When it comes to understanding the power of superheroes and what they reveal about society, Politics, Economics and Law Professor Carolyn Cocca is taking her expertise to a global audience.
As part of the documentary series “42 – The answer to almost everything,” distributed by the European public service channel ARTE, Cocca is drawing on her award-winning research into gender, power and representation in comics, film and television for an episode exploring the question, “Do We Need Superheroes?”
The episode, written and directed by Julia Fritzsche, will focus on superheroes, their ideologies and stories, their creation and representation and how they can inform our society.
“Dr. Cocca’s expertise is on all of these topics and especially on the question of representation, gender roles and stereotypes,” said Fritzsche, who interviewed Cocca via a Zoom connection between her office in Germany and the John & Lillian Maguire Theater on campus.
Cocca is a political scientist whose research analyzes power relations and representations of gender. “I was looking at it at first through law and nonfiction, but then I kind of applied the same lenses to pop culture,” she said. "There's a real gender inequity.”
In her two books, “Superwomen: Gender, Power, and Representation” and “Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel: Militarism and Feminism in Comics and Film,” Cocca focuses on the politics of superheroes in comics, television and film and the portrayal of female superheroes.
Presented in 2017 by Comic-Con the prestigious Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for “Superwomen,” Cocca also brings her expertise into the classroom through her course, “The Politics of Comics.”
After researching and writing about the portrayal of historic and contemporary female perpetrators and victims of crimes in news media early in her scholarly career, Cocca made connections to the comic book characters and stories she grew up with an interest towards.
“I realized that it was not so different from the way female fictional characters are portrayed in all different kinds of fictional media,” she said. One female character she studies is Wonder Woman, who is often described as special, unusual, or tricky to write. Yet, she’s not, Cocca explained: “She is just constantly showing that heroism and intelligence and strength and leadership are not male traits. They're just human traits.”
One of the main concepts Cocca likes to share regarding her research centers on diversity and representation. Certain demographics have been overrepresented as superheroes, she said, but greater diversity in superheroes would better reflect the world’s population and demonstrate that anyone can be a leader.
“These stories can be about empathy and working for equity and justice and organizing for a better world,” she said.
Cocca’s documentary feature will be aired in December or January on YouTube, the ARTE website, and on European television. “I am particularly excited about this because of its wide reach and its availability,” she said. “It's exactly why my colleagues and I do what we do. We want to share our knowledge with anybody who will listen.”