Iron Man as Cyborg: Between Masculinities
By Evdokia Stefanopoulou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Abstract
Since the turn of the millennium there has been a mass proliferation of superhero movies.
From the appearance of the fist Spider-Man film in 2002 since the latest installment in
the Captain America series (2016), superhero movies have a tremendous popular and
economic success. These popular texts have also a massive cultural impact by articulating
their representations and ideologies in a global audience consisting of different national,
racial, class and gender identities. The gender issues in superhero movies are often
accompanied by the common observation that the great majority of superheroes are men
and the rare presence of women is marked by their placement in a supporting role, thus
reproducing a patriarchal ideology. Although this phenomenon can indeed be
characterized as an excessive demonstration of masculine power and superheroes can be
seen as mythical figures of a technological patriarchy, I would also suggest a different
approach, an antithetical reading. This approach examines the overstated “technological
sublime in human form” (Wasielewski 66) as a sort of divergent embodiment of
subjectivity, one that contains the notion of the cyborg as described by Donna Harraway,
one containing its own blurring of the ontological boundaries (161), therefore projecting
its own existence as a social construction. Deploying this approach, I would examine the
gender representations in the Iron Man trilogy (2008, 2010, 2013) not as demonstration
of patriarchal power, but as masculinity in crisis, a masculinity undermined by its
excessive technological look and its status as a constructed fabrication. A close analysis
of the three texts and a special focus on gender representations will demonstrate how the
technological subjectivity of Iron Man and the ironic performance by Robert Downey Jr.
actually undermines the surface super-masculinity of the character. Finally, some general
conclusion from the above analysis will be drawn.
1
Since the turn of the century there has been a mass proliferation of superhero
movies. From the first installment of the Spider-Man franchise in 2002 to the latest
Captain America: Civil War in 2016, there are 37 superhero movies in the top-100
records of highest grossing films worldwide for each year. 1 Their popularity is also
inscribed in the all-time worldwide records, where 16 superhero films appear in the top100 of highest grossing films. Among these, six films (Marvel’s The Avengers (2012),
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Iron Man 3 (2013), Captain America: Civil War (2016),
The Dark Knight (2008) and the Dark Knight Rises (2012)) have grossed over 1 billion
1
The number is based on a corpus I have compiled for my PhD thesis in the American science fiction film
for the period 2001-2015.
21
dollars worldwide. 2 Given these numbers, the superhero film can be regarded as an
“event movie” (Elsaesser 321), a highly sophisticated and well-promoted cinematic
product that serve as a showcase window for the convergence of various industries, from
the comic book and graphic novel market and the latest visual effects and audiovisual
technologies, to the videogame industries and to an expanded market of other tie-in
products such as toys or t-shirts. Not only is the superhero film an adequate audiovisual
product in the conglomerate-driven Hollywood film industry since it can advertise and
disseminate products and technologies in a variety of markets, it is also the ultimate
audiovisual product condensing the aesthetics and values of the late capitalist, media
saturated societies (Jameson 1-5). Hence, the superhero film displays “a new kind of
flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense, perhaps
the supreme formal feature of all Postmodernisms…” (Jameson 8).
2
Although economic and industrial aspects are major factors in the shaping of
these “spectacular narratives” (King), the boom of the superhero film is also a product of
its time, ascribing various discourses surrounding the sociopolitical landscape of the first
decade of the 21st century. One of the major approaches in this context is the effect of the
events of 9/11 in the subsequent filmic production and especially in the superhero films,
which accommodate the need of national healing in affirmative myths. The 9/11 context
is stressed by Karen Randell (138) who argues that in the superhero cycle, the urban
destruction has taken on what she labels as a “9/11 aesthetic” that reworks and resonates
the traumatic events. Furthermore, Yann Roblou links the 9/11 trauma with the
production of “complex masculinities” in superhero films stressing that we can regard
these films as “answers to contemporary issues following the 9/11 trauma, one of which
concerns the understanding of the multi-faceted problematic of masculinities” (1). 9/11
destabilized not only the fixed idea of a secure nation, but also the concept of hegemonic
masculinity as a fundamental national
myth,
therefore producing “complex
masculinities”. Superhero films are also meaning-making systems that produce various
subject positions and articulate often-conflicting discourses surrounding identity
questions such as race, gender and class.
2
All economic data drawn from boxoffice.com.
