Can Pop Culture Save Disney Marvel Movies?

Can Pop Culture Save Disney Marvel Movies?


The dictionary states Pop Culture means "Modern popular culture transmitted via the mass media and is often aimed particularly at younger people." In other words, pop culture is often considered mainstream media and changes as time passes and generations grow. For example, while attending a Pop Culture Communication online presentation at Southern Utah University (SUU) Dr. James Briscoe references classics like Super Mario Brothers and Karate Kid. Although, I consider both Super Mario Brothers and Karate Kid timeless classics, my 6-year-old nephew would beg to differ. Thankfully, through continuous readaptations of the media, we love these classics live a little longer but can not last forever. 

In "Stephen Swell's Consumer Slaves" he references pop culture as a "commerce". He discusses how capitalism has caused us to be consumer slaves but as scary as the influence of pop culture is we the adults have more power than we know. A great example of this is Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Marvel comics have been popular and have been around for generations but on May 2nd, 2008 when Marvel's Iron Man was released it increased the view of superhero media tremendously and it increased even higher when Avengers came out in 2011. 

Unfortunately, after Avengers End Game in 2019, everyone felt the MCU was too saturated with rushed content and Disney lost billions of dollars to the point everyone believed the "MCU was dying" However, not all hope is lost as seen in several articles including websites such as Forbes and Wahington Post attached down below, claiming the MCU movie "The Marvels" giving Disney hope providing better box office results than expected. I think the success of this film was due to pop culture concepts such as "Site of struggle" as referenced by Dr. Briscoe, pop culture references, and the fear of being left out in the cold.




The site of struggle can be seen throughout the film because all of the main cast are female leads and check the boxes of Bechdel's test explained by Colin Stokes. The main cast is not only female but is very diverse helping everyone feel represented for example Monica Rambo is African American and Kamala Khan is Pakistani. The MCU Marvel's trailer also showed old Avengers clips making it seem these characters would appear. I know that these Avenger clips convinced several people to go in fear that would be left in the cold. Additionally, the film was more comic book accurate and referenced pop culture several times such as popular shows, comics, old technology, and city landmarks. Do you think the MCU was successful because of the way they used pop culture? or do you think they will continue to create poor content and manipulate its audience treating them as "consumer slaves"? Additionally, what are some pop culture references that you saw in the film, the MCU, or other superhero TV shows/movies?

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx8RRIiP53Q

https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2023/11/16/marvels-box-office-mcu/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2023/11/16/marvels-box-office-mcu/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwmDH12MAA4


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