Thread by @Positivteacha

🧵 SUPERHERO MOVIES AND MASCULINITY 🧵

This morning I came across as fun study from 2022 that looked at presentations of masculinity in superhero movies.

Given the genre's hulk-like grip on popular culture, I thought I'd share some highlights...

So, the study got a LOAD of Superhero movies and counted 'Total Instances of Masculinity Themes' in each.

So we now know that the manliest superhero movie out there is 'Avengers: Age of Ultron (304 incidences)'.

The least masculine? Dr Strange and Guardians Galaxy vol.2 (75)

The full list can be seen here 👇

The Masculinity Themes was a long list including:

Winning
Power over women
Physically strong
Objectification of women
Working out
Being scary
Risk taking
Violence
Being a playboy

There are others too, and I'll link you to the study a bit later if you want to know more...

So, what else did the study find? A few interesting bits actually:

1. The most common masculinity themes reported for superheroes were:

-Physical strength
-Violence
-Athleticism

2. For villains, it was:

- Physical strength
-Violence

3. Superheroes were far more likely to be strong, athletic, risky, concerned with their own appearance, asserting and preserving of masculinity than villains were. In other words, villains were less manly.

4. Superheroes put significant emphasis on how their bodies looked. This could be damaging for younger viewers as it teaches young boys that to be one of the good guys - to be a hero - you need to have a muscular physique. This could put undue mental strain on children.

5. Risk taking behaviour was higher in heroes than in villains which is also concerning. We know from other studies that risk-taking is seen as a way to be manly. This is problematic 'cos risk doesn't always pay off. This could be damaging to social, physical and financial health

6. No significant differences were observed in the way heroes and villains objectify women, act as playboys or engage in violence.

The violence thing is a prob because violence was the most common masculine theme observed. The fact that heroes are just as violent as villains...

...means that young viewers may not see that violence is something only bad guys do.

Some studies have shown that children who watch superhero movies are more likely to engage in weapon play than kids who don't.

That's it! Hope you found this one interesting. I did!

And here's the study if you want it:

apa.org/pubs/journals/…

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