scholarly journals Representation and Agency of Aging Superheroes in Popular Culture and Contemporary Society

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Kateřina Valentová
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Cultural Expressions ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many

The figure of the superhero has always been regarded as an iconic representative of American society. Since the birth of the first superhero, it has been shaped by the most important historical, political, and social events, which were echoed in different comic issues. In principle, in the superhero genre, there has never been a place for aging superheroes, for they stand as a symbol of power and protection for the nation. Indeed, their mythical portrayal of young and strong broad-chested men with superpowers cannot be shattered showing them fragile or disabled. The aim of this article is to delve into the complex paradigm of the passage of time in comics and to analyze one of the most famous superheroes of all times, Superman, in terms of his archetypical representation across time. From the perspective of cultural and literary gerontology, the different issues of Action Comics will be examined, as well as an alternative graphic novel Kingdom Come (2008) by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, where Superman appears as an aged man. Although it breaks the standards of the genre, in the end it does not succeed to challenge the many stereotypes embedded in society in regard to aging, associated with physical, cognitive, and emotional decline. Furthermore, this article will show how a symbolic use of the monomythical representation of a superhero may penetrate into other cultural expressions to instill a more positive and realistic portrayal of aging.

Applying the Devil's Works in a Holy Cause: Working-Class Popular Culture and the Salvation Army in the United States, 1879-1900

1997 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-223
Author(s):  
Lillian Taiz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Salvation Army ◽  
Public Meeting ◽  
The Many ◽  
Sunday Evening

Forty-eight hours after they landed in New York City in 1880, a small contingent of the Salvation Army held their first public meeting at the infamous Harry Hill's Variety Theater. The enterprising Hill, alerted to the group's arrival from Britain by newspaper reports, contacted their leader, Commissioner George Scott Railton, and offered to pay the group to “do a turn” for “an hour or two on … Sunday evening.” In nineteenth-century New York City, Harry Hill's was one of the best known concert saloons, and reformers considered him “among the disreputable classes” of that city. His saloon, they said, was “nothing more than one of the many gates to hell.”

Individuals In Postmodern Society And Evolution Of New York In Select Novels Of Don Delillo.

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 875-879
Author(s):  
M. Thendral ◽  
Dr. G. Parvathy
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
York City ◽  
Don Delillo ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
American Society ◽  
Effects Of Media

DeLillo is a well- known American novelist of fifteen novels, who is widely regarded by other critics as an important satirist of modern culture. Throughout his novels, he has picturized the chaos underwent by the society i.e. the effects of media, technology and popular culture on the daily lives of contemporary American society. All of his novels move in and around New York City as a setting. The study attempts to examine the development of New York City and individuals in a post-modernistic perspective.

Viktor Vasnetsov’s New Icons

Experiment ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Wendy Salmond
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Paris Exposition ◽  
The Many ◽  
Modern Orthodox ◽  
Human Hands

Abstract This essay examines Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov’s search for a new kind of prayer icon in the closing decades of the nineteenth century: a hybrid of icon and painting that would reconcile Russia’s historic contradictions and launch a renaissance of national culture and faith. Beginning with his icons for the Spas nerukotvornyi [Savior Not Made by Human Hands] Church at Abramtsevo in 1880-81, for two decades Vasnetsov was hailed as an innovator, the four icons he sent to the Paris “Exposition Universelle” of 1900 marking the culmination of his vision. After 1900, his religious painting polarized elite Russian society and was bitterly attacked in advanced art circles. Yet Vasnetsov’s new icons were increasingly linked with popular culture and the many copies made of them in the late Imperial period suggest that his hybrid image spoke to a generation seeking a resolution to the dilemma of how modern Orthodox worshippers should pray.

Unsettling Entitlement and ‘Ginx’s Baby’

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica F Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Frame Analysis ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
Colonial Resistance ◽  
Expression Of Emotions ◽  
Popular Novel ◽  
The Many ◽  
Victorian Popular Culture

Abstract This story traces the many adventures of a title, from Edward Jenkins’s 1870 novel, Ginx’s Baby, through colonial resistance to imperial copyright law in Canada, to the photograph of a distressed baby that Charles Darwin featured in The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals and that the art photographer Oscar Rejlander reproduced as popular cartes de visites. The reiterative use of the title across genres and oceans conjures an image of Victorian popular culture as an unregulated bazaar affording the surprising emergence of unintended creators. Copyright history, frame analysis, and name theory help explain how the title of a popular novel could lend itself to so many unrelated creative objects.

