Intergalactic Triumph: American Hegemony Represented in Arrival (2016) Movie

<div class="WordSection1"><p>This research examines a Hollywood movie entitled Arrival (2016) to see how American hegemony is represented and maintained in the movie. This is a qualitative research that is conducted under the framework of American studies. The concept of American values, Hegemony by Antonio Gramsci and Soft Power by Joseph Nye are used to answer the research questions. Semiotic film theory is employed to analyze the data in the form of dialogues and movie scenes. The results show the representation of American hegemony are seen in the characters that show American values, the U.S foreign policy, the U.S military supremacy, and the U.S economic field. Meanwhile, the maintenance of American hegemony is represented in American’s destiny to unify the world and also in hegemony through the language.</p><p> </p><p><em>Keywords</em>: American hegemony, manifest destiny, science fiction, representation, soft power</p></div>

Context Culture in CDC's Health Alert: For All Travelers

The high number of covid-19 cases and the US's mortality rate encourage The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to socialize and promote prevention guidance to stop the spreading. One of the preventive measures is by issuing travel warnings. Scholars have noted that the linguistic and cultural concept conveys norms of behavior and values in society at a particular stage of its development. In brief, advertisements messages are influenced by communicators' cultural backgrounds and references. It means the signs in the CDC poster can show American values. To examine and explore those cultural values in CDC publication materials, the authors conducted a semiotic analysis on a poster entitled Health Alert: For All Travelers. The method used is Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotic model. The study shows that the signs presented on the CDC poster are simple, use direct communication structures, and are equipped with universal meaning to understand the message conveyed easily. It indicates a representation of the dominant culture in the United States, the low-context culture with a high level of individualism values. Multidisciplinary research is needed to help create a universal communication model so that messages conveyed in advertisements can reach a wider audience.

TRANSFORMATIONS IN A LITTLE PRINCESS MOVIE: AN ADAPTATION ANALYSIS

A Little Princess is a novel written by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905). This novel has been adapted several times into film, one of which is Alfonso Cuaron's (1995) work produced by Warner Bross Picture. This film was released in 1995 with the same title, "A Little Princess". This article focuses on the motives and ideologies of the adaptation process from novel to film. The changes that occur are a consequence of using media that change from text to screen scenes. This study will compare the intrinsic elements contained in novels and films. This research will also discuss how the transformation from novel adaptation to film and the motives. The adaptation theory by Linda Hutcheon (2006) was used to analyze the motives of adapting novels to films and will be supported by the theory of Mythology by Roland Barthes' (1957) to find ideology. Barthes' semiotic analysis helps the writer find the hidden ideology in the adaptation work, leading us to find the motive of the transformation process. As a result, the adaptation work of Alfonso Cuaron shows the existence of an ideology of feminism and American values. This ideology exists because of the cultural and political motives of the filmmaker to gain benefit from the process of adaptation. Keywords : adaptation, ideology, myth, motives.

US EDUCATIONAL FOREIGN POLICY AS A “SOFT POWER” FACTOR: RETROSPECTIVE ASPECT

The subject of the article is education as a component of US foreign policy that was used and still is as an efficient and influential factor in the development of society oriented to American values, viewpoints, and way of life. The goal of the article is to analyse the place and role of education in the US foreign policy strategy in the modern era, while the main objectives are to specify the strategic directions of using education as a “soft power” by the United States as well as identify specific mechanisms that enable achieving the most effective results in this direction. Within the study, all the above objectives are solved. In particular, the main results obtained include the following: the historical context of the US use of education as a “soft power” tool is studied, the strategic directions of using educational potential as a “soft power” are analysed, the areas where educational efforts of the United States have always been concentrated are singled out. The US experience in the sphere of educational services export can be used to specify and theoretically substantiate the capabilities of Ukraine to advance its interests in the international arena using the educational opportunities our country can suggest to the world.

Context Culture in CDC's Health Alert: For All Travelers

The high number of covid-19 cases and the US's mortality rate encourage The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to socialize and promote prevention guidance to stop the spreading. One of the preventive measures is by issuing travel warnings. Scholars have noted that the linguistic and cultural concept conveys norms of behavior and values in society at a particular stage of its development. In brief, advertisements messages are influenced by communicators' cultural backgrounds and references. It means the signs in the CDC poster can show American values. To examine and explore those cultural values in CDC publication materials, the authors conducted a semiotic analysis on a poster entitled Health Alert: For All Travelers. The method used is Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotic model. The study shows that the signs presented on the CDC poster are simple, use direct communication structures, and are equipped with universal meaning to understand the message conveyed easily. It indicates a representation of the dominant culture in the United States, the low-context culture with a high level of individualism values. Multidisciplinary research is needed to help create a universal communication model so that messages conveyed in advertisements can reach a wider audience.

