This week in class our topic was a continuation from last week’s on genre; our lecture moved past the formation of conventions and focused on its cycle and the effect it has on the superhero film. We watched Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass (2009) as an example to the third stage of revisionism and the conventions it exploits for purpose of irony.
To begin, genre is explained, by Louis Gianetti and Jim Leach, as films “that are immediately recognizable through their iconography, motifs that become associated through repetition” (52). It is always traced back to Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903), as it was the first western ever made, a genre not unlike that of the superhero. Both deal with isolated individuals with a penchant for social do-good following specific conventions that have become altered as film has progressed through history. To point out more similarities, the western, like the superhero film, is also rooted in convenience store material.
The reading that supplements the lecture, titled “Introduction: Once Upon a Time Once Again,” is an interesting article that provides the history of the evolution of the superhero and the interpretation readers provide through its progression. They dissect what they consider to be “canonical and non-canonical” in regards to changed material in order to help presence its integrity. The author emphasizes the point of change where a superhero becomes revamped while staying true to source content. He utilizes examples where it has enhanced the original content, like that of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, where its serves a new vehicle for “superhero relevance.” It adds a new gritty realism that was not seen to that point. He also provides examples where it was harbored conventions taking it to a point where it provides no variety and diminished the product, like the bifurcation of Superman into two separate entities of red and blue.
All of this can be applied to our adaptation of Powers because Michael Bendis takes conventions and subverts them. He does not alter them to the point of irony like in Kick-Ass but to point where he presents something not considered a-typical of the superhero medium. In the graphic novel, the world is created around the notion that superheroes are a common phenomenon although in the way that they exist without being called attention to. The protagonists of the novel have no powers alienating them from the world at hand creating a paradox not seen in most comics. It inverts the notion of isolation usually attributed to the superhero; however, the ones singled out are regular human beings. Although this is not a radical revision, he creates a new approach to the genre connecting the audience with something not ultimately available.
Works Cited
Giannetti, Louis D., and Jim Leach. Understanding Movies. Toronto: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006. Print.
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