[ecrea] CfP French Journal Genre en séries: Can heroines escape their gender?

*Can superheroines escape their gender ? <http://genreenseries.weebly.com/>*

by Sophie Bonadé, doctoral student (UEVE/Saclay, SLAM) and Réjane 
Hamus-Vallée,professor (UEVE/Saclay, Centre Pierre Naville)

"Jewel is a great superhero name! »
" Jewel is a stripper's name. »
dialogue in Jessica Jones

In 1938, the first issue of Action Comics featured the character of 
Superman on its cover. Success came fast. Although Superman was not the 
first superhero (Gabilliet 2004), he would become the prototype of the 
American superhero story. As products of mass culture, which today have 
a worldwide influence, superheroes did not confine themselves to comic 
books for long. In 1941,
Superman also reached TV screens through the animation series produced 
by Fleischer Studios (Fleischer 1941). The same year, Adventures of 
Captain Marvel (English and Witney 1941) was published, a serial divided 
into 12 parts. In 1952, the television series Adventures of Superman 
(Syndication, 1952-1958) was the first live-action adaptation of 
Superman's adventures. Many other
superhero story adaptations have since been produced, which soared in 
the early 2000s with many television, film and video game adaptations of 
the stories by the two main publishers of the superhero genre: Marvel 
and DC Comics.
While superheroines were born shortly after Superman (Fantomah in Jungle 
Comic No. 2 in late 1939/early 1940s or The Lady in Red in the early 
1940s, No. 2 in Thrilling Comics), they had more difficulty than their 
male counterparts in being adapted to small (and large) screens, with a 
fairly marked time lag. This issue of Genre en Séries will therefore be 
devoted to the place of superheroines
since their creation and proposes to study them both in comic books and 
through their adaptations in types of media.
Apart from Trina Robbins' books, which provide a fairly broad overview 
of the evolution of superheroines (Robbins 1996) and the place of women 
in the comic-book industry (Robbins and Roniwode 1985; Robbins 1999 ; 
Robbins 2001; Robbins 2013), superheroines are poorly studied, with the 
exception of the most famous of them,WonderWoman (Robinson 2004; Bilat 
2011; Hanley
2014; Bajac-Carter, Jones and Batchelor (eds.) 2014; Zechowski and 
Neumann 2014; Cocca 2016).
Most of the time, superheroines are just mentioned in a book 
(Hassler-Forest 2012) or are sometimes the subject of a specific chapter 
(Gray II 2011; Ducreux 2013). We believe it is necessary to compensate 
for this delay.
If our questioning focuses on superheroines from comic books, this issue 
also aims to question the limits of these characters. Proposing a list 
of definitional, but not essential, characteristics, as
Jean-Marc Lainé has done (in Lainé 2011, we find the following: 
superpowers, costume, secret identity, companions, Achilles' heel, 
founding trauma, adversary and relationship to the city) is not a 
satisfactory definition, as it allows to group under the superhero name 
characters as old as Gilgamesh or Hercules (Reynolds 1994 ; Knowles 
2007). A definition by characteristics must be combined with a 
definition that makes it possible to locate and contextualize the 
characters that are superheroes and superheroines. Is Buffy, the vampire 
slayer (The WB, 1997-2001, UPN, 2001-2003), who has superpowers and 
protects the world by looking after the small town of Sunnydale, a 
superhero? She
is not wearing a suit, but her identity as a killer is a fact she hides 
from her family during the first few seasons. Are the action women of 
1980s cinema - such as Ellen Ripley from the Alien film series (Scott 
1979; Cameron 1986; Fincher 1992; Jeunet 1997) and Sarah Connor from the 
Terminator
franchise (Cameron 1984; Cameron 1991) superheroines, since they are 
fighting to protect humanity?
And what about Max Guevara, the heroine of Dark Angel (Fox, 2000-2002), 
whose genetic heritage was modified during childhood to turn into a 
weapon and who fights as an adult for her right, and that of her fellow 
human beings, to exist: does she not recall the X-Men team of mutants?
This issue therefore proposes to study superheroines as such but also in 
their relationships with their male teammates. From comic books to 
animated image adaptations, the reasons for their relative lesser 
success compared to superheroes is at the heart of our questioning.
Who are the superheroines and where are they today? What place(s) do 
they have in the different media? Who are their audiences? How does the 
transition from comic book to another medium transform, or not, the 
heroine in question? What are their links with superheroes?
Approaches from the different social sciences are welcome in this issue, 
which will focus in particular on the following non-exhaustive areas:

1) Evolution of superheroines
A first approach can focus on the socio-historical context of the 
appearance of these characters in the tradition of Loïse Bilat's work on 
Wonder Woman. When Wonder Woman appeared in 1941, she had physical 
strength similar to Superman's. However, its creatorWilliam Moulton 
Martson, also
endowed her with qualities that he considered intrinsically feminine 
such as softness and charm. This construction of Wonder Woman is 
attributable to William Moulton Martson's essentialist vision, but also 
to the gender relations at the beginning of the Second World War, when 
women were called upon to support the war effort, taking on male roles 
while remaining male supporters.
Superheroine stories have since gone through 70 years of American social 
transformation. The social changes that have taken place since 1941 - 
changes in the status of women, civil rights, feminist movements, 
LGBTIQ+ struggles - have influenced the stories of superheroines. The 
creation and simultaneous broadcasting, between 1975 and 1977, of the 
superhero series The Secret of Isis (CBS, 1975-1977) and Wonder Woman 
(ABC, 1975, CBS, 1977-1979) were made possible by the women's rights 
movements that shook the United States during the Second Wave of 
feminism, but also by the massive entry of women into the paid labour 
market, which turned them into consumers to whom a product can be sold 
(Passerini 2002). In the early 2000s, Jessica Jones, an alcoholic and 
borderline ex-superheroine, was created. Alias (2001-2004, Max Comics), 
the series in which she is the protagonist, is a meta-report that offers 
a reflection on the evolution of superheroines, but also on their 
future. The character's success in comic books but also on the Netflix 
video platform (Netflix, 2015-ajd), where the series has been renewed 
for a third season, supports an unconventional superhero model. 
Nevertheless, Jessica Jones must also question the possibility even for 
a woman to embody a superheroic figure, because the character has 
precisely renounced being a superhero.
How are superheroines representatives of their time? How do superheroine 
stories portray and interact with American social changes in different 
media? And does adaptation make it possible to solve certain "problems" 
posed by superheroines in comics (objectification, use for scriptwriting 
purposes in stories centred on men) or are they reproduced in the target 
medium?

2) Creation, production, mediation and public
In this axis, priority will be given to studies that focus on the 
contexts of these comic books and their adaptations. On the one hand, 
the reception context: which audiences, for which works? Are the 
audiences of superhero and superheroine stories really more masculine? 
How does this audience
influence the content of these superheroic fictions? In 2013, Paul Dini, 
one of the creators of Batman:
The Animated Series (Fox Kids, 1992-1995), attributed the cancellation 
of Young Justice (Cartoon Network, 2010-ajd) and Green Lantern (Cartoon 
Network, 2011-2013) to the overly female audience, which was not good 
for broadcasting channels, as girls are known to buy fewer toys. While the
reasons for this cancellation were never confirmed by the Cartoon 
Network, Paul Dini pointed at the gendered dimension of superhero 
productions that are intended for the youth market in relation to the 
importance of the sale of ancillary products in their profitability.
This also raises the question of the production context: who are the 
people who create these superheroic adventures? Can the gender relations 
that are played out within a television channel, film studio, video game 
production company or comic book publishing house influence its brand 
identity?
The CW channel, for example, which produces many of the current 
superhero television series, was, when it was created in 2006, the 
network with the highest number of female employees and its identity was 
marked by the production of series for young women such as Gossip Girl 
(Le Fèvre-Berthelot 2015). Can CW's recent production - Arrow, The Flash 
- be seen as a desire to remasculinize its audience - after Mark 
Pedowitz was appointed head of the network in 2011 - or are these series 
also dedicated to a female audience? If so, how can we explain the 
inclusive approach of these television series that feature racialized, 
homosexual, bisexual and soon-to-be transgendered characters and on 
which the CW is basing its brand identity in a video announcing its 
upcoming series for the 2018-2019 season (AlloCine)? While these 
superheroic television adaptations play the card of a certain diversity, 
it is worth questioning the timidity of the film adaptations on this 
subject: we had to wait for the 21st film produced in the Marvel 
Cinematic Universe, Captain Marvel (Boden and Fleck
2019), to have a superheroine as the main protagonist.

3) Superheroine stories and politics
This axis aims to analyse the place and role of television and film 
superheroines by observing the narrative construction of these 
characters. How is the scene set for superheroines? What role do 
superheroines working alongside superheroes play, for instance in Heroes 
(NBC, 2006-2010), the
Avengers film franchise, the Batman: The Telltale Series video game 
(Telltale Games, 2016), Batman (ABC, 1966-1968), and Gotham (Fox, 
2014-ajd)? More generally, these superheroines must be examined as 
heroines (Cassagnes-Brouquet and Dubesset 2009), but also as women of 
action (Monk
2010; Bilat and Haver 2011).
It is also necessary to question how superheroines can experience other 
types of domination than gender. Superheroes and superheroines were 
originally white, heterosexual characters - even if their sexuality was 
never mentioned - and they often come from higher social classes. Today, 
these
representations have diversified. Racialized and/or non-heterosexual 
superheroines exist, and a transgender superhero appeared in the fourth 
season of Supergirl (CBS, 2015, The CW, 2016-ajd).
The status of all superheroines must nevertheless be questioned. The use 
of the image of Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), a Muslim superhero, to fight 
Islamophobic campaigns in San Francisco evokes a certain political power 
of these representations, but what is really happening? Do superheroines 
contribute to challenging patriarchal norms or are they pure 
post-feminist products devoid of any political substance (Cervulle 
2009)? Are they simple feminist pop characters who spread a message of 
individualistic empowerment without its political and collective side or 
do they spread globally the idea that women, whoever they are, can be 
heroines and even more?

Proposals for articles, accompanied by a short biography, should be sent to
(sbonade /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(sbonade /at/ gmail.com)> and (rvallee /at/ univ-evry.fr) 
<mailto:(rvallee /at/ univ-evry.fr)> before *15th December 2018*. The authors 
will be advised by 15th January 2019 and the articles must be sent by 
30th April 2019, for publication after proofreading in Autumn 2019.


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