scholarly journals Alien Invasions and Identity Crisis: Steven Spielberg’s The War of the Worlds (2005)

2016 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Rocío Carrasco Carrasco
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
White Male ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Steven Spielberg ◽  
Identity Crises ◽  
Alien Invasion ◽  
Post September 11 ◽  
Male Heterosexual

The idea of national identity as threatened by foreign invasions has been at the centre of many popular Science Fiction (SF) films in the United States of America. In alien invasion films, aggressive colonisers stand for collective anxieties and can be read “as metaphors for a range of perceived threats to humanity, or particular groups, ranging from 1950s communism to the AIDS virus and contemporary ‘illegal aliens’ of human origin” (King and Krzywinska, 2000: 31-2). Such films can effectively tell historical and cultural specificities, including gender concerns. In them, the characters’ sense of belonging to a nation is destabilised in a number of ways, resulting in identity crisis in most cases. A fervent need to defend the nation from the malevolent strangers is combined with an alienation of the self in the search of individual salvation or survival.The present analysis will attempt to illustrate how threats to configurations of power are employed in a contemporary alien invasion film: The War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005). Specifically, the film takes the narrative of destruction to suggest the destabilisation of US national power within the context of post September 11, together with a subtle disruption of the gender and sexual status quo. Indeed, new ways of understanding masculinity and fatherhood assault both the public and the private spaces of its white male heterosexual protagonist, Ray, performed by popular actor Tom Cruise. Ambiguous patriotism, identity crises and selfishness are at the core of this contemporary version of H.G. Wells’s landmark novel.

Gay (White) Male Speech and the E(race)sure of Identity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna R. Cornelius
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Language Use ◽  
White Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gay Identity ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Gay Male ◽  
Men Of Color ◽  
African American Language

Although a notable body of work has emerged describing gay male speech (GMS), its overlap with African American language (AAL) remains comparatively understudied. This chapter explores the assumption of whiteness that has informed research on gay identity and precluded intersectional considerations in sociolinguistic research. Examining the importance of racial identity, particularly Blackness, to the construction of gay identity in the United States, the chapter investigates the treatment of GMS as white by default, with the voices of gay men of color considered additive. The desire vs. identity debate in language and sexuality studies contributed to an understanding of gay identity as community-based practice, thereby laying a necessary framework for the study of GMS. However, this framework led to a virtually exclusive focus on white men’s language use. Although efforts to bring a community-based understanding to gay identity have been groundbreaking, the lack of consideration of intersectionality has erased contributions to GMS from racially based language varieties, such as AAL.

Of Comics and Charisma: Representing Transpacific White Masculinities

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina D. Owens
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
White Male ◽  
English Teachers ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Charismatic Authority ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Madame Butterfly ◽  
White Masculinities ◽  
Male Heterosexual

AbstractThis article employs palimpsestuous reading practices to query the transpacific reach and imperial pedigree of the comic strip “Charisma Man.” Turning to Max Weber’s theory of “charismatic authority” to understand the comic’s humorous portrayals of white male heterosexual privilege in Asia, the article proposes that the comic strip illuminates the patterns of raced and gendered “hereditary charisma” that continue to haunt transpacific relations. “Charisma Man,” penned by a team of North American men living in Japan, links contemporary white migrants across Asia – especially native English teachers – with a longue durée of Euro-American imperial actors abroad and builds meaning through intertextual engagement with the iconic cultural texts Superman and Madame Butterfly. The article concludes that “Charisma Man” makes light of white male hereditary charisma in Asia through a layering of temporally-disjointed transpacific discourses and, in turn, adds one more layer to a palimpsestuous sedimentation of sexist and racist hierarchies, normalizing their continuation within contemporary globalization.

Overeducation and the Earnings of Black, Hispanic, and White Male Workers

1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard R. Verdugo ◽  
Naomi Turner Verdugo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
White Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Male Workers ◽  
White Minority

This study addresses two issues: (1) the impact of overeducation on the earnings of male workers in the United States, and (2) white-minority earnings differences among males. Given that educational attainment levels are increasing among workers, there is some suspicion that earnings returns to education are not as great as might be expected. This topic is examined by including an overeducation variable in an earnings function. Regarding the second issue addressed in this article, little is actually known about white-minority differences because the bulk of such research compares whites and blacks. By including selected Hispanic groups in this analysis (Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Other Hispanics) we are able to assess white-minority earnings differences to a greater degree. Using data from a 5% sample of the 1980 census to estimate an earnings function, we find that overeducated workers earn less than either undereducated or adequately educated workers. Second, we find that there are substantial earnings differences between whites and minorities, and, also, between the five minority groups examined.

Male Youth Activities and Metropolitan Context

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
S R Holloway
Keyword(s):  
Black Male ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
White Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Activity Choices ◽  
The Impact

The research reported here examines the impact of metropolitan location on the activity choices of a sample of black and white male youths living in large metropolitan areas in the United States in 1980. The results of the analysis confirm that similar youths living in different metropolitan areas will make different activity choices. Furthermore, black male youths are found to be substantially more sensitive to metropolitan context than white male youths. The analysis also suggests that black and white disadvantaged youths respond differently to metropolitan context in terms of the trade-offs between activities. Disadvantaged black male youths are highly unlikely to be employed in all metropolitan areas and tend to trade-off staying in school with idleness, whereas disadvantaged white male youths tend to trade-off employment with idleness, depending on the metropolitan area they live in. This research confirms the importance of incorporating geographic context into our theoretical understanding of male youths' behavior. We must also, however, continue to address the implications of race as it shapes the context-dependent labor-market experiences of male youths.

