the trenches.

Superheroes became mainstream figures during the Golden Age. In 1941, The Adventures of Captain Marvel movie serial was released by Republic Pictures. The same year, Batman received his own serial. The characters were not longer just comic book heroes––they were now icons, fighting for “truth, justice, and the American Way.”143 As readership increased and

139 Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America, 30. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

140 Weaver, Tyler. Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld, 76. Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2013.

141 Dallin Godfrey, “Super Heroes During World War II,” Years of War 4. January 20, 2012, 1.

142 Johnson, Jeffrey K. Super-history: Comic Book Superheroes and American Society, 1938 to the Present, 44. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.

143 This slogan belongs to Superman, the representative of all things American even though he is an illegal alien (literally) hailing from the planter Krypton. This hero adopted the United States as his own and was depicted helping the Allied Powers during the war. ! !49 individual characters became representations of certain ideals, DC and Marvel comics benefitted

immensely from the war. Their superheroes were used in a variety of ways. They could move

across media, translated from the page. “Characters are recognizable through the presence of this

information sources used for indirect characterization… a similar physical appearance, especially for cartoon characters, [is] sufficient.”144 DC and Marvel were given the opportunities to expand the comic book industry into other areas and capitalized on the potential profits of doing so.

Indeed, licensed merchandise featuring the symbols and colors of certain characters is still a popular means of garnering profit for both publishing houses.145 It was during this time that DC and Marvel established their positions as the powerhouses of the superhero genre. Their characters showed citizens the American Ideal of nationalism, masculinity, and defending the status quo, cementing the two publishing houses as the dominant force in the market.

5.4 The Silver Age

The Silver Age was ushered in during the 1950s, when television sets were all the rage and superheroes had been subjected to Wertham’s fierce criticism of the comic book genre, causing a drop in comic sales and a shift in tone within the industry.146 A letter written by comics

fan Scott Taylor nicknaming the 1960s the “Silver Sixties” caught on, and other fans latched on

to the idea of adopting a system of metals to distinguish comics from different time periods

based on the hierarchy of gold, silver, and bronze.147 The Comics Code, set up to deter publishers

144 Lent, John A. Comic Art of the United States through 2000, Animation and Cartoons: An International Bibliography, 316. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005.

145 McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics, 188. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993.

146 Wertham’s book The Seduction of the Innocent lambasted the industry for its apparent lewdness. Wertham, however, did not read comic books. 147 Taylor, Scott, “Letters Column,” Justice League of America! #42. February 1966. !50 from making content that was too racy or controversial, caused superheroes to become goofy and

largely innocent; camp reigned during the era that created Adam West’s fun-filled Batman

television show, the hugely popular adaptation that spawned the total commodification of the

superhero. Although there were earlier adaptations, such as the Superman television show,

Batman became much more prevalent, even garnering a spot on the front cover of Life

magazine.148 Despite creative setbacks, commercialism increased during this time, and

consumers saw more cross-overs in the form of superhero teams like Marvel’s and

DC’s Justice League.149 Such cross-overs encouraged loyal readers to buy the comics featuring

each character in order to stay up-to-date on their activities. For example, a reader may have to

buy an issue of Batman in order to understand a given situation within the Justice League, or vice

versa. This clever ploy ensured that hooked readers would buy more comic overall, providing a

boost to the publisher. An example of this is the maxi-crossover event called Crisis on Infinite

Earths by DC. Crisis ran for 12 volumes and featured almost every character in the DC

pantheon.150 In order to know key characters’ backgrounds, readers would have to purchase pre-

Crisis publications or run the risk of being confused by the events of the comics.

During this time, Marvel and DC also became corporate entities. Marvel was sold to the

Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation151 in 1967; DC became the property of Warner

Communication, known to us now as TimeWarner. The subsumption of the largest publishing

houses made licensing easier, as economies of scale and vertical integration allowed for more

148 Liam, Burke. Fan Phenomena. Batman, 15. Bristol: Intellect, 2013.

149 Daniels, Les. DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Super Heroes, 116. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.

150 "Wikia." DC Database, n.d.

151 This corporation was formed in 1962 by Martin Ackerman from parts of other acquisitions: United Whelan, Hudson National, Perfect Photos, and Equity Plastics Incorporated.! !51 products to be made of given intellectual properties without having to pay a hefty licensing fee.

As a result, the popularity of Batman in his corporate-sponsored television show and subsequent

film saw “knife-and-fork sets, bubble bath dispensers, apparel galore, model kits, and lunch

boxes”152 featuring the character’s colors and symbols available for purchase. Such merchandise

was advertised in comic books, guaranteeing readers would be aware of how they could spend

more money to associate with their heroes.

The Silver Age presented a radical shift in how superheroes were used in the public

imagination and the commercial sphere, yet in the comic books themselves the characters

remained largely the same. New characters were introduced at this time, such as Marvel’s

Spider-man and Marvel Girl (now Phoenix) and DC’s the Flash and Black Canary. The new

characters had different abilities but espoused the same ideologies as their contemporaries. None

of them were communist, minorities, disabled, or beatniks. Instead, they were beautiful men and

women who performed the ideal role of men and women as set by the media at that time. The

representation of superheroes as an extension of both American ideologies and the status quo

furthers the political economic theory mentioned by Jhally that “groups that benefit from the

existing distribution of power...work for stability.”153 In a society with increasingly concentrated

ownership, this meant those with power and wealth could gain the consent of those without

power––or with lesser power––by presenting their views as the best views. The consciousness

produced is not one of derision for the current system, and can provide clues as to why

superheroes created before the creativity burst in the Bronze Age all mirrored each other in terms

152 Misiroglu, Gina Renée., and Michael Eury. The Book: The Evil Side of Comics and Hollywood, 523. Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 2006. 153 Angus, Ian H., and Sut Jhally. Cultural Politics in Contemporary! America, 66. New York: Routledge, 1989. !52 of physicality and personality. As DC and Marvel began to function as an oligopoly, the

ideologies they sought to promote were in favor of consumerism, patriarchy, and free market

capitalism.154

As superheroes became more and more common not just as characters who saved their

cities but also as action figures and symbols of freedom, they could be viewed as brands in and

of themselves. According to David A. Aaker, a brand is “a name used to identify and distinguish

a specific product.”155 For comic book publishers, certain brands––like Superman or

Spiderman––became highly valuable and profitable assets. Their appearances in mainstream

culture were like advertisements to the comic serials that bore their name. The Silver Age, with

recombinant culture becoming more common and superheroes turning into commodities, was an

indicator of the United States’ status as an increasingly commercialized nation. Comic book

characters were a way for younger readers to be turned into tiny consumers, and the booming

industry set the stage for how superheroes would be presented in decades to come.156 As the

comic book industry grew, much of its income came not from comic books, but from licensing

the right to use characters and symbols to third parties such as toy manufacturers, media

companies, books, etc. The licensing out of intellectual property meant that consumers would

have ample access to their favorite superheroes, and DC and Marvel co-registered the term

“Super Heroes” as a mark for their toys.157 Both companies could also sell options to movie

154 McChesney, Robert Waterman. The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-first Century, 177. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004.

155Aaker, David A. Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name, 17. New York: Free Press, 1991.

156 Cross, Gary S. An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. 157 “World Intellectual Property Organization." Marvel’s Superhero! Licensing. !53 studios to produce films based on its characters. In an age where World War II was a historical

horror, values like capitalism, consumerism, and the belief in an were echoed in

comic books. These values were further pushed by commodifying intellectual property and

making characters promote anything from bodily cleanliness to patriotism.158 The Silver Age was

the time period in which DC and Marvel solidified their position as the big two in the comic

book field. They branched out into more commercial ventures during this time and experimented

with synergy by licensing out their characters. While the age of the big media was still in the

future, the increased concentration of this particular media market would prove to be a prototype.

5.5 Industry, New Technologies, and Synergy:

Communication Firms and Licensing from the Bronze Age Onward

From Flash Gordan in 1936 to Batman in 1943, the adaptation is by no means a new phenomenon.159 Comic books, once considered fare for young boys, crossed over into the realm of cinema, consumed by families and considered to be just another type of action film. In 1978, the eponymous film based on DC’s top hero Superman was released, garnering three Academy

Award nominations and critical (and financial) acclaim, which changed the game for superhero films as they now could be seen as serious contenders in the film world. The film made upwards of $130,000,000 and boasted the star power of Christopher Reeve and Marlon Brando.160

Superman II was placed on the fast track, and comic book heroes entered the mainstream, proving Croteau and Hoynes’ point that “follow[ing] records of past success [will] result in

158 Maslon, Laurence, and Michael Kantor. Superheroes!: Capes, Cowls, and the Creation of Comic Book Culture. New York: Crown Archetype, 2013.

159 Smith, Benjamin. Spandex Cinema: Three Approaches to Comic Book Film Adaptation, 13. Thesis, University of Central Oklahoma, 2009. 160 "Superman (1978)." Box Office Mojo. ! !54 substantial profits.”161 Over the next few decades, many sequels, prequels, and reboots were

made of some of the most popular superheroes like Superman and Batman.

There have been, since 1978––the year of the Superman––110 films adapted from the

medium of comic books. Of those, 42 films were based on DC and Marvel mainstay characters.

fifteen were sequels, five were reboots, and four were spinoffs featuring characters who were not

in titular roles in the original films. “The belief that it’s nearly impossible to make a 100%

original film in today’s age does seem true, at least according to box office figures.”162 Once the

film industry noticed the value of comic book properties, there has been an exponential increase

in superhero movies made. As superheroes had fans in the form of those who read comic books

when they were children as well as younger audiences currently interested in superheroes, such

films had a built-in audience that guaranteed at least some amount of money would be made

from an adaptation. Corporate sponsors who could afford to promote the films did so; 1989’s

Batman saw four million Batman brochures containing mail-order Batman materials.163 Political

economics Eileen Meehan critiqued the commodification of comic book characters by stating

“most cultural production in the United States is done by private, for-profit corporations. These

corporations comprise the entertainment/information sector of the American economy and

encompass the industries of publishing, television, film, music, , and radio.” She continues

to note that, “significantly, America capitalism organizes the creation of cultural artifacts as a

process of mass production carried out by profit-oriented business operating in an industrial

161 Croteau, David, and William Hoynes. The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest, 122. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2001.

