• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.63 no.5
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• pp.151-166
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• 2013

In order to create a national myth and be able to control international society, America with her short national history, used popular culture to accomplish these goals. The medium fit this purpose the best was the use of superhero characters based on comics. Born and developed from the 1930s through the 1960s, which could be seen as America's national crisis era, superhero characters were thorough advocates of American justice and was perfect for the role of spreading the legitimacy of American ideology. From the 1970s, superhero characters became part of movies and became even more influential through the Hollywood's massive film industry and the box office success. American ideology in superhero characters symbolically appeared in movie costumes. Starting with Superman and Batman, the very first and typical superhero characters' costumes work as metaphors for realization of American justice. After the 1980s, superheroes were newly developed through a genre called graphic novel and the most representative piece of this genre is Alan Moore's Watchmen. In the Watchmen, which was also turn into a movie in 2009, six changed superhero characters appear ranging from a non-human superhero, villain superhero, superhero with mental disorder and superhero with sexual impotency, the characters were never-seen-before superheroes with different aspects that connote introspection and philosophical ideology. The changed type of heroes and ideology became another form of heroes, and this brought changes to character costumes that were never considered before. The superhero costumes that used to symbolize America now express different types of superhero by borrowing exotic mythical elements, undressing, pastiche and daily life clothes. The superhero characters and their changes in costumes from Watchmen imply American popular culture's introspective tendency. Amongst these changes, we need to raise our critical vision towards popular culture.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.99-125
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• 2010

This paper explores the political significance of a literary work, the hidden side beneath the ideology of founding America in Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok which reconstructs the history of the colonial period. The ideological strategy of founding America on racial discrimination is given a repeated representation in 19th-century American novels. Most works shed a negative light on Native Americans, whereas Hobomok stands out by presenting a positive picture of a miscegenation between a Native American man and a white woman, the acculturation of a half Indian into the white society. Furthermore, Child undoes distorted stereotypes about native Americans, exposing the Puritans' intolerant and exclusive attitudes and criticizing men who forced women to be obedient for the cause of nation and religion. However, Child also shows that she could not be free from the ideology of founding America which insisted on the superiority of the white's racial identity and excluded the Native Americans as beings who were destined to vanish gradually but eventually. Although Hobomok revises stereotypical representation of Native Americans as the other, it also serves for a political purpose, showing a politically inseparable relationship between literary works and the ideology of founding America.

• American Studies
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.81-112
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• 2021

As polarization intensified in the United States, the voting support of the presidential party lawmakers has become the most important source of power for the president. The presidential party has been believed to legalize the president's agenda in a unified government and prevent legislation opposed by the president from being passed by the Congress within a divided government. However, even under party polarization, all the lawmakers and factions of the presidential party have not voted in accordance with the president's policy preferences. Statistical analysis shows that lawmakers who corresponded to the ideology median of the presidential party most strongly supported the president's agendas during the unified government. However, lawmakers with extreme ideologies voted more actively for the president than those with median ones during the divided government. Furthermore, this trend has been amplified regarding ideological factions.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.1-27
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• 2017

My aim in this paper is to provide a clear view of Victorian gender ideology and highlight the role played by Browning's dramatic monologues in the challenge against the strict patriarchal codes of the era. Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze theory in cinema is especially useful for understanding Browning's most well-known dramatic monologues, "Porphyria's Lover," and "My Last Duchess," because these poems are structured by polarities of looking and being looked at, the active and the passive. In her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Mulvey introduced the second-wave feminist concept of "male gaze" as a feature of gender power asymmetry in film. To gaze implies more than to look at – it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze. She declares that in patriarchal society pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. Browning's women are subject to the male gaze, but they refuse to become the objects of a scopophilic pleasure-in-looking. Porphyria and the Duchess don't exist in order to satisfy the desires and pleasures of men. They reveal themselves as an autonomous being - reserved in Victorian gender dynamics for men. Mulvey advocates 'an alternative cinema' which can challenges the male-dominated Hollywood ideology. It is possible to say that Browning's dramatic monologues correspond to Mulvey's 'alternative cinema' because they show a counterview in terms of the representation of woman against the Victorian patriarchal ideology.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.391-411
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• 2011

This paper examines Du Boisian critique of American exceptionalism through a close textual analysis of his writings from early essays to later works. As an attempt to respond to the persistent grip American exceptionalism has on both the academia and the intellectual world at large, this paper tries to fill in the gaps within the discourse of American exceptionalism by exploring the works of one of the most towering American intellectual figures, and suggests that the discourse of American exceptionalism has remained within the purview of white scholars. Although at times inconsistent and contradictory, Du Bois's trenchant critique of American civilization and Western imperialism deconstructs the original ideals of America, creating more than a fissure in the ideology/hegemony/state fantasy of American exceptionalism. I argue that Du Boisian critique of American exceptionalism shows its violent marginalization and racialization based on white supremacy. Du Boisian critique should be a cautionary tale for those scholars who talk of "reform" or "replenishment" or even who occlude the possibility that American exceptionalism has not always functioned as a "state fantasy" by assuming its absolute blinding powers.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.461-482
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• 2008

