IntroductionThe commercial success of the X-Men and Spider-Man film franchises (begun in 2000 and2002, respectively) bookend the attacks of 11 September 2001. Indeed, the advertisementsfor Spider-Man had to be redrawn as they had initially shown a giant spider web strewnbetween the World Trade Center towers, which was deemed too traumatic to presentto viewers. Although it would be too simplistic to attribute the subsequent delugeof superhero film adaptations to the Bush administration policies as some reviewers did(eg Editorial Board, 2008), it is not incorrect to say that the superhero genre as a wholeresonates with events of the past decade, as will be explored later in this paper.

The thirty-four superhero films released since 9/11, in addition to the many morealready slated for release, attest to a confluence of factors at play, only one of which isa connection between the politics of superheroes and the politics of the recentlydeparted Bush Administration, which includes the use of military force, doctrines ofpreemption, and the valorization of (masculinist) militarism more generally (Enloe,2004; Young, 2003). Still, if one of the most-cited facts about the 11 September 2001attacks is that viewers felt like it was something they had seen in a movie (eg Dalby,2008; Dodds, 2008; Power and Crampton, 2005), then a superhero movie is exactly thekind of place in which to witness a supervillain plotting mass murder in an urbansetting and the emergence of a superhero determined to foil any further fiendish plots.

This paper will argue that the explosion in filmic representations of superheroes resultsfrom the intersection of a variety of technocultural factors, of which a substantial, but notsole, component is the capacity for superheroes to articulate a particularly Americangeopolitical vision and sense of self, which is often shorthanded as American exception-alism. After an initial literature review connecting this paper to work being done in critical

American exceptionalism, visual effects, and the post-9/11cinematic superhero boom

Jason DittmerDepartment of Geography, University College London, Pearson Building, Gower Street,London WC1E 6BT, England; e-mail: j.dittmer@ucl.ac.ukReceived 17 April 2009; in revised form 2 February 2010; published online 2 November 2010

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2011, volume 29, pages 114 ^ 130

Abstract. This paper argues that popular geopolitics needs to pay attention to the full range of thecultural economy in its analyses of popular culture artifacts. Previous work has been overfocused onthe text without enough attention to production and audiencing, and as a result analyses often assumean ideological motivation to questions of genre and meaning. This paper uses as a case study the post-9/11 boom of the superhero genre in Hollywood cinema, tracing it through the circuits of culturaleconomy. Particular attention is paid to the claim that superheroism resonates with the post-9/11foreign policy of the United States and that this has enabled the genre to flourish at the box office.Academic and critical readings of Hellboy (2004), Superman Returns (2006), Iron Man (2008), andHellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) indicate these resonances with various strands of Americanexceptionalism, but production-focused analysis indicates that technological innovation in visualeffects as well as industry economics have driven the American film industry into the current super-hero cul-de-sac. Audience research indicates both viewers' critical awareness of the politics embeddedin the films under consideration and also the centrality of visual effects to their appreciation. Ratherthan concluding that the recent flurry of superhero films is rooted in either American exceptionalismor visual effects, this paper concludes with the potential linkage of those topics through nonrepre-sentational theory and calls for methodological innovation that might assess this type of possibility.

doi:10.1068/d4309

geopolitics and cultural studies (specifically American exceptionalism and audiencestudies), this paper will continue with its empirical case studyöan analysis of thesuperhero cinema boom through the lens of cultural economy. Cultural economy refersto the analysis of popular culture as commodities, ``the temporary `property' of varied,productive workers and publics and the abiding `property' of businesspeople'' (Milleret al, 2001, pages 13 ^ 14). Key aspects of the production of superhero films areenunciated, with particular emphasis on recent changes within the film industry andon the technological and artistic challenges of adapting superheroes from the comicbook page to the silver screen. Then, the paper will shift its focus to four specificsuperhero films: Hellboy (2004), Superman Returns (2006), Iron Man (2008), andHellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). These films will be considered in relation to theliterature on American exceptionalism, and then audience understandings of thesefilms (in the form of reviews from the Internet Movie Database) will be introducedto compare the academic reading with the popular.

By tracing these films through the cultural economy, this paper seeks to contributeto the development of new methodologies within popular geopolitics by attempting topay attention to all three segments of the cultural economy (most work in populargeopolitics analyzes at most two) and in doing so to also highlight the limitationsof this framework. Recent work in popular geopolitics has sought to better theorizethe processes by which popular culture is received and made meaningful by consumers.This has largely gone in two directions. One has been a `ground-truthing' engagementwith audiences as active and central to the construction of geopolitical imaginations,drawing either from the audience studies tradition (Dittmer, 2008; Dittmer and Dodds,2008; Dodds, 2006) or from feminist geopolitics (Ho« rschelmann, 2008). The secondattempt to improve the understanding of cultural reception has drawn on nonrepre-sentational theory, especially notions of affect (Carter and McCormack, 2006;Oè Tuathail, 2003). This approach has largely eschewed engagement with audiences infavor of more detailed textual analysis to uncover the elements of music or film thatmight engender geopolitical affects among audiences. This paper, generally written inthe first of these traditions (audience studies), is an attempt to probe the limits of thistradition and argue that future work should develop new methods to incorporate affectmore meaningfully into audience work.

American exceptionalism and the superheroAmerican exceptionalism can be understood as the notion that the United States isunlike other states in terms of its creation, settlement, and sense of wider mission in theworld (Lockhart, 2003; Madsen, 1998; Spanos 2008). As an extension of this notion,Jewett and Lawrence (2003) describe what they refer to as the American monomyth',which is identifiable in the Western and superhero genres, as well as other narrativegenres that are seen as quintessentially American. In this mythic narrative helplesscommunities are saved from oppression by an itinerant hero who always refrainsfrom integration with the political community in which the hero has just intervened(see Dittmer, 2009; Goss, 2004). Jewett and Lawrence contrast this with Campbell'sclassical monomyth' (1949 [2008]), which narrates the coming of age of young males(usually) who leave their community, undergo challenge and adversity, and return totheir home communities transformed and fully capable of participating in their originalpolitical community as full-fledged citizens (or elders).

