Read more
Zusatztext This is a timely and entertaining volume that will prove very useful in the development of genre courses in the next few years as the superhero genre finds its place in taught modules across film and media programmes. The work is scholarly and well referenced in ways that open it to further reading and research! but accessible to undergraduate readers. The author takes an epistemically specific approach that is not inappropriate given the avowed focus on the MCU specifically! rather than the superhero genre on the whole or its historical roots. As such! the range of contemporary readings on terrorism! conflict! and the power structures of the twenty first century (mainly American) is again both timely and informative. Intellectually! the breaking of the MCU into its industrially determined 'phases' again focuses the chronology but also opens new arenas of interrogation. The 'phase two' section demonstrates the degree to which the frames of reference change between 2008 and 2013! freeing the franchise (and scholarly debate) from some of the immediate trauma narrative tropes of the first phase! and allowing the discussion to delve into some of the more liminal spaces of the MCU! such as in Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of the Galaxy on gender and fantasy. The final section on the recent television incarnations of the franchise is useful without delving too deeply into the political economy of transmedia in the Netflix age (which is another topic entirely) Informationen zum Autor Terence McSweeney is senior lecturer in Media Arts and Technology at Southampton Solent University. He is the author of The War on Terror and American Film: 9/11 Frames per Second' (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), Beyond the Frame: The Films and Film Theory of Andrei Tarkovsky (Aporetic Press, 2015) and the co-editor of Millennial Cinema: Memory in Global Film (Wallflower, 2012). Klappentext Avengers Assemble! explores the cinematic and televisual branches of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from a diverse range of critical perspectives. Beginning with Iron Man! the book considers them both as embodiments of the changing blockbuster film and as affective cultural artifacts that are immersed in the turbulent political climate of their era. Zusammenfassung Avengers Assemble! explores the cinematic and televisual branches of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from a diverse range of critical perspectives. Beginning with Iron Man, the book considers them both as embodiments of the changing blockbuster film and as affective cultural artifacts that are immersed in the turbulent political climate of their era. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgements Prologue: The Heroes We Need Right Now?: Explaining 'The Age of the Superhero' Introduction: Superheroes in the New Millennium and 'The Example of America' PHASE ONE 1. 'That's how Dad did it! that's how America does it ? and it's worked out pretty well so far': The Stark Doctrine in Iron Man and Iron Man 2 2. Allegorical Narratives of Gods and Monsters: Thor and The Incredible Hulk 3. State Fantasy and the Superhero: (Mis)Remembering World War II in Captain America: The First Avenger 4. 'Seeing ? still working on believing!': The Ethics and Aesthetics of Destruction in The Avengers PHASE TWO 5. 'Nothing's been the same since New York': Ideological Continuity and Change in Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World 6. 'The world has changed and none of us can go back': The Illusory Moral Ambiguities of the Post-9/11 Superhero in Captain America: The Winter Soldier 7. Blurring the Boundaries of Genre and Gender in Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man 8. 'Isn't that why we fight? So we can end the fight and go home?': The Enduring American Monomyth in Avengers: Age of Ultron THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE ON TELEVISION 9. 'What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for?': The MCU on the Small Screen i...
