Study on Narrative Structure of Contemporary Myth in Marvel Heroes, Focusing on Avenger Series

Myth-making from different political, social and cultural events flows in today's world and contemporary societies. Modern human, like his ancestors, have the power of myth-making and he uses this power when he encounters with a situation which is beyond his perception and his potency. It seems that one of the methods to achieve to this goal is creating superheroes whose abilities are suitable with man's needs and desires and his altitude to existence and world. In fact, making these myths is a reaction to fears and inabilities of modern human encountering with the world around him. Today's man has desires and dreams which cannot fulfilment them, so he actualize them in the form of heroes and local athletes. Due to the new world's technologies and developments to illustrate impossibilities, now superheroes can exist on screen. But how they represent myths on cinema screen? This survey studies on the way of representing contemporary myths and analyzing the elements of superheroes. Heroes and superheroes in comic books and in cinema are characters in "contemporary myths" because they have many things in common with myths in their classical meaning. This study relies on Umberto Eco's opinion about superheroes. The way of narration and its dominant components based on character (double identity), repetitive plot, conspiracy, paradox, and time and place has been studied. This research is based on this hypothesis that contemporary myths have components which is traceable in newfound superheroes of cinema and shows that dominant components of these superheroes; narration, time, place and characters show that according to eyewitness and sample surveys, narrative components of contemporary myths can be seen in the form of placeless and timelessness, repetitive plot, conspiracy, paradox and character's double identity.