How Product Challenges Conventions (Updated)

1.      Our product represents social groups through its use of a female lead. Specifically within the superhero genre, females are strongly underrepresented. This plays into the old fashioned idea of being uncomfortable with the idea of women in powerful positions.

In the modern age of the superhero genre transferring from books to films, the majority of superhero films star a male lead. This discrimination can be measured using the Bechdel test. To pass the Bechdel test, a film must have at least two named female characters, they must talk to each other, and they must talk about something besides a man. Many modern superhero films don’t pass this test, such as ‘Ant-Man’, ‘Doctor Strange’, ‘Green Lantern’, and ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’. Some people claim that this makes sense since the genre typically targets young male audiences, however this excuse doesn’t hold when considering that statistics show women indeed to cover a large amount of the genre’s audience. The ratio of men and women that saw ‘Marvel’s The Avengers’ was 60% men and 40% women, while 44% of the audience of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ was female. This convention of ignoring females within superhero films has gone largely unchallenged besides movies such as ‘Wonder Woman’. At current date, the popular superhero film franchise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has not produced a single film with a leading female superhero. Our film attempts to challenge this convention by introducing a female protagonist, furthering this challenge by giving her super strength, which challenges the basis of the discrimination of women in superhero films being that people are uncomfortable seeing powerful women.

Our film also challenges conventions by presenting a female protagonist comedically. There is a long-standing underlining idea in the film industry that women aren't as funny as men. In 2013, the top 10 highest-paid comedians, who combined made $173 million, were all men. Many people try to justify such statistics with points such as those made by Christopher Hitchens in his article for Vanity Fair in January 2007 where he tried to explain that much of humor comes from mocking people physically or referencing the physical decay of a person. He says that for men, this is humorous since it is less important for them, however for women since they can give birth the mocking of the body is more serious therefore not funny. His article says, "In other words, for women the question of funniness is essentially a secondary one. They are innately aware of a higher calling that is no laughing matter." Such ludicrous and unjustifiable arguments as the one made by Hitchens have been attempting to justify the sexism in the comedy industry for a long time. Our film challenges this convention by including a female protagonist who is humorous rather than the serious attitude portrayed in previous female superheroes such as Wonder Woman and Black Widow.