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Stefanopoulou, Evdokia. "Iron Man as Cyborg: Between masculinities." Gender Forum 62 2017. Accessed 20 May. 2019. <http://genderforum.org/ ... uperheroes_Complete.pdf>. Added by: joachim (20/05/2019, 21:00) Last edited by: joachim (22/05/2019, 16:53) |
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| Resource type: Web Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed BibTeX citation key: Stefanopoulou2017 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "Iron Man", Adaptation, Cyborg, Film adaptation, Gender, Superhero, USA Creators: Stefanopoulou Collection: Gender Forum |
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Since the turn of the millennium there has been a mass proliferation of superhero movies. From the appearance of the fist Spider-Man film in 2002 since the latest installment in the Captain America series (2016), superhero movies have a tremendous popular and economic success. These popular texts have also a massive cultural impact by articulating their representations and ideologies in a global audience consisting of different national, racial, class and gender identities. The gender issues in superhero movies are often accompanied by the common observation that the great majority of superheroes are men and the rare presence of women is marked by their placement in a supporting role, thus reproducing a patriarchal ideology. Although this phenomenon can indeed be characterized as an excessive demonstration of masculine power and superheroes can be seen as mythical figures of a technological patriarchy, I would also suggest a different approach, an antithetical reading. This approach examines the overstated “technological sublime in human form” (Wasielewski 66) as a sort of divergent embodiment of subjectivity, one that contains the notion of the cyborg as described by Donna Harraway, one containing its own blurring of the ontological boundaries (161), therefore projecting its own existence as a social construction. Deploying this approach, I would examine the gender representations in the Iron Man trilogy (2008, 2010, 2013) not as demonstration of patriarchal power, but as masculinity in crisis, a masculinity undermined by its excessive technological look and its status as a constructed fabrication. A close analysis of the three texts and a special focus on gender representations will demonstrate how the technological subjectivity of Iron Man and the ironic performance by Robert Downey Jr. actually undermines the surface super-masculinity of the character. Finally, some general conclusion from the above analysis will be drawn.
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