...But Not Black Widow

If you’ve ever been on a Disney vacation, you may have noticed people wearing lanyards covered in pins. These are part of an activity known as Disney pin trading, where people buy and trade collectible pins featuring Disney characters, events, attractions, and other Disney things. Or if you’re us, you buy one and use it as a lapel pin.

The photo below was taken aboard a ship on the Disney Cruise Line.

You can participate in Disney pin trading with many Marvel heroes...

It’s late September, and Halloween costumes have hit stores! We checked a Halloween specialty store for their children’s superhero costume selection. Here’s what we found. On the “boys’“ side of the store:

Quite a few options, though some of our favorite superheroes of color are noticeably absent. That’s especially disappointing considering that so many of Marvel’s costumes are branded under Avengers Assemble.

On the “girls’” side of the store:

A much smaller selection. Four characters from DC and only one from Marvel. Black Widow and Spider-girl are available online but not carried in the store.

Of course, given that there are so many more male superheroes than female superheroes in movies and television, one might expect that the selection of female superhero costumes would be much smaller. But there are so many missing, even with the online options included--Scarlet Witch, Agent Carter, Agent May, Quake, Mockingbird... Plus, if American Dream is available, why not Miss America Chavez? Why not She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Spider-woman, Spider-Gwen, Kate Bishop, or any other Marvel heroines that aren’t on the big or small screen yet? Even just sticking with heroines that look somewhat like a movie or TV character (which may very well be what Marvel is doing with the American Dream costumes), there are several Spider-ladies, She-Hulk, Rescue, a Hawkeye, and a Thor that all fit that bill.

If you want a store-bought Halloween costume of a female superhero, you have only a few options...

Whenever someone complains about lack of Black Widow merchandise, a common response is that Hawkeye also doesn’t have much merchandise. There has been an uptick in those responses to this blog, so we want to take some time to address that. It is somewhat true that Hawkeye, like Black Widow, lacks merchandise. It is important to acknowledge that Hawkeye actually does have more merchandise than Black Widow in spite of having less screen time in both Avengers movies. But Hawkeye’s merchandise lags FAR behind that of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk. Like many of you, we think that sucks because we like Hawkeye and want to have stuff that shows it. Plus, he’s probably the most quiet and reserved hero in the MCU, and a lot of people can identify with that. So we want to take a few minutes to explain why we don’t write about Hawkeye on this blog.

As stated in our description, this blog is about symbolic annihilation. The next few paragraphs are an explanation of what symbolic annihilation is for anyone who is unfamiliar with that term. The term was coined by social scientist George Gerbner in the 1970s, though it’s used more in the humanities now. Gerbner used symbolic annihilation as part of his concept of cultivation. The basic idea behind cultivation is that when people receive very similar messages over and over and over again in media while also seeing few media messages providing counter examples, over time they begin to believe those repeated messages. While some of the original assumptions underlying cultivation have been questioned, the basic idea has been supported by TONS of research over the last 40ish years. (Sidebar: Cultivation is sometimes described as a “hypodermic needle” effect where audiences never think about or interact with the media they watch, and that is a gross oversimplification that is simply not true. If you want more information about cultivation, I highly recommend Morgan, Shanahan, and Signorielli’s chapter “Growing Up with Television” in the book Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research.)

Symbolic annihilation describes cultivation concerning certain groups of people. It occurs primarily in three ways: (1) a certain group of people is largely absent from media texts (e.g., gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters combined had only .4% of speaking roles in the top 100 movies in 2014) (2) a certain group of people is underrepresented (e.g., women make up about 50% of the population but had only 30.2% of speaking roles in the top 100 movies in the last several years--see link above) (3) a certain group of people fills the same roles but rarely fills other roles (e.g., being villains often but heroes rarely)

It is probably not surprising that in the current media landscape in the US, the groups that face symbolic annihilation are women, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBT individuals, ACE individuals, people with disabilities, and other minority groups. The repetition across many media texts of the above things for the above groups contributes to stereotypes, can lead people to believe that majority groups are “default” settings for humans, and can send the message that minority groups are less important than others.

This blog is about how symbolic annihilation also occurs in merchandising. Even when movies, television shows, and other media do include at least a little diversity in their media texts, they often leave women, racial minorities, and other groups that face symbolic annihilation out of the merchandise. We interpret this as a kind of symbolic annihilation that contributes to the larger effects above.

When characters like Black Widow, Falcon, Wonder Woman, and others we have featured on this blog are left out of merchandise, this contributes to the larger of problem of symbolic annihilation as it exists in the current media landscape in the US. When Hawkeye is left out of merchandise, it does not contribute to symbolic annihilation. Hawkeye, as he currently exists in the MCU, is not a representation of any group that feels the effects of symbolic annihilation. Further, there are multiple other characters that occupy his exact intersectional identity in the MCU, many of whom have an abundance of available merchandise. We fully support Marvel, Disney, and their licensees making more Hawkeye merchandise, but we also recognize that the lack of Hawkeye merchandise is not problematic in the same way that the lack of Black Widow merchandise is.

