Sirmans 1

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Intertextuality and

its Impact on the Discourse Community
Produced by Jackson Sirmans in Professor Gardiako’s Spring 2023 ENC 1102

Introduction
The Marvel Cinematic universe is a franchise that has proven to be extremely popular

around the world becoming a staple series among many households. When I was growing up my

father would make an effort to go see every Marvel movie in theater almost as soon as it was

released. This was always something I looked forward to as it was a great bonding experience

between us. After the movie we would discuss what happened in the movie and he would explain

to me what was key to the story based off the original comic book series in which he was an avid

reader when he was younger. When trying to create a topic for my research these instances

where my father would make connections to the comic series stood out to me. It made me

curious as to how the movies display intertextuality and how it would impact the Marvel fan

discourse communities.

There is a plethora of ways that the usage of intertextuality in the film series can create a

large impact on the community. There are positives such as huge crossover events that include a

wide variety of the fans favorite characters and there are negatives like including controversial

messages into the story that fans have various opinions on. I am one that personally enjoys when

big media franchises use their platform to speak out on real world issues and provide

representation to those who may not have it, as long as it is done in a well thought out manner.

Knowing that the stories in the films are originally from the comics created way back in the
 Sirmans 2

1960’s in some cases, I really wanted to dive into the possible conflicts that could arrive from

deviating from the true storyline in hopes of adding a more modern touch. Providing both sides

of the “argument” is my goal for my research so the audience can interpret it as they please and

form their own opinions of the topic.

Intertextuality and Discourse Communities

In order to develop the topic, I first had to fully outline the core concepts I was trying to

establish before diving into the various factors involved. The ideas of intertextuality and

discourse communities are simple to understand from a tip of the iceberg standpoint. When

looking at the tip of iceberg and beyond, James Porter’s article “Intertextuality and the Discourse

Community” dives into the depths to uncover the extent of the two concepts. Intertextuality is

described as the presence of text within text that traces back to someone else’s work with two

kinds of appearances known as “iterability” and “presupposition” (Porter 35). Iterability is the

more direct relevant text while presupposition falls into the implied connection area. All works

have a level of intertextuality within in order to create a sense of credibility and relevancy to the

audience. A discourse community is a group of people with a common set of goals and

guidelines specific to said community. Porter best describes the discourse community as “a

group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels

and whose discourse is regulated” (39). These two concepts go hand in hand with each other

according to Porter as intertextuality is a concept that builds off the works of others which

requires a discourse community to set guidelines for how ideas are built upon within the

community.
 Sirmans 3

Outgrowing the old

Marvel’s franchise has become so widespread that it has accumulated a vast amount of

discourse communities that focus on different pieces of intertextuality that apply specifically to

their group. The main focus of intertextuality when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe is

how the creators build a more modern rendition of the original story from the comics. James C.

Taylor makes a claim that “Marvel Studios develops existing practices of cinematic

intertextuality and combines these with a shared universe model of serialization adapted from

comic books” (Taylor 130) in his work “Reading the Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Avengers’

Intertextual Aesthetic.” This article focuses on the modes of intertextuality found within the

Marvel Cinematic Universe especially with taking the original story from the comics and

creating a new but comic accurate story in a different form of texts. Majority of the original

stories presented through the mode of comic books were produced as early as the 1960’s which

means that the story often must be adapted to fit the modern era. These stories are broken up into

many pieces spread out over weeks leaving audiences with cliffhangers and drawn-out plots over

large spans of time. Taylor focuses on how the stories created in the comics must be

“compressed” to fit into the common guidelines of movies. The other big point being made in the

article is how there are layers of intertextuality through the Marvel franchise from plot to settings

to characters. Each component that makes up a true storyline falls into the category of

intertextuality as they all stem from various levels in a hierarchy of intertext.