The distinction Jewett and Lawrence see between the two narratives, the reintegra-tion (or lack thereof ) with societal structures, is indicative of the political implicationsof such a narrative: ``We suggest that this new myth system, which crystallized itsconventions of plot and character in the axial decade of the 1930s, shows a democratic

American exceptionalism and the post-9/11 cinematic superhero boom 115

face in that the protagonist is an Everyman, yet has a pop-fascist dimension in thatthese unelected, law-transcending figures exercise superpowers to overcome foes''(2003, page 29). This has disturbing political implications at the domestic scale (themasks of Spider-man and the Ku Klux Klan blending into one) but also, importantly,at the international or global scale, where the United States (and its agents and troops)are often scripted as cowboys or superheroes run amoköindifferent to internationallaw and international bodies such as the United Nations.

Oè Tuathail identifies a similar political morality at play in Behind Enemy Lines (2001),a film rushed into theaters in the aftermath of 9/11: `Behind Enemy Lines articulatesan [American] everyman' frustration with the confusion of the post-Cold War era andthen delivers on the desire for a Manichean world of clarity and moral certainty. Actionand righteous violence are made possible by a clarified world where there are recog-nizably othered enemies and adversaries'' (2005, page 370). Surely this applies to thesuperhero genre as well, where villains often wear garish costumes that identify themas other and plot assaults on society so fiendish that they require someone capableof administering righteous violence. The cathartic quality of violence in the wake ofperceived victimization is shared between both the fictional superhero world andthe immediate post-9/11 American landscape (Oè Tuathail, 2003). However, thesegeographies are not as separate as the previous sentence would indicate:

`Hollywood's peculiar position as the quintessential `industry of desire' demandsfrom us to take both architecture and fantasies quite seriously. Hollywood-createdzones of production and consumption materialize the illusions of societal controland pleasure that could never have been realized in other industrial sectors or inAmerican economy in general. As such, they do not just express the unattainablesocial ideals or repressed fears: they actively (some would say forcefully) constructthe world which they claim to evade'' (Hozic, 2001, page 30).

Films about American desire to administer righteous violence do not reflect existentfantasies but instead provide a space for fantasies to be fantasized about in the firstplace (Zí iz­ ek, 1997).

Figure 1 [In color online, see http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/d4309] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeldis introduced alongside Captain America and Spider-Man at the Pentagon on 28 April 2005 topromote a custom-made comic book for more than 150 000 service members in the Middle East(source: photograph by Tech Sgt. Cherie A Thurlby, USAF).

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The notion of American exception from legal orders is often fostered by the USstate (see figure 1) because it provides freedom of action for the US state from the veryliberal international governmentality it seeks to impose on others, as in the case of theInternational Criminal Court (ICC), where several American administrations of bothparties have refused to submit to a judicial process that they have imposed on others,for instance in postwar Germany or in the Balkans from the 1990s onward. Americandiplomat Pierre-Robert Prosper stated the US position on the ICC this way in 2002:` What we've learnt from the war on terror is that rather than creating an internationalmechanism to deal with these issues it is better to organize an international mandatethat authorizes states to use their unilateral tools to tackle the problems we have'' (BBC,2002, no page). This lack of integration with the international community ultimatelyled to the accusation by critics that the Bush administration was appropriatelycharacterized as the `torture presidency' (see Brecher, 2007).

Avoiding the shackles of governmental authority is also a long-standing themeof superheroism (albeit usually at the national rather than the international scale).Consider the preceding quotation alongside this fictional debate between CaptainAmerica and his girlfriend, Sharon Carter, about the Superhero Registration Act,which would require superheroes to work directly for the US government. Sharonexplains why superheroes should be forced to register (quoted in Brubaker and Perkins,2006, pages 13 ^ 14):

Sharon: ` Because they're risking other people's lives every time they jump into afirefight. And because it's against the law. And the rule of law is what this countryis founded on.''Captain America: ` No... it was founded on breaking the law. Because the law waswrong.''Sharon: ` That's semantics, Steve. You know what I mean?''Captain America: ``It's not semantics, Sharon. It's the heart of the issue. TheRegistration Act is another step toward government control.''

Thus, both superhero narratives and US government narrations of the international realmemphasize the need for freedom of (cathartic, redemptive) action when confrontedby corrupt bureaucracies, at least by a select few morally exceptional superpowers'. Thesesuperpowers' serve as permanent (American) exceptions to legal ordersöexisting outsidethe law in order to maintain the law. However, these generic claims about superheronarratives rely on specific academic readings (and, crucially, feelings) of these narratives,which may not be universal. The following part of the paper discusses specifically the liter-ature on genre, film, and different forms of audiencing, which is a necessary prerequisitefor analyzing the recent explosion in superhero films.

Popular geopolitics, genre, and film audiencesFilm has been established as fundamental to scholarship in popular geopolitics, witha special issue of Geopolitics in 2005 and with plenty of subsequent work (Carterand McCormack, 2006; Dalby, 2008; Dodds, 2003, 2005; 2008; 2009; Jones, 2008;Power and Crampton, 2005). Film has particular import for popular geopolitics:` Film ... provides a moral vocabulary, and with it implicitly the geographical meta-phors and the contextualizations into which narratives of right conduct and thejustifications for violence are situated'' (Dalby, 2008, page 443). However, through allthis scholarship some lacunae still exist.

