Hoodies in Pop Culture: Positive and Negative Representations in Fictional Narratives
Original hoodie illustration and watercolor commissioned by Observing Leslie from Anilyn Fabello, an artist based in Texas. You can learn more about Anilyn and her work via her website.
A lighthearted Twitter exchange about whether Skeletor popularized the hoodie—a scandalous notion that prompted me to share my infographic of the history of the hoodie in protest—nudged me to consider how popular culture has represented the hoodie.
Thinking beyond news headlines and sports figures—the obvious starting points—I wondered whether fictional hooded characters have had any effect on the predominant mental image of the hoodie or on the symbolism of the hoodie.
Of course, to draw any conclusions, I needed to do some research into the popular, mainstream-enough fictional characters that wear hoodies and hooded garments.
Then, I needed to understand these characters’ stories to better determine how their representations may have influenced the image and impressions we have of the hoodie today—if at all.
What Counts as a Hoodie-Wearing Fictional Character in Popular Culture?
To make my list for consideration, a fictional character needed to have a relatively broad audience among the general population, with some leeway given to popular characters known well among significantly sized subgroups of the wider public (such as comic-book fans).
Characters on my list needed to have at least one story arc—if not more than one. I did not consider characters or figures without a storyline or ones represented as archetypes in artwork (e.g., a warlock, a wood sprite, or the Grim Reaper).
Further, the hoodie needed to serve as the character’s predominant clothing item for me to include it on my list. The character couldn’t merely wear a hoodie once or twice or even occasionally—it needed to wear the hoodie always or almost always. In other words, the standard image or appearance of the fictional personality had to show the character in a hooded garment. (For a list of hoodie archetypes—any one of which would classify an item as a “hooded garment”—click here.)
Initial Surprises with Hoodie-Wearing Characters
With my criteria in place, I did some researching into popular fictional characters to find the ones with hoods.
I had a few initial surprises.
First, I didn’t realize how few pop-culture figures wear hoodies. Given the hoodie’s popularity, I had the impression I’d find several characters—at least in cartoons—wearing hooded garments.
Alas, I did not.
Further, many of the characters my mind’s eye remembered in hoodies didn’t wear hoodies, including Shaggy from the “Scooby-Doo” franchise and Disney’s Tinkerbell. The Disney version of the Seven Dwarfs—of which I was sure several wore hoodies—don’t have hoods, either. (Seems like they should, right?)
Turns out most of the hooded fictional characters I could find in my research into popular figures come from comic books. Perhaps if I were a comic-book fan, I’d have realized their importance for the genre. However, I’d only remembered superheroes wearing masks, including the full-face and full-head versions. (Think Batman.) Hoods? I’d had no clue.
The Hooded-Character Sorting Process
After developing the best list I could of hooded characters that met my above criteria, I tried to discern patterns for sorting the list and determining how or whether the hoodie is used as a symbolic clothing item in fiction and pop culture.
As with any list, I could have carved it in several ways.
However, given my interest in determining how the hoodie’s representation in fiction could have influenced popular-consciousness perceptions of the garment, I decided to create three broad groupings: Good, ambivalent, and bad.
I placed each character on one of these three lists according to the figure’s predominant motivations and the overarching results of its actions.
Note: Yes, fictional characters—especially comic-book characters—often have storylines that involve them going against their typical natures. In these cases, I sorted the figure according to its typical or overarching characterization.
“Good” Hooded Characters
The following hoodie-wearing fictional characters have storylines that predominantly feature them as forces for good:
Ghost (Dark Horse superhero): This comic-book superhero wears a white hooded cloak to investigate and avenge her own death, saving and protecting others in the process.
The Hood (DC Comics superhero): Although he only occasionally makes appearances, mainly in other characters’ storylines, The Hood wears a red cloak to rob from the rich and give to the poor (like his namesake, Robin Hood).
Little Red Riding Hood (folk character): Little Red Riding Hood wears her red-hooded cloak as protection from the elements as she heads to grandmother’s house with her basket of cake and wine from her mother.
Elliot Alderson (main character in “Mr. Robot” television series): Although a troubled soul, Elliot wears his faded black zip-up sweatshirt hoodie to perform a form of well-intentioned vigilante justice (though sometimes not with the intended results) via computer hacking.
Ragman (DC Comics superhero): A Golem-like character, Ragman is typically depicted wearing a tattered hooded cloak (often green) as he distributes vigilante justice.