Underrepresentation to Misrepresentation

The American film industry is a very prominent creative space where a majority of

successful films are produced. Even though there are major successes there is also a lack of

proper representation that many are willing to call out. This unfortunate common practice is
 Sirmans 4

highlighted in “Contemporary American Cinema: Thrills to Narratives and Back” with the article

focusing on the American cinema culture and its impact on the audience. The main idea being

pushed by the article is that “Digital technology, chang[es] both the aesthetics and the ethics of

audiovisual culture, manag[ing] to reinvent a negative perception of American cinema as well”

(Zawadka 6). Digitalization on a large scale has provided easy access to varieties of film to

people all around the globe. For a long period of time, American film lacked progressive

ideologies and inclusion sugarcoating reality. This false reality was one that many could become

overindulged in, almost getting lost in this fake world achieved by focusing on audience's

emotions, not so much their logic. The lack of representation within American cinema was

extremely criticized especially when aiming to place the film in “the context” of other

cultures/countries. Digitalization has brought forth an increase of diversity within films, but the

previous wrongdoings may not be overlooked by the audience as well as a possibility of

misinterpretation.

There are groups of people in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that often get swept under

the rug or even villainized in the films. These groups commonly are women and people of whom

have different ethnicities/cultures than the white American. Marvel as a brand has not done the

best when it comes to diversifying their characters and when there are characters that break out

from the “typical,” there is often a sense of misrepresentation. When looking into

underrepresentation within the film franchise, Kathryn Frank’s article, “Diversify, Rinse, Repeat:

The Direct Market, Sales Data, and Marvel Comics’ Diversity Cycle” is a prime example. The

article showcases the lack of proper diversification within the Marvel Cinematic Universe

through an idea of what the assumed audience wanted. Focusing on the market sales, the author

looks at what the Marvel franchise put priority on and more so what they do not. Frank suggests
 Sirmans 5

Marvel feels obligated to make movies including more diverse settings and roles but only does

so here and there. The occasionally diverse movie then gets released but doesn’t get a lot of

emphasis on it which leads to a poor performance. This becomes a cycle because the assumed

audience develops into reality through a continuous conditioning of the audience created by the

Marvel franchise. This cycle is pushing the idea of the American identity and is a key component

in misrepresentation.

The “American identity” is one that is majorly developed within the MCU. The basis for

the film series is built off making the U.S. seem like the good guys through villainizing other

countries. The idea of uplifting one group by putting another down is an unfair way of

representing people: it’s basically bullying the little kid at the playground. This ideology is

further explored in “We Are Iron Man: Tony Stark, Iron Man, and American Identity in the

Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase One Films” in which the author, Ashley Robinson, explains

a sense of American Pride is created through an iconic Marvel character during the early part of

the movie franchise. Iron Man’s back story is one that seems almost similar to what happens in

real life dealing with groups like terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, for example. As the

movie series builds so does the American identity creating a sense of national pride, freedom,

and prosperity of the “Western World” (Robinson 1). The whole first segment of the cinematic

universe builds upon the idea of Americans being the good guys and any foreign countries we

have had conflict with are the enemy. This is done through referencing real-world issues in the

movies or including subliminal messages that villainize other countries. The article as whole

picks at Iron Man for being individualistic and selfish which reflects upon the “American

Identity” (Robinson 1).

 Sirmans 6

Further developing the misrepresentation in films created by Marvel is the idea of

“chaotic spaces” defined by the author Jessie Rogers in “Chaotic Asian Spaces in the Marvel

Cinematic Universe.” Roger’s article focuses on the misrepresentation of cultures within the

Marvel cinematic universe primarily involving the Asian community, often creating negative

stigma. The main target is the concept of a “chaotic backdrop” of Asian culture with focusing on

overpopulation and large but cluttered spaces (Rogers 1). Many of the “monstrous” villains

within Marvel movies were developed in Asian spaces which paints them poorly. Marvel

attempts to shine light on other cultures and minorities but in a lot of instances it backfires. This

idea is flipped when it comes to the Black Panther movie where the “world building” within

outshines the true culture which in turn falsely represents culture (Rogers 27). The Black Panther

movie primarily focuses on the magical world that Wakanda is rather than the culture of the

people that live in it. Rodgers believes that the movie should put more emphasis on the African

culture in the film Black Panther in order to capture a true representation of said culture.

