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- Volume 10, Issue 1, 2021
Film, Fashion & Consumption - Superheroes, Apr 2021
Superheroes, Apr 2021
- Editorial
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- Articles
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No tights, no flights: Constructing the wardrobe of television superheroes
More LessSuperheroes have always been defined by their dual lives, but analysis of the ways dress has informed characterization is often limited to just their superhero costumes, despite qualitative evidence that comic book heroes are depicted in civilian clothes at least half as often. Contemporary depictions of superheroes on television spend an even greater percentage of time dressed in civilian garments. This article combines both adaptation studies and industry studies approaches to discuss the overlooked influence of civilian clothing in conceiving the television superhero – examining both comic book source materials and the process of costume design through the intrinsic constraints of industry television production. Through case studies into the DC comics Arrowverse, a series of interconnected programmes aired on the CW Network, and Marvel’s Runaways, the Hulu adaptation about teenage superheroes without costumes, as well as interviews with costume designers and actors, this article recognizes strong visual similarities across programmes between pseudo-character archetypes, and presents a de facto formula for analysing civilian superhero costume design. The resulting narrative reveals a struggle within superhero civilian costume design: finding the balance between serving semiotics or characterization, and building a sense of realism and individual choice within costuming choices from within hegemonic structures.
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Power dressing: The sari in Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani
More LessThe heroine of Kahaani, in taking on a powerful persona in the quintessentially female garment of the sari, represents a sharp contrast with conventional ways of dressing powerful women in western cinematic tradition. There is ample cultural and mythological precedent in India for coding action and violence as female, but Kahaani’s affinity with the contemporary superhero film emerges in an unexpected way in its treatment of costume, specifically the use of the sari as a distinct article of clothing that the heroine assumes only for the first time as she embarks upon the dispensation of justice. Demarcating an ordinary set of clothing from the ‘special’ sari mirrors the superhero division of the everyday person from the heroic one, only here the sari, which is a quotidian form of dress, performs as an exceptional one. The copious symbolic potential of the sari permits this move, while at the same time pointing to many of the tensions and contradictions of life that engage contemporary metropolitan audiences in India. The sari thus functions to help solidify the film’s complex positioning in twenty-first-century Hindi filmmaking.
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- Photo Essay
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Black skin as costume in Black Panther
More LessAs a costume, textile and surface adornment practitioner my research focuses on how skin contributes to the reading of a costume. Black Panther’s (2018) Oscar winning costume by Ruth E. Carter conformation to whilst also breaking traditional superhero costuming tropes feeds directly into my research on reading black skin as heroic. The visual disruption to the limited and negative narratives usually embedded within black skin are subtly challenged by Carter’s use of both black primordial and superhero skin-like costumes to signify the heroic. The costuming of a black superhero and nemesis frame the black body in action away from the negative stereotypes of Bogle’s hypersexual buck. The reading of black skin as heroic underpins the practice’s explorations away from the binary of black and white skin to the many shades of brown the moniker of black represents. It is the repetition of skin as metaphor where both superhero costumed skin and primordial skin demonstrate the multiplicity between superhero, his alter-ego and Bogle’s stereotypes that form the basis of this article. Black skin as costume explores how skin colour, according to Dyer has been used to other the black body and rank it below that of the white body within postcolonial readings. Traditionally systemic racism in action films has seamlessly placed the white body and skin as inherently heroic whilst reading the equivalent black body and skin negatively. My practice explores equity of black and brown skin as strong, precious and powerful so that any costumes, textiles or surface decoration I create would read the same when placed on a black body as they would on a white body.
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- Articles
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Ne Zha’s image transformation in Chinese animation cinema (1961–2019)
By Ni FanThis article analyses Ne Zha’s image evolution through different animated films in the PRC from 1961 to 2019. Three key Ne Zha films are Uproar in Heaven, Ne Zha Conquers the Dragon King and Ne Zha, representing the era of ‘classical Chinese animation’, ‘modern Chinese animation’ and ‘postmodern Chinese animation’, respectively. In 2019, Ne Zha became the summer hit and the highest-grossing Chinese original animation earning ¥5.035 billion at the Chinese box office. Explorations of how classical artistic traditions and legendary stories have been transposed into these films shows that Chinese animation has retreated from the peak of national style in the 1960s and undergone change with globalization’s cultural and ideological impacts. In sum, artistic techniques associated with fine arts film, traditional narrative methods and plot stylization have gradually weakened. Contemporary elements such as Hollywood classic three-act pattern and Japanese comic character relationships and images have significantly influenced Chinese animation in the twenty-first century.
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The many masks of Dr Henry Pym: Alter ego, identity, disability and personality of a founding Avenger
By Jason KahlerThe unique history of Dr Henry ‘Hank’ Pym, better known as the Marvel Comics superhero Ant-Man, and his many varied costumes and alter egos, set him apart from other characters in comic books. Pym’s costumes reflect an uncertain and unstable mental state in ways other costumes do not. Through textual analysis, Pym’s costumes can be understood to represent his personality and a slipping identity that goes beyond the usual coding of superhero costuming. Pym’s consistent remaking of his appearance and identity point to a personality struggling to understand who he is in the context of his own life, a deeper message than was originally intended upon the character’s creation but one that has been explored in his later appearances.
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- Shortcut
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The Indian Superheroine costume: Analysing Indian comics’ first superheroine
More LessComics are an important form of Indian popular culture. Like other forms of popular culture which have engaged with superheroes, male superheroes have dominated the comic book industry in India. Costumes enable the social construction of these characters in comics, determine their characteristic traits and emphasize their gendered roles. Female characters have had to struggle against multiple patriarchal social processes which are integral to the global comics’ culture. Costumes play a critical role in how these characters engage with the overall narrative of the comics. The article analyses the costume of Shakti – Indian comics’ first superheroine. It locates her costume within the broader literature available on graphic novels, comics and costumes. The article attempts to analyse the processes by which Shakti’s costume restricts her to a normative femininity where the power and authority of women become socially acceptable only when they are expressed or asserted without challenging patriarchal social norms.
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