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Masoud Keshavarz

Masoud Keshavarz

Academic rank: Assistant Professor
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6585-2752
Education: PhD.
ScopusId:
HIndex:
Faculty: Literature and Languages
Address: Arak University
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Research

Title
The Representation of Women in Marie Lu’s Batman: Nightwalker and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy: A Comparative Study from a Postfeminist Point of View
Type
Thesis
Keywords
the femme fatale, the damsel in distress, superhero comic strip, neo-noir, postfeminism, Batman: Nightwalker, Batman trilogy
Year
2022
Researchers Masoud Keshavarz(PrimaryAdvisor)، Anfal Aliedani(Student)

Abstract

Picturing female characters as one-dimensional stereotypical characters in literature and media has been a concern in feminist and postfeminist societies. Having that in mind, this study, generally, focused on two feminine Stereotypes: the femme fatale and the damsel in distress; and analyzed them comparatively in Marie Lu’s Batman: Nightwalker (2018) and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy (2005-2012). This thesis aimed to analyze the female characters in the mentioned works from a postfeminist point of view to see if Lu and Nolan have represented the Stereotypical femme fatal and the damsel in distress in their works and also to see if they have represented these two stereotypes differently. In order to conduct the presented study and also to give a better picture of these two stereotypes, different characteristics of the femme fatale and the damsel in distress were extracted from different sources, of which the major one was Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (2000). The chosen female characters were as follows: Dianne Garcia, Detective Draccon, and Madeleine Wallace from Batman: Nightwalker; Rachel Dawes, Selina Kyle, and Miranda Tate, from Batman Trilogy. After analyzing different features of the mentioned female characters; the conclusion was that, in one way or another, the stereotypical femme fatal and the damsel in distress were presented differently by Marie Lu and Christopher Nolan. Both have created a new version of these two stereotypes by representing a new version of the femme fatale who can be good; and a new version of the damsel in distress who can be independent. Also, that, after all, the stereotypical femme fatale is not totally negative as well as the stereotypical damsel in distress is not totally positive. This study helps us to set a new structure for analyzing and portraying the female characters as a whole person who has different features and are not limited to one set of roles.