Aldo J. Regalado
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781628462210
- eISBN:
- 9781626746183
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462210.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This book examines the historical origins and cultural significance of Superman and his fellow American crusaders. It asserts that the superhero seems a direct response to modernity, often fighting ...
More
This book examines the historical origins and cultural significance of Superman and his fellow American crusaders. It asserts that the superhero seems a direct response to modernity, often fighting the interrelated processes of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and capitalism that transformed the United States from the early nineteenth century to the present. Reeling from the destabilizing forces, Americans turned to heroic fiction as a means of explaining national and personal identities to themselves and to the world. In so doing, they created characters and stories that sometimes affirmed, but other times subverted conventional notions of race, class, gender, and nationalism. The cultural conversation articulated through the nation's early heroic fiction eventually led to a new heroic type—the brightly clad, super-powered, pro-social action heroes that first appeared in American comic books starting in the late 1930s. Although indelibly shaped by the Great Depression and World War II sensibilities of the second-generation immigrants most responsible for their creation, comic book superheroes remain a mainstay of American popular culture. Tracing superhero fiction all the way back to the nineteenth century, the book firmly bases analysis of dime novels, pulp fiction, and comics in historical, biographical, and reader response sources. It explores the roles played by creators, producers, and consumers in crafting superhero fiction, ultimately concluding that these narratives are essential for understanding vital trajectories in American culture.Less
This book examines the historical origins and cultural significance of Superman and his fellow American crusaders. It asserts that the superhero seems a direct response to modernity, often fighting the interrelated processes of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and capitalism that transformed the United States from the early nineteenth century to the present. Reeling from the destabilizing forces, Americans turned to heroic fiction as a means of explaining national and personal identities to themselves and to the world. In so doing, they created characters and stories that sometimes affirmed, but other times subverted conventional notions of race, class, gender, and nationalism. The cultural conversation articulated through the nation's early heroic fiction eventually led to a new heroic type—the brightly clad, super-powered, pro-social action heroes that first appeared in American comic books starting in the late 1930s. Although indelibly shaped by the Great Depression and World War II sensibilities of the second-generation immigrants most responsible for their creation, comic book superheroes remain a mainstay of American popular culture. Tracing superhero fiction all the way back to the nineteenth century, the book firmly bases analysis of dime novels, pulp fiction, and comics in historical, biographical, and reader response sources. It explores the roles played by creators, producers, and consumers in crafting superhero fiction, ultimately concluding that these narratives are essential for understanding vital trajectories in American culture.
Aldo J. Regalado
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781628462210
- eISBN:
- 9781626746183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462210.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This introductory chapter discusses how understanding modernity is essential in identifying the cultural significance of the American superhero. At their genesis, superheroes are cultural responses ...
More
This introductory chapter discusses how understanding modernity is essential in identifying the cultural significance of the American superhero. At their genesis, superheroes are cultural responses to American modernity. Indeed, Americans had been employing heroic fiction as a means of navigating modernity's challenges as early as the nineteenth century. The work of authors writing in the genre during the early national period is rife with considerations of how democracy, capitalism, slavery, westward expansion, immigration, urbanization, technological innovation, and increased mobility shaped the nation's character. Initially written and distributed by people of privilege, these stories too often served to underpin the power of traditional elites at the expense of those marginalized by ethnicity, race, class, or gender. Such categories, therefore, became significant for defining the contours of modernity.Less
This introductory chapter discusses how understanding modernity is essential in identifying the cultural significance of the American superhero. At their genesis, superheroes are cultural responses to American modernity. Indeed, Americans had been employing heroic fiction as a means of navigating modernity's challenges as early as the nineteenth century. The work of authors writing in the genre during the early national period is rife with considerations of how democracy, capitalism, slavery, westward expansion, immigration, urbanization, technological innovation, and increased mobility shaped the nation's character. Initially written and distributed by people of privilege, these stories too often served to underpin the power of traditional elites at the expense of those marginalized by ethnicity, race, class, or gender. Such categories, therefore, became significant for defining the contours of modernity.