The Spectre (DC Comics superhero): Wearing his green hooded cloak, The Spectre does mostly good and occasional not-so-good, but with overall good intentions.
Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi (fantasy characters from the “Star Wars” franchise): The Jedi Masters (and the other Jedi, including Luke Skywalker, later in his story arc) wear coarse hooded robes or cloaks to teach and promote the good side of The Force. (May it be with you.)
Hooded Characters with Ambivalent Storylines
In classifying a fictional character as “ambivalent,” I meant that it—on balance—neither works as a force for good or for bad in its intentions or results, even if it occasionally tilts its behavior toward one or the other side of the scale.
I found a couple of hoodie-wearing characters with solidly ambivalent storylines:
Cloak (Marvel superhero): Cloak mainly shows up in his dark, hooded cloak with his partner Dagger; together, their characters typically fight drug crime. However, his pull to darkness requires Dagger to keep him in line.
Kenny McCormick (“South Park” cartoon television series): Wearing his classic red pullover hoodie with the hood up and the drawstring pulled tight around his face, Kenny is best known for dying repeatedly throughout the series and for his shocking profanity—which is fortunately muffled by his hood.
“Bad” Hooded Characters
When it comes to working as a force for bad or evil—an antihero, as it were—the following fictional characters predominantly serve the dark side:
The Hood (Marvel superhero): This second The Hood character appears so rarely I almost didn’t consider him popular enough—and you could still convince me to remove him. Marvel’s The Hood wears a red hooded cloak to commit crime (mainly theft).
Skeletor (“He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” cartoon series): Skeletor wears a purple hood over his skull as he repeatedly tries and fails to wrest control of the universe from He-Man, his nephew.
On Balance: Good Wins
Especially given the popularity of the hooded Grim Reaper figure throughout history (starting way back in the 1300s), finding that most pop-culture hooded figures have an overall positive nature and story arc surprised me.
Even if you remove the comic-book characters from the above lists, the remaining fictional figures are fundamentally good influences and work as positive forces.
Some people would even put Kenny from “South Park” on the “good” list, as the series often shows him sacrificing his life for the sake of others and he occasionally has scenes wherein he helps his little sister.
Yet even if you move one or two figures to different lists based on your own estimation of their natures, you can’t deny that the “good” list far outweighs the “ambivalent” and “bad” lists.
Bias for Popular Characters with Positive Motivations?
Was it really the case that creators tended to make most hoodie-wearing characters positive figures? Or could I find mainly “good” characters in hoodies due to the popular preference for positive forces in fictional narratives?
After all, characters that attract the popular consciousness at a grand-enough level to qualify for classification according to my criteria may simply be the more beloved characters in fiction. Perhaps the “bad” hoodie-wearing characters just didn’t show up in my research because they aren’t popular enough.
Though I didn’t perform extensive bibliographic work to research all popular fiction in all forms to see which even less-popular characters in these stories wore hoods and had negative motivations, I searched fairly broadly across several types of popular media to find characters of all types. I did not find numerous hooded characters with positive, neutral, or negative storylines in general.
Therefore, I don’t think we’ve just forgotten about the baddies or decided to prefer stories about the heroes. I’ll stand by my discovery that most of the popular-culture fictional characters wearing hooded garments work as forces for good, not as forces for bad.
Positive Hoodie Perceptions Limited to Fiction
Unfortunately, as mentioned in my article about the symbolism of the hoodie, the garment rarely has positive symbolic associations in today’s culture. (Sadly, as I love hoodies.)
Therefore, I can only draw the conclusion here that—as of this moment—the hoodie’s overall positive representation via fictional figures has not translated into popular acclaim for the garment.
However, the finding that hooded characters more often have positive than negative story arcs does give me some level of hope that the hoodie will get less of a bad rap someday than it currently has in popular culture and in the news media.
Can we make fiction in this case reality?
I say we give it a try.
Who’d I Miss in My Character Research?
I must have missed a big fictional personality in my research, whether of the good, ambivalent, or bad genre.
Readers, what popular fictional hoodie character do I need to revise this list to include?
Also, if you love hoodies as much as I do, you might enjoy a quick look at my repository of hoodie-related articles and information.
I have more hoodie goodness in the works, don’cha know. What other stories and history should I research? What would you like to know?
(And if you found this article interesting or helpful, hat tip me a coffee!)