Superhero Case Study

 Superhero Genre Case Study

 

Media Language Codes: how media communicates its message to an audience (mise-en-scene, setting, make-up, costumes, lighting, sound, etc.)

 

Narrative Conventions: typical or common story structures used in media. The word conventional means typical or usual. 

 

Conventional Representations: typical or common representations of characters, gender, stereotypes, etc. in media. 

 

Themes and Ideological Codes: common messages (encoding and decoding) in media 

 

 

 Activity 1:

	Conventions of Superhero Media
Media Language Codes	A cape, a suit, low-angle shots to make heroes appear larger, orchestral compositions, explosions, whoosh, bright and bold colors for hero’s and darker colors for villains or troubled characters
Narrative Convention: Structure and Roles	A hero’s journey, origin story, dual identity
Conventional Representations	A tall white man, powers, symbols,
Themes and Ideological Codes	Power, justice, morality

 

Activity 2:

It was a regular day. Then a problem occurs, and a villain is up to something. The hero finds out, goes to save the day, starts losing or struggling, then finds a way to out smart the villain and ends up winning the fight and saving the world. It usually ends with the hero winning and the world going back to how they were.

Activity:

The terrorist attack promoted the government to take drastic political action and inspired Americans to feel new cultural anxieties. Literature and popular culture tried to make a sense of such an unprecedented event. Superhero stories are well-suited to deconstruct and critique American society after after 9/11 through depictions of power and the question of how people with powers fit into society. These superhero stories show how difficult it was for Americans when they faced the attack and how they have adjusted to the reality as there were actions taken to provide security, and they failed.

 

Activity 3:

‘Old’	‘New’	What has been done differently when comparing the ‘old’ and ‘new’ versions of these series	Why?
X Men (1,2,3)	X Men (First class and Days of Future Past)	Introduced a new generation of X-Men and offers a different tone.	To deconstruct and re-innovate
Wolverine (1,2)		No need for change	Too good
Spider-man (1,2,3)	The Amazing Spider-Man (1,2)	Recast Peter Parker and changed his love interest	Keep character fresh, engage new generation, better audience reception
Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin	Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Returns	Much darker, visceral superhero	A dissagreement

 

Notes

·      The superhero film has proved to be one of the most financially
lucrative genres in modern Hollywood

·      Television has a long history of success with the genre both in
animation and live action with a version of Superman being offered
to each generation since the 1950s and the 1960s Batman and Robin
remains one of the most famous of all TV programs across
generations.

·      Superhero films p as reactionary and conservative

 

·      Genre - Institution and Audience:

Genres provide a clear framework for production, so institutions find them useful. Genres use codes and conventions, and so institutions can write their stories and create the look and feel of their products with an awareness of what has gone before.

 

·      Audiences like the familiarity that genres provide as being able to
predict the way a film or TV series will play out can be reassuring

·      If the codes are repeated and followed too closely, audiences may find the product clichéd and boring. On the other hand, if the institution subverts the codes and conventions to provide the audience with something unexpected, they could fail to meet the audience’s expectations and cause disappointment

·      genres exist within the context of ‘economic relations and practices’ so institutions are always tying to find a balance between familiarity and innovation when creating genre texts. This is to try to maximize the possibility of success. This creates a relationship between institution and audience and the way a genre is approached by the audience and the institution is based on a negotiation between the two.

·      Genre is a key concept within media language that should form the bedrock of your analysis. At A2 you should begin looking at genre critically, linking it with other theoretical approaches, such as structuralism

·      The superhero genre must fit in with the dominant values of the day if audiences are going to be able to relate to such a fantastical story

·      Superhero’s comics first became popular in the 1930’s. Superheroes appeared in animated and live action serials at the cinema as early as
the 1940s

·      Genres replicate cultural myths and fears and by addressing them within stories a culture is able to play out those fears and concerns

·      Genres offer ideological reassurance when the narratives offer a resolution that addresses these fears and especially when the fears are overcome.

