The Correlation between Heroes and Heroines in Superhero Movies

In commercials of Super Bowl 46, the trailer clip of the new movie, The Avengers, has been opened to the public. The commercial showed that the team of superheroes from Marvle comics such as the Hulk, the Iron Man, and Captain America will rescue the world this coming May. Even though most superheroes in the movie are male characters that have muscular builds and supernatural powers, there is a female character, Black Widow, who has a sexy body and foxiness. Why are superheroes male characters and do heroines support them in most of the hero movies? The following article is dealing with this topic.

In the article “Sweetheart, This Ain’t Gender Studies”: Sexism and Superheroes, Carol A. Stabile (2009) wrote that hero movies and television series focus on male heroes who protect children and females. In addition, female characters of these shows are sub-characters and their sexuality is overemphasized. To be more specific, the author pointed out that heroes in recent movies and television shows, unlike the past, are getting the bigger diversity of characteristics while heroines show us “the constant recycling of sexist stereotypes” (p.88). Moreover, through the television show Heroes, whose main characters are “international, multiracial, multilingual casts,” the author argued that female characters of the show just support male characters or are helped by them. On the other hand, men characters represent stereotypes which prevent invasions like 9.11 and protect the fears of females and children.  

As many researchers explained, gender socialization in childhood is affected by family members, friends, and schools as well as mass media. Although family members, especially parents, might influence gender socialization of their children when they are infants and in childhood, teenagers are becoming more influenced by mass media. For example, we can easily watch media content which highlights sexism of women or masculinity of men, including television shows, movies, and commercials every day and everywhere. On the basis of other research in gender studies, the author identified gender stereotypes of mass media by using the specific example, Heroes.

On top of that, I think this article was dealing with a very interesting topic and I agree with the author’s opinion that female characters lack in hero movies and television series. From classical literature such as Greek and Roman mythologies to recent television shows, stereotypes of gods/goddesses or heroes/heroines have been fixed in our minds. In the article, the author mentioned that the cultural change might command new stereotypes of heroes and heroines in mass media content. I not only hope that but also think that maybe new media contents can lead to new cultural change as well as they reflect social situations.

Boys in Blue and Girls in Pink

When babies are born, boys should wear blue baby-suits and girls should wear pink shoes. When babies become two or three years old, boys play with tank and airplane toys, while girls play with Barbie and princess dolls.

I have been to a baby shower of a girl in the United States. The whole room was decorated in pink and presents from other people were almost always pink. For another example, my friend has a boy, three years old, and his room is decorated with blue and green. I thought the blue and pink for kids are a kind of formula for American parents.

Well, is it different in Korea? No. Absolutely, No. If a pregnant woman goes to a doctor to ask which sex her baby will have, the doctor probably tells a mom the baby would like a pink color as a metaphor. And then, parents should prepare pink stuff for their new baby-girl. If you would present a blue baby-suit, maybe you could get some reputation you have a poor sense. It looks like there is a strict rule where baby-girls should like pink and baby-boys should like blue in the whole world.

In my memory, I played with Barbie dolls when I was a kid. My younger brother played with mini cars. Surprisingly, these days, kids also play like my brother and me. I do not remember any lesson from my parents or teachers to play with dolls not cars or airplanes. My parents gave me dolls and doll houses and they gave cars to my brother. That was it. Of course, my girl friends did not play with cars but dolls and some cute stuff. I think I learned invisible rules about the difference between boys and girls. 

I watched a video on YouTube two months ago. Let’s watch this video.

The cute girl is raising a question about pink and superhero marketing. How smart! She recognized that girls do not have to like pink stuff and boys have more options. According to Susan D. Witt (1997) in "Parental influence on children’s socialization to gender roles," children are influenced by family members, friends, school and media to learn gender stereotyped behavior. In other words, boys and girls grow up as "immovable gender stereotype." I think that our kids should allow to get various chances in their taste regardless their gender. 

Activity – Like a man

I want to introduce my experiences of how I could learn men's manner in the United States and try them for myself.

I think that there are the different etiquettes in Korea and America when people use public transportation. In Korea, men give their seats to not women but elderly people and pregnant women. Even though a young lady, wearing a short skirt and high-heels, stands next to a young man, he does not usually give his seat to the lady. It is not a required manner for a man. However, I realized that male students in America naturally give their seats to female students on shuttle buses to campus. The first time a strange student gave his seat to me, I said, “Oh, really? Thank you so much, but I am fine” because it was not a familiar situation for me. The problem was the student was obviously flustered. After that, whenever other male students yielded up their seats, I accepted it thankfully. As a foreigner, it seemed like very necessary manner of men and women in the United States.

The other thing is holding a door. I thought it is natural that a person who is close to the door holds it for other people who come in or out. Therefore, I usually hold doors for other people regardless whether they are my friends or not. But sometimes some men wait for me to come into the door first because I am a woman. In some cases, I tried to hold doors for men waiting for them to come in first, but in most cases, I failed. As expected, whenever I tried, I could see they felt curious about my action.

In these experiences, I think what men do and women to seem fixed. The interesting thing is that those fixed man jobs and woman jobs in America and Korea might be different slightly.  

Myself between Stereotype and Individual Characteristic

What is my stereotype? Is there any gap between I am consider myself and a stereotype people thinking about me? Am I a kind of stereotyped individual? Or am I different to the typical stereotype? At first, let’s define what a stereotype is. According to the Collins Dictionary, a stereotype is a fixed general image or set of characteristics that a lot of people believe represent a particular type of person or thing.

A stereotype is often considered to be connected with the characteristics of race and ethnicity. The United States of America is one of the multiracial countries so that there are so many stereotypes which are from race and ethnicity. For example, Latinos are considered to be optimistic and enjoy dance and music more than other ethnics. In addition, Americans make jokes with stereotypes about of race and ethnicity. For instance, a joke about Jew is a common source in comedy shows. As an international student, I feel this is very strange because Korea is a kind of single-race country.

Of course, in the case of Korea, there exist stereotypes from different provinces. For example, the people of Chungcheong-do province, central region of South Korea, are known as speaking and acting slower than other provinces. Sometimes, comedians exaggerate the characteristic of the Chuncheong-do people in Korean TV shows. Like this example, I know Texans are known as big sports fans and people say everything is bigger in Texas. However, when I talk to my friends about this, some of my Texan friends say they do not fit in this stereotype. Sometimes, they ask me whether I think about Texas people like that. I think that in many cases, people do not understand or accept their stereotypes that other people see them in general images of the groups in which they exist.

Meanwhile, many stereotypes about gender exist. Let’s imagine this scene as an example. In a sports bar, many people are watching a football game and drinking. who do you think they are? Are they men or women? Maybe you just saw the scene as a bunch of men who are watching the game and sometimes yelling some words while drinking beer. People usually consider that men are big sports fans. I think that Korean people think this more than American people. However, I am a woman and I love watching baseball games. I am the representative example, my characteristic and stereotype of my group Asian woman, do not match each other. I have many experiences of who people kept glaring at me in baseball stadiums when I went there by myself. Maybe “the sports-fan stereotype” is men in Korea. I should get used to this in Korea, of course sometimes it was very stressful for me.

I think that we involuntarily try to understand other people through stereotypes of groups in which they are included. In most cases, those perceptions can help strange people easily understanding others, although the stereotypes make us uncomfortable when those stereotypes conflict with our own characteristics. Let’s think about my stereotype. Are stereotypes in my race, ethnic, gender, and job match with my individual characteristics?