If the MCU were to make Hawkeye deaf, as he is in some of the comics universes, then he would be one of very, very few disabled people in popular media and the only MCU hero with a physical disability. And if that happens, you’d better believe he will be on this blog (unless, of course, his merchandise increases, which would be wonderful).

I found this mug at a Spencer Gifts in the Midwest. It shows all the main Avengers team, including Black Widow! I was so excited when I saw this, I just had to buy it. I’m actually a huge fan of Hawkeye, but I understand that excluding him isn’t exactly the same as excluding the only two women superheroes, or the only black superheroes.

I want to see ALL the major players included in the merchandise!

-Rudy

Found these Avengers invitations at Walmart.

It’s back to school time! Let’s take a look at the Avengers school supplies available this year.

We have folders featuring four totally awesome Avengers!

We have notebooks featuring...the same four Avengers.

But look! Black Widow is in the background of the Hulk folder! She’s just small and behind all the characters who already have their own notebooks. She’ll probably be featured more prominently on something else, right? Like maybe this year’s backpack/lunchbox combo?

Or the OTHER lunchbox?

Surely the Avengers Assemble school supplies will have Black Widow.

Nope. Also no Falcon, who is a major player in the TV show. But hey! At least there’s a tiny Natasha on a couple of these pencils!

Final count: 2 Black Widows featured with other characters 0 Falcons 0 Scarlet Witches

You can go back to school with your love of the Avengers...

If you logged on to Amazon.com today, you may have seen this advertised on the homepage:

Comic book watches on sale! Clicking the link takes you here:

You may notice that Amazon has put 57 items in what it is calling “Comic-Con Watches.” How many women were featured on these 57 watches?

Black Widow is featured on 1/6 of one watch. This is the only instance of a female character anywhere in Amazon’s Comic-Con Watches special sale.

Three weeks ago we made this post where we looked at the availability of Avengers: Age of Ultron toys in our city. We noticed quite a bit of toys dedicated to the Avengers Assemble cartoon which couldn’t be counted. This weekend, we decided to count toys for the cartoon by character. As we’ve explained before, we feel that availability in stores is part of merchandising issue because online shopping is not always a realistic option and because not seeing certain characters on shelves reinforces the idea that those characters are somehow less valuable than the others. What we found was even worse.

First, the rules:

We only counted toys. No school supplies, clothes, or anything else that might be official Avengers Assemble merchandise.

We only counted toys that had the Avengers Assemble logo or characters on them. We didn’t count anything licensed under a movie or television show featured in the MCU, Superhero Squad, Ultimate Spider-Man, Hulk: Agents of SMASH, or any other Marvel based property.

We visited the same two Targets, Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, and Disney Store as before. 

Below is the number of toys found for each Avenger regularly featured in the cartoon:

And here is the graph representing how many toys were available for every character I found:

We see that, just like before, Iron Man is the most represented of the featured Avengers (with 117 toys), and Black Widow is, once again, the least represented character (with 6 toys). Below are some interesting notes from the trip:

There was only one type of toy available at our Disney Store for Avengers Assemble. It was a Hulk action figure that wasn’t available anywhere else, and there were 32 of them. So thanks for wrecking the curve, Disney Store.

Toys featuring AA Black Widow were only found at Toys R Us. She was featured in decals on a children’s bicycle and a children’s scooter. These decals featured the entire team. There was no action figure, doll, LEGO, or prop toy featuring Black Widow. (As we’ve explained in previous posts of this nature, we use the term “prop toy” for toys that put the user in the position of the hero, like a Hawkeye bow and arrow set).

We’ve had several messages in the last couple of weeks about places where you can ACTUALLY BUY BLACK WIDOW MERCHANDISE!

Her Universe and Hot Topic have teamed up, and some Black Widow clothing is available in Hot Topic Stores.

The Disney Store’s website is selling various Black Widow merchandise, though as the submitter points out, mostly for adults. Our local Disney store does not stock any of this other than the men’s pajama pants. Rumor has it that they keep track of requests for merchandise in stores, so if you have a Disney Store in your area, ask an employee about what you’re looking for!

The above Disney Store page is very similar to a page on Marvel’s website (which makes sense).

One reader also reported seeing some shirts with Black Widow at Meijer, though they don’t seem to be on Meijer’s website.

You’d think with this many characters on one shirt that they could have included at least one woman.

You can display well over 30 male DC characters on your torso at once...

Not only Captain America, but Iron Man too. At least Cap is on a motorcycle at one point in the movie. Iron Man? The one who flies as their primary form of transportation? Sure. Why not.

Oh, and here’s War Machine, another character who can fucking fly on a motorcycle:

Well, in three-and-a-half years I’d hope that Marvel, Disney, and their licensees would remove their heads from their butts and actually make some decent merchandise for their women characters. Though, I also fear a future where they make the movie and all the merch for it but don’t include Carol on anything.  Just the logo on an empty action figure box. 

I’m not going to talk for the other person who runs the blog, but Carol is my favorite Marvel character. I really hope they treat her better than they have Black Widow, Gamora, and Wanda.