Page - 48 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

48 | Theresia Heimerl www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 45–57 culminate in the salvation of his damsel in distress. Deadpool (2016) deliberate- ly targets an audience that is just outside the PG-13 rating range and hence can make fun, along with the hero, of the squeaky-clean goody two-shoes peopling other comic book adaptations. An even tougher path is chosen by the big-screen adaptation of the DC comic Watchmen (2009): the titular group of superheroes, who are publicly reviled post-1968 as brutal enforcers embroiled in government operations, for exam- ple in Vietnam, come across as a cynical, down-at-heel bunch whose members yearn to find meaning in life now that their superhero glory days are over.6 We actually meet a superhero, called the Comedian, who kills women and children and tries to rape a female superhero colleague. Admittedly, other than at the very beginning of the film he is only seen in flashbacks, as somebody pushes him out of a window after a short, brutal struggle during the introductory se- quence. Moreover – and this is truly problematic from a feminist viewpoint – he also turns out to be the father of the young super-heroine, whose mother car- ries a nostalgic torch for him despite the violence and attempted rape: “Oh, we were still young. you don’t know. things change. What happened, happened 40 years ago […] the past, even the grimy parts of it keep on getting brighter.” Alongside other motifs, the search for his killer determines the course of the plot, which – while containing much explicit and bloody violence – has nothing to offer in terms of sexual violence except the abovementioned scene. in the cinematic adaptations of Japanese manga, the approach to sex is an entirely different one. Even outside the hentai genre, i.e. explicit pornography,7 sexuality is shown with extreme bluntness when compared to Western visual sensibilities. Leaving out anime conceived solely for a target audience of young children and excluding certain youth protection regulations that, due to West- ern influence, also have been imposing restrictions on shonen manga and re- lated film adaptations since the 1990s,8 the depiction of sexuality in the action genre is integral to the plots of both anime and live-action film adaptations. This also goes for explicit sexual violence. it is simply a part of a patriarchal society that, while sometimes punished as an element of the plot-driving narrative, is far too often shown without any expression of deeper moral judgment, not even on the part of the hero. A scene from a very successful film adaptation from the 1970s provides a good example of this: Kozure Okami (1972–1974), based on the eponymous manga and available in english as Lone Wolf and Cub (1972–1974) , is a series of six motion pictures in which itto Ogami, a former Kogi 6 Cf. rauscher 2009, 42: “the hero concept of classic superhero comics is negated to a point that ex- cludes any further nexus with this concept.” Regarding the very critical reception of the film, cf. Van Ness 2010, 171–189. 7 Cf. Winter 2012, footnote 41. 8 Cf. Winter 2012, 16.