War is for American (super)men: Narratives of conflict and gender in the Captain America franchise

Abstract

The way conflict and gender are discursively constructed is influenced, in part, by media representations. An influential entertainment complex like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) can, therefore, play a major role in the way conflict, gender, and their intersection are understood. This thesis explores Marvel’s representations of those topics in the Captain America franchise by analyzing the three movies and two TV shows in it using the methods of narratology and neoformalism with the aim of understanding not just which meanings are assigned to conflict and gender but also in what way those meanings are constructed. The results reveal that the Captain America franchise can be used to manufacture consent for American foreign policy and interventionism and justify oppressive gender relations, thus participating in the perpetuation of American hegemony and performing a form of cultural violence.