As Dodds writes: ``Existing geopolitical scholarship on film has not given, in myopinion, sufficient time and attention to the question of genre and even subgenre withregard to the manufacturing of geopolitical constructions and identity politics'' (2008,page 480). An advantage for film producers is that they can anticipate audience

American exceptionalism and the post-9/11 cinematic superhero boom 117

reaction by producing films according to genre conventions and advertising them ingenre-specific ways, which essentially presell the film to audiences:

`Genre is a cultural referencing system that provides pleasures for filmgoers as wellas pre-sold forms for risk-averse industries. Generic cultural forms are products ofmodernity where technologies of mass production and distribution privilege formalstandardization [such as both comic books and film]. These industrial imperativesregulate cultural production within historical contexts that engage with widespreadpublic recognition and consent. In this sense, genres both shape and are shaped bycultural specificities at particular moments and across various geographical scales.''(Miller et al, 2001, page 95)

In regards to the expansion of the superhero genre, Coogan (2006) argues that thesenarratives (whether in comic books or films) are defined by the prosocial mission ofthe hero and the hero's exaggerated abilities and secret identity (costume). Genrecategories are slippery, however, and often reflect the interests and biases of thosedoing the categorizing. For instance, if Batman is a superhero despite not having anysuperpowers, then why not Jason Bourne (who only lacks a costume) or SherlockHolmes (who only lacks a secret identity)? Coogan's emphasis on the iconic attire ofsuperheroes is one way to resolve this tension, but nevertheless it has to be admittedthat genres blur into one another more than they stand in opposition. Superheroes aredefined less by their type of costumes than by the type of narrative in which they exist.These narratives include the elements Coogan describes as indicative of a hero, butserializes themöthe origin being a key element (from which the hero derives, usually,the three elements Coogan highlights) that is followed by the perpetual defense ofsociety from (evil) revolutionary elements internal or external to the loosely bounded(good) community (Wolf-Meyer, 2003).

Within this genre, the superhero is in some ways the polar opposite of Dalby's` imperial warrior'': ` Whether a special forces operative or garrison soldier in peace-keeping mode, these warriors are key figures of the post September 11th era, physicallysecuring the West, and simultaneously securing its identity as the repository of virtueagainst barbaric threats to civilization'' (2008, page 440). However, while imperialwarriors distinguish themselves by going forth into dangerous spaces to produce newgeopolitical orders, superheroes usually operate locally to secure the domestic statusquo (Dittmer, 2007). Thus, superheroes and imperial warriors function in differentgeopolitical contexts, which impacts the moralities they construct. Regarding imperialwarriors, Dalby writes: ``Precisely because of this geography of extreme conditions,set in exotic locales beyond the mundane, the routine and the quotidian, the stagingoffers dramatic possibilities'' (2008, page 442). For superheroes, however, it is thejuxtaposition of the ` mundane, the routine, and the quotidian'' (everyday life) withthe spectacular, uncanny, and outlandish (supervillains' plots) that justifies their existenceand extralegal action.

However, a focus on the `meaning' (singular) of a superhero film essentializes theplurality of meanings that can be, and are, associated with a film at various points inits circulation. ` It is important to recognize that not only are films capable of beingunderstood in radically different ways but also that different audiences exist in the firstplace,'' (Dodds, 2006, page 120). This paper argues that audiences cannot only betheorized as the end point of cultural economy, but also as its starting point (Milleret al, 2001). Capitalist producers of popular culture anxiously seek knowledge of theintended audience, as the consumers' expectations (and subsequent reactions) holdthe keys to commercial success. Following Bratich (2005) then, I use a two-prongedmethodology, in which attention is not only paid to viewers' practices of meaning-making vis-a© -vis the superhero films analyzed in this paper but also to the ways in

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which an `audience' is discursively constructed by film producers. The following sectionof the paper will trace the meanings of these multiple notions of audience and text asthey circulate in the recent explosion of films in the superhero genre.

Cultural economy of superhero cinemaCarter (2008) has pointed to the dearth of engagement with the production of film inthe popular geopolitics literature (but see Dodds, 2005). Until recently, the lack ofattention to production had been paralleled by a lack of attention to audiencesöbuta recent spate of work has begun to remedy this (Dittmer, 2008; Dittmer and Dodds,2008; Dodds, 2006). This leaves film production as perhaps the most undertheorizedelement of cultural economy:

` In what ways are our understandings of filmic texts enhanced by consideringquestions of their production? I think one answer, in part, is that we can begin tounderstand more clearly how familiar filmic tropes continue to be produced, andtherefore how alternative geopolitical visions might also be possible within cinema''(Carter, 2008, page 7).

Carter also crucially calls for the various sites of filmic meaning (production, the filmitself, and audiencing) to be brought together in analysis rather than written about asseparate spheres. It is to this task that this paper now turns.

ProductionSo what can the production processes of superhero films tell us about the recentexplosion of the genre? Generally speaking, there are two interconnected elements tothis heightened centrality of superheroes to Hollywood production: the financing of thestudios and the evolution of special effects.

Studio financing has increasingly become tied to the `blockbuster' or `tentpole' film,usually released in the summer, on which a studio commits a high percentage of itsproduction, promotional, and institutional resources. Although this has almost alwaysbeen true, the last two decades have seen a ballooning of budgets in these blockbusters,enabled by the growth of secondary profit streams such as VCR/DVD sales, pay-per-view payments, and international box office receipts. By 1993 video game spin-offsfrom blockbusters were often more profitable than the domestic box office, thusrequiring stories that could enable such spin-offs and the emergence of more explicitlykinetic actors in both the superhero and spy genres (Maltby, 2003). ` Budgets rose evenmore rapidly during the 1990s, since the underlying economic logic of the blockbustersyndrome demonstrated its effectiveness every time a special-effects-driven, uncompli-cated, high-budget `event' movie broke a new box-office record,'' (Maltby, 2003, page198ösee also the recent success of Avatar (2009), which featured expensive visualeffects and a consequently unobjectionable but pedestrian narrative). The steadilyincreasing budget of blockbusters has increased the need for these films to be success-fulöif a smaller film fails, someone may lose their job, but if a summer blockbusterfails spectacularly, whole studios may collapse because they are so leveraged to pro-duce that failure. For instance, the box office failure of the $180 million The GoldenCompass (2007) led to the merger of New Line Cinema with Warner Brothers Pictures(both were owned by Time Warner).

