Perpetual and Pleasurable Marginality: White Masculine Victimhood Appropriation and Black Masculine Sacrifice in Marvel’s Netflix Series The Punisher

Abstract

Using Casey Ryan Kelly’s theorization of White masculine victimhood and Claire Sisco King’s conceptualization of abject hegemony, this manuscript rhetorically examines the 2017–2019 Netflix series, Marvel’s The Punisher, and its surrounding discourse. The analysis reveals an emotional-moral framework of White masculinity that thrives on and finds pleasure in an unending, inhumane, and cruel treatment of racial and gender Others, while investing in one’s own perpetual claims to victimization and disposability. Furthermore, abject constructions of White victimization and ressentiment subjugate and depend upon Black masculinity to sustain its abject hegemony, thereby extending current understandings of White masculine victimization and Black masculine subservience to whiteness in film and television.

Keywords:

• White masculinity
• whiteness
• Black masculinity
• White masculinity
• violence
• Marvel

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided insight that helped to improve this article. A prior version of this manuscript received the Top Faculty Paper Award in 2020 in the Critical and Cultural Studies Division at the 106^th annual meeting of the National Communication Association, Indianapolis, IN.