Figure 1: Texturally rich costuming of Matt Murdock character in Daredevil.

Post by Piers Britton, University of Redlands.

How far are Marvel Studios’ film and television franchises visually coded for homogeneity? How insistently, that is to say, is brand identity maintained at the levels of design, cinematography, editing and post-production processing? This question seems worth pursuing in relation to Marvel’s Daredevil (Netflix, 2015), which has already been critically positioned as divergent from prior entries in the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” super-franchise. All the MCU films since 2008 have been rated PG-13, while the ABC television series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013–) and Marvel’s Agent Carter (2014-15) are consistently anodyne, even at their darkest. Daredevil, by contrast, is already notorious for its frequent and intensely graphic violence, which earned it a TVMA certification, and for the conflicted nature of its anti-heroic protagonist. This shift in tone is not the only departure from the prior Marvel norm. Much more assertively than Agent Carter, and even more than the DC offerings on the CW, the new show emphasizes that its protagonist is one of Marvel’s “street-level” superheroes, with the action never straying beyond Hell’s Kitchen and the narrative focusing heavily on the socially disadvantaged and marginalized. While it is not the first Marvel property to introduce comic-book characters without their familiar costume trappings and idiosyncrasies of grooming, Daredevil has arguably gone further than its predecessors in this regard. For example, the series reduces the comics’ hirsute, flamboyantly coiffed and green-ulster-clad Leland Owlsley (Bob Gunton) to a deceptively avuncular elderly man with thinning hair and a short back and sides, dressed in earth-toned tweeds. Indeed, Daredevil even deprives Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) of his red superhero suit until the climax of the final episode.

Showrunner Steven DeKnight has underscored the ways in which Daredevil differs visually from network series like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., noting that he and his D.P., Matt Lloyd, “wanted to be able to do a show that was literally darker than what you would see on a network,” where series tend to be “very bright, very evenly lit,” and further that they “wanted to take more of the color palette of the classic movies of the ’70s, the Dog Day Afternoon and French Connection and Taxi Driver.” The series’ production designer, Loren Weeks, also emphasizes Daredevil’s departure from the sleek, well-appointed and technology-rich environments that typify Marvel’s cinematic tales of billionaire playboys, demigods and super-soldiers. Tellingly, Weeks claims: “We’re more The Wire than other Marvel movies. It’s not the stuff you see in Agents of SHIELD, it’s the stuff you see every day.”

Stress on the quotidian, invocation of the ultra-realist Wire, insistence on chiaroscuro lighting (with its inevitable noir associations), and reference to the subdued palette of dour seventies thrillers all serve to distance Daredevil not only from other Marvel properties but also from other broadly cognate television shows. They rhetorically position the series as something “grittier” than the quasi-realist narratives of street-level superheroes in Arrow (CW, 2012–) and The Flash (CW, 2014–). Indeed, if there is a DC comparison to be made, it is with the notoriously tenebrous and bleak Dark Knight films. So, if we are to take Weeks’ and DeKnight’s remarks at face value, how does the visual style of Daredevil fulfill the branding imperative of offering variety within identity and novelty within continuity?

A number of recurrent or repeated visual motifs both in Daredevil’s paratextual materials—posters, publicity stills, and so on—and in the episodes themselves serve to weld strongly to Marvel’s other film and television, and to its comic-book lineage. Use of strong color in Daredevil represents the most interesting variation on established Marvel brand elements. MCU style in toto is defined by chromatic intensity and richness (in contradistinction to the DC film and television “multiverse” that has gradually developed since Batman Begins). Dominant color values have varied, with Phase Two movies and the second series of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. frequently exhibiting lower values and lower-key lighting than Phase One. Even so, selective, punctuative use of high-intensity colors is endemic to Marvel’s television and film offerings. Only the environments and personnel of S.H.I.E.L.D. are stripped of high value and saturated color; otherwise, the heroes and villains and their worlds are as bright as the Marvel logo, and the comic-book pages we glimpse in the animated version of that logo that heads each film and television show from the MCU. In most cases, focal points of vibrant color are typically located one way or another on the bodies of the protagonists, from Iron Man’s scarlet and gold livery to Peggy Carter’s blue suit, white blouse and red hat (used so extensively in publicity materials for Agent Carter), and from Thor’s flaxen hair to the Hulk’s green skin.