162 Farquharson, Vanessa. "Adaptation Train, Next Stop: Cashville; If Your Toy Breaks, a Comic Book Will Also Work." The National Post, December 29, 2009, National ed., Arts & Life sec.

163Meehan, Eileen R. ""Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!"" In Cultural Dimensions: Ideology, Identity and Culture Industry Studies, 312. London: Routledge, 2004. ! !55 context.”164 Comic book films, as part of the mass production of media, were made not to excite

fans or push comic book creators to think differently, but to make profit from those who already

had a vested interest in the material.

Even as films were being made based on comic book properties, the actual print industry

was on an ownership roller coaster ride during the 1980s and 1990s, especially Marvel––the

publishing house had a financial crisis that led to the splintering of the company. This point in

the industry’s history represents a time when other forms of technology had firmly established

themselves and comic books did not have the same value as they had during World War II. In

addition, the number of media creators decreased rapidly during this time period, going from 50

companies in 1984 to 10 in 1996.165 The increasingly concentrated media further pushed

licensing deals for comic book characters as the comic book market experienced a huge

economic downturn in the early 1990s and publishing houses began looking for other methods of

generating profit.166 The reason for this downturn was due to poor decisions on the part of

publishers. In 1993, publishers would release “special issues” of certain comics in the hopes that

investors would buy them, trade them, sell them, or collect them. However, the market became

saturated with special issues and purchases slowed, causing a collapse.167 The ensuing hardship

forced some smaller publishers like Acclaim, Defiant, and Eclipse to declare bankruptcy, leaving

164 Meehan, Eileen R. ""Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!"" In Cultural Dimensions: Ideology, Identity and Culture Industry Studies, 314. London.: Routledge, 2004.

165 McAllister, Matthew P., Edward H. Sewell, and Ian Gordon. Comics & Ideology, 16. New York: P. Lang, 2001.

166 McAllister, Matthew P., Edward H. Sewell, and Ian Gordon. Comics & Ideology, 17. New York: P. Lang, 2001.

167 Evanier, Mark. "You Bought One, You Bought 'Em All: The Speculators Have Gone Away. Does This Mean Mark's Happy?" Comic Buyer's Guide, December 21, 2001, 34-35. 168 Bryant, Adam, “Pow! The Punches that left Marvel Reeling,”! New York Times, May 24, 1998. !56 fewer publishers overall.168 The corporate parentage of DC helped it get through the burst, but

Marvel was left in limbo.

Marvel had purchased the trading card company Fleer in 1992, ToyBiz in 1993, and

Panini, a sticker making company, all before the comics boom and burst occurred.169 When the

Major League Baseball strike happened in 1994 and caused trading card sales to plummet,

Marvel’s Fleer unit lost much money, and Marvel’s Parent Holdings Inc. led its owners Perelman

and Carl Icahn into financial battles, eventually leading to Marvel’s declaration of bankruptcy in

1996. Icahn and Perelman, as well as ToyBiz owners, continued to have arguments as to who

would take control of the corporation.170 Eventually ToyBiz procured Marvel, and ToyBiz and

Marvel Entertainment Group were merged into Marvel Enterprises in 1998 to bring it out of

bankrupty. Slowly, Marvel began growing again and reasserted itself as one of the dominant

publishers in the comic book industry.171

In 2005, Marvel Enterprises changed its name back to Marvel Entertainment, expanded

into the world of film, and once again joined DC as a multimedia corporation that created its own

characters and then exploited them fiercely.172 Before Marvel’s foray into film, its comic books were stagnating––poor management and the financial troubles of the Bronze Age led to crossovers, gimmicky releases, and reused plots. Due to the history of the comic book industry and Marvel’s status as a major player, the corporation was not forced to generate quality content

169 Raviv, Dan. Comic Wars: Marvel's Battle for Survival. Sea Cliff, NY: Heroes Books, 2004.

170 “Perelman to Settle Marvel Suit,” The New York Times, August 7, 2008.

171 Rozanski, Chuck. “The Vicious Downward Spiral of the 1990s,” Tales from the Database, Mile High Comics. 172 Vincent, Roger, “Marvel to Make Movies Based on Comic! Books,” Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2005. !57 even when the corporation changed hands. Corporate owners cared more about the overall assets

of Marvel than the comics it produced. Out of an industry originally for kids came a huge

market, and DC and Marvel stood to gain the most. The Bronze Age came to an end when both

Marvel and DC had recovered from the poor choices of the 1990s and came to take full

advantage of the film adaptation.

While film adaptations have mined other media for ideas since the beginning of the

industry, adapting comics has proven to be particularly problematic. From a political economic

standpoint, the ownership issues surrounding the industries of comics and film present audiences

with a lack of original content. Adaptations move ideas and characters from one medium to the

next, and sequels simply continue the ideas already laid out. Barriers to entry in both industries

block smaller publishers and filmmakers from expressing their viewpoints to a large group of

people. Once superheroes were designated a hot commodity, film after film was churned out,

each one similar in some ways to all the other ones.173 Marvel and DC increased their market

share during this period, buying up other properties to keep the oligopoly strong. Marvel

increased its comic sales by purchasing Malibu Comics in 1994; DC bought WildStorm Studios

in 1998.174 The ability of Marvel and DC to purchase other comic book makers gave them the

power to keep or discard writers, illustrators, and characters. Thus, as the number of publishers

decreased, the choices fans had decreased as well. There were no longer a plethora of small

publishing houses offering their own comics; instead, readers had to choose between a DC

publication or a Marvel one.

173Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. 174 McAllister, Matthew P., Edward H. Sewell, and Ian Gordon.! Comics & Ideology, 20. New York: P. Lang, 2001. !58 5.6 The Multimedia Superhero Environment in the 21st Century:

From Print Properties to Silver Screen Sensations

While the print history of the comic book industry has had its share of increased concentration and has tended toward conglomeration, the industry now is completely different from when it began. Browsing the shelves of the comic section in my town’s Books A Million, the only chain bookstore present, I am greeted with what seems to be a false number of choices.

There were available many iterations of the most famous heroes like Batman and Superman, who, interestingly enough, look more and more similar to their film counterparts. The Avengers are represented by the costumes that were worn in the highly profitable film.

It feels, as a consumer, like comic books are now testing grounds. If a given comic book series or character proves to be successful, then such intellectual properties may make successful films as well. After DC and Marvel’s parent companies decided that they could make more profits by adapting properties into films, actual comic books became extensions of the films and testing grounds for new ideas.175 Print comic books do not generate the type of income the industry used to, and the major moneymakers are now film and television adaptations and marketing and licensing agreements. Superman comics sold more copies in a month in the 1940s than such comics sell in six months currently; an imprint now is considered successful if it sells more than 180,000 copies in one month.176 As such, DC and Marvel are under pressure to keep

175 Meehan, Eileen R. Why TV Is Not Our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers, and Who's Really in Control, 39. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 176 "Comic Book Sales Figures for January 2013." Comichron! . !59 their characters the same, especially if the characters have already been featured in any sort of

adaptation.177

Comics follow characters along several different story lines simultaneously, such as

Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, in which Spider-man is the caucasian Peter Parker, known as the

Amazing Spider-man, along the lines of the recently released films. However, in another

universe known as Earth-616, leads the helm. Both titles are available for

purchase. It is fascinating to me that, without fail, there are always ‘classic’ iterations of certain

characters––and these classic iterations are the original white versions. The inclusion of such

characters makes diversity seem like it is more prevalent than it actually is. Yes, there is a mixed-

race Spider-man. However, if that is not your cup of tea, there is still the traditional Spider-man.

The control of the industry by the two largest publishers had led to a lack of creativity and the

recycling of plotlines and ideas. Crossovers are increasingly popular, leading readers to buy more

comics. Characters are brands, and their genderedness is only further reinforced by adaptations,

leading to a vicious cycle in which comic book females are more caricatures than fully formed

characters, and story stagnation replaces true character development.178 Following the set

formula means “drawing women with impossibly thin waists and triple D-cup breasts in

revealing costumes [has been] the aesthetic default in superhero comics, and institutionally that’s

hard to break away from.”179 Comic books portray their white male heroes in a certain way to

follow the marketing trends and the standard formula, and female heroes are also represented in a

177 McAllister, Matthew P., Edward H. Sewell, and Ian Gordon. Comics & Ideology. New York: P. Lang, 2001.

178 Meehan, Eileen R. "Gendering the Commodity Audience: Critical Media Research, Feminism, and Political Economy." In Sex & Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, edited by Ellen Riordan and Eileen R. Meehan, 220. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. 179 Quinn, Ben. "Ker-pow! Women Kick Back against Comic-book! Sexism." The Guardian. December 28, 2011. !60 specific way. The commercial success of adaptations based on these stereotypical depictions will

ensure that such films will continue to be made, and profits gained.

