Full Description
Superheroes and Masculinity: Unmasking the Gender Performance of Heroism explores how heteropatriarchal representations of gender are portrayed within superhero comics, film, and television. The contributors examine how hegemonic masculinity has been continually perpetuated and reinforced within the superhero genre and unpack concise critiques of specific superhero representations, the industry, and the fan base at large. However, Superheroes and Masculinity also argues that possibilities of resistance and change are embedded within these problematic portrayals. To this end, several chapters explore alternative portrayals of queerness within superhero representations and read the hegemonic masculinity of various characters against the grain to produce queer possibilities. Ultimately, this collection argues that the quest to unmask how gender operates within superheroes is a crucial one.
Contents
Chapter One: Deconstructing the Hero-Sidekick Bromance: Foggy, Kato, and the Masculine Performance of Friendship
Ryan Cheek and Anne Bialowas
Chapter Two: If She Be Worthy: Performance of Female Masculinity and Toxic Geek Masculinity in Jason Aaron's Thor: The Goddess of Thunder
Hailey J. Austin
Chapter Three: Witches and Witchbreed in Marvel 1602
Kevin Cummings
Chapter Four: The Joker's Dionysian Philosophy of Gender and Sexuality in The Dark Knight
Jacob Murel
Chapter Five: There are Different Ways of Being Strong: Steven Universe and Developing a Caring Superhero Masculinity
Edgar Sandoval, Julian Barr, and David J. Roberts
Chapter Six: There Must Always be a Thor: Marvel's Thor the Goddess of Thunder and the Disruption of Heroic Masculinities
Kiera M Gaswint and Jeff Brown
Chapter Seven: Poisoning Masculinity: Poison Ivy as a Counter-Narrative of Villainy and Trauma through Representations of Queer Love in DC's Everyone Loves Ivy
TJ Buttgereit, Emily Mendelson, and JL Schatz
Chapter Eight: The New Teen Titans for Queer Boys: Emergent Masculinities and Sentimental Superhero Melodrama in the 1980s
Brian Johnson