Figure 2: Superficially neutral costuming of Wilson Fisk character in Daredevil

Daredevil largely displaces intense color from bodies, except in the case of the saturated red costume worn by the “ninja” villain, Nobu (Peter Shinkoda), in a watershed fight scene. As befits a faux-realist television series, and especially one that unfolds over thirteen instantly reviewable episodes, the devil is in the details in Stephanie Maslansky’s costumes; bold gestures are correspondingly few and far between. Thus Matt Murdock’s suits are mostly mid-value monochrome but his clothes are texturally rich—shirts, for example, are nubby oxford rather than smooth poplin—suggesting the blind man’s heightened reliance on tactility (Fig. 1). By the same token, wisecracking Foggy Nelson (Eldon Hensen) is also superficially neutral in his dress, but the printed shirt fabrics and animal-motif ties reward leisurely, close inspection and add a “quirky but not flamboyant” note – and so on. Unmodified strong color is eschewed in inverse proportion to the dominance of all these surface nuances, a choice that is most notable in the reimagining of principal antagonist Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). The white suits and ascot of the comic book Kingpin are relegated to an “Easter egg” joke in the fifth episode, while Fisk’s open-necked silk shirts and mohair-tonic, three-piece suits for the series are either black, gray or muted blue, the surface of the latter sometimes broken up with self-stripes that further mitigate saturation (Fig. 2).

Figure 3: Vivid lighting in Daredevil.

Vivid color is mainly a property of environments, and more specifically the illumination of environments, in Daredevil. Murdock speaks of experiencing “a world on fire,” and in addition to a couple of livid-red POV shots simulating this for the audience, the idea is echoed each episode in the opening credits, which show New York landmarks and finally Daredevil himself forming viscously out of a red haze. A no-less insistent leitmotiv is the acid yellow and green light suffusing the panes of the picture windows that are endemic to the various warehouse and loft spaces in which so much of the nocturnal action takes place — including Murdock’s own apartment (Fig. 3). This sickly glow can in most cases be rationalized as light pollution from neon signage and street lamps (the now celebrated hallway fight from the second episode is one of the exceptions), but this is ultimately beside the point. The device is surely used chiefly because the grid of glazing bars in these windows provides a strong, stylized, quasi-graphic backdrop to action – and perhaps because both the strong color fields and insistent linearity recall the simplified backgrounds beloved of comic-book inkers and colorists (Fig. 4).

Figure 4: Example of simplified backgrounds of classic comic books.

Figure 5: Netflix’s posters for Daredevil.

Very little of this disembodied color creates as potent an effect as Netflix’s Hopperesque banner and posters for Daredevil (Fig. 5), which feature a cityscape bathed in the super-intense blue that hyperbolically represents nighttime in screen media as well as some comic strips. It is in these paratextual images that the “Marvelness” of Daredevil is perhaps most economically and powerfully expressed. Even so, and notwithstanding analogies with The Wire and Dog Day Afternoon, Daredevil’s imagery consistently reflects the fact that, as Loren Weeks puts it: “We didn’t want to be too literal with the real. It is the Marvel universe, after all.”

THE FLASH [Premiered Oct 7, 2014]

In this spinoff of Arrow, the DC Comics universe expands to Barry Gordon, who gains unexpected powers following a tragic explosion and wakes up with a new, motion-blurred view of the world, one that sheds light on tragic details from his childhood.

*

Paul Booth, DePaul University

Full disclosure. I have never read any of The Flash comics. But I was a big fan of the 1990 CBS version of the show, and I love the current CW show Arrow, which spawned the current CW version. I have no knowledge of the character Barry Allen nor if creator Greg Berlanti is screwing up the mythology or not. But, because I watch Arrow each week, I have a number of Wikipedia sites and DC pages bookmarked to aid my understanding of each hint and nudge towards the larger mythos. Gorilla Grood? Can’t wait!