When the stakes are this high, studios need to pick a winner, and the superherogenre brings relatively predictable audiences for that crucial opening weekend: ` Comicbook materials attract a youthful moviegoing demographic, appeal to nostalgic olderaudiences, and offer thrills and well-defined archetypal characters, especially heroeswho also have well-established track records for popularity, licensing, and sequelpotential'' (McAllister, 2006, page 110). Further, the resonance of the superhero genre

American exceptionalism and the post-9/11 cinematic superhero boom 119

with national narratives of American exceptionalism provides an extra layer of audiencepredictability. This anxious need to understand likely viewers, alluded to earlier in thispaper, is on display in the increasing infiltration of the annual San Diego ComicsConvention (Comic-con) by studios screening provisional versions of films to get focusgroup feedback from comic book fandom, a group seen as key to generating buzz;production and audience reaction increasingly occur in tandem so as not to leaveanything to chance.

Of course, the superhero genre itself adds to the steadily escalating financialpressures that push studios into producing them as summer blockbusters. The cost offamous actors (necessary to provide credibility) and elaborate special effects havedriven up the costs of blockbustersöSpider-Man 3 (2007) reportedly cost $258 million(but has made more than $1 trillion worldwide in box office and DVD sales aloneaccording to boxofficemojo.com). These costs are met by the involvement of outsideinvestors, such as Legendary Pictures, who are even more likely to emphasize thegeneric formulae of past winners in their selection of films to back (McAllister,2006). To ease these movie-making ventures, DC Comics (owners of characters suchas Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman) was bought by Time Warner. MarvelEntertainment (owner of Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, and many others)has gone another route, remaking itself as a film studio with the help of outsideinvestment by Merrill Lynch (Andrews, 2008). Marvel Entertainment is essentiallyusing its comic book unit as a source of ideas for future films, which will dwarf therelatively tiny profits made from comic books themselves.

The second element of production that has led to the superhero cinema boom is theenhanced visualization of superpowers and comic book imagery in ways that resonatewith viewers' expectations more broadly. Indeed, portraying superheroes on the silverscreen in a way that does not generate audience derision is one of the long-standingchallenges of superhero cinema. At a minimum, the iconic bright colors of manysuperhero costumes often look clownish in the glare of the film set. Going one stepfurther and rendering the superhuman feats of the hero onto celluloid was even moredaunting. The success of Superman (1978) in doing so was touted in the film's tagline:` You'll believe a man can fly.''

The difference in special effects between Superman in 1978 and X-Men in 2000 issignificant, but perhaps not as different as between 2000 and the present:

` Special effects emphasize real time, shared space, perceptual activity, kinestheticsensation, haptic engagement, and an emphatic sense of wonder. The impact ofthese spectacles has only been redoubled in the era of IMAX, ridefilms, and arange of new, immersive theme park attractions and other themed environments''(Bukatman, 2003, pages 115 ^ 116).

Of course, the ``aesthetic of astonishment'' (Bukatman, 2003, page 115) requires ever-escalating budgets and technological innovation, as ` ever more talent and resources aredevoted to making artifice seem natural, the nonvisible made visible, and the realmof the imaginary come across as convincing and credible. In an increasingly artificialand visible world, nothing must appear to be unreal, meaning that nothing must be leftunseen'' (Black, 2002, page 10, emphasis in original).

From the production perspective, the increased intermeshing of the superhero genrewith Hollywood appears to be driven by the demands of the increasing financialisation ofsummer blockbusters alongside audience expectations for the increasingly `unreal' specialeffects that define the summer blockbuster. Thus, superhero films both satisfy demandand drive it forward leaving the industry to appear addicted and leading to ` thenarrowing of narrative genres and industrial strategies'' currently visible in the multiplex(McAllister, 2006, page 110). This narrowing of narrative possibility, combined with the

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reliance of superhero movie producers on classic stories already trialed in the pagesof comic books, can be understood then as an overarching tendency for superherocinema to remain linked to narratives of American exceptionalism.

Text/filmThe second site of meaning in the cultural economy of superhero cinema is the filmitself, whereby the infinite forms that can be fixed in infinite ways are crystallized intoa singularity. In this part of the paper and the next, empirical focus will shift to fourspecific superhero films: Superman Returns (2006), Iron Man (2008), Hellboy (2004),and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). These films were selected because of theirdiffering enactments of American exceptionalismöspecifically divine providence,technological innovation and superiority, and the accommodation of difference.

