The image above was taken from a movie poster advertisement for the 2016 film, Captain America: Civil War, which is based off of a number of Marvel comic book characters. According to IMDb, this movie ranks in the #11 spot under the category of the Best Superhero Movies as of 2020. 

Let’s look at the poster as an advertisement, without any backstory at all, using the Goffmanian Analysis: 

  1. Relative Size: As with many of the other Superhero film posters analyzed, there is a lack of female representation; and, again, a similarity is that the two women on this poster are much smaller in size to the males in the forefront of the poster. Although, one could argue that this is because the sizes of the characters decrease with each row. This may be left more up to interpretation, but it’s obvious that the two women are smaller than all the males pictured 
  2. Function Ranking: The only two female characters on this poster are completely exposed in regard to their armor, while the men either have some sort of armor or mask or both. Not only that, but both women wear their hair down, supporting the fact that they are women and stressing their femininity. The lack of armor/suits suggest that the women are of lower status than the men. 

Shared by: Maddie Glosny
Image Credit: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/45/1c/97/451c97801dacffe00eb7314e843ec5e3.jpg