But here’s the crux: Is Flash a good show? It may be too soon to tell, but I really enjoyed the humor, especially at the beginning, and the hints towards a larger mystery—indeed, the fact that (spoiler alert) time travel might be involved really makes me eager to see where (when) they’re going. But I’m sure it’s not a spoiler to reveal that The Flash illustrates DC’s major problem with women. While both Iris (Candice Patton) and Dr. Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) are supposed to be smart female characters (despite the fact Iris seemingly doesn’t know how to backup her dissertation on Dropbox), they are also both hindered with awkward and unnecessary relationship baggage – and Dr. Snow is even told to “smile more.” Yikes.  But if The Flash can move beyond the trappings of teen angst, there’s the possibility of a truly interesting sci-fi show at its heart.

*

Bradley Schauer, University of Arizona

The premiere of The Flash is so predictable, there’s no real need to bring you up to speed. Every choice is safe, in a timidly bland way. We are introduced to a whole cast of characters that fit neatly into tropes: love interest, love-triangle-rival, alternate love interest, secret villain. In true/bad comic book form, Barry Allen’s mother is introduced, then fridged in literally the very next scene. Everybody announces their emotions outright, presumably because it’s too hard to make facial expressions that say “I was worried about you” or “I’m sad.” Other times, characters blurt out their backstories so awkwardly that I felt uncomfortable seeing it, like being stuck in an elevator with a couple of strangers having an argument. The climactic moment- wherein Flash has to spin counter-clockwise against a tornado to dissipate its energy- is so awkwardly contrived that it made me seriously doubt the show’s ability to find a problem every week that can be solved with running really fast.

