This study is premised on the concept of citizenship theory, primarily what is often called cultural citizenship and how this kind of approach can provide insight on narrative development of superhero comic book characters Spider-Man (Peter Parker) and Mary Jane Watson. By positioning the analysis within discourse theory (enforced by representational theory) it relies on the idea of the private and public sphere, the starting point of Lauren Berlant’s notion of citizenship, and how gender roles framed Mary Jane Watson and superhero Spider-Man in the process of gendering national identity. This article draws on two main sets of analyses – the wedding ceremony of Peter and Mary Jane that happened outside comic book panels, at the Shea Stadium in New York in 1987, and Tom DeFalco’s story Maximum Carnage from 1992. These cases are tackled from the position of gender representation with the focus on elaborating how the discourses about gender and citizenship positioned the character of Mary Jane and Spider-Man into the realm of gendered Americanness. The embeddedness of these findings places Mary Jane as a vital part of Spider-Man stories while pointing out specific discursive forms of gendered nationality in American popular superhero narratives: domesticated female identity and active male identity.
{"title":"The gendering of Americanness and citizenship narratives in Spider-Man comic books: The case of Mary Jane Watson","authors":"Zlatko Bukač","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00060_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00060_1","url":null,"abstract":"This study is premised on the concept of citizenship theory, primarily what is often called cultural citizenship and how this kind of approach can provide insight on narrative development of superhero comic book characters Spider-Man (Peter Parker) and Mary Jane Watson. By positioning the analysis within discourse theory (enforced by representational theory) it relies on the idea of the private and public sphere, the starting point of Lauren Berlant’s notion of citizenship, and how gender roles framed Mary Jane Watson and superhero Spider-Man in the process of gendering national identity. This article draws on two main sets of analyses – the wedding ceremony of Peter and Mary Jane that happened outside comic book panels, at the Shea Stadium in New York in 1987, and Tom DeFalco’s story Maximum Carnage from 1992. These cases are tackled from the position of gender representation with the focus on elaborating how the discourses about gender and citizenship positioned the character of Mary Jane and Spider-Man into the realm of gendered Americanness. The embeddedness of these findings places Mary Jane as a vital part of Spider-Man stories while pointing out specific discursive forms of gendered nationality in American popular superhero narratives: domesticated female identity and active male identity.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42729656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyses gendered representations of the 2008 financial crash in contemporary American cinema, focusing on films by Jason Reitman and Woody Allen. Scholars of the financial crisis on film have persuasively argued that the main impetus of indie global financial crisis cinema has been less to narrate the events than to make them intelligible through personification. I illustrate and modify this statement by suggesting that Reitman’s and Allen’s characters not only embody the financial crash but do so, importantly, along gender lines. What stands out the most, I propose, is the trope of female suffering. In both films, we witness female protagonists in the grip of monetary and mental crisis. I contend that this image of the distraught woman – with all the messiness and embarrassment of her feelings in full view – sheds new light on the affective pathologies of American capitalism. To make this point, I draw on cultural emblems of female hysteria, as well as on the work of political scientist Claudia Leeb on the expression of suffering and its transformative potential. Through their tormented heroines, Reitman and Allen provide a provocative view of US capitalism and its casualties after the global crash.
{"title":"Echoes of hysteria: Gender, affect and economic crisis in Blue Jasmine and Young Adult","authors":"Iris Pikouli","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00062_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00062_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses gendered representations of the 2008 financial crash in contemporary American cinema, focusing on films by Jason Reitman and Woody Allen. Scholars of the financial crisis on film have persuasively argued that the main impetus of indie global financial crisis cinema has been less to narrate the events than to make them intelligible through personification. I illustrate and modify this statement by suggesting that Reitman’s and Allen’s characters not only embody the financial crash but do so, importantly, along gender lines. What stands out the most, I propose, is the trope of female suffering. In both films, we witness female protagonists in the grip of monetary and mental crisis. I contend that this image of the distraught woman – with all the messiness and embarrassment of her feelings in full view – sheds new light on the affective pathologies of American capitalism. To make this point, I draw on cultural emblems of female hysteria, as well as on the work of political scientist Claudia Leeb on the expression of suffering and its transformative potential. Through their tormented heroines, Reitman and Allen provide a provocative view of US capitalism and its casualties after the global crash.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41890754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Review of: Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith, Tanya Long Bennett (ed.) (2021) Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 186 pp., ISBN 978-1-49683-684-7, $99.00
{"title":"Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith, Tanya Long Bennett (ed.) (2021)","authors":"Siân Round","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00065_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00065_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith, Tanya Long Bennett (ed.) (2021)\u0000Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 186 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-1-49683-684-7, $99.00","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46760942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"J. Wills, C. Lloyd, Harriet Stilley","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00058_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00058_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48228562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article brings together three consecutive films within Elia Kazan’s filmography, Baby Doll (1956), A Face in the Crowd (1957) and Wild River (1960) and conceptualizes an informal ‘southern trilogy’ within the director’s body of work that attempts an empathetic understanding of the situation that America’s White southerners found themselves in during a time of social and economic upheaval, whilst simultaneously petitioning for the necessity of widespread change. The suggestion is that Kazan’s personal experience as a friendly witness to the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and the resulting ostracization from his artistic community, lent the director a unique voice that imbued these films with a sense of understanding regarding the tension between personal circumstance and evolving cultural environments. Collectively the three films document Kazan’s journey as he sought to justify his political decisions through an insightful and humane discussion of how the changes taking place in the American South throughout the 1950s impacted the everyday private dramas of the region’s inhabitants. Whilst Kazan had struggled to be right in a world that he thought had gone wrong, he portrays his White protagonists as struggling with being wrong in a world that Kazan sees as going right.
