ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at characters in terms of their actual social contexts, treating them as representations (or exemplifications) of intersectional categories such as race, class, gender, or dis/ability. As protagonists of (mostly fictional) stories, characters and their actions are partly determined by – and in constant dialogue with – the same social categories that are imposed onto real-world persons. Transmedia characters are then, especially, a site of negotiation for social, political, and ideological power relations. This aspect can be discussed as their thematic dimension, which is further distinguished in (possibly intended) symbolic vs. (possibly unintended) symptomatic meanings. The chapter attempts to develop a clearer understanding of how both thematic dimensions can be distinguished and interrelated more clearly. Its overarching conceptual framework is that of intersectionality, the assumption that social axes of power intersect in various, often unexpected ways. After introducing three foundational terms concerned with such relations – hegemoniality, othering, and performativity – it offers detailed analyses of how characters are made legible as belonging to the specific social categories of gender, race, and dis/ability, while simultaneously working as reflexive commentaries on such categories and their structural relations.