The science fiction was established as a typical genre of the American popular culture by the monumental releases of two series: Star Wars and Star Trek. Based on the popular science discourse, these two series have functioned as an ideological apparatus for re-appropriating Frontierism which reflects the essential values of American myth. Arguably, the SF genre owes its success mainly to the increasing popularity of science during the 1960s and 1970s, which was well represented in the space project of NASA. This power of popular science, however, tended to weaken in the 1990s as the public interest in NASA's project gradually decreased. "Deep Space Homer," an episode of The Simpson's fifth season, reflects the changing attitude of the American audience toward the new American hero created in the SF series of popular science in the previous popular culture.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.412-424
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to analyze the meaning of soul fashion in American pop culture. This study was conducted using a literature research method based on the prior theses, journals and relevant books. Soul as a concept, originated in African-American communities and evolved from the ideology of Black Power, which prompted Black Nationalism. Soul fashion, which took on two styles in African American culture began to embody black resistance and community pride in the late 20th century. One of these, hip-hop style represented the message of resistance and a sense of beauty outside the mainstream. The other, African-inspired fashion, which utilized a look inspired by African tradition, rejected white supremacy by expressing a proud dignity. As a result, the meaning of "soul" in soul fashion represented by American pop culture resulted in contrasting appearance due to different elements. First, one of its meanings is ironic and sarcastic, and it expressed historical trauma, cultural stereotypes, self-hatred, and self-degradation and, the self-mutilation of African-American by cynically distorting their silhouettes and, using modified materials and patterns, fantastic colors, and extraordinary accessories. Second, the other meanings is the pride and dignity of Black Power, which visualized the concentration of ideas implied by the tradition of African-American, through soul fashion by using fierce traditional of African costumes, unique patterns and accessories.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.931-946
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• 2010

This paper examines the role of gender ideology in early British and American detective fiction focusing on the female detectives. Since a detective's attributes honor and idealize such traditionally masculine qualities as independence, intelligence, heroism, and bravery, the woman detective fiction has potentiality to operate against the established gender norms. The narratives about women in pursuit of justice and order through their criminal investigation can allow women to possess the masculine rationality and power. The subversive possibility inherent in the woman detective fiction is, however, contained by the representation of the female detectives and the negotiation through narratives. A female detective is represented either as unfeminine and thus unattractive and unlikeable or as desperate for survival. Her threatening potentiality is easily dismissed as that of an inadequate woman or a desperate one. The compromise in narratives is effected by the following three ways: first, a female detective is assigned to investigate crimes as an assistant to the male detectives; second, staying within the domestic sphere, she solves crimes by using her expert knowledge of the domestic service; and third, her detective narrative ends with the conventional marriage plot. Confining the female detectives within the conventional feminine roles and domains, the woman detective fiction supports and reestablishes the dominant gender ideology.

• American Studies
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.1-33
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• 2021

This paper examines the service ideal preached by Bruce Barton, a bestselling American author in the 1920s. Based on archival sources and other historical materials, this paper presents Barton's endorsement of service ideal less as an adaptation to the looming consumerist society than an endeavor to revive the old producer ethos that was more coercive than therapeutic. Revisiting Barton's messages to Americans, this paper traces the intellectual root of Barton's service ideal to the Social Gospel and illustrates the ways his producer ethos evolved into a commonplace ideology of Christian meritocracy that endorsed individualism and small government.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.585-600
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• 2018

Over the last three decades, the field of American Studies has increasingly paid attention to transnational approaches in an effort to diversify and expand the field's concerns beyond the narrow sense of the nation-state in today's globalizing world. Yet, the mediation of the transnational requires a careful analysis of the nation that is still in transit. In this context, this essay examines Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick (1851) as a case study that vividly shows how reading American literature and culture through transnationalism not only offers new interpretations of canonical texts, but also helps us to better understand the historical roots and cultural contexts of contemporary issues such as global labor and migration, US citizenship and racial justice. To address the complexity of the text's circulation and reproduction, coupled with US national ideology and cultural conditions, I first turn to the canonization of Melville's Moby-Dick during the Cold War era as a national project and then explore the possibilities of transnational readings by focusing on the politics of race and global capitalism in the nineteenth century whaling industry. In doing so, I argue that critical transnationalism allows readers to keep questioning about their own understanding of race, nation, and cultural identity while remaining attentive to the destructive force of US imperialism and global capitalism in the twenty-first century.