In 2009, TimeWarner’s WarnerBros. rebranded DC Comics DC Entertainment and put

brand manager Diane Nelson in charge of it in order to “better exploit its properties across the

studio’s movie, television, interactive, digital and consumer products business.”180 Exploiting

properties across a variety of media demonstrates how corporations use various outlets to

promote their own products. The aggressive marketing campaigns undertaken by TimeWarner

and Disney to promote its properties resulted in product placements, tie-ins, and merchandising

deals to reach potential viewers. In The Avengers, car company Acura and its products “filled the

film, literally start to finish, with its models. And it capped it all off with…Robert Downey Jr.’s

Tony “Iron Man” Stark hopping into a new, attention-grabbing Acura NSX roadster––and

straight onto the carpet at the movie’s premiere.”181 As such, the brand Acura, being driven by

the heroes of the film, is represented as something popular for the good guys; Acura paid for this

representation and so encourages audience members to purchase their vehicles. Another example

was PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew/ The Dark Knight Rises tie-in. Mountain Dew released a limited

edition flavor called “Dark Berry,” and ran ads featuring Batman himself. The ad campaign also

gave consumers access to digital content related to the film.182 This is an issue because it allows

both corporations to sell their ideologies to citizens who have been bombarded with Batman or

The Avengers ads, as other corporations seek to gain new consumers through exposure. As such,

180 Eller, Claudia and Ben Fritz, “Warner Shakes Up DC Comics to Compete with Marvel,” Los Angeles Times, September 10, 2009.

181 Sauer, Abe. "Acura: The Least Inspiring Avenger." BrandChannel. May 7, 2012.

182 Buss, Dale. “PepsiCo Takes Mountain Dew/ The Dark Knight Rises Tie-In Global,” BrandChannel. July 18, 2012. ! !61 those films and their various offshoots feed into the commercialism promoted by media

companies.183 In addition, on December 31, 2009, the Walt Disney Company bought Marvel

Comics for $4.24 billion; Marvel Entertainment is now wholly owned and managed by

Disney.184 The comic book industry’s two largest publishers are now owned by two even larger

media films, who can afford to make multimillion dollar films, toys, video games, and books.

As the largest publishing houses both have been subsumed by conglomerates, the ability

of the larger firms to use their vast earnings makes comic books’ most recognizable creations

ample fodder for products, franchises, and synergies.185 Not every media company has the ability

to generate films, published works, video games, and toys all under the same roof. However,

with the economic power of Disney and TimeWarner, Marvel and DC’s superheroes are able to

transcend the page and become commercial heroes, brands in and of themselves, fighting for

capitalism and maintaining the current socioeconomic status quo.

At the time of this writing, Disney and TimeWarner are in the top ten media

conglomerates globally, earning total profits of $5.5 billion and $3.5 billion respectively in

2013.186 Both DC Entertainment and Marvel Studios have an extensive lineup of superhero films

designated for release within the next five years: from Avengers sequel Avengers: Age of ,

Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier,187 to Man of Steel 2––which

183 Meehan, Eileen R. ""Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!"" In Cultural Dimensions: Ideology, Identity and Culture Industry Studies, 317. London [u.a.: Routledge, 2004.

184 "Marvel Comics vs. DC Comics." ReComparison RSS.

185 McAllister, Matthew P. "But Wait, There's More!: Advertising, the Recession, and the Future of Commercial Culture." Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture 8, no. 3 (2010): 189-93.

186 Milord, Jospeh. "The World's 10 Largest Media Conglomerates | Elite Daily." Elite Daily. July 22, 2013. 187 "Movies | Marvel.com." Marvel Movies. ! !62 would feature both Superman and Batman––and the Justice League.188 Theatres will continue to be filled with the familiar faces and histories of the white male superheroes who have proven to be so profitable. Instead of developing entirely new ideas or pulling more female or minority characters from their comics, sequels featuring now-recognizable brands are in planning.

DC and Marvel have hero and galleries from which adaptations could be made, but studios have focused on properties that are either well-known or thought to be palatable to audiences. In continuing this trend of giving audiences more of the same, other media employ the recognizable. Video games like Arkham Asylum and Green Lantern: Manhunters; toys in the likeness of film characters and their costumes as opposed to costumes in the comic books; clothing with the symbols of superheroes like Batman and Superman; the list of merchandise associated with these characters and their film adaptations is endless. Even the recent Lego

Movie, itself based on a profitable toy line, borrowed from the comics universe and featured

Batman as a character.

They not only own the production and distribution of the actual print comic books; they control the licensing deals that use the likeness and logos of each character brand, the rights to develop any Marvel/ DC character into a film, and the studios to create such a product. This vertical integration in both the comic book industry and subsequent adaptations makes it nearly impossible for small publishers or independent comics to find a place in the direct market of comic book retailers. In addition, adaptations of such works are equally difficult because without representation of large studios and the distribution and exhibition deals that come with being

188 Fleming, Ryan. "A Look at All the DC Comics Films Rumored and in Development [Updated]." Digital Trends. January 17, 2014. ! !63 associated with such firms, indie adaptations are less likely to break into the industry.189 In this

way, Disney and TimeWarner have a firm grasp on the superhero market. The comic book films

we see, therefore, will be largely either DC or Marvel properties. Viewers will be more familiar

with these superheroes and will then form a preexisting audience for sequels, reboots, and

marketing. This results in an environment in which audience members are given fare that

resembles the last decade and a half––the same caped crusaders are shown on the big screen,

perpetuating the same ideologies and supporting the same set of beliefs that oligopolistic media

firms continually promote.

5.7 Taking a Political Economic Approach to Superheroes

While some scholars have taken a political economic approach to comic books, most

have done so specifically regarding the print medium, such as McAllister’s Comics and Ideology,

Bradford Wright’s Comic Book Nation or even Jennifer K. Stuller’s Wonder Women. A political

economic history of ownership within comic books is important in any discussion of the current

atmosphere of comic book properties becoming essentially a store of characters ripe for film

adaptations. However, my interests do not end with one medium. Within the context of the

modern media, it is important to mention both the print comic book industry and its film

counterpart, as ownership concentration and corporate interest have caused the two to become

intertwined.

The fact that over half of the comic book industry is effectively owned by media giants

TimeWarner and Disney is extremely problematic in regard to the creation of content.190

189 Bettig, Ronald V., and Jeanne Lynn Hall. Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. 190 Tolworthy, Chris. "Marvel and DC Sales Figures." Marvel! and DC Sales Figures. !64 Oligopolistic firms seek to reduce risk and increase profit, and so instead of a plethora of new

characters and universes, frequently DC and Marvel feature the same set of characters rebooted

or reconfigured over and over.191 This causes a rift when characters introduced in the 1940s still

dominate the pages of comic books because these characters are overwhelmingly caucasian,

heterosexual males. The industry is reluctant to take risks with its most profitable properties and

thus gives readers similar ideas wrapped up in different packaging.192

On the pages of comic books, ownership concentration is clearly an issue. However, this

medium still has much more freedom than that of film and television. Comics are relatively

inexpensive to produce in small quantities and thanks to the prevalence of the Internet are

capable of being viewed by millions even when made outside a traditional publishing house.

Kate Beaton’s web comic Hark! A Vagrant led her to publish a book, which performed well and

became a critical success.193 However, all of her comics are archived on the original website,

providing a unique opportunity for fans. This type of comic book publishing is a fairly new

development, as historically the comic book trade was tightly controlled by two large publishers.

Despite DC and Marvel owning such large shares of the print industry, other imprints are far

more creative with their properties. One example would be the comic series Saga, released by

Image Comics (which controls 8% of the market). A space opera-type story, Saga does not

feature the same type of superhero character loved and hated for decades, yet it is doing very

191 "Who Owns the Media? | Free Press." Free Press.

192 Meehan, Eileen R. ""Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!"" In Cultural Dimensions: Ideology, Identity and Culture Industry Studies, 312. London [u.a.: Routledge, 2004.

193 "Hark! A Vagrant Tops 2011 PW Comics World Critic's Poll." PublishersWeekly.com. January 10, 2012; also see Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant website to read the comics for free.! !65 well. This, as well as the variety of alternative comics and small comic producers, provides evidence that readers will be interested in new stories and new characters.

When it comes to comic book adaptations, however, the plucking of characters and story lines takes a decidedly derivative turn. Characters that have proven profitable in the comic book industry are most likely to be considered for a film adaptation; these characters become brands, toys, and advertisements. They are moved from the pages of their comic books to the silver screen, then to a video game, then a toy store, and finally––in an easily palatable format––back to a comic. This recombinant culture takes certain characters and exploits them in a variety of media, allowing for maximum exposure to those intellectual properties and their personalities, histories, and the personal morals they hold. When this occurs, however, it hampers the ability of writers and illustrators to change the character too much, lest the valuable brand be destroyed or readers do not recognize what they have come to expect.

Characters are shifted into smaller and smaller boxes until the creators are left with a stagnant product––when a character loses the ability to be developed or altered in a significant way, how much freedom do the artists truly have? Yes, there are arguments against this, such as the variety of different universes within the Marvel pantheon, but the bottom line is that there will always be available a white, male, traditional Superman or Spiderman, because that is how those intellectual properties are marketed. In addition, in economist Richard Caves’ book

Creative Industries, he argues that the risk involved in a creative work is higher than other products because they depend on the purchases of their consumers. As a result, firms will attempt to produce creative material they know will succeed––often by drawing from the successes of the

! !66 past.194 This furthers the reasoning to keep characters the same and avoid controversy by making

Superman gay or offing Peter Parker and replacing him with a minority character. These

corporations “do not want greater political and social diversity because it would dilute their

audiences and thereby reduce the fees they can demand for the [products] that produce their

unprecedented profit levels.”195 Adaptations cannot be risky or different in the minds of

TimeWarner or Disney, because something different may make people question the system.196

Adaptations are also more difficult when there are fewer creators and producers––if the market is

controlled by only a few companies, then they are the ones that wield a disproportionate amount

of power and influence in what gets made.

