A mainstream conception of the superhero exists within the tales of Spiderman, Superman, X-Men, and the like. While Hollywood recently has devoted significant attention to these franchises from both Marvel and D.C., other "heroes" have emerged through independent film makers and distributors namely Harvey Pekar (American Splendor), David Dunn (Unbreakable), and Amelie Poulan (Amelie du Mont Marte). The former enjoys a moment early in his movie contrasting the aforementioned "true" superheroes. The middle, of course, functions as Shyamalan's exploration into the "myth" of the hero, and the final rearticulates the "hero" of another era, Zorro. What have these three to do with the resurgence of the hero? Are they riding the wave? Or do these movies merely coincide with the blockbuster summer movies of the tight clad hero? I'd like to do a brief exploration in the golden age of comics and radio in preparation for analysis of these three heroes: Harvey, David, and Amelie.

Bio Note :: Andrew Tash is a graduate student finishing his MA at the Elliott School of Communication, Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas. He has completed his MA in Literature focusing on film studies and composition research. Interested in Visual Rhetoric, his current research focuses on Rhetorical analyses of moving images for educational or industrial applications. He serves as Co-Chair for the Film Areas of the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association and is webmaster for the National Popular/American Culture Association.

Email :: andrtas@hotmail.com

Since Angela McRobbie's investigation of the male bias in subcultural studies in 1980, there has been much feminist analysis of the relationship between women and popular music. These studies have largely focused on women's consumption of music as a commodity and the ensuing pleasures and models of collective and individual identification this offers, or, have examined the production of music and music style as a site for female empowerment and resistance to patriarchal structures and institutions. It is within this context that I approach a recent crop of spunky scream-goddesses: the sexed-up shock-rocker Peaches, performance-artists turned mainstream musos Chicks on Speed, and Karen O, the front woman of New York outfit The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Through an examination of their actions, imagery, and 'look', I propose that these lycra-clad chanteuses appropriate superhero style to problematise the relationships between gender, sexuality, and power in music culture. Like modern day Wonder-Women they don a pastiche of shredded tights, underwear-as-outerwear, wristbands, and in Peaches' case, a strap-on dildo, to soar across the stage and leap into the crowd, fists flying in a chaotic and spectacular frenzy of musical cathartics. It is through the performance of masculinist superheroics that Peaches, Karen O, and Chicks on Speed complicate the relationship between gendered bodies, heroism, and power in the popular music sphere.

By performing the conventions and tropes of the superhero, these women rupture associations between the 'male-rock-star-in-tights' and the superhero, forged during the golden days of '80s glam metal. By parodying the masculinist (super)heroics of the boyz from Motley Crüe, Van Halen, and other such spandex-wearing show ponies, Peaches, Karen O, and Chicks on Speed challenge conventional formations and representations of gender in the music sphere. In reinventing the sexual excesses of cock-rock as a sexed-up, girl-power extravaganza these artists rupture the seamlessness of normative male and female bodies.

While many rock commentators have situated these stylistic and performance tropes within a history of female popular music (for example, sporty spandex streetwear has been associated with performers as diverse as Olivia Newton-John, Debbie Harry, and Salt 'n' Pepa; Madonna's cone-cupped corset is a precursor to the trend for wearing undergarments in public - a tactic that celebrates female sexuality as liberated and empowered; while the reworking of rock's potent, phallic energy to explode the dichotomies between men as active producers of music and women as passive consumers has most recently been attributed to the riot grrl movement), this paper offers an alternative genealogy to conventional interpretations that situate ladies who rock within a history of female music icons. The stretchy synthetic's use and abuse by rock royalty is explored through tropes of the superhero to look beyond conventional interpretations of women in music.

Unlike Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Xena Warrior Princess, Karen O, Chicks on Speed, and Peaches do not possess any special powers. They are not superheroes in the traditional sense. Rather, their relevance to a study of superheroes is located at the site where superhero discourse crosses over into music culture, transforming both traditional formulations of the superhero and gendered identity.

Bio Note :: Kim Toffoletti lectures in Women's Studies at Deakin University . She was awarded her doctorate in 2003 for her thesis, Transformations: Feminism and the Posthuman, completed in the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research at Monash University , Australia . Her publication record includes articles in journals such as Hecate, Thirdspace, Metro, and Southern Review, and her research areas include the posthuman, women and technology, theories of the visual, and feminist engagements with consumer culture.

Email :: kimt@deakin.edu.au

Death and the punishment of murderers are important themes in BtVS and Greek tragedies. In BtVS, the conscience of the characters, and the guilt they feel, is their punishment for taking human lives. In the Buffyverse, Willow reflects the character of Medea. Willow becomes enraged when her partner Tara is murdered by Warren and begins a quest of revenge. Unlike Medea, however, Willow suffers from guilt because she committed murder. When 'evil' Willow departs, Willow 's conscience punishes her. Although Willow is not physically punished for committing murder, her conscience makes it difficult to deal with the knowledge that she took another human life. In Greek tragedies, characters are often outcast from their cities after taking a human life, especially a family member's. This can be seen through characters such as Orestes and Oedipus. Medea also leaves her home town after murdering her children. Willow is sent away to London after murdering Warren , however, she is not punished for her misuse of the black magicks but rather she learns about, and hones, her power. Willow must rehabilitate herself in London and is punished by her conscience whilst Medea chooses to leave for Athens and has no remorse for killing her children, and is not punished by the gods.