22
3
One of the major discourses surrounding the superhero film concerns gender
issues, such as the hypermasculinity of superheroes and the patriarchal ideology
underlying the texts. Sabine Lebel stresses that superhero films “are positively regressive
in terms of their portrayal of male and female bodies, and gender relations” (1). Betty
Kaklamanidou supports that “Patriarchy works at carefully calculated ways, and the latest
cinematic superhero narratives serve once again as the proof of its hegemony despite the
filmic evidence that points to a newfound respect for the powerful female heroine” (61).
Adding the race factor to the superhero equation, Jeffrey Brown states: “if comic books
represent an acceptable, albeit obviously extreme model of hypermasculinity, and if the
black male body is already culturally ascribed as a site of hypermasculinity, then the
combination of the two—a black male superhero—runs the risk of being read as an
overabundance, a potentially threatening cluster of masculine signifiers” (269).
4
The hegemonic depiction of gender roles can also be located in the origins of the
superhero figure in the comic strips of the late 1930’s and the emergence of what is
commonly known as the era of “Golden Age Comics”. In these first images, the
connection of the superhero figures with futurism and military technology, as well as
with a eugenic hierarchy of bodies suggested a deeply authoritarian ideological core
(Wasielewski 68). Although the context of the 21st century superhero has changed
significantly, we can still trace the same hierarchy of bodies with the saliency of the
white, muscular and hypermasculine superhero body as the ultimate protector of
contemporary societies.
5
Although representations of hegemonic masculinities in contemporary production
can be traced in past and present conditions, I would nevertheless like to suggest another
perspective in examining these excessive masculinities. The superhero figure as a
“technological sublime in human form” (Wasielewski 66) can be explored by deploying
the notion of the cyborg, as described by Donna Haraway in her 1984 seminal essay.
After all, the superhero bodies with their integration in a technological environment and
their imminent dependence on various hi-tech gadgets can be regarded as excessive
posthumans, as cyborgs with a moral cause.
6
Haraway (“A Manifesto for Cyborgs” 158-161) regards the notion of the cyborg
as a political metaphor to overcome the dualities inscribed in the divided Cartesian
23
subject of contemporary societies. The hybrid body of the cyborg, part-machine, partflesh, transgresses the polarities shaping our world. Thus, the concepts of nature and
culture, public and private, male and female, animal, human and machine are reworked
and reconfigured in a radical different perspective. No longer placed in the topos of
“original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense” (159), this deviant
body challenges and subvert the usual categorizations and taxonomies providing
multiple, fractured identities that render the binary oppositions of hierarchical societies
irrelevant. The cyborg imagery delineates a path of liberation from dualities, such as
gender roles, prescribed in our bodies and our world. As Haraway argues, “the cyborg is
a creature in a post-gender world” (ibid), meaning a world that disavows gender as “an
obligatory distribution of subjects in unequal relationships, where some have property in
other” (Haraway, The Haraway Reader 328). Thus Haraway’s ironic 3 cyborg myth is
“about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions and dangerous possibilities, which
progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work” (“A Manifesto for
Cyborgs” 161).
7
It is precisely this notion of the cyborg that I intend to explore in order to
approach the issues of gender in superhero movies, and specifically in the Iron Man
trilogy (2008, 2010, 2013). The persistence of the superhero image even in a more
deconstructed, ironic version in mainstream Hollywood establishes it as an icon of
contemporary culture. Thus the significance of analyzing the representations and
ideologies involved around such icons cannot be overstated. Placing the superhero image
in a broader context and using different methods of approach can help us reveal new
meanings and ideas. The approach that I will follow diverges from the prevailing reading
of superhero films that regards them as expression of patriarchal myths that reproduce
images of hegemonic masculinities. The cyborg metaphor I use illuminates the meanings
that are ascribed to gender as a social construction of identity in the already highly
constructed superhero cyborg body. Superhero movies are after all about fractured
identities, split personalities, double lives and retrofitted bodies. It is a submergence of an
individual into a technological sublime that brings a transcendence of human possibilities
3
According to Haraway, Irony is “about the tension of holding incompatible things together […] about
humor and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method” (“A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
158).