Superman Returns is interesting as it serves as a partial reboot of the earlierSuperman films, which starred Christopher Reeve. Superman Returns in effect pre-tends that the last two Reeve films never occurred and that instead Superman had leftEarth for five years [referencing intertextually the long time between Superman II(1980) and the new film]. In that time, Lois Lane has married and has a child. Whilethe plot is concerned with Lex Luthor's attempt to create a new island of kryptonite offthe US east coast, the movie engages thematically with notions of Superman as aJesus-like messiah/savior figure (see Brewer, 2004). As such, this paper argues thatSuperman Returns portrays the form of American exceptionalism that can be foundin religiously themed notions of manifest destiny and John Winthrop's `shining cityon a hill'. These notions not only position the United States as the beneficiary of`Providence' (see Franklin, 2008) but also as the active agent of Providence who willredeem the world:

`America would remain a model, a guide, a measure. And also a guardian of theinalienable rights of man, so recently enshrined in the Constitution . ... America isto be not only a model nation but also will be the world's guardian, regulating theconduct of other nations, and representing the world's best and last chance atsalvation'' (Madsen, 1998, page 38).Similar to the idea of America as a messianic nation, the notion of Superman as

a Jesus-figure has long rootsöhe is sent to Earth by his father (Jor-El of Krypton),and once there he famously chooses to fight for ` truth, justice, and the Americanway''. This alone could be seen as a Christian-American narrative, but it stands along-side other possible readings [such as Superman as a Mosaic immigrant (Jones, 2004;Reynolds, 1992)]. However, both the narrative and the visuals of Superman Returnshighlight narrative elements amenable to the Christian form of American exception-alism. For instance, the movie begins by recycling Marlon Brando's monologue fromthe 1978 film, in which he portrayed Jor-El: ``Even though you've been raised asa human being you're not one of them. They can be a great people, Kal-El. Theywish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above allötheircapacity for goodöI have sent them you, my only son.'' Later we learn that inSuperman's absence Lois Lane penned a Pulitzer-Prize-winning editorial entitled``Why We Don't Need Superman''. This marks the narrative engagement of the plotwith questions of faith, mirroring larger debates about the role of religion and faithin American public life as well as broader questions of American legitimacy ininternational interventions such as those undertaken in the post-9/11 era. At theend of the film, after Superman has saved the day, Lois writes a new editorialrebutting her earlier work and reinforcing the notion of the United States as a placerequiring a savior, and tacitly of the world as a place requiring a United States.

American exceptionalism and the post-9/11 cinematic superhero boom 121

This reading of Superman Returns is buttressed by several visual elements of thefilm. First, Superman is stabbed in his side by a kryptonite dagger as if he is Jesus onthe cross, speared by a Roman soldier. Further, when (seemingly) sacrificing himselffor humanity by tossing Luthor's kryptonite continent into outer space, he blacks outand falls back to Earth in the pose of Jesus on the cross. Finally, the film's denouemententails Superman recovering in a hospital while in a coma. He slips out of the room inthe night, leaving a nurse to discover his empty room/tomb. Bryan Singer, the directorof Superman Returns, admitted in an interview, ` For me to say that those messianicimages don't exist in the movie would be absurd'' (Moring, 2006, page 2).

Iron Man (2008) can be read as embodying an entirely different form of Americanexceptionalism. Rather than resting on divine intervention, the United States is por-trayed as unique through its moral use of technological superiority. Caldwell (2006)identifies this strand of American exceptionalism as emerging after the closure ofthe frontier. Prior to this, the betterment of American life (and broadly speaking, theworld) could be accomplished through the rolling back of the frontier. However,the narrative of progress had to find a less territorial form following the end ofWestern expansionöand it was then that the national narrative of progress becameenmeshed with technological superiority and advancement.

In the case of Iron Man, the hero himself serves as an icon of American techno-logical innovation and the hierarchies of domination it permits. The hero is a playboyindustrial tycoon named Tony Stark, whose company produces weapons for the USmilitary. He is a man thoroughly implicated in the military ^ industrial complex. On atrip to Afghanistan to demonstrate his newest cluster missile, his convoy is attacked byAfghan paramilitary units using Stark's own weapons. He is captured, but woundedby shrapnel in his heart, which will eventually kill him (he is initially saved bya Westernized Afghan doctor who is also a prisoner). Stark designs a palm-sizedmagnetic reactor that he plugs into his chest to save himselföa metaphorical heartfor the previously callous weapons producer.

Stark escapes by building a suit of armor with which to defeat the men holding himhostage, and spurred by the proliferation of his weapons, he decides that his companywill no longer produce weapons since he cannot guarantee they will be used for moralcauses. In this he is opposed by his lieutenant, Obadiah Stane, who is secretly respon-sible for the sale of weapons to America's enemies. Stark secretly designs a weapononly he will useöa new, upgraded version of the armor he built in Afghanistan, whichwill be powered by the reactor in his chest. He tests the armor by returning toAfghanistan to defeat the militia who captured him and who were attacking the villageof Stark's now-dead fellow captive. The remainder of the plot revolves around theconflict between Stark/Iron Man and Stane (who designs his own form of armor);the primary conflict is about who will control Stark Industries and the new armortechnology (the Afghan terrorists had been paid by Stane to kill Stark and are latereliminated by Stane).

In Iron Man a particular relationship between power and technology is enunciated.As a superhero, Tony Stark has no special power except his own engineering skill andpersonal fortune. The film's opening sequence is Stark's demonstration of the Jerichocluster missile, a spectacular scene in which he utters the following line just prior tohaving the hillside behind him explode impressively from the cluster bomblets: ` Theysay the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer theweapon you only have to fire once. That's how dad did it, that's how America does it,and it's worked out pretty well so far. Find an excuse to let one of these off the chain andI personally guarantee you the bad guys won't want to come out of their caves.'' While hisconversion later presumably mitigates this technophilic orgy of military power, it soon

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becomes clear that Stark's love affair with technology has only just begun. The problemfor him lies not in the power itself but rather in who wields it. By limiting his innovationto a suit of armor that only he can wield, he attempts to guarantee that only his moralityis enforceable through resort to spectacular power; this is parallel to (for instance) USgovernment efforts to limit proliferation of nuclear weapons to new countries whilemaintaining its own stockpiles. This reading of the film is buttressed by no less thanRobert Downey Jr, who played Tony Stark/Iron Man: ` I see Tony Stark as the best andoccasionally worst in Americans and citizens around the world. He's a brilliant guy,an inventor who can't totally separate himself from the repercussions of the weaponshe builds'' (quoted in Stax, 2007, no page).

Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) are based in a somewhatmore unfamiliar type of superhero mythology. According to the narrative, at theend of World War II the Nazis attempted to open a dimensional portal and bringLovecraftian gods to Earth in order to destroy it. They were stopped by the US army,but only after the portal was open long enough for a baby demon to leap across.Trapped on our side of the portal, Hellboy was raised by Professor Bruttenholm, whowas with the soldiers at the battle. All grown up, he lives in seclusion as an agent of theBureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (part of the US government). He shaveshis horns down to mere bumps as a sign of his loyalty and uses his oversized stoneright fist to battle against monsters and other paranormal assailants about whichsociety cannot know.

The plots of the two movies resolve around bizarre occult imaginings, the specialtyof director Guillermo del Toro. However, the theme of the films is more clearly seenin the relationship between Hellboy and humanity. In the finale of the first film heis offered the chance to fulfill his role as the Beast of the Apocalypse and unleashthe Ogdru Jahad (Lovecraftian gods) on humanity, but refuses at the last moment.In the second film Hellboy reveals himself to humanity only to be rejected. This leadshim to question his combat against other monsters when he has more in common withthem than with humanity. In the finale Hellboy is wounded and the Angel of Deathtells Hellboy's girlfriend, Liz, that if he lives he will doom humanity, and she will sufferespecially. She still chooses to save Hellboy, and her sacrifice (along with the knowl-edge that she is bearing Hellboy's children) inspires his recovery and rapprochementwith humanity.

The theme of Hellboy's relationship with humanity keys to this paper's discussionof American exceptionalism because a third strand of this discourse stems from thenonprimordial roots of the American nation; what makes America unique in thisformulation is its ability to accommodate difference. As Weiner indicates, Americanexceptionalism has long keyed on a mythology of acceptance regarding immigration(even when contemporary public opinion opposes immigration):

`The widely held American view is that Americans admitted as immigrants ought tobe and can be incorporated into the American society, economy and polity. This isan assumption of human pliability, that foreigners can become American by livingin the United States, and that their children, through the impact of the educationalsystem and popular culture, can be Americanized'' (1998, page 6).In the director's commentary for the first film, Guillermo del Toro expresses his belief

that the notion of difference is key to appreciating the characters. Del Toro likes the idea ofHellboy fighting other monsters because he is essentially fighting himself, trying to becomemore human through his opposition to monsters. This form of self-loathing is onlynormatively acceptable if we ignore real-world parallels (such as homosexual retraining),but it does highlight the exceptionalist notion of American identity as something flexiblethat can be chosen regardless of where (or what) you are born. Thus, the film is meant

American exceptionalism and the post-9/11 cinematic superhero boom 123

to embody the emphasis on choice and opportunity as a key element of Americanidentity. Hellboy chooses to fight for humanity rather than fulfill his ethnic identity byturning on them, and although rejected by much of humanity at first, he is so suitablytied to humanity, by his relationships with Liz and with Prof Bruttenholm, that hecontinues to `assimilate'.

ConsumptionOf course, these filmic interpretations are all only rooted in either an academic readingor in the preferred meanings of the director. This paper now follows on Dodds's (2006)methods by utilizing a textual analysis of the Internet Movie Database (IMDböhttp://www.imdb.com) as a primary source of empirical data. On IMDb each film can bevoted on, reviewed, and discussed by viewers. Each film had been voted on by between50 000 and 130 000 viewers on the website. As these numbers demonstrate, this methodhas the advantage of bringing together a vast number of people who have experiencedthe films in question to one place. However, it does have its flaws (Mann and Stewart,2000). For instance, nothing is known about posters' subjectivities unless they includeit in their post; similarly the data gained are exclusively textual, leaving out bodylanguage and other more embodied reactions that occur during face-to-face encounters.This method also has the potential for ethical questions to arise; however, given thepseudonymous nature of posting on IMDb, this was not deemed to be a fatal flaw.

However, rather than dwelling in the free-form internet forum for each film asDodds did, this paper focuses on the reviews of the film produced by users in hopesof generating new results rather than replicating those of Dodds. It was hypothesizedthat reviewers would be more thoughtfully critical in the more structured form of areview, which as a genre itself carries certain expectations of the author. For eachmovie, the fifty reviews ranked as the most `useful' by IMDb users were analyzed.While there are flaws in this selection method (reviews seem to be flagged as useful ifviewers agree with the review), it was deemed a suitable way of sampling the reviews toexclude the many too-brief-to-be-useful reviews on the website. These reviews werequalitatively coded using Atlas.ti software. Seventeen codes were found to detail thecontents and argumentative strategies of the reviewers.(1)

Mirroring the work done by Dodds, this work finds that a large majority of thereviews were less concerned with the geopolitical interpretation of such films andinstead engaged in more Hollywood-centric discourse. Of course, these are not mutu-ally exclusive forms of discourse, as questions of casting (for example) often tacitlyconnect to notions of heroism, national identity, and masculinity. Still, there were somekey differences between the reviews of these movies and the forum-based results foundby Dodds. Far and away the top three codes produced were appropriateness or qualityof casting/acting (144 quotations), comparison or connection with other films (112quotations), and quality of writing (105 quotations). Indeed, while Dodds reports thatthe reviewers of Die Another Day (2002) were ` knowing fans'', those writing reviews inthis research seem more likely to analyze the film, its aesthetics, and meanings whileoften specifying that they were not fans of the superhero genre.

One subject brought up often in the reviews was the visual design of each movie.However, this was not an evenly distributed quality; in fact, Superman Returns hasattention called to its visuals only six times, while they are raised for Iron Man fourteentimes, and a full sixty-seven times for the two Hellboy films. For Superman Returns

(1) These were casting/acting', character/action balance', comparing/connecting to other movies',comparison to comics', `grounded in 9/11', `Hellboy is everyday guy', `inter-fan politics', `morality',`mythos', `plot holes', `realism', superhero genre commentary', `Superman/Jesus', `technology', `villains',`visual elements', and `writing/clarity'.

