From Zero to My Own Hero: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis of the Woman Superhero's Challenge to Humanity in Watchmen and Jessica Jones

Simonsen, Louise Stenbak ; Thorsen, Sabina Kox

4. term

English, Master

2020

2020-06-01

1322 pages

The image of women in the superhero genre has for many years been dominated by how it is produced as a mirror to the masculine. However, this image is now beginning to be disrupted by feminist attempts at diversifying representations. This paper aims to examine ​Watchmen and the first season of​ Jessica Jones​ as cultural representations and new voices of women which materialise the category as a transgressive, challenging force to assumedly fixed structures of gender, race and sexuality. As Jessica Jones speaks from a White feminist perspective, and Watchmen from a Black feminist perspective, we explore how the texts can be combined to expand the category of women. The texts show the discourses, regimes of truth, and forms of violence which seek to regulate women, and in exposing these tools of domination, the texts disrupt the fixed categories and definitions of women and question the limits of performativity. In spite of women being shown to be materialised beyond the phallogocentric economy of signification, the two series still limit gender to a biological determinism that assumes a normativity of social structures and relations of power. However, because the texts are voices of women, they are the first step of many towards a multitude of untold, endless possibilities of gender and racial representation.

The image of women in the superhero genre has for many years been dominated by how it is produced as a mirror to the masculine. However, this image is now beginning to be disrupted by feminist attempts at diversifying representations. This paper aims to examine ​Watchmen and the first season of​ Jessica Jones​ as cultural representations and new voices of women which materialise the category as a transgressive, challenging force to assumedly fixed structures of gender, race and sexuality. As Jessica Jones speaks from a White feminist perspective, and Watchmen from a Black feminist perspective, we explore how the texts can be combined to expand the category of women. The texts show the discourses, regimes of truth, and forms of violence which seek to regulate women, and in exposing these tools of domination, the texts disrupt the fixed categories and definitions of women and question the limits of performativity. In spite of women being shown to be materialised beyond the phallogocentric economy of signification, the two series still limit gender to a biological determinism that assumes a normativity of social structures and relations of power. However, because the texts are voices of women, they are the first step of many towards a multitude of untold, endless possibilities of gender and racial representation.

Køn ; feminisme ; race ; medie ; film ; superhelte ; populærkultur ; popkultur

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