Assembling Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Ashley Richardson

Advisor: Richard T Craig, Timothy Gibson, Department of Communication

Committee Members: Alison Landsberg, Hatim El-Hibri

Online Location, https://gmu.zoom.us/j/7619939735
April 04, 2024, 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation is concerned with matters of diversity and representation in Hollywood’s biggest entertainment franchise of the twenty-first century. Through an evaluation of Marvel Studios’ live-action films and paratextual materials, I examine how racial and ethnic representations are constructed and commercialized in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Drawing on scholarship from cinema studies, media political economy, and critical race theory, I ask how MCU films engage with the power dynamics of visual and political representation and I interrogate their relationship to political economy. Few franchises can reach audiences quite like the MCU, which is bolstered by the Walt Disney Company. Marvel Studios must therefore be examined as a producer of media that are influential to our ideologies and realities. In other words, Marvel Studios is an arena in which competing ideas about diversity, race, and representation are being played out. I look to Marvel Studios and the MCU in this dissertation as part of a larger conversation on race, ethnicity, and diversity in U.S. media.