An example of this is the publishing house DC Comics. DC Comics belongs to DC

Entertainment, which also owns Vertigo Comics, the publishers of alternative comics like

Sandman and Y: The Last Man; DC Entertainment also owns MAD Magazine, which runs humorous content.197 It is owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, which in turned is owned by TimeWarner. The fact that DC Entertainment owns not one, but two comic publishers makes entry into the comic book industry even more difficult, as both mainstream and alternative comics have corporate sponsors. In turn, this makes adaptations for such comics nearly impossible. TimeWarner has used DC’s most famous superheroes Batman and Superman, and churned out twelve films based on them since 1978. Of those twelve, five have been reboots

194 Caves, Richard E. Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce, 20. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

195 Bagdikian, Ben H. The New Media Monopoly, 260. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.

196 Bagdikian, Ben H. The New Media Monopoly, 261. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. 197 "DC Properties," DC Entertainment. ! !67 featuring the same origin story and the others have been sequels of some sort.198 This is striking

because that is the recent adaptation history of only two characters. Other properties owned by

DC have received their own films, but none so much as Batman and Superman. Sadly, DC’s other well-known and historically popular character Wonder Woman has yet to have a critically and commercially successful film release; the closest she ever got was a television show from

1975-1979.199 DC has based its most expensive adaptations on its two most commercially successful characters, and reaped the benefits in return––despite the facts that the DC Universe has a variety of other characters who are different genders, ethnicities, and sexualities. At the same time, DC has stuck to the formula and has not attempted to be truly creative in making a multimillion-dollar film for fear that audience members’ expectations would be defied and the film boycotted. To contrast this is the use of other, less successful characters by Disney’s Marvel.

An upcoming adaptations of Guardians of the Galaxy features a raccoon, a character who is not even human and does not bear any similarity to the caucasian male archetype. If a film with a raccoon can be profitable, then perhaps sticking to the formula may not be as important as DC and, traditionally, Marvel, believe it to be.

Marvel, on the other hand, was not owned by Disney when it began its foray into film. In

2005, Marvel Entertainment created Marvel Studios, the branch responsible for the flurry of superhero films released since then. A distribution deal with Paramount allowed Marvel to succeed in the theatrical world, and it was Marvel’s adaptations, not its comics, that interested

Disney in purchase. Marvel has also focused on its successful characters, but has branched out a

198 For more information on the Batman box office figures, see Box Office Mojo's website. 199 "Wonder Woman," Internet Movie Database IMDB. ! !68 bit more than DC. Superheroes like the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America

all received films. Spider-man, technically a Marvel character, was––and is––owned by Sony,

and so was not part of the Marvel Studios production plan. Like DC, Marvel Entertainment has

chosen characters who are deemed palatable for a theatre audience who has certain expectations

of the superhero film genre, and those characters are unfailingly hyper masculine white males.

From the 1970s until now, the most profitable and hyped superhero films have all starred

straight white men. Female characters were relegated to the sidelines, portraying girlfriends in

need of being rescued, femme fatales using their feminine wiles to sway the strong males, or

nurturing mother figures used as mentors. Other times, women are simply used as plot devices to

further the character development of the lead male protagonist, as was the case with Bruce

Wayne/ Batman’s love interest Rachel Dawes, who was unceremoniously killed off in the Dark

Knight to make room for a new love interest, Catwoman, in the Dark Knight Rises.

5.8 Political Economy and Female Representation

The lack of inspiring and/or believable female lead characters in films is indicative of a larger issue: the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of multifaceted women in large tentpole films. Superhero movies are the most recent movie trend, and even though they draw in billions of dollars, the largest studios have not yet made a critically and commercially successful film featuring a female character as the main character. Although the comic book industry has its fair share of political economic turmoil, even DC and Marvel comic books have a plethora of female characters who serve as examples that readers are indeed interested in seeing women in more prominent roles. DC’s Batwoman sold 34,000 units in January of last year, placing just under Hawkeye and Daredevil. Batgirl, at the same time, sold 72,000 units, placing it in the top ! !69 20 comics of that month.200 This is an example of how there is a comic book fandom who

purchases comics featuring female leads, even as that has not translated into film. DC and

Marvel must be aware, then, that strong white men are not the only characters that will do well.

Thus, the source material for adaptation is there, even though the practice of adapting can reduce

creativity.201 In Wasko’s How Hollywood Works, the author discusses how the largest media

corporations use their media outlets to perpetuate certain ideologies that promote consumerism,

capitalism, and the maintenance of the status quo.202 With gender roles and norms, this status quo

has translated into films being largely by and for a male audience, with females featured as

secondary characters who do not drive the plot or characters there solely as plot devices to

further the story arc of the male protagonist.

“On a global level, communications industries produce a vast array of cultural artifacts in

the form of entertainment…feminist political economists must rigorously challenge both

production and consumption practices detrimental to women.”203 DC and Marvel films are not

just national successes that perpetuate a certain set of ideologies; they are part of a global film

industry that garners audiences from multiple countries and so the ideologies disseminated have

a wider impact than just domestic audiences. Superhero films produced by multimedia giants

reflect the “gendered nature of capitalism”204 espoused by corporations that have an end goal of

200 "Comic Book Sales Figures for January 2013." Comichron Website.

201 Riesman, Abraham. "Marvel's Diversity Issue: Screen Output Doesn't Reflect Open-minded Comics." . October 09, 2013.

202 Wasko, Janet. How Hollywood Works. London: SAGE, 2003.

203 Meehan, Eileen R., and Ellen Riordan. Sex & Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, 8. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

204 Meehan, Eileen R., and Ellen Riordan. Sex & Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, 9. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. ! !70 making as much money as possible while spending as little as possible. The publishing houses

and conglomerated media firms discussed care about their bottom line, and so producing films

that could directly contradict the ideals of capitalism, or question rampant consumerism or

gender norms, are viewed as risky to make. In addition, there is still a huge gap in the gender

ratio of media creators. More men than women have positions within the comic book and film

industry, and more men are writers and directors.205 The imbalance of the work force only strengthens the status quo within patriarchal capitalist societies that men are the producers of information and women are assistants.

Therefore, in the next chapter, I closely examine the top ten most profitable superhero films adapted from DC and Marvel properties since 2000. I chose the 21st Century as the time to study because of the rapid increase in corporate interest in their comic book properties. Chapter 5 provides an in-depth look at the ideologies being pushed by the top films and the themes that are carried throughout these movies. A political economic background is important when discussing content because it places these blockbuster adaptations in their historical, social, and economic context. All of these films were released with the intent of generating a profit, and all of them belong to massive media firms. As representations of an oligopolistic media industry in both the comic book realm and the film realm, these movies can provide insight as to what values the studios want to instill in audience members. Certain trends are common, and certain ideas are silenced. ! ! !

205 Smith, Jeff. "Normalizing Male Dominance: Gender Representation in 2012 Films." Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy. February 12, 2013. ! !71 CHAPTER! FIVE ! ANALYZING THEMES WITHIN THE TOP TEN SUPERHERO FILMS SINCE 2000 Now that the political economy of media regarding superhero films has been discussed, it

is time to focus on the content of the actual films. First, the most profitable films are listed and a

brief explanation of the lead characters in each film is given. Next I offer an analysis of these

films and their ideologies concerning gender roles and portrayals. The analysis is grouped by the

most common themes within this genre, which are: damsels in distress, the praising of male

hypermasculinity and the demonizing of male femininity, the femme fatale, and the portrayal of

women as highly sexualized beings. I chose the most profitable films because of their wide

reach––the money these films made is an indication of how many viewers watched them, and so

the ideologies housed within are particularly important. The top ten films are, in order of their

total profits domestically: Marvel's The Avengers, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Iron

Man 3, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and Man of Steel.206

The films were all released after 2000,207 so my analysis will focus on how ideologies have been

perpetuated in the 21st century and why these ideologies are important. Men are the main

characters in all of these adaptations, and women are represented in stereotypical ways.

Each of these films were all made by major studios and garnered impressive amounts of

profit. Without the financial backing and conglomeration of the parent corporations mentioned in

the previous chapter, it is likely that none of these films would have been made. However,

because ample assets were available to lift these superheroes from the page and turn them into a

206 For more information, see Appendix A. 207 "Top Superhero Films," Box Office Mojo. ! !72 different kind of product, superhero films that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce have been enthusiastically adapted. Buena Vista studios belongs to Disney; Warner Brothers belongs to TimeWarner. Interestingly, Sony does not have any partnerships with either corporation even though Spider-man is a Marvel character. In 2012, The Amazing Spider-man was released so that Sony could keep the licensing rights to the character and continue using the property for future films.

The very first item to notice is that of the lead characters––who they are and what they represent. These characters are all white males with the exception of one ensemble female and one morally questionable villain (Faora). Both the heroes and their foes are caucasian, leaving little room for non-white audience members to identify with a given hero. Not even one of these films has a minority and/ or female figure in the title role. This is indeed problematic, as it presents the idea that the sex and gender of male is the default, while female is relegated to the sidelines. Half of the global population is female, yet none of the most profitable––and expensive––films in this genre acknowledge this by featuring a female lead. The lack of prominent female protagonists and antagonists has also been noted by a recent study released by

Stacey Smith in which over 500 films were analyzed for the ratio of male to female characters, and the results found that, out of the top 100 films per year, females made up, on average, 30% of total speaking characters.208 In 2012, out of the most profitable 67 films, only twelve featured a female protagonist.209 Not only are females underrepresented; they are portrayed in

208 Smith, Stacy, Marc Choueiti, Elizabeth Scofield, and Katherine Pieper. “Gender Inequality in 500 Popular Films: Examining On-Screen Portrayals and behind-the-Scenes Employment Patterns in Motion Pictures Released between 2007-2012,” study by the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, 2013.

