This looks like a blowjob for Superman: servicing fanboys with superhero porn parodies

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe porn industry is following Hollywood’s lead by taking superheroes more seriously than either had in decades past. Contemporary superhero porn parodies, particularly those directed by Axel Braun, eschew the goofy puns and tacked-on themes that had previously defined the pornographic parody genre. These films present a unique point of intersection between Hollywood, the porn industry, and fandom. While female-oriented fandoms often devote considerable intellectual and creative energies to transforming patriarchal genres into shapes that better appeal to their interests and desires, male fandom seems much more inclined to keep the story the way it is. Braun’s parodies appropriate transformative textual practices usually associated with female fan productivity in order to seduce male fans, while also exploiting the industrial limitations of the mainstream superhero genre, and capitalizing on the legal freedoms afforded by their parody status. 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. If porn and the superhero genre usually speak to and express male power fantasies already, Braun’s porn parodies merely take current trends in superhero film aesthetics and fanboys’ fetish for fidelity to the next level.