24
and boundaries. As Scott Bukatman suggests: “The central fascination in the superhero
movie is the transforming body […] the body’s discovery of its own transformation”
(121). The superhero body is a cyborg body where the Cartesian ontology is rendered
inadequate. Among the superhero pantheon one figure stands out as an ideal cyborg
metaphor: Iron Man. Half-man, half-machine as his name eloquently suggests, he is
already a divided subject, embodying a negation of the unitary subject of Enlightenment.
However, Iron-Man still performs in certain instances hegemonic masculinity, but his
altered body causes disruptions in the fixed sense of a gendered self. Therefore, in these
momentarily disruptions lay the possibility for a critical rethinking of gender roles. As I
will show, the portrayal of Iron-Man in the cinematic trilogy provides a plethora of
examples and instances of altered bodies that enclose the potential of altered, multiple
identities. Thus, my hypothesis is that by examining the superhero image using
Haraway’s cyborg metaphor, the superhero can be read as a dichotomous constructed
being, enclosing opposing binaries such as masculine/feminine, thus destabilizing
hegemonic notions of gender. Furthermore, notions of performance, as I will later
explore, can also contribute in this perspective.
Between Masculinities
8
The first cinematic Iron Man (2008) is the story of the myth’s origins as “the first
film always features the hero’s origins and subsequent films treat the emergence of each
new villain’s metamorphologies” (Bukatman 121). The author adds that “the origin story
is the real site of plasmatic possibility […] forcing a new awareness of corporeal
possibility, as the body is rethought, physically (within the diegesis) and digitally (on the
level of production)” (ibid). Thus, in the first Iron Man film we witness a technological
birth, the gradual metamorphoses of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Junior), an allmasculine all-American entrepreneur, into Iron-Man, an embodiment of fractured
subjectivities. His violent birth is placed in Afghanistan, where he has gone to
demonstrate Stark Industries’ new superweapon “Jericho” to potential buyers. Stark’s
introduction to the audience finds him sitting in the back of a moving SUV, comfortably
drinking his scotch, while listening to hard rock music loudly. He desperately wants to
start a conversation, although the military personnel escorting him seem reluctant. When
25
he finally breaks the silence, they immediately start asking questions about his personal
and sexual life and express their admiration. Albeit in a humorous, light-hearted way, the
scene presents him as a kind of rock star and as an arrogant playboy. The initial setting is
abruptly interrupted when a missile hits the jeep that precedes them. Tony manages to get
out of the vehicle and the last thing he sees before falling unconscious is another
incoming missile bearing the sign of his own signature “Stark Industries”. In the
flashback sequence that follows, the viewers get to glimpse Tony’s temperament: He is
an arrogant, self-centered playboy, who collects women and cars and a true believer in
the necessity of weapons in keeping world peace.
9
After this introductory sequence, the scene of his violent rebirth takes place in a
dark womb-like cave. Tony Stark’s life is at stake as the shrapnel shards from the
explosion are reaching his heart, thus he is in need of an altered body, a new birth. This is
an all male birth, taking place due to masculine actions and counter-actions, where Iron
Man is delivered between two opposing masculinities. On the one side, there is a
surrogate doctor, Yinsen (Shaun Toub) an altruistic, scientific figure, who serves as a
benevolent father figure and helps him reconstruct a new body and thus a new identity.
On the other side, we have the terrorist organization “Ten Rings”, an all-male aggressive
militaristic group that took him into captivity and commands him to build the new
superweapon “Jericho” as a condition of his release. In this all-male scenery, technology
with its generative and disrupting possibilities is the only signifier that eludes a
signification of masculinity. As Mary Ann Doane notes, in various science fiction
narratives “the technological is insistently linked to the maternal” and technology itself is
coded as feminine (185). But contrary to Doane (182) who examines “representations of
technology that work to fortify – sometimes desperately – conventional understandings of
the feminine”, I suggest an antithetical approach; that technology can be placed in an
intermediate space, between masculine and feminine and its representation may offer
destabilizing possibilities in gender identities. It is exactly this destabilizing technological
force that underpins Iron Man’s birth.
10
Hence the birth scene takes on a double meaning: The reconstruction of Tony’s
identity as a result of a bodily experience is paralleled with an acknowledgment of the
constructedness of his identity. The process of reconstruction, of the technological re-
26
birth is accompanied by deep acknowledgment as Stark is actually orchestrating his own
re-birth. The “being present in my own birth” scenario is enacting a primal scene fantasy,
and a rather common fantasy in a genre obsessed with origin myths, cosmogonies, world
creations and destructions (Dervin 96, Penley 120). Hence, the witnessing of this primal
scene elicits a traumatic acknowledgment of his fabricated identity. The two-fold process
of the technological creation of the self oscillates Iron Man in different power positions.