{"title":"‘The big shot had become the outsider’: Empathy and circumstance in Elia Kazan’s ‘southern trilogy’","authors":"J. Homer","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00059_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00059_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article brings together three consecutive films within Elia Kazan’s filmography, Baby Doll (1956), A Face in the Crowd (1957) and Wild River (1960) and conceptualizes an informal ‘southern trilogy’ within the director’s body of work that attempts an empathetic understanding of the situation that America’s White southerners found themselves in during a time of social and economic upheaval, whilst simultaneously petitioning for the necessity of widespread change. The suggestion is that Kazan’s personal experience as a friendly witness to the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and the resulting ostracization from his artistic community, lent the director a unique voice that imbued these films with a sense of understanding regarding the tension between personal circumstance and evolving cultural environments. Collectively the three films document Kazan’s journey as he sought to justify his political decisions through an insightful and humane discussion of how the changes taking place in the American South throughout the 1950s impacted the everyday private dramas of the region’s inhabitants. Whilst Kazan had struggled to be right in a world that he thought had gone wrong, he portrays his White protagonists as struggling with being wrong in a world that Kazan sees as going right.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47448035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With a focus on the twenty-first-century United States, this article explores two narratives of sexual violence written by White women: Rape New York by Jana Leo (2009) and Joanna Connors’ I Will Find You (2016). In order to discuss them in relation to the topic proposed, the following research questions are posed: (1) What is the aim of the text? (2) Which methods of composition and narrative are used to achieve that aim? (3) Does the text manifest a political intention? (4) Does that intention align with the current wave of feminism? The thesis sustained here is that these two authors create stories of sexual violence where the personal is political in ways that are relevant to a feminist understanding of contemporary America. I propose that Leo and Connors, writing before #MeToo, can be considered early fourth-wavers. Their approach to the events that they portray is intersectional, and they practice self- and cultural inquiry as part of their process of constructing autobiographical rape narratives.
{"title":"The personal and the political in twenty-first-century America: Self- and cultural inquiry in contemporary rape memoirs","authors":"Marta Fernández-Morales","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00061_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00061_1","url":null,"abstract":"With a focus on the twenty-first-century United States, this article explores two narratives of sexual violence written by White women: Rape New York by Jana Leo (2009) and Joanna Connors’ I Will Find You (2016). In order to discuss them in relation to the topic proposed, the following research questions are posed: (1) What is the aim of the text? (2) Which methods of composition and narrative are used to achieve that aim? (3) Does the text manifest a political intention? (4) Does that intention align with the current wave of feminism? The thesis sustained here is that these two authors create stories of sexual violence where the personal is political in ways that are relevant to a feminist understanding of contemporary America. I propose that Leo and Connors, writing before #MeToo, can be considered early fourth-wavers. Their approach to the events that they portray is intersectional, and they practice self- and cultural inquiry as part of their process of constructing autobiographical rape narratives.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46328431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam, Congressional investigations uncovered the largely unknown activities of the CIA and other agencies, which included arming and interfering in the domestic politics of regimes in both Central America and Iran. These programmes had also involved supporting reactionary regimes in ways that some saw as drawing the United States into conflicts, like Vietnam, without public knowledge or consent. In 1987, it was revealed that the Reagan administration had operated a clandestine policy in Nicaragua that evaded the restrictions placed upon the executive by the Boland Amendment in terms of aid given to the Nicaraguan Contras and that National Security Council (NSC) staff had lied to Congress and concealed these illegal actions. They had solicited funds from foreign allies and smuggled arms to the Contra insurgents in support of their efforts to topple the Sandinista regime. Contrary to the Arms Export Control Act and to its own publicly stated policy, the administration had also sold arms, particularly missiles, to Iran, which had been branded a sponsor of international terrorism since the Iranian revolution, and which was currently at war with its neighbour, Iraq. Such deals had formed part of ‘arms for hostages’ negotiations that were also contrary to official policy. Finally, it was disclosed that profits from the arms sales had been diverted to fund the Contras and hence to evade Congressional restrictions on funding. This article explores why these illegal actions did not result in President Reagan’s impeachment. It considers the merits of the administration’s claims that this was a ‘rogue operation’ by zealots within the NSC, and the success of its efforts to present Reagan as eager to cooperate with efforts to discover the truth of what had happened. It reviews the interactions between the Tower Commission, Congressional investigations and Office of Independent Counsel probe (Lawrence Walsh) and shows how these contributed to Reagan’s ‘escape’ from impeachment. It reviews the argument that Reagan’s underlying health problems contributed to his lax management of NSC operations and it considers the importance of televised testimony, particularly that of Oliver North, in shaping public opinion in the administration’s favour. Finally, it considers how this significant episode in 1980s politics foreshadowed major trends in US politics that can be seen as culminating in the present, acute partisan divide, Donald Trump’s double impeachment, and a manifest decline in public trust and respect for American political institutions.
