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Love, Sex, Gender, and Superheroes
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2022
About this book
Impossibly muscular men and voluptuous women parade around in revealing, skintight outfits, and their romantic and sexual entanglements are a key part of the ongoing drama. Such is the state of superhero comics and movies, a genre that has become one of our leading mythologies, conveying influential messages about gender, sexuality, and relationships.
Love, Sex, Gender, and Superheroes examines a full range of superhero media, from comics to films to television to merchandising. With a keen eye for the genre’s complex and internally contradictory mythology, comics scholar Jeffrey A. Brown considers its mixed messages. Superhero comics may reinforce sex roles with their litany of phallic musclemen and slinky femme fatales, but they also blur gender binaries with their emphasis on transformation and body swaps. Similarly, while most heroes have heterosexual love interests, the genre prioritizes homosocial bonding, and it both celebrates and condemns gendered and sexualized violence.
With examples spanning from the Golden Ages of DC and Marvel comics up to recent works like the TV series The Boys, this study provides a comprehensive look at how superhero media shapes our perceptions of love, sex, and gender.
Love, Sex, Gender, and Superheroes examines a full range of superhero media, from comics to films to television to merchandising. With a keen eye for the genre’s complex and internally contradictory mythology, comics scholar Jeffrey A. Brown considers its mixed messages. Superhero comics may reinforce sex roles with their litany of phallic musclemen and slinky femme fatales, but they also blur gender binaries with their emphasis on transformation and body swaps. Similarly, while most heroes have heterosexual love interests, the genre prioritizes homosocial bonding, and it both celebrates and condemns gendered and sexualized violence.
With examples spanning from the Golden Ages of DC and Marvel comics up to recent works like the TV series The Boys, this study provides a comprehensive look at how superhero media shapes our perceptions of love, sex, and gender.
Author / Editor information
JEFFREY A. BROWN is a professor in the Department of Popular Culture in the School of Critical and Cultural Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. His many books include The Modern Superhero in Film and Television and Panthers, Hulks and Ironhearts: Marvel, Diversity, and the 21st Century Superhero (Rutgers University Press).
Reviews
"From porn parodies to Bat man-caves, from hidden Hulk phalluses to robots in revealing negligees, Jeffrey A. Brown demonstrates convincingly that superhero narratives are filled not just with superfeats, but with supergender."
— Noah Berlatsky, author of Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics“It’s a bird, plane. . . No, it’s actually a phallic-bulged Man of Steel, ultrasonic orgasming Black Canary, jester in hot-pants Harley, vanilla romancing Spidey, a gay lip-locking Iceman, queer Batcave encounters, and out-and-proud Young Avengers. With his usual superhuman infrared analytic prowess, Jeffrey Allan Brown makes visible to the human eye a superhero universe that at once feeds straight fanboy wish fulfillment fantasies of square-jawed virility and radically troubles mainstreamed norms of love, sex, sexuality, and gender!”
— Frederick Luis Aldama, author of Eisner Award-winning Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics"We know that superhero comics are concerned with masculinity, but Jeffrey Brown makes a powerful case for understanding superhero comics as also foundationally about love and sex. Perhaps this accessible text with its impressive breadth will finally put to bed the idea that these works are only selling adolescent fantasies about manhood. Creators and fans consistently use superhero comics to explore very adult ideas about intimacy. Adding one more important volume to his prolific body of work, Brown yet again demonstrates that he is a skilled reader of gender in popular culture."
— Rebecca Wanzo, author of The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging"While scholarship on superheroes is prolific, Jeffrey A. Brown has succeeded several times in finding an as-yet-underexplored niche to unpack. . . . Clarity of objective characterizes his work in general, which is scholarly and incisive yet accessible to more than just an academic audience. His writing is ideal for teaching undergrads, asking them to think critically."— Journal of American Culture
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Introduction: Signifying Love, Sex, and Gender
1 -
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1 The Visible and the Invisible
20 -
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2 Women Dark and Dangerous
37 -
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3 Secrets of the Batcave
59 -
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4 Marriage, Domesticity, and Superheroes (for Better or Worse)
77 -
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5 It Starts with a Kiss
92 -
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6 Even an Android Has Feelings
115 -
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7 Super Fluidity
138 -
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8 KRAKK! WHACK! SMACK!
159 -
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9 Pleasure, Pain, Climaxes, and Little Deaths
184 -
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Conclusion: Love, Sex, Gender, and Superheroes in Real Life
207 -
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References
217 -
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Index
227 -
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About the Author
233
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
December 21, 2021
eBook ISBN:
9781978825291
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781978825291
Keywords for this book
superheroes; sex; gender studies; comic studies; popular culture; American studies; women's studies; LGBTQ studies; DC; marvel comic; comics studies; pop culture; cultural studies; womens studies; womens' studies; lgbt; lgbtq; lgbt community; lgbtqia; lit crit; literary criticism; comics and graphic novels; graphic novel studies; art; social science; feminist; feminist studies; human sexuality; sexuality; sexual orientation; superhero comics; superhero movies; Marvel; Marvel comics; The Boys; femme fatale; female sexuality; superhero studies; Batman; Batcave; marriage; domesticity; queer; straight; transgender; gender and sexuality; violence; comic book violence; sexual assault
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
