Assignment 2 Part A by Carson Dumais

By: Carson Dumais –

This picture of a fan dressed as a store bought Thor outfit was taken on April 22, 2012 by Rick Chung at the first annual Fan Expo in Vancouver. This festivity was held at the Vancouver Convention Centre West. This particular outfit has key attributes associated with it which consist of the classic cape, long hair, helmet and of course the hammer and suit. These attributes are all essential when dressing up as Thor (especially the bigger male body and hammer) as without them many could get confused as to who he is trying to impersonate. The person who dressed up as Thor in this picture is pretty strong already and has “Thor” like manly characteristics which is needed to be him. This character type is very common at these events as well as the cosplay community as almost all the male superheroes are put out to have perfect abs, height and fitness; Many males dress up as these superheroes to show masculinity and also have fun while doing it. An example of this from “The Modern Superhero in Film and Television” Jeffrey A. Brown stated “men are overly masculine in the genre; men are overrepresented as both protagonists and as fans and women are oversexualized as objects of desire rather than as independent characters.” To sum up Browns’ words, he is stating how superheroes have been given a supersexualized version of the male and female bodies; Basically stating male superheroes are huge and have unattainable muscles whereas women superheroes have the perfect “hourglass” figure and are super sexulized. This can relate to the male in the picture as he is dressing up as Thor, a superhero who is extremely fit and strong which many humans can’t obtain. The reason they dress up as strong superheroes is possibly because they are afraid of being looked down upon as “less” than others and also to not look out of place. This person more than likely dressed up as Thor because it is one of his favorite superheroes, as well as he already has the main characteristics Thor has (tall and long hair). These oversexualized and masculinized heroes are awful for generations who look up to them as they give nothing but an unrealistic body type to try and be, many kids and teenagers look at them and want to be like them; which is simply impossible. In Social Thought and Research they stated how “men must consider the effect their decisions have on female consumers of the product (Taylor 2007; Yabroff 2008)”. This is important as the male dominated comic book/superhero industry never thinks of what females think of their characters, leading to a very negative and sexualized look of women characters. 

Sources

Avery-Natale, E. (2013). An Analysis of Embodiment among Six Superheroes in DC Comics. Social Thought & Research, 32, 71–106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24642398

Brown, J. A. (2019, December 20). The Modern Superhero in Film and Television. Canadian Journal of Film Studies. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/cjfs.28.2.2019-0045?journalCode=cjfs.