On the one hand the orchestration of his own creation gives Iron-Man an empowering
position of the male creator who masters the technological skills and enhances his own
body. On the other hand the recognition of this process brings forth the constructedness
of his identity, the fabrication of his own masculine myth. This realization causes a
traumatic awareness that the self is the effect of different experiences in lived social
reality as they are inscribed in the body and thus is always in flux. Hence, Iron Man is
figured as an ambiguous subject, a cyborg knowing of his own constructed ‘nature’.
Although the awareness of his constructed self remains embedded in a rather hegemonic
masculinity, it nevertheless causes ruptures in the hegemonic notion of the gendered self
as an essential, natural and permanent category.
11
The obsessive reenactments of his own construction are replayed in the rest of the
“origins” film and are inscribed in his transformed social relations. After his painful birth
of iron, fire and blood, he is ejected from the dark of the cave to the blinding white sand,
a proper birth metaphor, where he is rescued and brought back home by a literal Deus
Ex-Machina, an American army helicopter. The following sequences record the trajectory
of the newborn’s first clumsy steps into the kinesis of a full-grown subject who has
mastered his movements and choreographies. The gradual submersion into the
potentialities of his new iron self, the obsessive tests and rehearsals of his powers, bring
him to a personality meltdown, a dissolution of the stable identity and a fixation in the
constructedness of the self. The metamorphosis is also inscribed in his social relations as
they are depicted in the course of the film. From the accompaniment of numerous women
prior to his transformation, his current sociability is located in the highly technological
environment of his basement where his main interactions are with Jarvis, the male voice
of his central operating system and his anthropomorphized (and funny) fire extinguisher.
Finally, his relation with his assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) is rebalanced,
27
although not yet in full equality, by acknowledging her importance in his life.
12
Although the cyborg status is causing dissolution of the boundaries that shape
Tony Stark/Iron Man, I am not suggesting a complete transformation but rather an
ambiguous placement in various subject positions. His gradual trajectory from a cynical
arms manufacturer supporting a militaristic ideology into a more sensitive and
considerate individual is not without gaps or contradictions. His identity is not
completely altered but shuttered in an incongruous way. After all, this is what the cyborg
entails: the coexistence of the opposites, the destabilization of the Manichean logic 4 .
Hence, Iron Man may still express arrogance, superiority, or hegemonic masculinity but
these instances are not an expression of his solid identity and are in constant conflict with
other elements of his fragmented identity.
13
After Iron-Man achieves a complete mastery of his augmented body, his new
existence is established in an Oedipal-like confrontation with the father figure of Obadiah
Stane (Jeff Bridges), a close friend of his father and co-director of Stark Industries, who
obstructs his entrance in the (symbolic) world. Obadiah represents a dominant masculine
authority that opposes the ‘soft’ turn in Tony’s positioning (as he ironically asks him
“What, you are humanitarian now?”). Iron Man denies the authoritative masculinity of
the father-figure, having acquired a new identity that is diverging from the law of the
Father5. Thus, his own masculinity is figured as deviant. Nevertheless, in the final scene
of the duel and in order to confront Iron Man, Obadiah acquires his own giant iron suit,
therefore looking like a dark reflection of Iron Man, a meaner, larger, darker version of
the self, which is a common feature in superhero films (Tyree 28). Still, although they are
similar on the surface, the two augmented bodies have different experiences, different
embodied subjectivities and thus different stories to tell.
14
Iron Man and Obadiah embody and project different masculinities. Iron Man is a
cyborg; an organism with embodied technological modifications, while Obadiah’s nature
remains unchanged within his huge, powerful Iron Suit. The difference is a matter of
embodiment and is the defining point of their actions. Iron Man’s status as a cyborg
4
Manichean logic refers to a worldview that describes everything in dualistic opposite terms such as good
vs. evil, dark vs. light etc.
5
Put in simple worlds, the “Law of the Father” in Lacanian psychoanalysis represents the body of social
laws, conventions, norms and values of a given society. The adherence to the Law facilitates the child to
abandon its desire for the Mother and to assume its ‘proper’ gendered role.
