Peter Coogan, The Superhero Renaissance and The Superhero Genre

(In Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre)

In this book, Coogan sets out to pay some much needed attention to the genre of superhero fiction, in film and comic books. Unfortunately, it's riddled with all the wrong kinds of rhetoric (including the claim that it is concerned only with "pure" aesthetics [EDIT: intended to write "poetics"], and not culture, as though that is even possible, let alone desirable*), interspersed by all-too-few genuine insights.

The problem here is that Coogan makes far too many broad, sweeping, arbitrary statements which reek of just-plain fandom rather than a happy unison of fandom and scholarship. For example, the notion that campy superhero texts always fail is ridiculous - obviously the 1960s Batman TV show was wildly successful. This kind of selective argument just doesn't fly so far as I'm concerned.

Worse still, Coogan seems to think that there is some kind of absolute, "true" version of every superhero that all superhero texts aspire towards. Again, typical fanboy rhetoric that just doesn't hold up in this context. Suggesting that Ang Lee's Hulk is not a superhero movie because it is a betrayal of the heroic origins of the character and is evidence of a failed vision rather than a true superhero film is patently absurd. A more accurate statement would be that Coogan's book is a betrayal of contemporary thinking on superheroes and genre, and that is evidence of a failed vision.

One potentially useful idea that Coogan puts forward is the concept of "resonant tropes" that link the many different versions of superheroes together - big things like costumes and powers, but also little things like Bruce Wayne's mother's pearls or Uncle Ben's advice to Peter Parker. These repeated and familiar but also unstable conventions are the linkages which connect franchise texts to one another, and could be an interesting way of articulating my idea of reintroduction.

Although not Coogan's concept, a quotation from Thomas Schatz also got me thinking: genre as privileged story form, that becomes formally recognized by society through repetition. Naturally, the same formulation could easily be applied to franchises on a smaller scale. Recognizable "brand-name" franchises become privileged as reliable and familiar story forms.

At the end of the day, Coogan's occasional good ideas are subjected to the archaic notion of genre as a fixed construct with a predictable, consistent pattern of evolution - precisely the notion that Altman, Neale and other have tried to debunk.

*Adimittedly, I've been known to rely on the same schtick in the past, but it really is useless.

Harold Bloom, Introduction: A Meditation on Misreading

(In A Map of Misreading)

I'm not going to read much more of this book, as it emphasizes poetry as its object, but Bloom's idea that there is no such thing as a text, but only relationships between texts is a delightful paradox that offers much to my own work, so I thought I would check out some of his writing. His idea of "misreading" is an interesting one - I would have used a different word - but it essentially says that creators (and one could easily extrapolate, readers/viewers) use earlier works to establish their own voice or style, but in order to distinguish themselves must invariably impose an alternative "misreading" on that which influences them. When divested of older literary notions of authorship which, though suited to poetry are ineffective when dealing with film, and from the highly structured map which Bloom devises, his ideas can certainly be seen as a theoretical jumping point for my work. If all the various users engaged with a franchise are "misreading" in different ways, then this diverse network will define that franchise and direct franchise in many different directions.

Rick Altman, Conclusion: A semantic/syntactic/pragmatic approach to genre

(In Film/Genre)

So in this final chapter, Altman sums up his argument and distills it into a sort of three-pronged approach, incorporating pragmatics - that is to say use - into his earlier model. Again, he argues that genre is between users and uses, rather than fixed at any one point. Genres (and, as I have noted before, franchises) "serve diverse groups diversely." It is impossible, therefore, for terminology to be neutral when referring to a genre. The terms we use are invariably loaded in a variety of different ways for different audiences.

The process of reintroduction which defines franchise texts, therefore, takes place in many different ways - established as invalid by fans while simultaneously being validated by studio rhetoric, and so on. It is important to incorporate this discursivity into any account of genre, or remakes, or franchises, etc. These (and indeed, all texts and communication systems, Altman argues) are sites of struggle and cooperation among multiple users" and groups of users. This kind of understanding helps us to escape the tyranny of the text, as he puts it.

Rick Altman, What's at stake in the history of literary genre theory? and Where are genres located?

(In Film/Genre)

In this relatively recent book (well, only a decade old, in any case), Altman recasts and expands his earlier, highly influential work on genre as part of a broader theory of communication, much as Steve Neale has done with his 1980s writings. The first chapter provides a very general overview of the history of literary genre criticism, and identifies the assumptions behind most thinking on genre, which have their genesis as far back as Aristotle. Altman, like Verevis, criticizes the pseudo-science of genre taxonomy, and is highly skeptical that any kind of work on genre can be as rigid and apolitical as some critics seem to believe.