Representing Race in Graphs: W.E.B. Du Bois, Corporate Bureaucrats, and Visualization Strategies for Change

In this paper, I draw together W. E. B. Du Bois and corporate bureaucrats to compare the graphical representation of race across three distinct racial epochs: the Progressive, Civil Rights, and post-1980s neoliberal era. I illustrate how, through visual and rhetorical strategies, corporate bureaucrats extend a Du Boisian legacy in constructing popular knowledge of race and racism. I show how they do this by making whiteness visible through data visualizations and rhetorically bundling them to liberal American values of equal opportunity. In examining them as epistemic and semiotic objects, I argue that graphical representations of race compel the enactment of meaningful strategies seen to challenge racial inequalities in the workplace. Yet, insofar as these are employed to equate racism with the absence of equal opportunity in capitalist firms, I argue, they also mask whiteness and reproduce systemic racism. The graphical representation of race, in effect, reveals how the practices of knowledge production and processes of signification are entangled in everyday corporate bureaucracies. Thus, I suggest that we need to reject analytical binaries that pose a bounded distinction between “business” and “social justice” to extend research into the cultural production and productive enactment of racial materiality.

Will the USA Face the Fate of the Roman Empire? (Reflections on Irina Zhezhko-Brown’s Articles about the Minority Elite in the USA)

The starting point of the paper is the three articles in the journal Ideas and Ideals by Irina Zhezhko-Brown who analyzes the formation of a new ruling class in the USA, which rests on racial and gender minorities. The values proclaimed by the elite are fundamentally different from traditional American values. The paper shows that any attempt to bring them into life can have devastating consequences for American society and, ultimately, lead to its downfall. Considering the huge role of the USA in the world system, this can be compared to the fall of the Roman Empire. The author shows that it is possible to escape such an outcome. The obstacle to this escape is the entire social and economic system that has developed in the USA. In the field of economics, the priority in recruiting personnel is given to quotas based on race and gender instead of qualification and business qualities, which will lead to a significant decrease in the financial performance of companies and the wages of employees. The author analyzes such long-term macroeconomic defects of the American economy as the budget deficit, trade and balance of payments deficit, and the growth of government debt. In the near future, these defects may lead to a deep economic crisis, a stock market crisis, and the US dollar can lose its position as the key currency. The paper considers economic and political premises and prevention methods of these destructive processes.

"HAVE A GREAT, POSITIVE, BEAUTIFUL DAY!": GOOD MORNING MEMES AND THE CROSS-CULTURAL ARTICULATION OF VALUES

This paper adopts the lens of social media rituals to study a new incarnation of ritualized greetings: good morning memes. These are a popular yet under-studied form of ritualized greeting posted every morning by social media users across the global. Such memes feature text with a wish for the incoming day paired with elements such as flowers, food or animals. In this paper, I focus on the ways in which these memes construct values, broadly defined as guiding beliefs about the desirable. My analysis is based on a sample of 414 good morning memes posted to Instagram in English and Italian. I conducted a content analysis examining the posts for content (protagonist and background), the main values conveyed (e.g. achievement and self-efficacy, happiness and positivity), and their stance (serious or ironic). A preliminary analysis revealed strong consistency in the dataset. Overall, good morning memes embed the general mandate for “politeness” that infuses the communicative genre of greetings, transposing it in the meme format through impersonal messages and a saccharine aesthetic. Furthermore, the memes voice a shared core of values, namely: “Happiness and positivity” and “performative kindness.” However, the English and Italian subsets also diverge in significant ways. The English language version of the meme upholds the value of “achievement and self-efficacy,” possibly because of the influence of American values on globalized social media content. Conversely, the Italian-language version of the meme uses humor to pushback against the idea that the morning is a time to be energetic and productive.

Winning Spelling Bee Competition: The Representation of Black Girl in Akeelah and The Bee (2006) Movie

<p class="AbstractText">This research examines the representations of African-American stereotype and the struggle of Black American girl in National Spelling Bee contest in Hollywood movie entitled Akeelah and the Bee (2006). The use of African-American English (AAVE) is one of the stereotype often depicted in Hollywood movie. Race theories are used to examine the relationship between race, racism and power. Meanwhile, Roland Barthes’s theory and semiotic film theory are used to examine the meaning portrayed in the movie. Findings show that the representation of Akeelah as a successful participant in the spelling bee competition challenges the stereotype of African American as academic underclass, and as associated with crime, failure and frustration. Akeelah is represented as a successful African American girl as she assimilates (adopts) American values of change/mobility, time and its importance, action and work orientation. The assimilation is achieved through a mentoring process and support from African American community.</p><p class="AbstractText"> </p><p class="AbstractText"><em>Keywords</em>: African-American, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Stereotype, Spelling Bee</p>

American Soft Power Through Hollywood Superhero Movies: The Case of the Trilogy of Captain America

The Captain America trilogy exemplifies American ideals: individuality, democracy, liberty, equality, and patriotism through the life and identity of its protagonist Steve Rogers. From the blatant display of American cultures to American values to the artistic imitation of American policies, the Captain America trilogy incorporates all mentioned elements and presents the world the compelling stories where heroes are created, sacrifices are made, damages are done&mdash;all for the protection of humanity. As the curtain closes, superheroes always emerge as the saviors&mdash;to all. The assertion of power, as the trilogy demonstrates, is no longer through the brutal force of military power but wielded through soft power, namely culture, values, and policies. Only through careful analysis of the storyline, character traits, dialogues, and images, one may discover hidden messages in the art that imitates life. As stated by Joseph Nye (1990), a political scientist, &ldquo;the best propaganda is not propaganda&rdquo;.