butnotblackwidow:

Whenever someone complains about lack of Black Widow merchandise, a common response is that Hawkeye also doesn’t have much merchandise. There has been an uptick in those responses to this blog, so we want to take some time to address that. It is somewhat true that Hawkeye, like Black Widow, lacks merchandise. It is important to acknowledge that Hawkeye actually does have more merchandise than Black Widow in spite of having less screen time in both Avengers movies. But Hawkeye’s merchandise lags FAR behind that of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk. Like many of you, we think that sucks because we like Hawkeye and want to have stuff that shows it. Plus, he’s probably the most quiet and reserved hero in the MCU, and a lot of people can identify with that. So we want to take a few minutes to explain why we don’t write about Hawkeye on this blog.

As stated in our description, this blog is about symbolic annihilation. The next few paragraphs are an explanation of what symbolic annihilation is for anyone who is unfamiliar with that term. The term was coined by social scientist George Gerbner in the 1970s, though it’s used more in the humanities now. Gerbner used symbolic annihilation as part of his concept of cultivation. The basic idea behind cultivation is that when people receive very similar messages over and over and over again in media while also seeing few media messages providing counter examples, over time they begin to believe those repeated messages. While some of the original assumptions underlying cultivation have been questioned, the basic idea has been supported by TONS of research over the last 40ish years. (Sidebar: Cultivation is sometimes described as a “hypodermic needle” effect where audiences never think about or interact with the media they watch, and that is a gross oversimplification that is simply not true. If you want more information about cultivation, I highly recommend Morgan, Shanahan, and Signorielli’s chapter “Growing Up with Television” in the book Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research.)

Symbolic annihilation describes cultivation concerning certain groups of people. It occurs primarily in three ways:

(1) a certain group of people is largely absent from media texts (e.g., gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters combined had only .4% of speaking roles in the top 100 movies in 2014)

(2) a certain group of people is underrepresented (e.g., women make up about 50% of the population but had only 30.2% of speaking roles in the top 100 movies in the last several years–see link above)

(3) a certain group of people fills the same roles but rarely fills other roles (e.g., being villains often but heroes rarely)

It is probably not surprising that in the current media landscape in the US, the groups that face symbolic annihilation are women, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBT individuals, ACE individuals, people with disabilities, and other minority groups. The repetition across many media texts of the above things for the above groups contributes to stereotypes, can lead people to believe that majority groups are “default” settings for humans, and can send the message that minority groups are less important than others.



This blog is about how symbolic annihilation also occurs in merchandising. Even when movies, television shows, and other media do include at least a little diversity in their media texts, they often leave women, racial minorities, and other groups that face symbolic annihilation out of the merchandise. We interpret this as a kind of symbolic annihilation that contributes to the larger effects above.



When characters like Black Widow, Falcon, Wonder Woman, and others we have featured on this blog are left out of merchandise, this contributes to the larger of problem of symbolic annihilation as it exists in the current media landscape in the US. When Hawkeye is left out of merchandise, it does not contribute to symbolic annihilation. Hawkeye, as he currently exists in the MCU, is not a representation of any group that feels the effects of symbolic annihilation. Further, there are multiple other characters that occupy his exact intersectional identity in the MCU, many of whom have an abundance of available merchandise. We fully support Marvel, Disney, and their licensees making more Hawkeye merchandise, but we also recognize that the lack of Hawkeye merchandise is not problematic in the same way that the lack of Black Widow merchandise is.



If the MCU were to make Hawkeye deaf, as he is in some of the comics universes, then he would be one of very, very few disabled people in popular media and the only MCU hero with a physical disability. And if that happens, you’d better believe he will be on this blog (unless, of course, his merchandise increases, which would be wonderful).



But for now, we do not blog about Hawkeye merchandise because it does not fit the purpose of the blog, which is to document symbolic annihilation through merchandise.