124 J Dittmer

audience reaction to the special effects was mixed, with some approving of the iconicsequences (` The flight scenes were beautiful; Superman cut a very majestic figure as hesoared across skylines and starscapes'' (2) ) and others illustrating Joel Black's earlierpoint about the unreality of `realistic' special effects (` Watching high caliber bulletsbounce off Superman is old hat. Watching a bullet bounce off his eyeball may be newbut it creates an instant disconnect with the viewer'' (3)). For Iron Man the reviews wereuniformly positive regarding the special effects, even among those who disliked themovie (` The visual effects are just perfect'' (4)), but several reviewers raised similarissues about their ubiquity within the superhero genre:

`The final confrontation has become a serious problem for the superhero film.In days of yore, special effects were difficult, so typically the best the film had tooffer was saved for the ending. Now, every scene is liberally slathered with computergenerated gunk. The result is explosive fatigue, a run of overpowering sequenceswhich forgo actual affect for special effect.'' (5)

The comments regarding the Hellboy films' visuals reflect the attention paid byGuillermo del Toro to set design and atmospherics. Despite having smaller budgetsthan either Superman Returns or Iron Man, the Hellboy films' visual design wascentral to audience enjoyment: ``Each of [the scenes] are teeming with Gothic inven-tion and impossibly elaborate steampunk machinery. Anyone with even a passingadmiration for the mechanics of clockwork will find themselves smiling at the way,for example, a destroyed Golden Army solider reconstructs itself from varioussprings, cogs and gears.'' (6) The critical role of visual design and special effects inthe success of the superhero genre appears to be confirmed by the topic's centralityto audience reviews.

In regard to the three strands of American exceptionalism raised earlier, thereis ample evidence of audiences recognizing these themes and engaging with them ingeopolitical ways. For Superman Returns audience members either lukewarmlyaccepted Superman as a ` secular messiah'' (7) or were opposed to the stretching ofthe Superman mythos to include religion (and vice versa):

` I have to take issue with his characterization of Superman as the only son ofa God-like Jor-el sent to Earth to be a savior. Jor-el wasn't all-wise, he was just ascientist. And he didn't send his son to Earth to be a savior, he threw him ina rocket and hurriedly fired it into space because his planet was about to explode.I'll buy the Christ allegory if [director] Brian Singer can show me the part in theBible where God sends Christ to Earth because Heaven was about to explode, andthen radioactive pieces of Heaven become Christ's primary weakness.'' (8)

For Iron Man fans exulted in the technology on display both in the suit and in TonyStark's Malibu mansion, especially given its implications for American military power(` Iron Man's metal suit is definitely very cool, equipped with about anything you'dneed to fight an army of terrorists, or anyone else'' (9)). Alternatively, several reviewers

(2) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348150/usercomments(3) http://us.vdc.imdb.com/title/tt0348150/usercomments?start=19(4) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/usercomments?start=40(5) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/usercomments?start=10(6) Steampunk refers to a genre of science fiction that imagines Victorian-era technology to be farmore advanced than it ever was, while maintaining the aesthetics and materials that were in factcommon to that era (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411477/usercomments?start=40).(7) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348150/usercomments?filter=love(8) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348150/usercomments(9)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/usercomments?filter=prolific

American exceptionalism and the post-9/11 cinematic superhero boom 125

questioned the uncritical celebration of military technology. One in particular is worthquoting at length:

` Iron Man, essentially a symbol of power, abounds in biblical references, ... Jericho,the name given to Stark's finest military weapon, was the city that had to bedestroyed, `as an outward display of faith.' Which makes for great symbolism.Until you consider that modern-day Jericho is in the West Bank of the Palestinianterritories, and then Stark's `rockets' start to look a lot more loaded.'' (10)

For the Hellboy films, more attention was paid to the visuals (as described before),and there was less engagement with the (geo)political context of the film. The themeswere nonetheless appreciated: ` Even though he's half demon, a large part of thecomics, at leastöand this is hinted at in the film, particularly in the climaxöis acontinual nature versus nurture `debate'. He was raised by humans who were as normalas they could be, being government agents in a bureau dedicated to the paranor-mal.'' (11) Similarly, another reviewer noted that ` [t]his movie is about everybody findingout who (the hell) they are, and what makes them want to keep ticking. I would LOVEto see a sequel. Character contrasts: How normal `freaks' can be, and how alien`normal' people can be.'' (12) However, not all reviewers appreciated the message thateveryone has a little demon inside them: ` I don't proscribe to the traditional Catholicbelief that we are born into sin. I believe that people are fundamentally good, andbecome evil through their choices. So the idea of a hero who comes from hell, whois fundamentally bad, who then chooses to be good doesn't really jive with my sense ofthe human experience.'' (13)

Together, this analysis shows that audiences take up the notion of American excep-tionalism but rarely recognize it as such. Heroes were only criticized for not beingmasculine enough (especially Superman, who wrestles with self-doubt throughout thefilm) rather than for exercising power in an undemocratic fashion. Acceptance ofthe superheroes' role in producing order in a dangerous world was universal. Never-theless, as seen above, reviewers can and do argue that the categories and contextsin which the superheroes are situated are flawed (see, for example, the critical natureof the above comments on Superman's categorization, Iron Man's militarism, andHellboy's `difference'). In short, the exceptionalism of superheroes is unremarkable(and un-remarked) in the abstract, but the American nature of that exceptionalism isup for negotiation.

