Blog #2-January 28th, 2022
Context
Recently, along with the social empowerment movements of Hollywood, there has come a massive amount of push for movie studios to more accurately represent the greater population, by gender or otherwise. Along with this trend, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has noticeably increased the amount of diversified characters within their film universe from the first Marvel female led movie, Captain Marvel, and first African American led movie, Black Panther.
Black Panther movie poster
credit: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825683/
Captain Marvel movie poster
credit: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154664/
Gap
There are two, separate discussions that currently exist. One focuses on gender representation within MCU films. Obviously, this discussion is almost purely focused on how the female characters are portrayed rather than the volume of which female characters are found in the films. The other discussion was involving racial diversity in MCU films.
I will be addressing both gender and race diversity across multiple movies and comparing all of them. The gap that I will be exploring is attempting to directly compare the two types of diversity. In the current academic conversation, the sources only look at one or the other diversity, but my paper will be looking at both types. Also, my research will give a more quantitative aspect to the conversation that I was unable to find in my initial search online.
Gender Representation
credit: https://stand.ie/toxic-gender-stereotypes-socialisation/
Race representation
credit: https://phdsandpigtails.com/2014/01/07/comps-notes-race-and-representation/
Process
My research method will combine both the traditional qualitative analysis and add a more quantitative element. Every character will then be evaluated on a quantitative basis based on:
How many movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe the character participated in
Overall screen time for the character (imdb)
The screen time a character received as a percentage of the total run time of the film (imdb)
On a qualitative basis:
Interactions with fellow characters (specific dialogue)
Screen time for a character that’s devoted to furthering the plot (main conflict of the movie is established and how much of the given character’s screen time is actually dedicated to the conflict/plot of the film)
Overall character summaries-over the course of starring in multiple feature and solo films, the characters will inevitably change, grow, and evolve
IMDB logo: https://www.imdb.com/
Changes
The changes that I’ve made were to add on another character in the pseudo control group of non-diverse people being Stephen Strange. Thus, I also added Doctor Strange to the list of MCU movies that I’d be analyzing. Also, I decided that the amount of dialogue found in each movie would be an excruciating amount of time to analyze, thus I removed this from the list of qualities I would be analyzing on the quantitative side of my analysis.
Doctor Strange movie poster: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1211837/
Stephen Strange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Strange_(Marvel_Cinematic_Universe)
Progress
Overall, I am analyzing 9 movies and am currently on the fourth. Overall, progress is going slower than expected, but that's fine with me!
Credit for "Marvel Studios" photo: https://www.deseret.com/22524865/marvel-cinematic-universe-mcu