28
signifies his embodied difference, a result of a lived experience that has been inscribed
into his body. Starting from Stark’s ironic injury due to his own weapons to the slow
realization that the military industry is actually a threat for the innocents, his inner
transformation follows the outer change. Another important incident is his acquaintance
with the benevolent father figure of Yinsen, who literally replaces Tony’s heart and offers
him an alternative model of being. Therefore, Tony’s altered body is a production of his
own history that marks him with an open wound, a trauma reminding him of the fragility
of existence, transforming him both externally and internally. On the contrary, Obadiah’s
transformation in the final duel is only superficial, external. His transformation is just an
Iron Suit that he wears skin-deep and prevents him from any inner changes. Thus, the
boundaries of his identity remain unchanged. The suit is just a ‘hard’ projection of his
ego that excludes any lived social experience; it is just a weapon that reflects his solid,
unchanged and ‘closed’ identity.
15
In the second part of the trilogy, Iron Man 2 (2010) Iron Man’s masculinity is
again replayed in contrast with other masculinities; those of his enemies but also of his
ally, Colonel Rhodes (Don Cheadle). Again Stark’s trajectory is delineated between two
poles of masculine authority. On the one hand an extravagant excessive masculinity
embodied in Russian Ivan (Mickey Rourke) who is marked as a deviant and ethnically
Other body. Ivan’s masculinity is expressed as an old fashioned masculinity powered by
the will to avenge his own father’s betrayal by Iron Man’s father, Howard Stark. Ivan’s
body, excessively muscular and covered with tattoos, inscribes not only a negatively
deviant masculinity linked primarily to prison life, but also the cold war politics of
America. Besides the foreign enemy, there is also the enemy from within, personified in
Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), as the egomaniac entrepreneur who puts profit and fame
above everything, including his country’s safety. He sees the perfect opportunity in
Ivan’s ability to build his own army of iron suits, but his masculinity is being ridiculed as
Ivan just uses his resources to meet his own purposes. As it is common in the genre both
characters are constructed as hyperboles, portraying an image of excessive masculinities
coded in a negative way. Justin’s and Ivan’s masculinities are inscribed as destructive and
negative, serving their own egoistic purposes and failing to contribute to the community.
16
On the other hand, but equally reproducing hegemonic masculinity, is the
29
protective, law-abiding Colonel Rhodes. Being a close friend of Iron Man and a highranking officer in American Air Force, he represents a masculinity that aims toward the
protection of the community, engulfing ideals and values such as friendship and honor.
When Rhodes witnesses Iron Man in an out-of-control state he decides to stop him and
claims one of the iron suits as his own. Although at first he puts his faith in the American
Army and hands over the Iron Man’s suit to the authorities, the army’s collaboration with
Justin Hammer and the subsequent catastrophe makes him skeptical about official
authority. Thus, he stands as an intermediate figure between Iron Man and the army,
between private initiative and national control6.
17
Iron Man stands between opposing male forces, between mainstream and
divergent masculinities and blurs the boundaries between private and collective, egoism
and altruism, between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic modes of masculinity. His
masculinity is an intermediate and ironically opposes all stable categories. The oscillation
is inscribed in his trajectory in the filmic narrative. In one of the first scenes of the film
we see him in a Supreme Court hearing, where he is asked to deliver the Iron Suit into the
hands of the government due to its status a weapon. Iron Man objects this statement and
he refers to the suit as “high-tech” prosthesis and adds, “Iron Man is me. You can’t have
me”. At the end of his triumphant and arrogant speech, he concludes: “I privatized world
peace”. These statements are inscribing a tendency of mistrust in the government and its
handling of military issues – perhaps a comment in the post 9/11 foreign policy.
Although in the end of the film his stance is recognized as right – only he can efficiently
handle the suit – the need of collectivization, if not nationalization, of security issues is
vaguely recognized with the first helpful appearance of the S.H.I.E.L.D. initiative. While
he initially declines the job offer as a S.H.I.E.L.D. advisor (he is disqualified for a full
membership due to his narcissistic tendencies) with the line “you can’t afford me”, he
does seem to put some consideration into this idea (proven in the subsequent film of the
Marvel cinematic universe, The Avengers in 2012). Hence, he is placed in a liminal space
between collective action and private initiative. However, Tony’s choice to oppose the
state-control of his powers can be regarded as a part of his hegemonic masculinity,
6
Colonel Rhodes’ character will be further complicated after his accident in Captain America: Civil War
(2016) and his potential assimilation in a cyborg status due to the technological prosthesis that enables him
to walk.