DEVELOPMENT OF CORPORATE CULTURE DURING THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 ON THE EXAMPLE OF AMERICAN SOCIETY

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-143
Author(s):  
EKATERINA V. GORLOVA ◽  
◽  
NATALYA S. RESHETNIKOVA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Corporate Values ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many ◽  
Country People

The many changes caused by COVID-19 have impacted all areas of our lives. Since the beginning of the pandemic in every country, people have experienced the same fears: getting sick, being left without a livelihood, dying, losing loved ones, etc. In many states, support was provided by both the government and the employer. Our analyze show how the employees themselves assessed the level of relations between them and the company through the connecting thread of corporate culture. We have determined that, in general, in many cases there is an increase in corporate values, information coming from managers is more trustworthy than information from the mass media. Honesty, openness and communication are becoming the new flagships for the development of corporate culture.

Managing Race in the American Workplace

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Skrentny
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces the problems of the roles racial differences play in the workplace. It discusses the changes in the way Americans talk about race and what pragmatic and progressive voices say that they want since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Never before has such a wide variety of employers, advocates, activists, and government leaders in American society discussed the benefits of racial diversity and the utility of racial difference in such a broad range of contexts. Thus, the chapter points out the emerging discourse of race as a qualification for employment, and briefly details the many issues as well as the role of established laws on such an issue. It also lays out the conceptual foundations upon which the following chapters will be based on.

How Media Shapes the Public Discourse and Influences Health

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-35
Author(s):  
Alonzo L. Plough
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Inaccurate Information ◽  
Modern Media ◽  
Multiple Media ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many

This chapter describes the multiple roles of modern media in determining not only what consumers know, but also how and what they think. The exponential growth of ideologically driven cable channels and social media, dovetailing with cutbacks in newspaper staffing and coverage, point to the many ways that the power and reach of media are shifting even as they continue to reshape American society and norms. In this environment, multiple media compete for viewers, readers, and listeners who will click on their websites, buy their products, sign their petitions, and often accept their spin, especially if it reinforces personal perspectives. Thoughtful information about complex public health issues is easily lost in that context, leading too many people to base their decision-making on incomplete, biased, and even inaccurate information. For the news media to help build a Culture of Health, people need to understand how it works, what it does, and how it can be used for widespread benefit.

When ‘feminism’ becomes a genre: Alias Grace and ‘feminist’ television

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Cattien
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Site ◽  
Popular Feminism ◽  
Privileged Site ◽  
Critical Movement ◽  
Alternative Reading

Alias Grace is just one of the many recent TV shows that was labelled ‘feminist’ so quickly and with such ease that one is left to wonder how much of a genre ‘feminism’ has already become. This article interrogates what is at stake for ‘feminist’ critique in labelling cultural phenomena as ‘feminist’. I argue that certain ways of reading Alias Grace as a ‘feminist’ show preclude an alternative reading in which Alias Grace emerges as a critique of ‘feminism’ itself. What is at stake in the debate on ‘feminism’ in popular culture is thus not only whether or not we can recognise the potential for ‘feminist’ critique that resides within popular culture, but also whether or not we can allow socio-cultural phenomena, like TV shows, to take ‘feminism’ as an object of critique: to generate the kind of critical movement that renders futile any attempt to stabilise, or reify, the signifier ‘feminism’ as an ahistorical object with fixed meanings – as a genre even. In so doing, I take it that there is no privileged site from which to engender such movement; and I do not take popular culture as a self-contained domain that could qualify for being such a site. The point, then, is not to treat Alias Grace as a representative case study in popular ‘feminism’; but rather, to demonstrate, by way of Alias Grace, the complex and contradictory readings that socio-cultural phenomena are amenable to, and which in turn give rise to critical possibilities that unfold from within these phenomena. Reading Alias Grace critically, as I understand it in this article, means allowing it to be, at one and the same time, a reflection on itself and a reflection on the world in which it so quickly comes to be labelled ‘feminist’.

The Culture of a Multi-Ethnic Colony

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonya Lipsett-Rivera
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Spanish Colonization ◽  
Hierarchical Nature ◽  
The Many ◽  
Different Cultures

The very nature of Spanish colonization meant that New Spain brought together people from different cultures, ethnicities, religions, and attitudes. Mexico City was the meeting place of all these various populaces. Before the conquest, Tenochtitlan had neighborhoods composed of residents from various parts of the empire. Apart from the many indigenous cultures, colonization also meant the addition of Spaniards, Africans, and Asians, some of whom were enslaved and others simply migrants. The result was a culture that expressed itself both in high and popular culture with a melding of elements—a joyous cacophony that reflected its mestizo nature. This culture was played out not only in institutional settings such as the viceregal court, ceremonies, the theater, and in church but also in the streets, parks, and taverns that dotted towns and cities. Although culture, to a certain extent, reflected New Spain’s hierarchical nature, separation between high and low was never absolute. In the cathedral, as in many other institutions, popular pursuits and music infiltrated the formal singing. This pattern of cultural slippage prevailed within many areas of daily life as the colonial world of New Spain layered pastimes and pursuits from its many constituents.

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