Aldo J. Regalado
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781628462210
- eISBN:
- 9781626746183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462210.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter examines how early nineteenth-century American authors employed heroic fiction to define the national character at a time when the United States was engaging modernity on its own terms ...
More
This chapter examines how early nineteenth-century American authors employed heroic fiction to define the national character at a time when the United States was engaging modernity on its own terms for the first time in its history. The republican modernity that emerged in this era promised to realize the American Revolution's liberalizing sentiments through opportunities created by improvements in infrastructure, as well as transportation and communications technologies. Foremost among those who responded to these changes through heroic fiction was James Fenimore Cooper, who created Natty Bumppo, the renowned frontiersman of his Leatherstocking Tales. He imagined an American hero who embraced the competitive spirit of nineteenth-century America, while affirming traditional notions of race, class, and gender. However, other antebellum authors challenged Cooper's heroic paradigm as the Market Revolution intensified. Dime novel writers created working-class heroes that openly challenged the legitimacy of elites, sometimes even by appropriating the lineaments of the frontiersman for proletarian ends.Less
This chapter examines how early nineteenth-century American authors employed heroic fiction to define the national character at a time when the United States was engaging modernity on its own terms for the first time in its history. The republican modernity that emerged in this era promised to realize the American Revolution's liberalizing sentiments through opportunities created by improvements in infrastructure, as well as transportation and communications technologies. Foremost among those who responded to these changes through heroic fiction was James Fenimore Cooper, who created Natty Bumppo, the renowned frontiersman of his Leatherstocking Tales. He imagined an American hero who embraced the competitive spirit of nineteenth-century America, while affirming traditional notions of race, class, and gender. However, other antebellum authors challenged Cooper's heroic paradigm as the Market Revolution intensified. Dime novel writers created working-class heroes that openly challenged the legitimacy of elites, sometimes even by appropriating the lineaments of the frontiersman for proletarian ends.
Aldo J. Regalado
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781628462210
- eISBN:
- 9781626746183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462210.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter discusses how earlier heroic fiction developed in the immediate post-Civil War era and into the early twentieth century as republican modernity gave way to the industrial modernity. ...
More
This chapter discusses how earlier heroic fiction developed in the immediate post-Civil War era and into the early twentieth century as republican modernity gave way to the industrial modernity. Responding to new heights of immigration, industrialization, urbanization, mechanization, and modernization, the next generation of American authors to write heroic fiction updated earlier heroic archetypes as creative and personal responses to industrial modernity. Generally speaking, their fiction involved imaginative withdrawals from modern society that affirmed white middle-class masculinity in the face of those forces they perceived as threatening to its viability. Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes, for instance, allowed him and his readers an imaginative escape from modern urban society. Central to this escape was a rejection of cities, technology, bureaucracy, and business culture, as well as the celebration of white, male Anglo-Saxonism over “others” defined by gender, class, race, and ethnicity. The chapter also considers the horror fiction work of H. P. Lovecraft.Less
This chapter discusses how earlier heroic fiction developed in the immediate post-Civil War era and into the early twentieth century as republican modernity gave way to the industrial modernity. Responding to new heights of immigration, industrialization, urbanization, mechanization, and modernization, the next generation of American authors to write heroic fiction updated earlier heroic archetypes as creative and personal responses to industrial modernity. Generally speaking, their fiction involved imaginative withdrawals from modern society that affirmed white middle-class masculinity in the face of those forces they perceived as threatening to its viability. Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes, for instance, allowed him and his readers an imaginative escape from modern urban society. Central to this escape was a rejection of cities, technology, bureaucracy, and business culture, as well as the celebration of white, male Anglo-Saxonism over “others” defined by gender, class, race, and ethnicity. The chapter also considers the horror fiction work of H. P. Lovecraft.