30
simply reproducing the state politics on a private level. Nevertheless, his consideration on
using his powers in an alternative collective force and his liminal positioning disrupts
hegemonic discourse by suggesting alternative and intermediate possibilities.
18
In the third and final part, the metamorphosis is complete. In this part Stark is
presented as vulnerable, sensitive and grounded. He is devoted to two things: His iron
suits, which function as a sort of surrogate children, or as Tony puts it “a part of me”, and
his relationship with Pepper, the most important aspect in his life. These two ‘loves’ seem
to be in conflict at times as the suits are uncannily assuming different domestic roles that
undermine his relationship with Pepper, or even worse, threaten her life. However, these
instances can also be interpreted as a Freudian return of the repressed, since Tony’s
repressed hypermasculinity is reflected in the suits’ seemingly growing sentience.
Another characteristic that delineates his vulnerability and subverts any notion of
dominant masculinity is the panic attacks that Tony experiences. Showing a superhero
experiencing panic attacks is a total reversal of the common notion of hegemonic
masculinity, which usually excludes any signs of ‘weaknesses’. Tony’s body inscribes
the coexistence of the opposite, the elimination of the dualities of a hegemonic
masculinity, such as weak and strong, powerful and powerless, superhero and everyday
man. Finally, his sensitive and caring side is revealed in his relationship with the child
who helps him after he lands unconscious in Tennessee, having escaped in one of his iron
suits from the catastrophic attack in his house. Although never resorting to overt
sentimentality and preserving his cool, ironic persona, Iron Man seems to take a real
interest in this child by giving him a solution on how to deal with bullies and by
empathizing with him as he projects his own childhood also marked by an absent father.
Yet, this incident can be read as Stark fulfilling the criteria of a heteronormative father
and re-writing his own traumatic father-son relationship, yet it also reveals qualities
usually coded as feminine that add another dimension in his not-too-solid masculine
identity.
19
His transformation is paralleled with the trajectory of Pepper Potts’s arc in the
film. As Pepper is captured by Aldrich Cillian (Guy Pearce) – a personification of the evil
scientific-industrial complex – who uses a biogenetic process to turn dismembered exsoldiers into weapons, she is subjected by force into this transforming process and thus
31
acquires a more than human status. In the final battle scene, as she comes out of the
flames after a sixty-meter fall and saves Iron Man, she is finally positioned as his equal.
Her transformed femininity is matched with Iron Man’s altered masculinity. In this scene,
the issues of gender roles reallocation and of a latent empowered femininity throughout
the trilogy are openly manifested. It is the necessary reversal in gender roles for Iron Man
to complete his transformation and re-enter his social milieu as a changed man.
20
In the final scene of Iron Man 3 (2013), both Iron Man and Pepper get rid of their
prosthesis and thus return to a ‘normal’ human status. Nevertheless, they remain changed
because the inner transformation has altered permanently their fixed, stable sense of self7.
As Iron Man says in the end, “my armor was a cocoon… and now I am a changed man…
I am Iron Man”. It is exactly this identity description that can be attributed to the process
of becoming a cyborg. The armor is indeed a cocoon for the reworking and negotiation of
a traditional understanding of the self as a closed and fixed identity with impermeable
limits. The armor, the ‘external self’, the technological prosthesis subvert this image, thus
disrupting any notion of traditional, fixed categories such as masculine/feminine.
However, I am not suggesting that Iron-Man is a “creature in a post-gender world”
(Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” 159). On the contrary, he still remains a gendered
figure. Yet the awareness of his constructed identity and the possibility to change it
brings also a disruption in the sense of a gendered self as a solid, fixed and permanent
category. The gendered self is just one possibility in a rather fractured identity. It is this
acknowledgment that cannot be removed along with the technological modification.
Once disrupted, the notion of the self cannot be brought back to neatly, fixed boundaries
and thus the importance of the conclusive and sort of existentialist identity manifestation:
“I am Iron Man”.
