Capital City: How Billionaire Heroism Mediates Post-Imperial Ambiguities in The Avengers and The Avengers – Age of Ultron

Abstract

This article discusses the negotiation of cultural, economic and political ambiguities in the first two instalments of the Avengers movie franchise.Based on Douglas Kellner's concept of the media spectacle and Dan Hassler-Forest's observations on capitalist superheroes in the neoliberal age, the analysis traces the role of concentrated wealth and futuristic technologies in defeating the otherized forces that threaten the US-American metropolis in both these films.The spectacle-laden struggles are also investigated in terms of their resurrection of national mythologies, which celebrate visions of white, masculine entrepreneurialism and the aesthetics of an imaginary past located in the midtwentieth century.These threads are tied together and put into historical context in two separate close readings of the filmic texts.

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