{"title":"Why Reagan was not impeached","authors":"Peter J. Ling","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00053_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00053_1","url":null,"abstract":"In the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam, Congressional investigations uncovered the largely unknown activities of the CIA and other agencies, which included arming and interfering in the domestic politics of regimes in both Central America and Iran. These programmes had also involved\u0000 supporting reactionary regimes in ways that some saw as drawing the United States into conflicts, like Vietnam, without public knowledge or consent. In 1987, it was revealed that the Reagan administration had operated a clandestine policy in Nicaragua that evaded the restrictions placed upon\u0000 the executive by the Boland Amendment in terms of aid given to the Nicaraguan Contras and that National Security Council (NSC) staff had lied to Congress and concealed these illegal actions. They had solicited funds from foreign allies and smuggled arms to the Contra insurgents in support\u0000 of their efforts to topple the Sandinista regime. Contrary to the Arms Export Control Act and to its own publicly stated policy, the administration had also sold arms, particularly missiles, to Iran, which had been branded a sponsor of international terrorism since the Iranian revolution,\u0000 and which was currently at war with its neighbour, Iraq. Such deals had formed part of ‘arms for hostages’ negotiations that were also contrary to official policy. Finally, it was disclosed that profits from the arms sales had been diverted to fund the Contras and hence to evade\u0000 Congressional restrictions on funding. This article explores why these illegal actions did not result in President Reagan’s impeachment. It considers the merits of the administration’s claims that this was a ‘rogue operation’ by zealots within the NSC, and the success\u0000 of its efforts to present Reagan as eager to cooperate with efforts to discover the truth of what had happened. It reviews the interactions between the Tower Commission, Congressional investigations and Office of Independent Counsel probe (Lawrence Walsh) and shows how these contributed to\u0000 Reagan’s ‘escape’ from impeachment. It reviews the argument that Reagan’s underlying health problems contributed to his lax management of NSC operations and it considers the importance of televised testimony, particularly that of Oliver North, in shaping public opinion\u0000 in the administration’s favour. Finally, it considers how this significant episode in 1980s politics foreshadowed major trends in US politics that can be seen as culminating in the present, acute partisan divide, Donald Trump’s double impeachment, and a manifest decline in public\u0000 trust and respect for American political institutions.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49460690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Written for laughs in 1982, Bruce Feirstein’s Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche: A Guidebook to All that Is Truly Masculine hit a real and raw nerve among American men. Beneath its jokes, the book documented a moment of 1980s gender crisis that pitted older constellations of masculinity against ‘the new man’. This article analyses how Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche and its cookbook sequel communicated this gender anxiety through food and the body specifically, considering the context of the Cold War, notable transitions in nutrition science and policy, and period food and fitness trends. Although many readers today may not know the origin of Feirstein’s book’s titular phrase, notions of ‘real men’ and gendered food still have cultural endurance, often deployed as a shorthand for hegemonic gender norms that pose destructive consequences 40 years later.
{"title":"Real men don’t eat quiche, do they?: Food, fitness and masculinity crisis in 1980s America","authors":"Emily J. H. Contois","doi":"10.1386/ejac_00052_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac_00052_1","url":null,"abstract":"Written for laughs in 1982, Bruce Feirstein’s Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche: A Guidebook to All that Is Truly Masculine hit a real and raw nerve among American men. Beneath its jokes, the book documented a moment of 1980s gender crisis that pitted older constellations\u0000 of masculinity against ‘the new man’. This article analyses how Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche and its cookbook sequel communicated this gender anxiety through food and the body specifically, considering the context of the Cold War, notable transitions in nutrition science\u0000 and policy, and period food and fitness trends. Although many readers today may not know the origin of Feirstein’s book’s titular phrase, notions of ‘real men’ and gendered food still have cultural endurance, often deployed as a shorthand for hegemonic gender norms\u0000 that pose destructive consequences 40 years later.","PeriodicalId":35235,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of American Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45257167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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