·      Conventional superhero texts tend to show the hero defeating the enemy, so this is often seen as one of the more reassuring of genres

·      Several theorists see that genres tend to follow the same pattern of development. Schatz, for example uses the following terms to show how genres are dynamic and that they go through a cycle

·      They receive ideological closure when the source of their fear is vanquished as this reinforces their perspective but also offers a solution to what worries them. This helps the producers too as the generic formula promotes the preferred reading of a text and prevents audiences from ‘reading against the grain’ (Fiske)

 

The Theory Applied to the Superhero Genre

• Innovation: The visual codes for the superhero genre were largely established via the comic books. As soon as film and TV began to use the comic book characters other codes and conventions regarding the presentation of the genre in moving image were set. This can be seen in the early superhero shorts of the 1940s.

• Classical: By the 1950s the superhero genre could be seen to be in its classical stage with the codes and conventions being replicated in the film and TV programmes of the time.

• Parody: Batman (1966) was intentionally funny and camp and wouldn’t let its audience take the superhero too seriously. It had an ironic tone that flagged up the daft nature of the genre and allowed the audience to enjoy the awareness of that. After Batman, the classical and parodic versions of the genre were largely located in children’s animation, from Spider-Man whose animated adventures were on TV from the late 1960s, to the less than serious versions of the genre in Mighty Mouse (a perennially popular cartoon first made in the 1940s), Atom Ant (from the late 60s), Captain Caveman (from the late 70s) amongst many, many more.

• Deconstruction: Superman (1978) started a new cycle in the superhero genre with technology leading the innovation with special effects creating more realistic visual ‘miracles. Both the Superman series and Tim Burton’s Batman franchise treated the fantastic world of the superhero seriously as in the classical era but they also used the camp comedy and a tongue-in-cheek approach of parody showing how the genre had been deconstructed and repackaged in an attempt to revitalize the genre and help it find a new audience - successfully in the case of these two franchises. This brings the genre back to a period of innovation when new ideas and new developments create interesting new ideas within the genre

• The Cycle Continues: After 1997’s Batman and Robin received a less than positive reception, the genre again needed to deconstruct and re-innovate. The next stage of the genre’s development was the rise of Marvel Studios with The X Men (2000) and Spider-Man in 2002 and DC’s return with Batman Begins in 2005 and Superman Returns in 2006. These series have themselves been deconstructed once again. DC’s X-Men: First Class (2011) introduced a new generation of X-Men and offers a different tone to the first three films. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) recast Peter Parker and changed his love interest whilst Chris Nolan’s Batman offers a much darker, visceral superhero than the one in the 60s and the 90s. Perhaps the parody and deconstruction of indie superheroes has moved the genre on more quickly than in the past although Marvel can be seen to be playing it safe with its relatively conventional and classical Avengers series - particularly the Captain America films – but they also offer some parody within Iron Man (2008) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).

·       Schatz says that during the innovative and classical parts of a genre’s development, genres are ‘transparent’ - that is the audience does not see the genre, rather they ‘look through it’ to the story being told. During the parody and deconstruction phases genres become ‘opaque’ - audiences look at the form itself. They are aware of the genre rather than just the story being told. Deconstruction is a crucial time because if there is no successful deconstruction of the genre there cannot be a return to innovation and the genre may (sometimes temporarily) disappear as it cannot move beyond parody, Sometimes a genre disappears for a while and then comes back at the innovation stage (horror has done this many times). Sometimes a genre struggles to re-innovate itself and then it can struggle to find an audience.

·       Superhero films offer a range of pleasures for the audience from empathy, catharsis and escapism to narrative and ideological reassurance and the simple gratifications of the visual spectacle and visceral reaction. The fact that we continue to go to see them at the cinema, tune in to TV programs and buy the DVDs means that media producers will continue to provide us with more superhero products. Of course, once we get bored and if institutions do not deconstruct the genre in ways that appeal to us the genre will go into decline. The swift and almost constant reinventions of the genre we have seen since the early 2000s, media institutions are working hard to try to make sure that does not happen.