Setting the record ‘straight’: Captain America fanfiction, museums and queer narratives

Abstract

Many of the largest and furthest-reaching media franchises today, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), opt not to represent a range of queer identities and relationships but instead perpetuate heteronormativity. Alternatively, an extensive site of queer historical recovery can be found in the fanfiction that is written in response to these popular media franchises. This article explores how fanfiction set in museums challenges the version of history presented in the MCU’s Captain America films by re-introducing queerness into historical narratives. I argue that while popular media franchises often continue to replicate a narrow definition of sexuality, we can turn to other sites of prolific literary production for more optimistic and pluralistic queer imaginaries. However, fanfiction is not immune to the systemic biases that occur in contemporary culture and, while these texts are successful at re-inscribing queer narratives, they reveal the complexities of attending to intersections of identities, especially in terms of according the same recuperative attention to race.