The Contemporary Superhero Film: Projections of Power and Identity

Despite dominating theater screens like never before, the superhero genre remains critically marginalized-ignored at best and more often actively maligned. Terence McSweeney lays out its narrative codes and conventions, expiring why it appeals to diverse audiences and what it has to say about the world in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Unpacking the social, ideological, and cultural content of superhero films, he scrutinizes representations or gender, race, and sexuality...