Body Issues in Wonder Woman 90–100 (1994–1995): Good Girls, Bad Girls, Macho Men
- Submitting institution
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Manchester Metropolitan University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 162357
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- The Woman Fantastic in Contemporary American Media Culture
- Publisher
- University Press of Mississippi
- ISBN
- 9781496808714
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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E - Media
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter establishes a model for analysing female bodies in superhero comics. It foregrounds the need to develop ways of interpreting comics as a specific medium within popular culture rather than aligned with cinematic theoretical models and departs from and adapts existing models for cultural analysis. Thinking about spectatorship in relation to the representation of the sexualised female body, I propose that cinematic models since the 1970s of the gaze, deriving from Laura Mulvey’s (1974) seminal analysis, are inadequate when applied to the analysis of comics. My argument is based on the comics form as static whereas Mulvey argues that her model is specific to cinema. Using an analysis of the comics page aligned with Turner’s somatic approach to the body in consumer culture, I illustrate the body can be read within its cultural context. Such a reading employs the specificity of the comics form to explore the body beyond the limitations of gaze theory. Examples of the gendered body presented in Wonder Woman comics from the 1990s are read in terms of these ideas and located historically in relation to contemporary discourses of the body within a period in which gender characteristics are exaggerated. Using this analytical analysis, the female body is constructed within consumerism and public relations in addition to patriarchal discourses. The chapter thus presents a clear research imperative within the field of comic studies, with an original take on how to understand the representation of the gendered body in this context. The chapter involves a series of close readings of comic examples, reinforcing a clear relationship between theoretical sources, on the one hand and primary cultural sources on the other. The chapter is published by an American University Press. The editor, Elyce Helford is an important researcher in the area of fantasy heroines.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -