Superhero Parodies Lampoon Their Source in More Ways Than One
The heyday of the porn parody has passed, but superhero spoofs still manage to thrive. While you won’t see a porn take-off on every popular show and movie anymore, spoofs featuring Batman, Superman, Supergirl and the top superheroes routinely capture audience’s imaginations. In a new article published in the Porn Studies journal, author Dru Jeffries suggests that part of the reason for their success is that they understand their target market and communicate with them in subtle and sophisticated ways.
If there’s one thing superhero audiences love, it’s fidelity to the source material. Diversions from the spirit of the original comic books is decried. Remember the annoyance of some observers that the Batman of Tim Burton‘s 1989 version was willing to kill people? According to this view, the Batman of creator Bob Kane avoided taking human life at all costs. Indeed, the book The Batman Filmography focuses on this “lapse” at great length. Jeffries points out that porn parodies, particular those directed by Axel Braun, focus on the perceived failures of the mainstream adaptations. “Often antagonistic to their mainstream counterparts, these hardcore films appeal to fans by confirming the value of an ‘original’ text by critiquing the shortcomings of official adaptations,” he notes in the article’s abstract. Braun’s superhero porn movies are often even described as surpassing their source material. Fans even tried to get Braun to mount a version of The Fantastic Four after the mainstream version failed to live up to expectations.
In Jeffries’s view, porn superhero spoofs are something more than light-hearted, affectionate lampoons of their source material. They “eschew the goofy puns and tacked-on themes that had previously defined the pornographic parody genre,” he notes. They’re also critiques of the shortcomings of the movies they are derived from, ones that affirm the indignation of the comic-book fanbase.
(We also feel obliged to point out that the name of Jeffries’s article is “This looks like a blowjob for Superman.” Title win!)
Read more here.
