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Richardus Krisna Dewandaru, University of Gadjah Mada, IndonesiaAbstract
Film is one of the media that has become an ideological machine either to maintain or resist dominant reality. The animated series Batman: Caped Crusader (Timm, 2024) which was released last August shows the ability of film to challenge dominant gender ideology through alternative discourses. The latest superhero comic adaptation features Penguin, an antagonist character usually represented as a male gangster, gender-swapped by the series creators to a female. Although the movie brings new perspectives on women's position in society, it also gives rise to a contradictory discourse where the character remains positioned as a villain, like in the concept of femme fatale. Through Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, I uncover the underlying issue behind the gender swap and its contradictory femme fatale aspect in relation to the socio-political context at the time of the series’ release. The findings show that scenarios, dialogues, and visual elements in the series are able to present alternative gender discourses amid an increasingly politically polarized society. Unfortunately, these discourses become less effective as it is still tied to the femme fatale formula which generates the notion that to be dominant, women have to be positioned as antagonistic figures towards male protagonists.
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Conference: ACAH2025Stream: Media
This paper is part of the ACAH2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Dewandaru R. (2025) From Oswald to Oswalda: The Penguin’s Contradictory Discourse of Gender Swap and Femme Fatale in Batman: Caped Crusader ISSN: 2186-229X – The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities 2025 Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 521-532) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-229X.2025.43
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-229X.2025.43
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