A Feminist Examination Of Fanforum. Com's The Avengers

The text of The Avengers is sometimes empowering and always complex. Fans will make up their own minds about that text, however, and will shape it to their own needs. Still, the feminist debates that abound in the way that Black Widow is portrayed cannot be lost on the viewer, and the text is bound to spark some sort of discussion over those debates. In the following examination of fanforum.com’s Marvel Cinematic Universe forum, I find exactly those discussions. A dearth of female characters leads to a dearth in fan discussion of women in The Avengers, so of the three prominent women in the film, Pepper Potts, Maria Hill, and Black Widow, only Black Widow has her own fan thread on fanforum.com. Still, although her fan sites are small, her fans

Black Widow’s most recent appreciation thread on fanforum.com is titled “Don't think I'm helpless, just because I'm soft and cuddly!” which sparked a joking debate among posters over whether Black Widow could ever be described as cuddly. She is almost a perfect of trope of the strong female action hero, seemingly not soft or cuddly at all, which might be what leads some fans to want to see her softened by romance. It might be that those of Black Widow’s personality traits intended as empowering and feminist are precisely those that fans enjoy subsuming into more traditional

But, even Natasha telling Bucky that he's a good man, and his response being that he isn't. Which, I think, proves Nat right. He's a good man because he feels guilty and responsible for what he did as the brainwashed Winter Soldier” (Kiss of Death). These shippers seem to see Black Widow as a sensitive, emotive person; she is someone who can help the damaged man she fights with repeatedly in the films. For one thing, this help apparently has to come coupled with romance. For another, it is at odds with Black Widow’s canon representation as disingenuous in her more “feminine” and emotive