Volume 1, Issue 2 June 2019 Superheroes in Contemporary Media General Information Panic at the Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal is published by graduate students and early career researchers from the Cultural Studies Program at Queen’s University. All material is copyrighted. Written permission must be obtained from the editors before copying or reprinting figures or more than 500 words of text. Submissions for each volume are chosen by the journal’s Executive Editorial Collective and go through a review process before publication. Each author is responsible for any omissions or errors in their article. ISSN 2562-5411 (Print) ISSN 2562-542X (Online) Key title: Panic at the discourse (Print and Online) Panic at the Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal Attn: Morgan Oddie Cultural Studies Program, Queen’s University B176 Macintosh-Corry Hall Kingston, ON, CAN K7L 3N6 Please contact us at: [email protected] www.panicdiscourse.com © 2019 Panic at the Discourse. All rights reserved. Editorial Team: Panic at the Discourse Volume 1, Issue 2, July 2019 Editorial Team Brittainy R. Bonnis is a PhD student in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Her master’s degree is in Media Studies, and her graduate work examines the intersections of religion, media and culture. Particularly concerned with representations of belonging and otherness in plural societies, her current work examines the representation of religious minorities in media forms from editorials to situation comedies. Christina Fabiani joined the Cultural Studies PhD program at Queen's University in 2018, after completing an MA in History/Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at the University of Victoria (2017) and a BA in Humanities/History at Carleton University (2006). Her passion for research, collaboration, and writing has led her to various editorial positions with Notches: (re)marks on the history of sexuality, The Graduate History Review, The Corvette, and Panic at the Discourse. In her own research, Fabiani combines deviant body theory with cultural and social history as she explores the complex relationship between tattoos, subversion, and normativity in twentieth-century North America. Stéphanie McKnight (Stéfy) is a doctoral candidate in the Cultural Studies at Queen's University in Katarokwi/Kingston. She is an artist-scholar whose research examines surveillance post 9/11 as a form of contemporary colonialism in Canada through the methodology of research-creation. Her research has been published in Drain Magazine, (e) Affect Magazine and upcoming in the Surveillance & Society Journal. Morgan Oddie is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Her dissertation examines the dynamics of gendered bodies, pain, and power in consensual sadomasochistic (BDSM) women’s communities. Other academic interests include feminist horror films, sexuality and popular culture, and the ‘secularization’ of rituals. Daniel Smith is a graduate student at York University specializing in Ethnomusicology. He is currently researching local dance and jazz band leader David Black with recent ventures into Sound Studies. Much of his research interests and personal projects, regardless of specialization, focus on memory, history, and narrative. Michelle Smith is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Her current research focuses on Canadian animation. Her larger research specialties are in the fields of Monster, East Asian, Film, Media, Visual and Material Studies. Article Contributors: Panic at the Discourse Volume 1, Issue 2, July 2019 Larissa Tamborindenguy Becko received their Bachelor in Public Relations from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and Master’s degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Vale dos Sinos River (UNISINOS), where they are currently a doctoral student. Main topics of interest include fan culture, superheroes, performances, identities and consumer practices. Michael Bodkin is a PhD student in the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University. With a MA in Theology, Michael’s current work focuses on the intersection of taste, kitsch, and kenosis as a site of decolonizing practices. Erika Chung is a PhD student in the joint Communication and Culture program at Ryerson University and York University. Her research interests include comics, fandom and popular culture. She is currently a research assistant on the Comic Con Research Project. Meg D. Lonergan is a PhD Candidate and contract instructor in Legal Studies with a specialization in Political Economy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersections of law, security, and culture. Claire Meagher is a recent MA graduate from the University of Guelph. She received her BA from the University of Waterloo in English. Her work focuses