‘Don’t worry – she’s got help’. The representation of female characters in the Avengers film series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

This thesis looks at the representation of female characters in the four Avenger movies by conducting a visual and critical discourse analysis of these four movies to uncover discourses around the concept of femininity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The movies of the MCU have become hugely popular and as popular culture, such as film, reflects the beliefs in society about certain concepts, discourse analysis makes it possible to investigate these movies and uncover beliefs about the concept of femininity in modern day society. To do so, the field of cultural studies, Hall’s concept of representation, Foucault’s concept of discourse, Mulvey’s male gaze and feminist film theory are used as a background, thereby arguing the importance of the representation of women in popular culture, as well as the relevance of looking at discourses in these texts. The research in this thesis exists out of a critical discourse analysis of the scripts of the four Avenger movies and a visual discourse analysis of the images themselves. The focus is on the central female characters of these movies: Black Widow, Maria Hill, Pepper Potts, Okoye, Shuri, Gamora, Nebula, Valkyrie, the Wasp, Captain Marvel, Wanda Maximoff, and Mantis. The analysis showed that the portrayal of these women can be put into five categories: their depiction on screen, the roles they take on in the movies, their skills and personal traits, their use of emotions, and their absence in key parts of the movies. The female characters are attractive, wear tight costumes, and colours are used to show their personalities and the dichotomy between innocence/purity and passion/power, indicating that women must be attractive, pure, or passionate. The attributes that they use are mostly male attributes such as guns and cars. Moreover, female characters were skilled at maleconsidered tasks too, such as fighting or operating technology. However, the camera angle and the position of women on screen show that they are, especially in the first movie(s), inferior to men, as they are positioned in the back, behind male characters, or blurred in the frame. The male gaze was evident here too, as the camera and the narrative often followed a male point of view. From the scripts it became evident that female characters were regularly part of a power-relation in which they were not the ones in power. Next to this, a 3 larger part of their story development relied on their roles as friends, family, or lovers than for the male characters, and they acted more emotional than male characters. Lastly, they were often absent in important scenes or important conversations. Nonetheless, the analysis showed that these discourses changed throughout the four movies, providing hope for the future of female representation in superhero movies.