Hot Pants and Spandex Suits: Gender Representation in American Superhero Comic Books - Hardcover

De Dauw, Esther

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1978806043 ISBN 13: 9781978806047

Verlag: Rutgers University Press, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

The superheroes from DC and Marvel comics are some of the most iconic characters in popular culture today. But how do these figures idealize certain gender roles, body types, sexualities, and racial identities at the expense of others?

Hot Pants and Spandex Suits offers a far-reaching look at how masculinity and femininity have been represented in American superhero comics, from the Golden and Silver Ages to the Modern Age. Scholar Esther De Dauw contrasts the bulletproof and musclebound phallic bodies of classic male heroes like Superman, Captain America, and Iron Man with the figures of female counterparts like Wonder Woman and Supergirl, who are drawn as superhumanly flexible and plastic. It also examines the genre's ambivalent treatment of LGBTQ representation, from the presentation of gay male heroes Wiccan and Hulkling as a model minority couple to the troubling association of Batwoman's lesbianism with monstrosity. Finally, it explores the intersection between gender and race through case studies of heroes like Luke Cage, Storm, and Ms. Marvel.

Hot Pants and Spandex Suits is a fascinating and thought-provoking consideration of what superhero comics teach us about identity, embodiment, and sexuality.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

ESTHER DE DAUW is a Leicester, UK based comics scholar, who works on superheroes, gender and race. She has published in The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, contributed a chapter to the edited volume Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics, and was the primary editor for the collection Toxic Masculinity: Mapping the Monstrous in our Heroes.
 

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Introduction

For almost eighty years, superheroes have been a part of American mass media, and, through the increased presence and popularity of superhero films and TV-shows, are now considered a staple of American culture, exported to international audiences in several different mass media formats. Originally appearing in comic books, superheroes have also appeared in syndicated newspaper strips and radio serials, animated cartoons, TV series, films and original web content. Most mainstream audiences are accessing the superhero outside of comic book content, through the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008-ongoing), hereafter referred to as the MCU, Netflix' series and the CW Network's TV series.[1] With wide ranges of products serving as superhero merchandise (literally anything you can slap a hero's chevron or face on), superheroes being adopted for various political and social movements, and Avengers: Endgame (2019) bringing in a world-wide $2.796 billion at the box-office, labelling it the highest grossing film of all time, it is safe to say that the superhero is at least as culturally present now as when they first took the world by storm.[2] Arguably, with everyday life increasingly saturated with mass media and advertising, the superhero is more present than ever and, like many other comic scholars, I want to dig into what it is they say about and to us. Situated at the intersection of comic studies, cultural studies and theories of structural power-relations, this book discusses superheroes in their socio-historical context and determines how they are informed by dominant gender ideology in the American cultural landscape.

A History of the Industry
In this book, I mostly focus on the comics instead of the films or TV-shows that superheroes appear in, which warrants a brief history of the medium. Despite film and TV's ability to reach a wider audience, the sheer amount of comic titles produced, with roughly 75 monthly comic book titles published by Marvel and 73 by DC at the time of writing, points to comics as being the superhero's dominant media format. Additionally, TV shows and Hollywood movies are considered adaptations of the comics and thus, comics remain the primary medium dictating the shape and form of superhero content, even as other media content also influences comics.[3] As the original progenitor of the superhero, the comic book medium and its industry has significantly defined the concept of the superhero.[4] The industry's history was initially documented by fans and expert-practitioners, who used labels that Marvel and DC adopted to categorise the different ages of comic book development: Golden Age (1930s-1950s), Silver Age (1950s-1970s), Bronze Age (1970s-1980s), Dark Age (1980s-1990s) and Modern Age (1990s - Ongoing) Age. Each Age is supposedly defined by dominating narrative, formal or economic trends. While the exact dates of the ages (and the use of this classification) are regularly debated both in fan communities and academia, the industry generally accepts them. Discussing the "extremely articulate critique of that model" by Benjamin Woo, Orion Ussner Kidder writes that Woo "contends that the terms are inherently antithetical to academic rigor."[5] As Kidder states, agreement with this analysis does not preclude the usefulness of these terms, considering its use by the industry, professionals, fans, creators, experts and the academic field. Recently, American Studies scholar, Adrienne Resha, provided a compelling argument that we have entered a new stage: the Blue Age of Comic Books (2000s-ongoing), which is defined by the digitization of comic books and comic book culture's increasingly online presence.[6] When discussing history and comics, these terms are inescapable and will be used in this book when appropriate.

In June 1938, DC published Action Comics #1 with Superman on the cover for the first time. Comics were a fairly new medium and mostly consisted of collections of reprinted syndicated newspaper strips with few original storylines. Due to the popularity of these collections, publishers began to pay artists and writers for new comic book content, which led to creation of short comics and, eventually, to the publication of Superman. The immense success of this character launched the superhero genre, which dominated the comic book industry for nearly fifteen years. As Bradford W. Wright explains, "most comic books titles sold between 200,000 and 400,000 copies per issues" and "each issue of Action Comics (featuring one Superman story each) regularly sold about 900,000 copies per months."[7] Following Superman's lead, other publishers jumped on the superhero bandwagon and the market became saturated with other superheroes and imitations, which heralded the Golden Age of Comics. Historically, the Golden Age is defined by the industry's extraordinary output as well as Superman's omnipresence. While there exists, in online boards and fan communities, a nostalgic reverence for Golden Age stories, the quality of the material is often questionable. In Golden Age illustrations, the background is often blank and there is a lack of detail in objects in the foreground. There is a wooden quality to the character's bodies, most visible in stoic facial expressions, which can be partly attributed to the low quality of the paper and the cheap printing process that would have blurred any detail in the artist's original composition. Comics were popular with publishers because they were cheap to produce and finished products could be bought cheaply from artist studios or shops. Artists and writers often worked as freelancers and worked together as a studio/shop, which functioned as an assembly line with the writing, drawing, colouring, lettering and inking of the work divided among contributors. This allowed for the fast production of a fully finished product. The copyright was often transferred to the publisher as part of the sale, with the understanding that the publisher would continue to pay the shop for new issues. Many artists considered this kind of comic book work as a way to make money while they worked on their 'real art' or until they were contracted to illustrate syndicated newspaper strips, which were more respectable. Both inside and outside the industry, comic books were condemned as low brow mass entertainment. Sold cheaply, they were affordable to the largest demographic in the 1930s: the working poor.

Following the depression and unprecedented levels of unemployment across the United States, a large part of the population became subject to extreme poverty. The cultural landscape shifted in response, abandoning the "Victorian middle-class axiom" and turning to blue-collar sentiments instead.[8] The middle class shrank while the working class expanded and the working poor and unemployed reached record numbers. Superman was born in this context, with mass media focusing on the common man, who was working-class and beaten down, desperately struggling against the forces of industry and modernization.[9] As Wright writes, "[from] Depression-era popular culture, there came a passionate celebration of the common man" and his victory over the social forces set against him.[10] Especially science-fiction and fantasy offered up avenues of escape by removing the hero from the contemporary modern world, which allowed his masculine abilities to thrive, or by imbuing the hero with abilities that allowed him to conquer the modern world itself. Superman, brought into the world by avid readers of science-fiction and fantasy, could bend the world around him for the sake of the disenfranchised and the poor. His creators were also young members of the Jewish community, which increasingly rejected the tenets of laissez-faire capitalism in favour of a more social model as their community was disproportionally...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Rutgers University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1978806043
• ISBN 13: 9781978806047
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 216
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande