THE SUPERHERO GENRE
Hatfield, C., Heer, J. and Worcester, K. (2013) The Superhero Reader. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi
This book analyses the superhero genre in its original form – comics. While it does not relate especially to film, it is an important addition to the project. The book takes into consideration history, genre theory, culture and identity and examines each aspect in great detail. The book offers a deeper understanding of the superhero genre as a whole and makes it easier to connect the psychological aspect of colour theory to superhero films. Section 3 of the book opens with a discussion about how this genre approaches the issues of culture and identity – “While superhero storytelling offers a window onto the (recent) past and can provide grist for rigorous, theory-inflected investigation, superhero tales also represent a means by which individuals can interrogate and articulate their own feelings, experiences, and social relations.” (Hatfield, Heer, Worcester 2013, p. 200). Focusing on storytelling rather than on the characters alone, the author opens the discussion to a broader audience, suggesting that the heroes are not the only part of this genre the audience is allowed to identify with. This book is not only useful for its way of dealing with the issue of identification, but for the clear way it outlines the genre from its beginnings, in comic books, to what it is now.
Barker, M (1989) Comics: Ideology, Power & the Critics. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
This book focuses on claims regarding the power mass media has over the people that consume it. The author investigates this idea by looking at the influence comics have over their readers by analysing different case studies on the subject. While the whole book itself might stray away from the subject of this project, Chapter 5 is quite helpful to look at. The chapter deals with the concept of identification and argues against different claims that believed comics were causing children to be more aggressive, as the heroes they identified with were doing nothing but fight. It is an interesting chapter to consider when looking at the superhero genre with the “cinema is a mirror” theory in mind. It comes as a good counterargument to the idea that everyone sees superheroes as good, and it does seem closer to the way films are beginning to portray them more and more – not as bad, but as flawed, as humans.
As a side note, I want to explain the "cinema is a mirror" theory. Jacques Lacan, an important psychoanalyst from the 1980s, talks about how a child develops his ego by using his imagination - the child identifies himself by looking in the mirror in the same way spectators identify themselves when looking at a film. Considering this theory, we can say that that is how the cinema started - as a mirror for the outside world. However, as cinema evolved, it turned more into a window - the spectator is fully aware of the fact that he is watching a film. Although he realises that his own being is not represented on screen, he can identify with certain traits portrayed and begins to learn from what he is watching.
The belief that cinema acts as a mirror for the viewers has been since analysed and deconstructed countless of times, but it is, none the less, the basis of psychoanalytic film theory. Further research leads into Freud’s theory about the id, ego and the super-ego, which in turn leads to Carl Jung’s ideology about the four personality archetypes.