The Struggle to Maintain a Content Community

Marvel’s large fanbase can create conflicts as there are many subcommittees that have

different wants and needs for the franchise. Some groups can tend to stand on opposing sides of a

topic and it requires a side to be chosen. Marvel has the responsibility to please all their

audiences in order to retain their large viewership. To see how large of an impact Marvel’s

movies had on their audiences, Jayme Gerring in “The Marvel Effect: Cinematic Universes and

Their Impact on Box Office Receipts” looks into the box office reports for movies of various

categories. This article looks at a variety of factors that can alter or improve a movies

performance during opening weekend in the box office. Primarily using statistical analysis,

Gerring compiles numerical factors from 250 movies during their opening weekend to determine
 Sirmans 7

whether being a movie within the Marvel Cinematic Universe helps bring in revenue. Using

different categories such as: MCU vs. Non MCU, “star power,” movie review organization

ratings, director star power, and other independent variables to find what brings in the big bucks

on opening weekend. Overall, most of the variables didn’t matter outside of whether the movie

fell into the MCU category. If it was a Marvel movie it would prove to have the best

performance in the box office over majority of other movies. Concluding that the dedicated

community was so large that any movie put out by Marvel was going to be worth watching

because the quality was just assumed to be high due to franchise association. Unfortunately, only

creating movies for an audience isn’t enough so other modes of entertainment are important for

the franchise to look into.

As the entertainment industry expands, big brands and franchises must follow in order to

grow their audience and continue to be relevant. One way that movie franchises can grow is

through the introduction of theme parks and videogame experiences as explored in Erica

Garber’s “Ride on: From Movie Franchises to Video Games, Television Series and More,

Entertainment Companies Are Tapping into Theme Parks to Leverage Their IP, Enhance Brand

Awareness and Connect with Consumers in a Completely New, Innovative Way.” The article

dives into a multitude of movie franchises branching out in many different modes of

entertainment from videogames to theme parks. Exemplifying how theme parks and videogames

have been around for decades now, provide entertainment from a firsthand standpoint every day.

Movie franchises are realizing that they can extend their stories into the real world in a way that

will be available to the population year-round. Many consumers from the around the world visit

these parks and become exposed to the franchises content which expands their audience while

diversifying culture within their community. Expanding the cinematic universe toward the theme
 Sirmans 8

park market also creates an immersive experience for their audience almost allowing an escape

from reality. Marvel has created a theme park experience by introducing the “Avenger’s

Campus” in Disneyland, California. This addition has made it possible for fans to meet the

characters in real life and experience attractions revolving around the MCU’s storyline. Keeping

the fans entertained and engaged is a difficult task for movie franchises which means they must

go above and beyond to stay relevant.

Methods

Due to the vast size of content produced by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and

the Marvel Comic Group (MCG), I decided to compare the more memorable moments that are

seen in both modes of entertainment. One of the key events I wanted to analyze was from the

movie Spiderman: No Way Home which features a scene where three different “spidermen”

come together from different timelines which is originally featured in the comics. This singular

scene caused a commotion amongst fans which means it is a good instance to put my focus on.

Another scene that sparked conversation comes from the movie Avengers Endgame where all the

female heroines introduced into the series up until that point are lined up ready for battle

displaying women empowerment. This moment is not in the original comic book telling of the

story so including it in the modern version emphasizes growth in the community. Adding

modern references is common throughout the Marvel movie series from an allusion to Covid-19

to a character known as Thor playing a popular game called Fortnite. These pieces of modern

intertext are designed to create a sense of relevance to the audience and analyzing how they are

received by said audience is what I aimed to do.

 Sirmans 9

Materials/Procedure

The “Three Spidermen”

Fig. 1 The image depicts two Spider-

mans pointing at each other from an
original 1960’s comic which would
become a widespread meme in the
year 2011 and continued to grow from
then on.

IGN, “Marvel Release ‘Spider-man

Pointing’ Meme…in Live-Action,” 2022

Fig. 2 The image is a recreation of the

original comic meme in Fig. 1 which has
the three Spider-mans from the movie
Spider-man: No Way Home.

Twitter, @Marvel posted February 23,

2022

Using the two images, Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, I first

looked at the obvious differences between them. These details include that one is comic and the

other is live-action, the number of Spider-mans, and how it was released. I then aimed to look at

how the community reacted to the recreation of the original comic version using Twitter

comments on the post seen in Figure 2. I then looked at the first one hundred comments on the

post to determine whether the majority of users were impacted by the intertextuality in a positive

or negative way.
 Sirmans 10

Avengers: Endgame Women Empowerment Scene

Fig. 3 A lineup of all living female

characters from a battle scene in the
movie Avengers: Endgame.

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-
00c5984f0717c9ec39c00243307d2190

Use video for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOYrirP56cQ

Fig. 4 The lineup of

characters in the image are
from the original comic
story that the film is based
off.

https://i.redd.it/dgw1nz31x
4v01.jpg

For this part of my primary research I planned to look at another instance of

intertextuality from comic to film. The comic cover shown in Fig. 4 is the original characters set

to be in the battle against the villain named Thanos. There are many differences between the

comic storyline and the story being told in the movie. I aimed to analyze how the scene of

women heroes being at the frontline of the battlefield as seen in Fig. 3 and the YouTube video

posted by KinoCheck.com titled “Female Avengers Unite Scene – Avengers 4 Endgame (2019)”

was received by the Marvel fanbase by compiling the amount of positive and negative comments
 Sirmans 11

in the comment section of the video. I then would determine the consensus based on the majority

of opinions in the first 100 comments.

Results

When I was searching through the comments on the Twitter post that had the Spider-man

comic recreation and looking for over ten minutes at hundreds of replies, I could not find a single

one that had something bad to say. This caught me off guard as I thought there would be at least

a few people that had a problem with the post. The original comic had turned into meme that

became popular on the internet so I figured that people would be both excited to see the meme

recreated in live-action and those that were upset about using the original meme to gain

publicity. As I pondered how I could use these results I realized that when compared to the next

part of my research, the answer started to unfold.

After looking through over one hundred comments in the YouTube video displaying the

“hype” moment where all of the female heroines make an appearance as a group. I determined that

it was a perfectly even fifty-fifty split in comments that spoke either positively of the inclusion of

the scene in the movie or negatively. I had to be careful as to what counted in the first one hundred

comments as their were many comments that didn’t apply to what I was looking for. I only

accounted for comments that were related to the positive or negative impact, weeding out those

that did not apply. I decided to include two comments to highlight the rough criteria I was looking

for to be able to count in my calculations.

 Sirmans 12

Example of a Positive Comment:

As you can see in the positive comment, the author stated that they enjoyed the inclusion

of the scene and only were critiquing the “convenience” of all the female heroines being in the

same place all at once.

Example of a Negative Comment:

This example of a negative comment is one that I wanted to include as the author goes into

a bit of detail as to why they don’t like the inclusion of the scene.

When looking at the two pieces that I did research on, the one that was based on the original

comic was more positively received by the fan base than the one that stepped away from the

original comic and included more progressive ideas. The MCU fanbase/community doesn’t take

kindly to the introduction of modern concepts and messages implemented into the original story.

Another interesting thing I noticed was that thirty-eight of the fifty that were on the side that
 Sirmans 13

enjoyed the inclusion of the scene had female names or profile pictures. There were seven people

that commented a positive opinion that had a name or profile that was not categorizable leaving

only five commentors that had a positive opinion at five. Looking at the opposing side, there were

forty male names/profiles, six indistinguishable names/profile, and four female names/profiles.

There is a clear difference between the makeups of each side which shows those for whom the

scene was not intended for did not particularly care for it.

As a franchise, Marvel has the responsibility of deciding to either stay true to intertext of

the original story or include the intertext of the world we live in now. If they essentially “copy and

paste” the comic story moments into the live-action film like they do in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, the

communities that enjoy the original ideologies will be content. However, the group that wants to

see the stories comic accurate through and through is such a small community in the broad scale

of the fan community. The community has grown significantly since the introduction of the film

series which means that there are many new faces that are wanting to see new things introduced

into the story. The usage of an all-female roster is not once seen in the comic version of this story,

so this addition has been seen to have gone both ways when it comes to having an impact on the

community.