There are so few chances taken that it’s hard to find anything specifically good to say about it. About the only notable thing in the episode is the special effects, which were surprisingly good, given the difficulty in making running fast look interesting and cool. In the end, the show doesn’t do much wrong and it doesn’t do much right. The Flash will likely survive long enough to develop a fan-base, but there’s no guarantee it will ever find its footing.

~~~~~

JANE THE VIRGIN [Premiered Oct 13, 2014]

What would happen if a twenty-something virgin was accidentally artificially inseminated? And what would happen if the sperm involved was attached to an absurdly contrived set of circumstances that create legitimate tension over whether or not the pregnancy should be terminated? Jane the Virgin is here to tell this story.

*

Melissa A. Click, University of Missouri

Jane the Virgin is one of the best pilots I’ve seen this fall. Based on the Venezuelan telenovela Juana la Virgen, the series follows 23 year-old Jane Villanueva (Gina Rodriguez), a virgin who is accidentally artificially inseminated while at a routine checkup. Building on the telenovela’s strengths as a genre, the series lays out a complicated story—a story that would take many paragraphs to explain with clarity. Suffice it to say that it will take the whole season to untangle Jane’s life, which until the accidental insemination, had been meticulously planned. The story, adapted and produced by Jennie Snyder and Ben Silverman, is reminiscent of Ugly Betty, yet thankfully lacks that series’ endless jokes about Betty’s appearance.

Unlike many of the other female characters on The CW, Jane is honest, thoughtful, and principled; she truly wants to do the right thing. The trouble is that everyone in her life—from her grandmother (Ivonne Coll), who likens Jane’s virginity to a flower (if crumpled, “you can never get it back!”), to Jane’s boyfriend (Brett Dier) who proposes to Jane on the same day she learns she is pregnant—has a different opinion about what Jane should do. The series’ complex story is strengthened by its playful narrator (Anthony Mendez) and Jane’s wild telenovela-inspired daydreams. Such devices remind the viewer of the implausibility of the story, but they skillfully anchor the series in its Latin roots and help it stand out among the CW’s standard fare. And Jane the Virgin should stand out—put this one in your weekly line up!

*

Kyra Hunting, University of Kentucky

Jane the Virgin’s most obvious asset is the actress playing its titular character, Gina Rodriguez. Ms. Rodriguez was instantly charming and expressive in a way that added depth to often funny but occasionally awkward dialogue. While the narrator as a device is one that I have largely been burnt out on, in this case I found its storytelling capacity and tone deeply appealing (and oddly evocative of Pushing Daisies). I entered the first episode deeply skeptical about what seemed like an unsupportable premise and was impressed by how intrigued – and sometimes surprised – I was by the series. While the Catholicism of Gina and her family is important, it is not the simplistic motivator that I had expected it to be, and so instead the series appears to offer a rare representation of faith on television that articulates it as important, complex, and sometimes influenced or complicated by the exigencies of real, messy life. In many ways the pilot episode suggests a series with a strong eye for effective diversity and cultural specificity done in subtle ways. It should particularly be applauded for having a very important, and complex and likable character, speaking almost exclusively in (subtitled) Spanish. While I still am skeptical of (and somewhat offended by) the way in which the series instigates the pregnancy, its ability to give Jane real agency and emotional depth, its offbeat humor, and its interesting family dynamic charmed me. Like fellow telenovela adaptation Red Band Society, it charmed me and I will likely continue to watch as long as it remains on the air – which I hope, but doubt, will be long enough to see her child go to preschool.

*

Karen Petruska, University of California – Santa Barbara

With critics like the typically grumpy (and CW-disparaging) Bastard Machine, Tim Goodman, praising the heck out of this show, I pretty much expected the second coming of the Lord. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find the show is much harder to categorize, and that’s terrific. There’s plenty of potential for soapy drama, with rival lovers for our heroine, an absentee father back in town, and a ridiculous set of coincidences motivating all our characters to action. And yes, there’s a lot that is hard to swallow—an emotional doctor accidentally inseminates Jane with the ONLY sample cancer-stricken Rafael will EVER produce? (and that is among the least crazy elements of the show). But Jane the Virgin’s carefully calculated tone, balancing the craziness of its inspirational telenovelas with a lovely performance by Gina Rodriguez as Jane, intrigues more than it alienates. Jane also has two loving women in her life, grounding the otherwise whimsical series in the stuff of real life for a girl raised in a Latina, working-class matriarchy.

I’m not sure if this will be world’s slowest developing pregnancy, such that the program will sustain multiple seasons through it alone, or if it will find newer, crazier plot points down the road. I’m also not sure how this is a CW program, aside from the love triangle at its heart. Perhaps Jane is evidence of the CW working hard to defy expectations of what the network can be. But the part I’m most hesitant about is “baby as excuse for a love story,” a subgenre within which Knocked Up is my least favorite example. Should the writers remember that this pregnancy can provide an opportunity for Jane to learn more about who she is as an adult person, there may really be something unusual here beyond the tone.

*

Sharon Ross, Columbia College Chicago

Te amo, JtV! And te quiero—because I want more! This telenovela-like pilot was utterly enchanting, waltzing gleefully through the premise of mistaken artificial insemination to settle warmly on a core of familial love and the unpredictability of charting one’s personal growth in relation to those around you. The acting was top-notch; it is not an easy thing to walk the fine line of genuine, dramatic moments and comedic whimsy but every actor pulled it off. This is a testament to skillful writing and production as well—from the pop-up type set that painted quick pictures of the characters tongue-in-cheek, to the true-to-life dialogue as Jane worked her way through dealing with her pregnancy and the ripple effect of this with her mother, grandmother, and boyfriend.

I am a cynical watcher, particularly when it comes to shows being highlighted in part for their diversity. JtV won me over quickly, however, creating depth for most of its characters (the conniving wife Petra could stand some backstory that I’m hoping will involve the tarot cards we kept seeing). This has the mark of Ugly Betty (Ben Silverman can be thanked for that), but with a gentler form of humor that lets you suspend disbelief just enough to embrace the emotional realism. By the end, I had enjoyable tears in my eyes, desperately wanted to see the next episode, and really wanted to have a grilled cheese sandwich. This show is like fabulous ice cream—the kind you go to a funky ice cream parlor for (green tea ice cream with chocolate chips); it’s sweet but not in an expected way, you won’t get the headache, and you sense that in the near future you’ll be returning to see what flavor emerges next.