Selling Arrow with Skin and Ethics

Deb Streusand — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 13:00:23 +0000

This week I’m following up on Aubri’s discussion of promotional photos for TV shows (in her post, Orange is the New Black) and my own examination of masks in Arrow. While the Arrow characters’ masks cover up more of the actors’ skin (in addition to the long sleeves and long pants of their costumes) some of the promotional imagery for the show specifically emphasizes bare skin. The image above portrays Stephen Amell playing Oliver Queen as The Arrow, but wearing only his quiver and some tight-fitting pants. Queen is frequently portrayed shirtless in the show while he is exercising or being patched up after combat, but never does he actually go out as The Arrow wearing less than his full costume including hood and mask. The image juxtaposes Queen’s identity as a vigilante hero with his sex appeal as a handsome and muscular man.

On one level, this image simply rehearses the standard formula that sex sells. However, the text in the upper right of the image emphasizes something rather different. “Destiny leaves its mark” draws attention to the scars that criss-cross Queen’s upper body. In the story, these are relics of the torture Queen underwent as part of the backstory that made him into The Arrow. Whether these scars constitute part of Queen’s attractiveness or work counter to his appeal depends on the eye of the beholder. Within the show, the character Laurel Lance sleeps with Queen, her old flame, immediately after her first time seeing his scars, suggesting that she, at least, finds him more attractive with them. Others’ mileage may vary. The emphasis on the scars may also be a nod to the show’s heterosexual male audience, who presumably wouldn’t particularly care about Queen’s bare chest without the scars that emphasize what a badass the character is.

Image Credit: wegotthiscovered.com

This picture of David Ramsey as John Diggle is even more transparently sexual, showcasing his muscles without any scars or distracting tagline. Diggle is Queen’s loyal friend and in some ways the emotional heart of the show, but he’s not the hero or any of the vigilantes who go in costume and have alternate names. Nor would the character actually ever pose like this in the show. The picture doesn’t sell the story of Arrow; it sells the body of the actor. There is a similar poster of Colton Haynes, who plays Roy Harper, so all the male members of Team Arrow have been used to sell the show in this way.

Image Credit: thegreenarrowtv.com

The above picture, by contrast, shows a clothed Oliver Queen (as far as one can tell) with his face partially obscured by an arrow. The image emphasizes the divided nature of Queen’s character – part ordinary man, part city-saving hero. It also shows the hero side as shadowed, which the tagline picks up on: “innocent and not guilty are two different things.” Since its beginnings, the show has wrangled with the ethical implications of being a vigilante. The second season features a key character transformation in which The Arrow stops killing bad guys and settles for stopping them, sometimes only temporarily. A vigilante who is not a killer is not guilty of homicide, but he is not an ordinary, innocent man either. This image actually sells the show’s ethical complexity as something attractive, a much more cerebral approach to advertising than the ones shown above.

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The Hidden Hero: Rhetoric of the Mask in Arrow

Deb Streusand — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 12:43:10 +0000

Image Credit: comicbook.com

The television show Arrow features a cadre of non-superhero vigilantes, superpower-free men and women who succeed in fighting bad guys through a combination of training, intelligence, and deft manipulation of technology. They must also rely on technology and trickery to protect their true identities. The major technology that the characters in Arrow use for this purpose is a simple one: the mask.

Image Credit: bostonherald.com

When Oliver Queen first begins his quest to save Starling City, he depends mostly on his hood to conceal his identity when he is being The Arrow. He smears greasepaint over his eyes to obscure his features, but when he wants to reveal himself as Oliver Queen to his friend Tommy, he simply lifts his hood and speaks in his natural voice. Only when the scientist Barry Allen, later to become the Flash, provides him with a comfortable mask that perfectly conforms to his face does he switch over to the more effective means of concealment. After that point, he’s not recognized as Queen even with his hood off. The simple mask is a powerful enough technology within the world of the story to prevent people from recognizing the extremely well-known Oliver Queen.

Image Credit: docbrowntv.com

Sara Lance as the Canary

Image Credit: docbrowntv.com

Laurel Lance as the Black Canary

The efficacy of masks in the show is not consistent, however. Like the disguises of characters on the Renaissance stage, they are generally ironclad to the point where the other characters seem extremely dense when they don’t recognize the disguised person. When Laurel Lance is impersonating her sister Sara, she puts on Sara’s Canary outfit and mask to speak to her father so that (SPOILER ALERT) he’ll think Sara is still alive. She is able to fool Detective Lance into thinking that she is Sara, even though they are his daughters and are significantly different in height and body type. Occasionally, though, a perceptive character will see through the mask. Sara’s friend Sin is able to recognize that someone else is pretending to be Sara because the woman she thinks is Sara doesn’t acknowledge her presence, something Sara would never fail to do. So the mask is able to conceal differences in physical appearance, but it can’t necessarily obscure differences in behavior.

Image Credit: bamsmackpow.com

The rhetoric of the mask argues that one’s face is one’s identity – if the face is obscured, the person is anonymous. The mask is a convenient choice on a practical level because it’s not enough of a disguise to fool the audience. The idea that it’s generally enough to hide the identity of the hero from those who would seek to penetrate it is a conceit that we have to accept when we watch the show. When the show itself then plays with that conceit for dramatic purposes (such as revealing information to a character) we continue to accept that the mask still disguises the heroes from most people’s perception. Anonymity is crucial for heroes outside the law, as the current plot in which (SPOILERS) The Arrow’s identity is revealed to Starling City at large makes clear. The Arrow can’t help anyone if everyone knows he’s Oliver Queen. So we must believe that he can hide his identity. We must believe in the mask.

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Selling Arrow with Skin and Ethics

The Hidden Hero: Rhetoric of the Mask in Arrow