Abstract Book of the 5th World Conference on Media and Communication
Year: 2025
DOI:
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Black and Asian Super Men: How The White American Racial Frame Weaponizes Superhero Media to Justify Confining Black and Asian American Males into Conceptual Labor Camps
Ramal La Ron Johnson
ABSTRACT:
Although the United States is in the midst of a cultural reformation concerning media representation, East Asian males in particular are perennially penalized for adhering–and for not adhering–to their cultural values. Marvel Comics is experiencing a resurgence in popularity due to its string of lucrative motion pictures, and the few Asian males who are featured on the silver screen and/or on the pages of comic books are virtually imprisoned within a White American racial frame. The White American racial frame, a group of subconscious assumptions White Americans have about other races, is similar to the concentration camps Japanese people were imprisoned in following the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. Additionally, Chinese male immigrants were deemed unassimilable and were discriminated against beginning in the 1840s. They too were contained in the White American racial frame. Comparably, Black American males are disposed to despotic discrimination and are indefinitely imprisoned similar to their Asian counterparts. While Asian boys and men are generally classified as asexual, intellectuals, and socially awkward, Black boys and men are classified as hypersexual, ignorant, and sociopathic. The stark dichotomy of these two demographics deserves a deep analysis considering they perpetually persist on polar opposites of the American masculinity spectrum. Despite the divergence, Asian American males and Black American males face similar struggles that have not been widely addressed. The assumptions regarding their presentations of masculinity more often than not determine how they are treated in the American labor force, among other aspects of life. These presentations manifest on the pages of Marvel superhero comic books and in Marvel motion pictures–two forms of media that frequently exhibit the ultimate displays of traditional American masculinity. This study probes the space between Asian masculinity and Black masculinity. It notes the crossways on the continuum that invalidate the conjecture that the expanse contains parallelisms, but no convergences, thus demonstrating how discrimination in the labor force is a byproduct of expectations of masculinity based on the White American racial frame, science fiction, and fantasy.
keywords: masculinity, Black, Asian, comic books, superheroes, labor force, discrimination