209 Smith, Jeff. "Normalizing Male Dominance: Gender Representation in 2012 Films." Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy. February 12, 2013. ! !73 exaggerated manners when depicted onscreen. The lack of female characters with diverse

personalities will continue to occur as long as women make up such a small percentage of total

characters. When only one gender is given a disproportionate amount of screen time, audiences

come to see male-ness and Hollywood hypermasculinity as the ideal, and female-ness and

femininity as something that can only be expressed in a specific manner. The themes of films

within the superhero genre regarding gender roles and representations is a reflection of the

overall trend of ignoring female characters, especially a variety of personality types.

The trivializing of female characters in these blockbuster performances cannot go

unnoticed. Many of the films follow what is known as the "Smurfette principle,"210 meaning that

there is a sole female character amidst a cast of many men. Of the top ten films, almost all adhere

to this principle. In my analysis, I summarize the films by franchise according to total profits,

i.e., The Avengers, the Batman trilogy, the Iron Man trilogy, the Spider-Man trilogy, and the recent Superman reboot. I then discuss the recurring themes in these films. The Avengers presents a particularly interesting look at superhero films because it features an ensemble cast unlike the other nine films. Out of the top films, there are only four studios represented: Disney's

Buena Vista, TimeWarner's WarnerBros., Viacom's Paramount, and Sony. This number will only get smaller in the future as Disney bought the distribution rights for Iron Man from Paramount, solidifying its status as the premier Marvel adaptation machine. As discussed in the previous chapter, this increased concentration is an overall negative change, as fewer voices will be able to reach the audiences blockbuster films draw; this will result in the ideologies of the largest corporations being disseminated. As discussed in the previous chapter, feminist political

210 Pollitt, Katha. "Hers; The Smurfette Principle." The New! York Times. April 06, 1991. !74 economy is the underlying foundation for studying the content of these films, so the ideologies

being perpetuated by global media firms under a hierarchical, patriarchal system will reflect the inherent values of such corporations.

What, though, are these ideologies? Film theorist Robert Stam asks “Do not adaptations

‘adapt to’ changing environments and changing tastes, as well as to a new medium, with its distinct industrial demands, commercial pressures, censorship taboos, and aesthetic norms?”211

As times changes and new technology went from being ‘new’ to simply being, adaptations became common. Comic book readers could offer a testing ground for new material; if a comic book serial sold well or a new character snagged readers, then those properties might be ripe for an adaptation. The process of turning an existing character or story into a film was not as complicated as generating completely new content, especially when borrowing from comics. As comic books are visual, costumes, settings, vehicles, and character features are all sketched out.

It is similar to adapting from a book, except that comics have much more visual information than their word-only kin. When comics are adapted––or rebooted––certain aspects do change to suit the times, but the main mechanics of the characters and their universes remain the same. When comic books are transformed into film properties, aspects of the original medium are altered. In addition, since some characters are well into their seventies by now (like Batman), the story lines told have also changed through the decades. Thus, studios examine different plots in the original source material of comics to see which ones sold well––popular villains or narratives are more likely to get adapted, regardless of the time period in which the original was created. No media

211 Stam, Robert. Literature through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation. Malden MA: Blackwell Pub., 2005. ! !75 are isolated from its societal context, and the narratives told by adaptations can provide insight as to what ideologies ‘big media’ provide for viewers to absorb.

5.1 A Summary of the Most Profitable Films and Their Characters

The most profitable film on the list was 2012’s The Avengers. Based on Marvel characters and made by Disney’s Buena Vista, this film featured an ensemble cast of superheroes consisting of the Norse god Thor, the scientist Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man, Captain America, the

Hulk/Bruce Banner, archer Hawkeye/Clint Barton, and spy Black Widow/Natasha Romanov. Of the team, only two are depicted as being ‘normal’ human beings: Hawkeye and Black Widow.

Additionally, neither character had a standalone film before The Avengers was released, so they were the characters about which audience members knew the least. The premise of the film is that , Thor’s younger half-brother and mischief maker, has joined forces with an alien race to wreak havoc on planet Earth, and Thor cannot stop him alone. Thus, Nick Fury and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. recruit heroes to band together. This film is a blockbuster action film, focusing on teamwork, communication, and what happens when a bunch of powerful men all have to place their egos aside and work together, along the lines of Ocean’s 11, the Sting, the

Expendables, or Top Gun. This film has only one female who is given a significant amount of screen time––the Black Widow appears in an equal number of scenes as her male counterparts and has dialogue with multiple characters, only one minority character with multiple lines, and no depiction of females interacting with other females despite the fact that Nick Fury’s second- in-command is a female.

The second franchise is that of Batman––Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark

Knight Rises, the DC character who was brought to life by TimeWarner’s WarnerBros. The titular ! !76 character of Batman is by day the billionaire playboy philanthropist genius Bruce Wayne; by

night he becomes the vigilante Caped Crusader who saves the city of Gotham (a fictional

surrogate for New York City) from villains. Unlike some other heroes, Batman has no

superpowers; he relies on his intellect, fighting skills, and wealth to craft a weapons arsenal to

assist in his crime-fighting. The trilogy follows Batman as he deals with corrupt government

officials and a terrorist organization, a maniacal serial killer who challenges Batman’s morality,

and the return of the terrorist organization in full force. Bruce Wayne has a relationship with his

childhood friend Rachel Dawes, and it is she who encourages him to maintain his sense of

morality in difficult times. In the second film, she is killed off by villain the Joker, spurring

Bruce Wayne to go into hiding, which provides the basis for the final film in which Batman must

return to save Gotham once more.

The third franchise is the Iron Man series, originally made by Paramount before Disney bought Marvel. Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and Iron Man 3 all focus on its eponymous character Iron

Man/ Tony Stark, the billionaire playboy philanthropist genius (sound familiar?) who is able to create a weaponized suit when he is held captive by a terrorist organization that gained access to the bombs made by Tony Stark’s corporation Stark Industries. Stark uses this suit to protect

America and fight villains others cannot fight. In the first film, he must deal with the knowledge that his weapons are being sold on the black market and used illegally, prompting a change of heart toward a more eco-friendly corporation. The second film sees Iron Man fighting someone who has mimicked his technology and is using it for villainy; the final installment sees the hero battling a foreign evil who has used pharmaceuticals to cause ill effects on its users. The films focus on Tony Stark’s casual style of heroism and his friendships with his (African-American) ! !77 military assistant Colonel Rhodes and his (white, female) secretary-turned-girlfriend-turned CEO of Stark Industries Pepper Potts, as well as the conflict between the hero and various evil incarnations of the self.

The fourth franchise is that of Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3, based on the Marvel character and produced by Sony. These films follow the teenager Peter Parker, a genius struggling through the hardships of high school who just happens to gain superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. Spider-Man provides the origin story and the villain

Green Goblin, who is actually the head of a medical-pharmaceutical corporation that produces a serum making its users incredibly strong. Tellingly, Peter Parker is bit by a spider while touring that corporation’s genetic testing room. The second film focuses on Parker’s relationship with his childhood friend and love interest Mary Jane, the literal girl next door. Parker as Spider-Man saved her several times throughout the series and does many of his good deeds to protect her.

The second and third Spider-Man films have villains who are intelligent yet mentally unstable, such as the genius physicist who threatens New York City by creating an artificial sun. The protagonist Peter Parker uses his ability to create webs and climb up walls to fight these villains and usually save Mary Jane in the process.

Finally, we have the most recent film on the list––2013’s Man of Steel, a reboot of the

Superman story based on the DC character and adapted by TimeWarner. This film follows the birth and growth of Kal-El, a baby whose alien planet was dying and so was rocketed to Earth by his parents. Kal-El landed in a cornfield in Kansas and was raised by humans, gaining the name

Clark Kent. Due to the difference between the planets, Clark had a set of superhuman abilities like flying and laser eyes. After he is stalked by reporter Lois Lane, who witnessed his powers ! !78 when he saved her life, Kent begins to wonder what would happen if he became a public hero.

Earth is then threatened by a few Kryptonians (inhabitants of Kent’s birth planet) who want to

terraform Earth into a new Krypton, killing the human residents. Clark Kent saves his fellow

humans, kills his fellow Kryptonians, and becomes the hero known as Superman.

5.2 Discussion of Recurring Themes, or the Trap of Tropes

In all of these films, being a white male is equated with being one of the major players

within the universe. The plethora of similar protagonists and their evil equals is due to the source

material from which they are pulled. As many comic characters have changed little in terms of

ethnicity and gender since their creation, and because licensing has required writers and

illustrators to keep things the same for the sake of the brand, films based on these properties will

promote the idea that superheroes ought to be white, male, and middle to upper-class. None of

these characters has to deal with poverty, racism, or sexism in their day-to-day lives, and they all

seem to believe in supporting their nation. These men are also physically healthy, with

symmetrical bodies and good complexion.212

The norm that audiences are being sold is that only white males with no disabilities and a

good amount of money (like Bruce Wayne’s family inheritance or Thor’s royal lineage) can

become heroes: that is how comic book characters work, and that is how the adaptations have

shaped the superhero genre. Corporations then offer tie-ins and merchandise so that viewers can

become more like the heroes they have become familiar with and have come to admire––but

212 Bohne, Antje, Nancy J. Keuthen, Sabine Wilhelm, Thilo Deckersbach, and Michael A. Jenike. "Prevalence of Symptoms of Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Its Correlates: A Cross-Cultural Comparison." Psychosomatics 43.6 (2002): 486-90. Print. ! !79 only the male heroes, as the Black Widow or Catwoman do not receive their own line of toys or limited edition Mountain Dew drinks.

Females are presented in superhero adaptations as not having the same amount of agency as their male counterparts, and only a few of these films even portray women as being capable of saving themselves. If the female characters were cut out of most of these films, their absence would not considerably alter the plot. Batman Begins without Rachel would still be a similar film. These films are about their male protagonists, and women have a limited place in such worlds. The lack of critically and commercially successful superhero films starring a female is glaring enough, but the similar depictions of women within male-led superhero films is startling.