Bio Note :: Sophia van Gameren has graduated from Master of Arts (Writing and Literature) at Deakin University , Melbourne . She completed her Bachelor of Arts with Honours at the University of Melbourne in 2001. Her Honours thesis was titled "From Anxiety to Sympathy: Following the Vampire from a Monstrous and Ethnic Threat to its Transformation into a Sympathetic 'White' Figure." Sophia's academic interests include Shakespearean literature, Classical Greek tragedies, the figure of the vampire, and most importantly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Email :: s_vangameren@hotmail.com

Baroque mutants in the 21st century? Re-thinking genre through the superhero :: Saige Walton

As early as the fifties, film theorist André Bazin had coined the term “super-western” to identify the ways in which the Hollywood western had moved beyond its so-called ‘classical’ form to reach a baroque state of play. Is the western (super)hero the real generic precursor to far more elaborately costumed and caped crusaders of justice? The mythology of the superhero certainly recalls the generic inheritance of the Hollywood western: the tortured, outsider mentality of the hero/anti-hero; the overt doubling of superhero/villain; and the maintenance of law and order that harbours a somewhat freakish tendency towards vigilantism.

Is the superhero informed by an amalgamation of diverse, generic elements? Does the superhero belong to a genre in its own right? Or might there be larger questions of genre theory that can be brought to light by the figure of the superhero?

Rather than discussing the superhero in terms of a distinct, self-contained genre or even as a collection of hybridised generic elements, this paper uses the metaphor of the superhero to understand the inherently baroque play of genre itself. Evolutionary approaches to genre (in which form teleologically moves towards what Bazin would term its super-status) need to be re-interpreted to take into account the cyclical and process-like nature of generic development. The cyclical nature of genre creates a palimpsest effect in which genres are both aware of their own history and subject to constant renewal and baroque re-activation.

The superhero provides a fitting metaphor for the baroque potential of all genres: a definitive point of origin often acts as a catalyst to the formation of a superhero (from the traumatic death of one’s parents to an attack by radioactive spiders) to which the overall mythology adheres to but renews again and again with potentially infinite plot variations; an emphasis on mutation and transformation (are all superheroes such figures of baroque excess?) which upset classical notions of order and symmetry, at the level of the body and the level of form; spatial trespass and the incorporation of cross-generic elements; and a constant emphasis on movement and phenomenological impact, which hints at the restless, cyclical development of genre as it moves towards its baroque (super)state.

Infinite variation, mutation and freedom of movement are the true calling cards of the superhero; the baroque play of genre is the superhero’s ultimate costume.

Bio Note :: Saige Walton is a postgraduate student in the Cinema Studies Program at Melbourne University, and is writing her dissertation on the neo-baroque logic of the cinematic experience. She is also a researcher with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

The Spirits Within: The Shamanic Hero in Final Fantasy :: Lucy Wright

Super-muscles and super-powers will only get you so far. When the enemy takes an inexplicably numinous form, you must turn inwards – to the mind, to dreams, to the Spirits Within – in order to find a solution. Scientific shaman-hero Dr Aki Ross uses both her rational mind and her oneiric intuition to save the day, and the planet. My paper will explore how the shamanic figure has been revisioned by this sci-fi anime text, and use a Jungian approach to comment on this reincarnation of the inner journey.

Bio Note :: Lucy Wright is a doctoral candidate in the Cinema Studies Program at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD focuses on spiritual ideas in science fiction anime.

Email :: lkwright@unimelb.edu.au

Bio Note :: Ray Younis was educated at Sydney and Oxford and is particularly interested in the relationship between philosophy (particularly the metaphysics and ethics of Nietzsche and Heidegger and the epistemology of Wittgenstein and Derrida) and cultural studies. He has co-edited a number of books on religion, myth and cultural studies and is currently working on a book length study of nihilism, post-modernity and deconstruction. He co-ordinates the communication, media and cultural studies programs at CQU (Sydney), teaches applied ethics and cultural studies and is a consultant in philosophy at the University of Sydney. He suspects that he was conceived during a late night screening of “The Wild Bunch”.

Email :: r.younis@syd.cqu.edu.au

Grant Morrison was one of a number of authors who participated in the revisionist trend of the 1980's comic genre, taking over the narrative of a 1960's hero from the DC archives, the unimaginative creation "Animal Man," who can duplicate the abilities of nearby animals. Morrison used the character as a spring board for a multiplicity of themes. Besides addressing immediate contemporary political concerns (notably issues of animal rights and ethics within the first few issues) Morrison drafted an Animal Man that very quickly became a meta-textual platform for discussions of identity construction.

The paper intends to address the development that Animal Man, and Morrison himself (who eventually includes himself within the narrative) undergoes in issues #1-26 of the book. In these issues, Morrison's authorial run on the title, Animal Man suffers from a number of trials and crises, sometimes with explicit mythological and Christian symbolic parallels, notably the story of Job. While the comic may have begun with a large scale political message on animal rights, the journey ends with Animal Man pursuing a much more intensely personal, or internal search for identity and meaning. Morrison's final arguments are that enduring heroism is a process achieved by constant evaluation of one's self and one's motives, and by constant attention the process involved in creating, literally writing and drawing, one's own identity. The individual battles and trials are less important than the constructive process of creating oneself in relation to memory and text.