on national identity and the boundaries that are permeated through works of literature. Drawing on her background in history, Claire studies negotiations of power in relation to themes of feminism and historical narration. Emily Scherzinger is a PhD student in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, where she researches language, meaning, and ‘common sense,’ specifically analyzing the ways in which these discourses influence and intersect with nonsense literature. Emily is also an avid zine maker, writer, and tea drinker. Matthew Wincherauk is a Master's student from Trent University, and is currently in the process of finishing his thesis “The Students’ Bell Tower: The Legacy of the University of Regina’s The Carillon in the Digital Age,” an exploration of the functions of the university newspaper and their relationship with their student and university publics. Matthew enjoys reading comic books and graphic novels, and going for adventures with his dog, Tonks. Forum / Reviews Contributors: Panic at the Discourse Volume 1, Issue 2, July 2019 Francesca Lopez is a teaching assistant for Communications and Media, Sociology, Advertising Communications, and Gender and Media courses (held by Prof. Elisa Giomi) at Roma Tre University in Rome. Specialized in Gender and Media Studies, her research is based on the analysis of the representation of lethal gendered-violence in crime TV series, in the horror genre and in pornography, with a special focus on female corpses. Shreyashi Mandal lives and works in Kolkata, India. She graduated from Jadavpur University with a Master’s degree in English (2016). She is a lover of literature and the visual arts, and is fond of writing about fantasy fiction, identity and gender politics. Ky Pearce (pronouns: they/them) is a queer poet, activist, and PhD student from Newfoundland, working out of the Cultural Studies program at Queen’s University in Katarokwi/Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Ky’s primary research interests revolve around rural-queer and Indigiqueer critiques of queer theory, queer studies, and queer media. Table of Contents Foreword: Why Superheroes?.............................………………………………………………….1 Morgan Oddie Ms. Marvel: Genre, Medium, and an Intersectional Superhero …………………………………..5 Erika Chung Consumption of Superheroes: The Performances of Fans as Strategies of Involvement ………..17 Larissa Tamborindenguy Becko Crossing No-Man’s Land: Wonder Woman & Liminality …………………….………………....28 Claire Meagher A Foe He Can’t Fight: Tony Stark, Addition, and PTSD ……………………………….……..…41 Matthew Wincherauk Of Amazons, Humans, and Batmen: Superheroes and the Affectual Dynamics of Loneliness….51 Emily Scherzinger Ready Player Four: Waluigi and the Rainbow Road to the Alt-Right ……………………….…..62 Michael Bodkin It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Security as Pacification! Security as Pacification in Superman Red Son ……………………………………………………………………………………………….77 Meg D. Lonergan Forum / Reviews Claiming the Domains of the Natural and the Supernatural in Netflix’s Occult Series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina …………………………………………………………………………...87 Shreyashi Mandal Deadpool is Normal(ly) Terrible: A Queer Critique of Deadpool 2 ……………………….……90 Ky Pearce Aquaman: The Eternal Return of the Male Subject ………………………………………………93 Francesca Lopez Foreword: Why Superheroes? Morgan Oddie Is superhero fatigue real? In contemporary popular cinema, super- and other-than-human bodies of heroes dominate. Since 2007, Marvel Studios has produced twenty-two films, with nine more slated for development and production. In a review of Avengers: Infinity War (2018), A.O. Scott pejoratively noted, “It’s Marvel’s Universe. We just live in it.”1 The amassing popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has contributed to the mainstreaming of what was historically a fringe subculture, confined to dingy comic book stores and children-focused animated adaptations. DC’s cinematic legacy is longer—though arguably less consistent in quality and critical and popular reception than MCU—and is also producing films at an overwhelming rate.2 However, this does not even account for the films outside of the MCU and DC Extended Universe (DCEU) that have been produced by other studios, or the vast array of superhero-centred television series. A little more than halfway through the year and we have already seen the live-action releases of Glass (2019), Captain Marvel (2019), Shazam! (2019), Hellboy (2019), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Brightburn (2019), X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019), and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). So, why superheroes? It seems that this trend is more than the natural evolution of action films3 and the financial success of these products