ABSTRACT
This study is an analysis of Amazon Prime’s series The Boys Season 1 by Eric Kripke to find out how the idea of corporate capitalism is portrayed and how the commodification of superheroes in a capitalist world corrupts the ideas of hero and superhero in the series. As we are living in a world of capitalism, many big global companies gain profit through the exploitation of labor and ideas. The Boys portrays the nature of capitalist exploitation in combination with the exploited concept of the superhero. The series introduces a world that heroes do not save the world for good deeds, but money and popularity. This analysis shows how the concept of a hero can be corrupted by capitalism and how a corporation can benefit from commodifying superheroes as products. The study concludes that Vought International creates a vicious cycle by creating superheroes, making profits from the commodification of the superheroes, and then spending the profits for the creation of more superheroes. The process results in a change in superheroes’ conscience. With money and popularity, they become selfish and start to drift apart from the path that they should follow, and even do non-heroic acts to maintain their status in society.
KEYWORDS
The Boys, hero, superhero, corporate capitalism, commodification