Yes, recombinant culture drains creativity from a given market and these films are adapted from properties that have stylized representations of characters, but other properties and other films depict gender roles and norms differently. The indie superhero film Kick-Ass features a female character––a young girl––who is in complete control of her abilities and is a central character, integral to the plot and in possession of her own agency. This film offers an alternative portrayal of femininity perhaps due to Kick-Ass being an unusual comic not set in a recognized universe like DC or Marvel’s characters.

In the media, gender portrayals offer behavioral norms for its male and female viewers, showing them the proper way to act their gender. In this way, superhero films can have an actual affect on its avid audiences and can promote stereotypical views on gender, race, and patriarchy.213 In addition, it has been shown that both children and adults mimic the actions of their celluloid heroes, from buying related products so they can identify with the roles portrayed,

213 Tuchman, Gaye, Arlene Kaplan Daniels, and James Benét. Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media. New York: Oxford University, 1978. Print. ! !80 or by adopting the values of their heroes.214 For men, the ideal is a muscular, heterosexual white

male who believes in patriotism, saving damsels, and physically fighting bad guys. For women,

the ideal is presented as a thin yet muscular female with wide hips and a large bust who assists men and uses her femininity and sexuality as a weapon.

Men do not have to be concerned with their sexual prowess––for example, Tony Stark calls himself a “playboy,” but that does not define his character; it is simply another facet of his personality and a positive trait. Catwoman, on the other hand, is defined by her very femaleness.

She performs the traditional act of femininity as depicted in comics by using her sexuality as a tool. Without it, she would not be able to carry out the deeds she does in the film. Her sex and performance of gender are what makes her character possible, turning Catwoman into little more than a highly gendered body who lacks internal dimension. If Tony Stark were not a playboy, he would be fine, capable of leaning on his wealth, intelligence, creativity, philanthropy, and mechanical skill. Catwoman could still be a thief, but what would happen if she suddenly lost all vestiges of her stereotyped gender? She would be adrift, unable to commit the same crimes to the same degree. Superhero films thus contribute to societal norms and what citizens think is expected of them as gendered individuals. Women are devalued and men are the ones deemed

‘good enough’ to take charge.215

5.3 Darling Damsels and Vexing Vixens: A Dichotomy of Women

The first theme I would like to discuss is concerned with the dichotomy of Madonna/Whore that

women are presented with upon viewing superhero films. This artificial duality portrays women

214 Bessenoff, Gayle R. "Can The Media Affect Us? Social Comparison, Self-Discrepancy, And The Thin Ideal." Psychology of Women Quarterly 30.3 (2006): 239-51. Print. 215 Alexander, Jeff. "Where Are All the (Good) Female Superhero! Movies?” Time Ideas, 31 Aug. 2012. Web. !81 as falling into two character types: that of the innocent damsel who needs rescuing or the dangerous vixen who has agency due to her feminine wiles. The actual presence of women in films is not reflective of the female population as a whole, and so the representation of the entire female population as derivative of two personality types is a problematic portrayal of women. If male and female viewers are not shown a variety of ethnicities, personalities, and body types, then the female standard will be set by the few women who are in superhero films.

In the Spider-Man films, both love interest Mary Jane and nurturing mother figure Aunt

May are kidnapped and used to draw out the hero by villains wanting to fight. In Spider-Man, the villain tries to get Peter Parker to choose between Mary Jane and a bus full of innocent children. Of course the hero saves both, but Mary Jane is left being portrayed as a helpless damsel in need of rescuing. She gets saved multiple times by Spider-Man and seems completely incapable of taking care of herself, resulting in her being stalked by Spider-Man, who is constantly concerned for her safety and rescues her from an abusive boyfriend, would-be robbers, and the Green Goblin; Mary Jane is not concerned that she is being followed by a masked figure, instead she is pleased at the attention. In the Batman films, Rachel, Bruce

Wayne's childhood friend and sometimes girlfriend, is represented in the same light. She is little more than a plot device used to further Wayne's growth as a character. In the third Iron Man film

Pepper Potts is kidnapped and subjected to biological testing by a villain, forcing Iron Man to save her. Women are presented as expendable, people who can be held captive, tortured, and killed without serious repercussion. Iron Man did not have to rescue a tortured Hawkeye; Bruce

Wayne never had to deal with his butler Alfred being spirited away. The constant use of female kidnapping portrays women as physically weak, so unable to defend themselves that they need a ! !82 chivalrous male to save them. When women are in danger, it is assumed that the hero will protect

them. The depiction of women as weak and dependent reinforces gender roles: men are the

strong ones, and women should be delicate.216

In the universes that are created by these films, the world is run by men and threatened by

other men. Women are defined by the men who hold power, and the few women who are

portrayed are familiar archetypes: women who sexually and manipulate men for their own ends

and could not gain power or information without men, and women who are saved and/or

redeemed by the love and actions of a man. Within the ten films, there are few examples that best

fit how women are expected to fall into the category or damsel or femme fatale, and how their

roles, actions, and outfits express the type of women the character depicts.

The first example is that of Pepper Potts in the Iron Man films. Pepper is a competent, intelligent, attractive secretary and assistant to the wealthy and selfish Tony Stark. She harbors an attraction to him that develops itself throughout the trilogy, and is a convenient character to be placed in danger for Iron Man to save. Her role is limited to the relationship she wants to have, hopes to have, and ultimately has with Tony Stark, and all of her decisions in the film relate to

Stark. She seemingly has no life or personality of her own outside of the interactions with her boss/boyfriend. The ensuing heteronormative romantic relationship of a male boss with power and his hardworking secretary is not a new one, but it is still being promoted by the Iron Man films in the 21st century. Pepper deftly handles Tony Stark's flings with other women because she knows eventually he will settle down and become a monogamous partner who will provide for her. Pepper Potts is a darling damsel, a female who lets the more traditional gender roles

216 Wood, Julia T. Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub., 1994. Print. ! !83 decide how she lives her life. Even as this character is supposed to represent a modern female with a good job and good income, she still needs to be rescued by the more able Iron Man and is relegated to the role of helper, assisting Tony Stark in corporate affairs.

The second example is Catwoman/Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises. She is a sultry cat who fights in six-inch spike heels and deftly steals from wealthy men. Kyle uses her sexuality as a weapon to lull men into a false sense of power and security while robbing them; she does not use rockets like Iron Man but instead relies on feminine wiles to manipulate characters, implying that women’s bodies are dangerous and ought not be trusted. Catwoman is also portrayed as being a bad capitalist––this femme fatale steals from others to make her living instead of consuming properly, suggesting that women who fall outside of the norm concerning capitalism are conniving and amoral. Kyle wears a tight black costume complete with the ultimate feminine signifiers of high heels, long hair, and makeup, and is shown to be a complete opposite of damsels Pepper Potts and Mary Jane. Selina Kyle does not need to be rescued, but she does not rescue others either. She is beautiful, but in a wild way that could lead to trouble.

Ultimately, her interaction with Bruce Wayne is what changes her into a heteronormative, moral human being. She is persuaded by him to return to Gotham and help save its citizens, and the final scene shows her and Bruce Wayne at a nice restaurant eating dinner together, her in a feminine dress and him in a suit. The ideologies of the madonna/whore dichotomy tells women that they must make a choice between respect and sexuality: sweet women who abide by the conventions of the status quo will win the loyalty of men while women who use their sexuality to get what they want will fail unless they change. There are so few women on screen as is; the

! !84 portrayal of women as falling into only a few character types encourages viewers to believe that

the majority of women do, or should, act in similar ways.

5.4 Promoting Hypermasculinity and Demoting Female Masculinity

The second theme common to the superhero genre is that hypermasculinity is presented

as the ultimate male ideal. Its subversion in the form of female masculinity and male femininity

are depicted as traits of villains, not of heroes. All of the lead characters are white males with

considerable muscles. They are physically fit, attractive, and will result to hand-to-hand combat when dealing with the bad guys. Men must be as masculine as possible in order to true heroes, and those who do not live up to this standard are either women, or villains. Viewers will take away the idea that in order to perform their gender well, they must be hypermasculine if men or hypersexualized if women. Men who do not perform masculinity as portrayed by superhero films may run the risk of being stigmatized for their nontraditional behavior, and women who act in masculine manner may be ridiculed as well. Hypermasculinity is only acceptable if performed by the male hero; masculine women and feminine men are villified.

The villain Loki in The Avengers is presented as being more feminine than his hyper masculine brother. Loki, unlike the male heroes, is lean, with long dark hair and delicate features.

He has an elaborate costume with gold detail and rich colors––an outfit more flamboyant than that of the protagonists. He is also portrayed as being cunning, someone who manipulates the emotions of others to further his evil plans. The depiction of the bad guy as someone who does not adhere to the genre male stereotype is telling. By making Loki more feminine/less masculine, audiences are given an example of how gender ought not be performed, because the antagonists represent the ills of the world. In a scene with Loki and the Black Widow, both of them are using ! !85 emotional tactics in an attempt to manipulate the other––Loki is trying to break down the Black

Widow by bringing up her bloody past. His tactics fail, as the Black Widow is better at reading emotions and faking them, which signifies that women are better at using their emotions instead of physicality as a weapon, and that men who employ emotion will fail. At the end, of course

Loki, the non-traditional male who uses the female act of emotional manipulation, is stopped, and the brawny masculine men save the day by rescuing the world from the lanky long-haired male.