Perhaps most damning is the assumption that genres exist in some kind of fixed, tangible, already-defined way, and not as fluid, multifarious cultural constructs. These are the kinds of assumptions I need to avoid when discussing franchises, by directly addressing this ambiguous nature. I must also avoid overemphasizing internal characteristics of franchise texts, for as Altman suggests, this kind of semantic/snytactic approach cannot be pursued alone without context. Too many theorists locate genre in one facet, whether textual, industrial or what have you, rather than examining how these facets intersect in order to establish what we call genre.

Constantine Verevis, Introduction: Remaking Films

(In Film Remakes)

I found this book completely by accident, but it's very good. Verevis sets out to establish remakes as a particular form of intertextual repetition - another form of which is franchises, as I am attempting to argue. Other forms include adaptation, quotation, allusion, the star system and so on. He suggests that remakes (and I would add, franchises) are an institutional structure of repetition, which has industrial, textual and discursive aspects. From a commercial standpoint, this sort of repetition is a way of minimizing risk (although this is an incorrect assumption on the part of the industry); the films are constructed is such a way as to recall elements from other texts; and the reception and criticism of these films is highly informed by the network of texts.

The problems faced by all such studies (especially in genre studies) is oversimplified taxonomy and the issue of measuring the remake against what is perceived as the "essential" elements of the original are also addressed, and Verevis emphasizes the importance of intertextuality and context when dealing with these concepts. Citing a variety of earlier work done on remakes, he criticizes the practice, demonstrating how these categories are almost invariably too ambiguous to be useful. I will certainly try to avoid the impulse - although it's difficult to avoid.

The creative impetus behind remakes is something I had not really considered in context of franchises - directors, actors, writers and other creators (often with some measure of auteur status) set out to pay homage to older films through remakes, however, and this can certainly also apply to sequels. Stallone was a driving force behind the most recent Rocky and Rambo films, and Len Wiseman apparently was a huge fan of Die Hard and very much wanted to direct Live Free or Die Hard for that reason.

The word "remake" throughout this chapter could virtually be replaced by "franchise," and Verevis would be making the kinds of points I want to make with my thesis, and so it will prove extremely useful. Treating texts which are concerned with repetition (or intertexts) as part of an elaborate, endless, non-linear web of meanings and signifiers.

Yvonne Tasker, Introduction and Steve Neale, Action-Adventure As Hollywood Genre

(In Action and Adventure Cinema)

This is a collection of essays on the genre, all of which look fascinating, but most of which unfortunately are minimally useful for my current research... so many articles, so little time. However, Tasker (who is somewhat of an authority on action cinema) raises some interesting points in her introduction.

I like the idea that the Action genre is the key genre of the blockbuster era - a glance at box office statistics confirms its preeminence - and that its emergence/formalization can be directly linked to the New/post-classical/whatever Hollywood. I think that the unique features of contemporary film franchise can similarly be attributed to the cultural and industrial shift towards high concept and beyond.

Tasker also briefly comments on the impulse among those of us who study and appreciate action cinema to be overly apologetic and defensive on behalf of action films. She advocates a "fair trial" for these films - we should not write them off automatically as trash, nor should we be overly diplomatic in valorizing the genre as a whole. I'm inclined to agree, although I'm certainly guilty of being a notoriously generous viewer.

The analogy between action films and musicals is a fairly common one (I wrote a paper once on the commonalities between musicals and martial arts films), but Tasker suggests a new angle on the critical tool. She proposes that the analogy can be useful in valorizing the genre in spite of its overwhelming violence. If we treat action sequences as spectacular performances, and not as violent images (or worse, as actual violence), then the films seem suddenly more harmless. This does not eliminate the many other ideologically problematic aspects of both the musical and action genres, of course, but it is an interesting notion.

Neale's chapter is a brief excerpt from his Genre and Hollywood, locating what I have come to call Action cinema (the version of the genre which emerges in the 1970s and becomes formalized in the 1980s) within the larger context of action-adventure-type movies and fiction throughout history, as far back as medieval romantic literature. The exercises debunks some of our commonly held ideas about action movies, in particular gender - female heroines seem to pass in and out of vogue throughout the development of the genre, but are very much a part of that development. This contextualization is useful and I must keep it in mind, even as I emphasize the contemporary version of the genre.