The concept of antihero or antiheroine in contemporary audiovisual transmedia

Abstract

This article studies the concept of antihero or antiheroine, with emphasis on the characters cataloged as such in transmedia pop culture and their contrast to classic and modern heroes and superheroes. From a bibliographical and theoretical review from the origins of the concept to the present, we conducted a virtual ethnography on Instagram to extrapolate the traits and attributes of the so-called antiheroes who star in some of the most successful contemporary transmedia audiovisual narratives between 2015 and 2021. The above, with the objective of proposing an updated definition of the term and establishing common characteristics that shed light on the lack of unified criteria and regarding the different perspectives that address it.