Women who use physical force and lack emotion must be villainous, and in this case the two female characters with significant speaking lines are heavily contrasted with each other. The two major female characters in Man of Steel demonstrate how femininity should and should not be performed in the area of superhero films. Lois Lane, the love interest of Clark Kent, has long curly hair and performs traditional femininity well by displaying emotions often and focusing on the men around her. Faora, the assistant to General Zod of the Kryptonian army, on the other hand, has dark short hair and seems sexless as well. She is a woman, but a very masculine one; therefore, she cannot be portrayed as being either a sweet damsel or a morally divided femme fatale. Faora represents a tough female who acts outside of the realms of traditional femininity and masculinity, and her physical prowess and rational manner get her killed. The presence of an alternative take on gender performance was a welcome change, but that performance signaled to audiences that women who perform gender outside of tradition are somehow evil. If, however,

Faora was a hero, then audience members may be more willing to accept the idea of a powerful, masculine female as something not to be feared. A villain in the realm of traditional gender roles,

Faora is the opposite of Loki––instead of a more feminine male, she is a masculine female who ! !86 is unafraid to act like the men in the film. She wields weapons with ease and is adept at hand-to-

hand combat, a trait used mostly by men in superhero films. This behavior is depicted as a

negative, for Faora is a bad guy and not a hero. Again, villains represent traits that are

undesirable––they are on the wrong side of justice, and non-traditional trappings of gender roles

are enough to garner a place in a rogue’s gallery. By depicting these two characters as lacking in

the morality and heroism that defines the protagonists, both Loki and Faora are touted as gender

performance gone awry, which furthers the precedent of promoting only rigidly defined gender.

5.5 Males and the Consumerist Weapons-Industrial Complex:

Superheroes as Caring Capitalists

In several of the superhero films, the main male characters are depicted as having a considerable amount of wealth and power, and two of the leads––Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne–– own their own corporations. Even though Iron Man is a Marvel property and Batman is a DC property, the characters have multiple parallels. Tony Stark creates a weaponized suit, an expensive foray into wearable armor that also allows flight and projectile weapons.217 In the Iron

Man films, Stark is presented as a corporate leader who uses his money to better the lives of others. In the opening scene of The Avengers, he is underwater crafting a pipe that would take his corporate headquarters off the grid, conserving energy and helping reduce Stark Industries’ carbon footprint. By the third film, Tony Stark has created a whole line of weaponized suits and uses them to help him battle villains. Stark’s ownership of a weapons manufacturer and status as a corporate businessman promotes the idea that those with wealth and power are not greedy mobsters but people who are trying to find their place in society. The presentation of a white

217 "Iron Man: A Cinematic View on the Military Industrial! Complex." NetAge. N.p., 2014. !87 male capitalist who promotes consumerism and the weaponization of consumption marks Iron

Man as the male ideal––a man who has all the guns, goods, and girls he needs.

Bruce Wayne’s Batman is also an avid consumer of weapons and weaponized items. Like

Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne has no superpowers of his own and so relies on his wealth and intellect

to craft weapons. Wayne is the owner of Wayne Enterprises, another corporation that has done

much good in the city of Gotham. Batman protects the city by night using his armored suit

equipped with a belt that has a variety of different tools and weapons to incapacitate crooks. By

The Dark Knight Rises, Batman has a modified military humvee that is capable of flight as well as a weaponized motorcycle. Both Wayne and Stark have monetary assets that most citizens do not; they also own corporations that promote the industrial-military complex. They are capitalists

who encourage consumerism by displaying examples of their own materialism in the expensive

weapons and gadgets they own; both heroes use weapons as an extension of their masculinity by

treating them as toys. They are also depicted as wealthy playboys who throw parties and host

corporate events to add to the mythos of the male hero as sexy men of means who can balance

parties with crime-fighting. Viewers are encouraged to view intelligent corporate men as capable of actually using their wealth to create powerful weapons that allow them to fight crime.218 Thus, weapons and the violence wrought by them are promoted instead of condemned, and the consumerist mindset that led these wealthy heroes to buy the goods needed to make their weapons of choice is promoted.

Women hardly use weapons in these films, and when they do, it is under specific circumstances and not an ordinary reaction to handling villains. In Iron Man 3, Pepper Potts uses

218 O'Neil, Dennis, and Leah Wilson. Batman Unauthorized: Vigilantes, Jokers, and Heroes in Gotham City. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2008. ! !88 a modified armored suit, but she only uses it to help save Tony Stark, whereas Tony Stark employs his suit on a daily basis. Pepper Potts utilizes the armored suit after being kidnapped and injected with a super-serum by the villain; under normal circumstances, she would not ever suit up and fight crime on her own. Catwoman also uses weaponized technology when she borrows Batman’s motorcycle in The Dark Knight Rises, but again it is only because of her interaction with Batman and not because of her own affinity for expensive bought guns. Batman asks her to help him save the city, and her use of weaponized technology is a direct result of that.

In Man of Steel, Lois Lane uses a Kryptonian gun, but she is literally told where to shoot and when by the consciousness of Jor-El. Women are allowed to use the weapons, but men are the primary creators and buyers of the weapons displayed, and they are the encouragers of consumerism through their example.

5.6 Women as Expendable and the Use of Females as Plot Devices

The final theme I would like to discuss is that of presenting female characters as pure figures, plot devices that are used for the male heroes to find their humanity and help others.

Rachel Dawes encourages Bruce Wayne to think outside of himself in Batman Begins, and in

The Dark Knight admonishes him for his selfishness when explaining to him why she has chosen another man as her lover. constantly pushes Peter Parker to be a better human being and remember the lessons of his late . Pepper Potts attempts to get Tony Stark to act like a mature, less narcissistic human. Natasha Romanov frees Clint Barton from Loki's mental control, and persuades Bruce Banner to help the Avengers. Women are assistants to men––they are used to help the male leads reach their full potential, whether by being kidnapped and needing rescue or by encouraging the men to pause and reflect on their actions, as if being ! !89 introspective is not a normal masculine behavior. The most striking example of this is the unnecessary of Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight. Rachel Dawes is presented as being a pure, kind woman who wants to make Gotham a better place. In Batman Begins, she consoles

Bruce Wayne when his childhood mansion burns down and lives up to the Madonna stereotype as she is fair, beautiful, and honest. Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes’ relationship takes a rocky turn in The Dark Knight, as she fears he is becoming irresponsible and immature. When villain the Joker forces Batman to choose between her and district attorney Harvey Dent, Rachel is killed. While her character was not fleshed out enough in the first two films for audience members to really care about her death, it provided the foundation for the third and final film, which required Bruce Wayne’s spiral into depression in order for the plot to move forward.

Dawes’ death is an example of the “women in refrigerators”219 stereotype as outlined by comic book writer Gail Simone, in which male protagonists’ female companions are needlessly maimed just to further the development of said male. Dawes could have lived, but the plot necessitated her death.

Throughout these films, women are constantly depowered, pushed about, and demoralized. Men, while they are both heroes and villains, also have to fulfill a defined role.

Audience members are encouraged to empathize with the male heroes, not the females who are treacherous or helpless, nor the villains who are feminine or . DC and Marvel superhero adaptations reflect the nature of their parents corporations by shedding a positive light on capitalism and consumerism, from the product placements within the film to the portrayal of heroes as protectors of capitalist structures. Women inhabit this existence in a more limited

219 Sarkeesian, Anita. "Tropes vs. Women: #2 Women in Refrigerators | Feminist Frequency." Feminist Frequency. April 7, 2011. ! !90 capacity than their male counterparts, much like the current film and media industry. The rise of women in leadership would change the status quo, and so depicting women and their gender roles in such a rigid and stereotypical way may affect females who watch such films by only showing women doing a certain set of jobs within a certain set of circumstances. !

! !91 CHAPTER! SIX RESEARCH FINDINGS, OR WHERE! WE GO FROM HERE Superhero films are not merely a passing fad. This genre has grown stronger over the past decade and a half and studios are planning several more films to continue the profits. As has been shown, the history and present of the comic book industry and its entrance into the world of film is an example of how media concentration and conglomeration has led to lack of creativity, lack of diverse ideas and people types, and lack of alternative voices being represented. Chapter One introduced the idea that the political economic climate of the media industry today has given rise to superhero films in which the content perpetuates certain ideologies instead of questioning the status quo. Chapters Two and Three discussed the literature surrounding this field and the methodologies used to examine both communications corporations and the content created by them. In Chapter Four, a history of the comic book industry and its descent into an oligopoly as well as the takeover by larger firms Disney and TimeWarner was outlined. Chapter Five served as a textual analysis of the top ten grossing superhero films adapted from DC and Marvel, highlighting ideological themes that support the status quo and promote ideals that an oligopolistic media climate want to perpetuate.

This study adds to the current literature on comic books, superhero adaptations, and representations of women by studying how the media climate surrounding comic books has led to blockbuster films with a very limited view of femininity and masculinity. Not only were both print and film industries explored, but they were analyzed through the lens of feminist political economy, and that framework was then used to explore the content created by such industries and their corporate parents. I found that the top films are formulaic in a way that is detrimental to ! !92 its audience members because it perpetuates ideologies that seek to maintain the power of oligopolies in our capitalist media system.

6.1 Limitations of Study

This study does have its share of limitations that affect the findings mentioned. Due to time constraints, only ten superhero films could be analyzed as opposed to twenty or thirty. The most profitable films were made by large studios and based on comic books produced by large publishing companies, but some other superhero films are adapted from alternative comics or produced by smaller studios. It would be interesting to view those films and explore their content to compare it to the films made by conglomerated media firms. Another limitation of this study is that it only focused on films adapted from DC and Marvel comics. The third largest publishing company, , was not discussed nor were adaptations of its properties examined, which may have affected the findings of the study of these films. Finally, the effects of this media were not discussed as my argument outlined that ownership affects content as opposed to how content affects viewers. This is an important aspect of studying media, but as it was not the focus of this work, more could be done in the future to explore how the superhero genre actually impacts its viewers.

