Superheroes, identity, and the internet: Feeling the self as product in the age of networked neoliberalism

Using the close-reading of case studies, this thesis argues that the dominance of the superhero genre from 2008 to 2020 was due to its aptness for comprehending the feelings of the process of self production being made so visible and tangible through the affordances of the web.
This thesis contributes to both superhero studies and internet studies. Superhero studies literature has given little attention to the advent of social media as a specific cultural phenomenon, despite previous work looking at the genre as responsive to cultural anxieties. Internet studies have looked at individual and collective user practice and structures of the web, but have not looked at the feelings brought about by these affordances and their expression in other cultural artefacts. The first chapter explores the expression of self in image, a primary feature of online avatar creation and image sharing. Using Tania Bucher’s extension of Foucault’s regime visibility, this chapter uses Marvel’s Iron Man trilogy (2008, 2010, 2013) to demonstrate the evolution of a response to the agential affordances of self-representation online. The second chapter looks at the archival features of the web, and their capture of images and performances of self as they happen. This chapter examines Jessica Jones’ (2015-2019) representation of affectual rupturing of the self as an expression of anxieties around the visibility of the process of self performance and its consequent vulnerability. The third chapter extends the focus to archive’s corporate complement, data, and the challenges it presents to the self in its replication of user’s desires and behaviours. The fourth chapter uses HBO’s Watchmen (2019) to make the thesis’ most significant contribution; that the language of trauma is used as a way to legitimise the self and this discourse is at risk of manipulation by dominant identity group.