Study Marvel Movies For College Credit. No, Really.

Ah, if only my college days weren’t getting further behind me all the time. I did get to take a film class at Duke, but I did not get to take one that had Marvel movies as part of the curriculum.

But that’s what students at the University of Baltimore will get to do, thanks to a class being offered in the 2015 spring semester and taught by Arnold T. Blumberg. The course is called “Media Genres: Media Marvels,” and it plans to explore how the Marvel Cinematic Universe can give us insights into pop culture as a whole.

From Professor Blumberg himself in the course’s official press release:

"One thing we’ll do is dive into the impact of the Guardians of the Galaxy film, which proved two things: Mainstream movie audiences are not remotely tired of superhero movies; and Marvel Studios can now release a sci-fi adventure that actually features talking trees and raccoons. It’s not that they’re getting away with it—they’ve created a universe in which fans completely accept these developments, and they’re ready for even more."

He also talks up the idea that the Tony Stark character was relatable to audiences, allowing them to accept the larger than life events of the films. And he compares the impact the MCU movies have on the current generation to the role Star Wars played for the previous one, which I’d say is pretty accurate, at least as far as we can tell so far.

One of his other theories that will be discussed in the course is that people will continue to want Marvel and other comic book movies. In my line of work, we call that job security.

Oh, and Professor Blumberg, if you ever need any guest speakers, we’ll be happy to take a trip down to Baltimore to help out!

(via CNET)