Zines, Half-Lives, and Afterlives: On the Temporalities of Social and Political Change

PMLA ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 126 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Radway
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alternative Press ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The 1960S

The term zine is a recent variant of fanzine, a neologism coined in the 1930s to refer to magazines self-published by Aficionados of science fiction. Until zines emerged as digital forms, they were generally defined as handmade, noncommercial, irregularly issued, small-run, paper publications circulated by individuals participating in alternative, special-interest communities. Zines exploded in popularity during the 1980s when punk music fans adopted the form as part of their do-it-yourself aesthetic and as an outsider way to communicate among themselves about punk's defiant response to the commercialism of mainstream society. In 1990, only a few years after the first punk zines appeared, Mike Gunderloy made a case for the genre's significance in an article published in the Whole Earth Review, one of the few surviving organs of the 1960s alternative press in the United States. He celebrated zines' wide range of interests and the oppositional politics that generated their underground approach to publication.

scholarly journals Rendering Science Fiction, Culture, and Language While Translating Ready Player One

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 70-87
Author(s):  
Attila Imre
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Steven Spielberg ◽  
Real Challenge ◽  
Culture And Language

AbstractThe amazing science fiction setting and plot depicted by Ernest Cline in his Ready Player One may constitute a real challenge to translators and subtitlers alike as his book was also turned into a movie by Steven Spielberg. We have collected hundreds of terms from the original book (2011), its Hungarian translation (2012), the Hungarian dubbed version (March 2018), the most popular Hungarian fansub (2018), and the professional subtitle (July 2018, from the same person who translated the script for the dubbing). Having classified the collected terms into various categories, we have managed to identify successful Hungarian renditions of cultural allusions from the 1980s (movies, books, videogames, shows, songs, characters, objects, vehicles, etc.).

scholarly journals The voice and the void: the scream in 1950s American science fiction film

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Hergott
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
American Science ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Society

In the United States, science fiction film rose to prominence as a critically recognized genre in the 1950s, a decade fraught with cultural complications and contradictions and also inspired by optimism and upward trajectory. Warren Susman characterizes the period as one marked by a "dual consciousness," a time when "the fulfillment of our sweetest desires [led] inevitably to the brink of danger and damnation"; the fifties, he writes, was an age of anxiety as much as it was a time of abundance, freedom, and possibility (30). For historian David Halberstam, while a retrospective examination of the decade suggests to some a "slower, almost languid" pace, social ferment "was beginning just beneath this placid surface" (ix). Throughout the decade, notions of national security played out in conflicting ways that traversed both the public and private spheres. Science fiction, a genre that coincided with massive industry changes that saw the development of a sizable low-budget, teen-oriented independent sector, resonated deeply with such opposing and anxiety-laden articulations of both public and private security. While most previous discussions of the genre tend to focus on such concerns in their public dimension (particularly as related to political unease during the Cold War), what follows will address sci-fi' s depiction of anxieties in that other, more private realm of American society, particularly in relation to the expression of gender, sexuality, and desire. Cold War politics, the postwar consumer boom, re-entrenchment of family values and suburban home life, and industry upheavals in Hollywood are all important for understanding what is now thought of as the golden age of American science fiction film. These socio-political factors contextualize the genre's rise to prominence, its defining stylistic and thematic characteristics, and its treatment of gendered subjectivity. As we will see, while some science fiction films of the 1950s engaged or challenged cultural rhetoric related to expected norms of gendered behaviour, for the most part these films upheld the era's return to more traditional gender roles for men and women, an observation which has been taken up in the critical literature, particularly within feminist film scholarship. However, within this body of films exists a common and recurring convention that has been largely neglected by science fiction film scholars, one that warrants further study due to its implications for understanding the return to domesticity in the American postwar period. This filmic convention is the scream, a visual and aural articulation of fear expressed mostly by women (but also, and just as importantly, by men). Far from being a mere cheap gimmick employed by filmmakers alongside special effects and insatiable monsters, the scream provides valuable insight into the domestic ideologies that prevailed during the 1950s.

Conference in Honour of the 90th Birthday of Freeman Dyson

2014 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 18-21
Author(s):  
APPN Editorial Team
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Surface Area ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
Star Trek ◽  
Inside Surface ◽  
90Th Birthday ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Freeman Dyson ◽  
Data Informed

In an episode of the popular science fiction series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the crew of the USS Enterprise-D happened upon a full Dyson sphere when its gravitational fluctuations brought them to a stop. After some analysis of the sphere, Lieutenant Commander Data informed that the inside surface area of the sphere was equal to "250 million class-M worlds".

Asian-white male wage differentials in the United States

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Reza Arabsheibani ◽  
Jie Wang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wage Differentials ◽  
White Male ◽  
The United States
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