Discussion and Implications

The MCU has an audience of people with diverse backgrounds and cultures which can

often lead to conflicts within the community. For a large period of time, there was a lack of

representation of various minority groups seen on the big screens. This led to many different fans

demanding that their groups and cultures be displayed in the movies. However, when there was

representation especially in cases where the original comic characters traits were replaced, there

was outrage among other parts of the community. Including events that took place during the
 Sirmans 14

movie's production also led to controversy within the community. For example, they attempt to

condemn sexism and highlight the female empowerment movement through the movie Captain

Marvel. Many fans enjoyed seeing a woman with such power in a movie while others saw it as a

corny attempt, almost offensive at times. In fact, the character Captain Marvel in the original

comic series was a male but that fact went almost unnoticed to many which leads to the belief

that adapting the gender of a character does nothing if the essence of the character still exists.

The comic books were written during a time when many things that are not acceptable today

were back then. This includes the idea of uplifting various minorities by putting them in the role

of the hero. Often in the comics, women were extremely sexualized and those of different

ethnicities than white were put in the roles of villains, making them out to be evil. These aspects

of the comics are no longer tolerable which means the whole picture of the original works often

must be abandoned while referencing the plot with more modern, acceptable features woven into

it all.

The introduction of multimodal platforms for creation is also controversial within the

community due to the sense of quantity over quality. Introducing shows dedicated to various

characters has led to fans being overwhelmed with amount of content they have to keep up with

to understand the whole picture of the story as well as the quality of the works suffering from

unrealistic release deadlines. The time line for the MCU is very tight with movies set to release

every three to four months with television shows releasing in between. These tight deadlines can

cause many problems to be overlooked as the train doesn’t stop rolling when it comes to

Marvel’s timeline. Every piece has to fall in their place at the right time for the ongoing story to

make any sense which has created quality issues which takes away from the overarching

mission. Before the introduction of tv shows and strict deadlines, the quality of films were much
 Sirmans 15

higher and really brought attention to the franchise. Every movie put out was expected to be

good and without the consistent high-quality content, fans will cease to have interest in the

series.

With such a large audience it is often hard to please all members, so Marvel creators must

decide whether they want to spark change in the community by tackling tough issues or to stick

to the books. Having such a massive platform, the franchise has an easy opportunity to speak out

on real world issues and bring to light many unseen things that commonly get overlooked. Since

every story that films are telling has already been told, shouldn’t that allow for modern

adaptation? Many diehard fans want to stick with what they know which leads to repetitive

stories and falling out of the races as a film franchise.

 Sirmans 16

Works Cited

Frank, Kathryn M. “Diversify, Rinse, Repeat: The Direct Market, Sales Data, and Marvel

Comics’ Diversity Cycle.” Cinema journal 60.1 (2020): 153–157. Print.

Garber, Erica. “Ride on: From Movie Franchises to Video Games, Television Series and More,

Entertainment Companies Are Tapping into Theme Parks to Leverage Their IP, Enhance

Brand Awareness and Connect with Consumers in a Completely New, Innovative Way.”

License! (New York, N.Y.) 19.3 (2016): 162–. Print.

Gerring, Jayme V. “The Marvel Effect: Cinematic Universes and Their Impact on Box Office

Receipts.” Applied economics 54.42 (2022): 4886–4899. Web.

Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community” Rhetoric review 5.1 (1986): 34–

47. Web.

Robinson, Ashley Sufflé. “We Are Iron Man: Tony Stark, Iron Man, and American Identity in

the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase One Films.” Journal of popular culture 51.4

(2018): 824–844. Web.

Rogers, Jessie. “Chaotic Asian Spaces in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Journal of popular

culture 55.4 (2022): 755–776. Web.

Zawadka, Beata. “Contemporary American Cinema: Thrills to Narratives and Back.” Polish

Journal for American Studies 16.16 (2022) (2022): 5–9. Web.