6.2 Recommendations for Future Study

This thesis could provide the starting point for a variety of other works dealing with superhero films, ownership in the comic book industry, and feminist political economy. The themes mentioned in Chapter 5 could each be explored more fully, with an analysis of more films or an in-depth analysis of each film for only a single theme. Such themes may appear in other genres of film, comic books, or other media and could be explored in that manner. The ! !93 antagonists of superhero films could be studies as well, for I only touch upon a few antagonists in this thesis, but gender roles for villains may prove to be different than that of the heroes.

Another way this work could be used is to argue that the type of content found has adverse effects on audience members and may impact how they view gender roles and norms. The field of feminist political economy is relatively new, and studying popular culture provides a way to tie theory to current events. As superhero films will continue to be made, one could explore how female representation has (or has not) changed over the past few decades both in film and in comic books.

6.3 Closing Thoughts

In a society where there were more types of media available, and audience members can a true array of options, not just the seemingly different fare offered by the largest corporations afraid of losing profits, viewers may not seek stereotypical representations of males and females.

That society is not our society, however, and past successes are held up as a predictor of future profits, leading to more sequels, prequels, cross-overs, and reboots. Originality and difference are pushed out of the equation, and citizens are given content that is eerily familiar. When it comes to the superhero genre of filmmaking, this content promotes the idea that men do the heavy lifting, act with physical aggression, and are ideal masculine role models. Men are strong and capable, even if they are emotionally scarred or even morally flawed. Women are more sexualized, donning skintight suits with less body armor than their male counterparts (if they wear suits at all), and are often in need of saving. They are less aggressive and domineering, and use emotions to fight their battles.

! !94 This corroborates with other media research that found women are shown to be physically attractive and young, as well as traditionally feminine, while males are imposing and muscular, with square jaws and knowledge of hand-to-hand combat.220 The highly popular and growing genre of comic book adaptations posits several problems, then, to viewers who are tired of tired depictions of males and females. In the more recent films The Avengers and Man of

Steel, the female protagonists did have more agency––they wielded guns and were integral to the successful restoration of peace. That being said, they also were young, attractive, and used their emotions to further the plot. Both also were under the guidance of male leaders (Nick Fury in the

Avengers and Jor-El in Man of Steel) and held on to the trappings of traditional femininity.

In other genres, the media oligarchs have responded (somewhat) to the demand for more egalitarian depictions of women. In the comedy films Bridesmaids, Pitch Perfect, and The

Heat––all featuring female protagonists––the leads are multifaceted, flawed, and overwhelmingly normal. There are women of varying shapes and sizes, showing audiences a different view of how gender can be performed in our society. They give viewers more choices as to how women can act, look, dress, and speak. In animated films, Disney recently released a new princess film titled Frozen. Written by a female, this film is about the relationship between two sisters, and neither of them ends up being rescued by a convenient prince charming.

Films like these expand viewers’ notions of how gender roles and relations can be played out. Why, then, are superhero films seemingly stuck in the 1960s in relation to gender portrayals, even as its source material branches out with characters, providing readers with gay heroes, differently abled geniuses, and female leaders? These films are expensive to produce and market,

220 K., Baker, and Raney A.A. "Equally Super?: Gender-role Stereotyping of Superheroes in Children's Animated Programs." Mass Communication & Society 10.1 (2007): 25-41.! Web. !95 but reach audience members in a profitable global market, allowing them to propagate ideologies. Comic book adaptations follow a formula and do have certain beats, much like other genres, but alternative comics and their adaptations, like Kick-Ass, play with the formula and give the audience a different view of how superhero films, and their characters, can be depicted.

The answer can be found in the political economic climate as discussed in the previous chapter. The history of the comic book industry has always been concerned with how to use its intellectual properties to get a profit, and the firmly established locus of control held by DC and

Marvel kept depictions of certain marketable brands the same for decades. When the companies were bought out by larger conglomerated media groups, those concerns only increased, and generating income based on superheroes seemed like a surefire success. Films based on the comic books featuring familiar heroes were guaranteed to make some sort of income, and the popularity of more recent adaptations has resulted in a filmmaking cycle of reboots, restructuring, team-ups, and sequels. As many of the plotlines are not based on new stories or new characters, but rather the oldest and most famous ones, the gender portrayals are an echo of the source material. Studios do not want to change the characters too much, lest comic book fans decry the adaptation and refuse to watch the film. The conglomerated corporations also want to keep to the formula, because action figures, toys, and advertisements all rely on an easily- recognizable brand, and those brands stretch multiple platforms. The result of all of this is a genre desperately in need of an update.

Joss Whedon added as much of his feminist sensibilities to the character of Black Widow as he could,221 but in the comics she is ultimately a sexy super-spy who manipulates powerful

221 Schaefer, Sandy. "Joss Whedon: Black Widow Is ‘A Huge! Part’ of ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’." Screen Rant. !96 men to get information. Studios must be willing to take risks with their adaptations or be willing

to adapt comic books that feature alternative takes on how female superheroes can act. An

adaptation of Gail Simone’s profitable Birds of Prey series starring an ensemble cast of very different women would show viewers females do not have to be traditionally feminine, attractive, and helpless.222 The comic book series was adapted for television, but could also provide the basis for a film like the ensemble cast of Guardians of the Galaxy. This is unlikely to happen anytime soon, though, because those characters are not as well-known as Superman or

Wolverine. Adaptations will continue to be made, and if the current media climate stays the same, future films will rely heavily on white muscular males and one or two females who are either emotional or dangerously sexy. I hope this will change, and the previous statement rendered obsolete, and that future films and publications will reflect the diverse ethnicities, sexualities, and personalities of the other half of the global population.

There are those who are attempting to change the system from within by questioning the status quo and demanding answers. There is an annual convention––GeekGirlCon––where women and men can gather together to discuss portrayals of women in the media, from comic book films to the comics themselves. This event provides an outlet for those familiar with this media to talk about change.223 Feminist popular culture critic Anita Sarkeesian has a series of online videos called “Tropes vs. Women” that she uses to explore how stereotypes in comic books, video games, and films have a negative impact on both women and men.224 Gail Simone,

222 MacDonald, Heidi. "DC Comics Month-to-Month Sales: March 2013 — Now with 10 Year Comparisons." The Beat. April 22, 2013.

223 “GeekGirlCon: A Celebration of the Female Geek,” Geek Girl Con’s website. 224 To watch the videos, check out her we site Feminist Frequency.! !97 an avid comic book reader, created a list of women who had been maimed in the comic book

industry and called it Women in Refrigerators. That list has been widely circulated and highlights

how change needs to happen. Simone was eventually hired by DC and contributed to their series

of an all-female ensemble Birds of Prey. Another example of how various fans are gathering together to fight the stereotypes of the comic book industry and its film adaptations is through subversion. The Hawkeye Initiative is an online art forum where users upload images of female characters in compromising positions and post beside it their drawing of a male character in a similar position. A mixture of humorous and oddity, this website demonstrates how sexualized female characters are and what happens when that is altered.225 The medium of the internet has allowed fans to gather in a different way, and male and female fans alike can discuss the current media climate and take steps to change it. Through information like Simone’s findings or the

Hawkeye Initiative’s use of humor, fans can have a real, tangible effect on the comic book industry. Another way innovation and change are happening is through the alternative field of crowdfunding. like Hyperbole and a Half or Nimona226 use reader donations to assist the artists in their creative endeavors, and interaction with the readership lets the artists know their work is making a difference. While it takes much time to cause a shift in global media firms, it is possible. Alternative markets and media place the power back into the hands of citizens, and allows for a type of creativity that is lagging behind in the comic book and film industry. Ultimately, Hollywood remains stuck in its behemoth size and unwillingness to take

225 Seriously, please check out the website The Hawkeye Initiative.

226 Hyperbole and a Half is the comic creation of artist Allie Brosh. Her work is often crude, poignant, and introspective, and illustrates how alternative routes of publishing can create and promote different types of comics. Nimona is a long-form comic by artist Ginger Haze that features a complex female character. Its popularity demonstrates that audiences will read about females. ! !98 risks both nationally and globally. Independent and alternative comics are thriving on the

internet, and while it may take some time for the largest conglomerates to notice, innovation is occurring, and it is shifting the archetypes of comic book characters. !

! !99 APPENDIX A

INFORMATION ON THE TOP TEN FILMS

Film Title Studio Production Lifetime Release Date Protagonists( Villain(s) Budget ($) Gross, s) Domestic ($) Marvel’s The Buena Vista 220 million 623,357,910 May 4, 2012 Captain Loki, the Avengers America, Iron Centauri Man, the Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye, the Black Widow The Dark Warner 185 million 534,858,444 July 18, 2008 Batman Joker, Two- Knight Brothers Face The Dark Warner 250 million 448,139,099 July 20, 2012 Batman Bane, Knight Rises Brothers Catwoman Iron Man 3 Buena Vista 200 million 409,013,994 May 3, 2013 Iron Man The Mandarin

Spider-Man Sony 139 million 403,706,375 May 3, 2002 Spider-man Green Goblin

Spider-Man Sony 200 million 373,585,825 June 20, 2004 Spider-man Doctor 2 Octopus Spider-Man Sony 258 million 336,530,303 May 4, 2007 Spider-man , 3 Venom Iron Man Paramount 140 million 318,412,101 May 2, 2008 Iron Man Obadiah Stane Iron Man 2 Paramount 200 million 312,433,331 May 7, 2010 Iron Man Michael Hammer, Ivan Vanko Man of Steel Warner 225 million 291,045,518 June 14, 2013 Superman General Zod, Brothers Faora !

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! !113 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Laura S. Stoltzfus was born in Tallahassee, Florida and was raised in a small agrarian town near there. She did a combined Bachelor’s-to-Masters program with Florida State University’s

College of Communication & Information in Media and Communication Studies. Her research interests include feminist political economy, women, gender and sexuality studies, and modern popular culture.

! !114