ConclusionsPaying attention to the role of viewers and audiences in processes of cultural produc-tion and consumption enables a more nuanced view of phenomena such as the recentspate of superhero films. A simplistic, and easy, analysis would connect the themes ofsuperheroism with those of the Bush Administration's foreign policy and note thecongruence of the time periods of each. This has been especially prevalent in critics'understandings of The Dark Knight (2008), which has been understood variously assupport for, or critique of, the Bush Administration's policies (eg, Klavan, 2008).However, by paying attention to the way `audiences' are produced by studio researchand marketing practices in order to understand their expectations (a la Comic-con)regarding special effects, continuity, and narrative structure as well as to the ways inwhich viewers make sense of the superhero genre after a film's release, this paper hasshown a more complex picture.(10)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/usercomments?count=761&filter=chrono;start=726(11) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167190/usercomments(12) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167190/usercomments?filter=love(13) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167190/usercomments?start=10

126 J Dittmer

The implications of this paper for popular geopolitics are threefold. First, payingattention to audiences' practices of consumption is not enough; the discursive produc-tion of `the audience' by film executives haunts the processes of production. Therefore,the implications of audiences, which have been quite rightly flagged up in recent work,must be traced throughout the cultural economy rather than just tagged onto the end.Secondly, this paper also illustrates the hazards of a too-quick rush to ideologicalunderstandings of popular culture. Popular geopolitics scholars' focus on the geopol-itical in any element of popular culture can often lead to a narrowness of analysis,ignoring elements of cultural economy that are less obviously tied to the geopoliticalbut nevertheless are important. In this case, the superhero genre proliferates not by theintervention of the Bush Administration or by the role of specific auteur-directorspushing political agendas, but instead largely by studio economics and financing.This nevertheless has geopolitical implications as the superhero genre does offer certaincultural resources for audiences with which to operate and shape their geopoliticalimaginations, even if only a fraction of internet reviewers consciously engage with theseresources. Indeed, many viewers may try to exclude overly political understandings ofthe superhero genre as this can be both unsettling and can ruin the escapist fantasy thatcan be key to movie-going pleasure.

The third way in which this paper has implications for popular geopolitics is inthe aporias evident in the audience research conducted for this paper.Viewers' reviewsof the films gave ample evidence of self-awareness and political critique, highlightingthe agency of these viewers as active audiences. Nevertheless, their reviews followed theaccepted genre conventions of the `movie review', emphasizing production elements ofthe film such as plot, writing, casting, and so on.When visual effects were considered,this was done in regards to how `real' they looked, perhaps hinting at their addition to(or subtraction from) the movie-going experience. For example, here is one responseto Iron Man: ` The special effects and CGI are probably the best I've ever seen in termsof relatable effects. They're not over the top and don't overwhelm your senses.'' (14)

The subordination of the visual to the narrative in reviews like this indicates that thecognitive-discursive focus of film reviews (which emphasize reviewers' subjectivities)might underplay the significance of nonrepresentational theory to the appreciationof film within popular geopolitics. In other words, while the attempt to be as com-prehensive as possible within this paper (in regards to attending to all aspects ofthe cultural economy) has indeed provided new insights for popular geopolitics, thismethod of audience research has left significant aspects of audiencing outside the frame:the visceral thrills of being, and possessing, a superpower.

It is in this nonrepresentational element of the superhero genre that Americanexceptionalism and the CGI revolution of the last decade can be seen to intersect.The discursive overlap between superheroes and American exceptionalism, describedat the outset of this paper, can also be seen to intersect with the affective thrill of thevisual effects revolution, which has made it possible for superheroes to demonstratetheir transcendent superpowers on screen. Whereas the above analysis exploresthe explosion of superhero films as being either a result of the cultural politics ofAmerican exceptionalism or of visual effects innovation, an analysis attuned to non-representational theory might be able to find an intersection between these elements. Thepotential for affective resonance among cinematic displays of (super)power and a post-9/11 American culture in which freedom from shackles [whether those of bureaucracy,legal systems, or of `reality' (see Suskind, 2004)] could yet link the explosion of super-hero films to post-9/11 geopolitical culture via the special effects revolution rather than

(14) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/usercommens

American exceptionalism and the post-9/11 cinematic superhero boom 127

in spite of it (see Carter and McCormack, 2010). There is certainly circumstantialevidence for this understanding, both through the discursive focus on visual effectsamong online reviewers and through their absence of attention to the politics ofsuperheroism itself (in comparison with the politics of the individual film narratives).

What is missing, however, is any direct evidence of audiences' affective responsesto films outside what can be inferred from their discursive production. This is,of course, a perpetual challenge in nonrepresentational thought, which strives forembodied, presentist performative research. Popular geopolitics has yet to substantiallyengage with methods for conducting this kind of research, but luckily works onnonrepresentational research are emerging at just the right time (see Dewsbury, 2009).The guidelines within, however, are not rigid formulae for the production of affect-basedknowledge, but rather

` interferences in problematizing how we think about the world and how the worldforces us to think, in attending intensely to the fluid, nervous, fleshy dispositions of ourbody's agency, and in how the world records itself on its surfaces both on the skin andin the cell, and in experimenting with the images we produce in disseminating ourresearch across an open and mutually transforming nexus of expression, content,form and audience effect'' (Dewsbury, 2009, page 332).

These `interferences' challenge the focus of audience research as it has been conductedthus far in popular geopolitics and point to a future research agenda of experimentalmethods that decenter the discourses and texts, of both producers and audiences, whichhave heretofore dominated debate. This is not to say that these foci, and the kindof work done in this paper, should be abandonedöbut they should be supplementedby empirically based research on the ways audiences are affected by films. This will notbe easyöwhat does it mean to sense and feel American exceptionalism?öbut therewards are potentially great. As Dewsbury (2009, page 321, quoting Beckett, 1987)describes this methodological challenge: ` Try again, fail again, fail better.''

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