Performing Self, Performing Cyborg
21
One of the highly discussed aspects of the Iron Man trilogy was Robert Downey
Jr.’s performance. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert (“Iron Man”) writes:
Downey’s performance is intriguing, and unexpected […] Tony Stark is created
7
Pepper Potts’s transformation seems to be confined in the Iron Man trilogy, since she is downgraded to a
marginal and slightly more passive role in the Avengers (2012) and disappears from subsequent Marvel
films.
32
from the persona Downey has fashioned through many movies: irreverent, quirky,
self-deprecating, wise-cracking [….] “Iron Man” doesn’t seem to know how
seriously most superhero movies take themselves. If there is wit in the dialog, the
superhero is often supposed to be unaware of it. If there is broad humor, it usually
belongs to the villain. What happens in “Iron Man,” however, is that sometimes
we wonder how seriously even Stark takes it. He’s flippant in the face of disaster,
casual on the brink of ruin […] At the end of the day it’s Robert Downey Jr. who
powers the lift-off separating this from most other superhero movies. You hire an
actor for his strengths, and Downey would not be strong as a one-dimensional
mighty-man. He is strong because he is smart, quick and funny, and because we
sense his public persona masks deep private wounds.
Other critics have also commented upon the link between Downey’s performance and his
public persona. A.O. Scott comments: “On paper the character is completely
preposterous, but since Tony is played by Robert Downey Jr., he’s almost immediately as
authentic and familiar — as much fun, as much trouble — as your ex-boyfriend or your
old college roommate”. Kirk Honeycott states “Downey plays off his own bad-boy image
wonderfully” and David Edelstein complements: “Who wouldn’t root for Downey as a
guy who has to clean up his act? [...] Downey has such terrific instincts.” Lastly David
Denby remarks: “He [Downey] can make offhandedness mesmerizing, even soulful; he
passes through the key moments in this cloddish story as if he were ad-libbing his inner
life.”
22
The comments on Downey’s performance and its connection with the actor’s
persona highlight issues of performance as a dual focus on the embodiment of character
and the body of the actor. This correlation is described by Richard de Cordova, who
defines performance, in contradiction with acting, as the moments of the body’s activity
where the split between actor and character is foregrounded or as he puts it, “those
moments in films in which acting comes to the fore and is noticed, there is a split
between actor and character as agents of two different actions” (152). This rupture
between the two bodies creates a distancing effect and “when the performative dimension
comes to the fore […] the body of the actor becomes an issue in the film, and, at those
moments, the spectator is involved in a particularly complex play of identification and
belief” (de Cordova 155). It is precisely this rupture that is achieved by Downey’s ironic
performance. The funny, quick and casual style and the projection of Downey’s own ‘bad
boy’ persona create a distancing effect and the ‘seriousness’ of the character with all its
33
gendered attributes are constantly interrogated by the text. This doubling effect is further
enhanced when one considers that several lines of Iron Man’s dialogue were actually
Downey’s improvisation (Eisenberg, “Jeff Bridges says Iron Man was all Improv”)
resulting in a further projection of the actor’s persona within the fabricated character and
an accentuation of the disjuncture between the real and fictive body. Thus, a space of
self-reflexivity, humor and discontinuity is created that undermines the credibility of
Iron-Man as well as his superficial masculine characteristics that at first seem to define
the character. Although at first look these masculine characteristics seem to be simply
reproduced, Downey Jr. uses humor and ironic distance to oscillate and adapt between
different types of masculinity. Thus, a critical distance is created for negotiating the
meaning of these hegemonic masculine features.
23
The dichotomy between the character and the actor’s body is further complicated
when another split is considered; that between the physical body and the technological
body as inscribed in the figuration of the cyborg. Christine Cornea (4) comments on what
she calls a “cyborg performance” and stresses the interconnectedness between the cyborg,
technology, cinematic apparatus and generic context and those issues of performance are
entangled with what is considered a “proper” or “natural” style of acting. Specifically,
Cornea highlights how the “robotic” performance of many cinematic cyborgs (i.e. in
Terminator films (1984, 1991), Robocop (1987), and Universal Soldier (1992)) can be
considered as a “generic form of acting” that is common to science fiction film and thus
must be interpreted in a proper context and examined in relation with other elements of
the cinematic text. In the case at hand, Downey Jr.’s cyborg performance is rather antirobotic, albeit equally superficial. It is a performance that does not try to reveal a deeper
meaning for the character or transfuse him with psychological depth 8 but instead it
remains on the surface. Thus it can be understood as a self-referential performance that
by avoiding the search of a “depth” and of a “reality effect” stresses its own
constuctedness. As Cornea notes the type of performance that stresses materiality and
depthlessness can be marked by what Philip Auslander characterizes as “resistant forms
of performance that retain a degree of self-reflexivity, remain at the level of the
8
Iron Man’s character is reworked in a more complex manner in subsequent films (Avengers (2012),
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016).
34
superficial, the surface, while somehow avoiding a reification of the very surfaces they
present” (10). By presenting a self-referential, ironic superhero like Iron-Man, and by
playing out loud the common (or latent) aspects of masculinity, as coded in previous
cinematic superhero texts, the films under examination provide a “resistant form of
performance”. Portraying Iron-Man’s oscillation between different types of masculinity,
the films create multiple layers of referentiality where Downey’s performance
undermines and parodies superheroes’ traditional masculine traits.
24
Several instances in this ‘constructed’ performance, one that brings attention to its
constructed surfaces, can be found throughout the trilogy. For example, in Iron Man
(2008), we find extended scenes where Tony Stark builds his technological suit, while
trying to master the powers and possibilities it offers. Tony delivers his first efforts of a
new reconstructed body with humor, while depictions of an all-controlling masculine
power are constantly undermined by his failures. Thus, Iron Man is a literally constructed
hero shown as the product of constant self-production, of trial and failure. This
constructedness is highlighted by his playfulness, as he makes his interaction with his suit
seem like a delightful activity than a serious preoccupation. For instance, his fist trial of
the suit is actually a child-like ride in the night skyline of Los Angeles, which echoes the
thrilling experience of human flight as a common children’s dream. Another example is
during a fighting sequence in Iron Man 3 where an adversary asks him: “Is that all you’ve
got? One trick and one cheesy line?” to which he ironically responds: “Sweetheart, that
could be the name of my autobiography.” Thus, he performs his own ‘low’ superhero
status in contrast with the serious, grand masculine characteristics of other superheroes.
By remaining on the surface, and by acknowledging it, he paradoxically avoids the
reification of these surface qualities. The text reveals the superhero as a constructed
gendered self, a self that according to Judith Butler continually performs its gender by a
ritualized repetition of stylized acts. Hence, Downey delivers a performance that draws
attentions to its constructed elements by intertwining parts of comic dialogue with an
appropriately ironic enunciation, thus laying bare the mechanism of a constructed,
gendered superhero image.
35
Conclusion
25
As we are now approaching the end of the 2010s, the superhero craze seems to
expand, entering a more self-referential, ironic phase. Although instances of humor and
irony are evident in older examples of the genre, such as X-Men (2000) or even Superman
(1978), nevertheless this tendency is more evident and self-reflexive in recent superhero
texts. The superbly preposterous Deadpool (2015) became the first superhero film with a
Golden Globe nomination in the category of best musical or comedy, following the same
path of self-referentiality, parody and humor that deconstruct and parodies the dominant
superhero image. This self-referentiality ironically plays with the main genre conventions
and offers a fresh perspective in a saturated genre. Besides the generic renewal that seems
to be at work, issues of representation and ideology, such as gender roles are also brought
into question.
26
By associating the superhero image with another prolific contemporary image,
that of the cyborg and by deploying other tools of analysis, such as performance aspects,
I hopefully showed that new meanings can be disclosed such as the disruptive
possibilities of the technological, constructed body. Hence, notions of hegemonic gender
representations that shape the analysis of superhero image are questioned and even in
occasions subverted and replaced by notions of the constructed self and the subsequent
blurring of its boundaries and dichotomies. Nevertheless, hegemonic gender depictions
are far but absent in superhero films; but they are often placed in a liminal space between
hegemonic and counter masculinity. Thus, the Iron Man cinematic trilogy offers a
plethora of subject positioning and “points of entry”, creating a heterogeneous and
conflicting textuality that offers a multitude of readings. Whether this is a Hollywood
strategy in order to renew a genre and to address a larger audience, that often contains
radically different subjects, or is the result of conflicting social discourses and
movements, the superhero myth has still some revealing stories to tell about the
boundaries of ourselves and the multitude of identities that we adopt in our contemporary
world. Hence, Iron Man’s description in a cyborg metaphor can offer us a new
perspective in exploring gender issues in the enduring superhero myth.
36
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