The Myth of the American Superhero

Arguing that the superhero is simply a distinctive form of the classical "monomyth" described by Joseph Campbell, the authors show that the American version of the monomyth derives from tales of redemption.

The Myth of the American Superhero.

It secularizes the Judeo-Christian drama, combining elements of the selfless servant with the lone, zealous crusader who destroys evil. Thus the supersaviors of pop culture are replacements for the Christ figure, whose credibility has been eroded by scientific rationalism.

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Drawing widely from books, film, and television, the authors trace the development of the American superhero during the twentieth century and expose the mythic patterns behind the most successful elements of pop culture. Challenging readers to reconsider the relationship of this myth to traditional religious and social values, the authors show how, ultimately, these fantastic narratives both gain the spiritual loyalties of their audiences and, in the process, denigrate America's democratic institutions and ethos. Published June 28th by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company first published June 1st To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book. May 07, Heidi KosminenK rated it really liked it Shelves: Paljon asiaa ja todella kiinnostavaa informaatiota ja ajatuksen juurta amerikkalaisen populaarikulttuurin vaikutuksesta. Jan 22, Douglas Wilson rated it liked it Shelves: Oct 31, Benedict rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is a fantastic book. It is fearless in approaching some of the stories we've put on pedestals I'll admit to a moment of personal horror that they took Star Wars down a peg or two , and calmly points out the tension between the deep values of a democracy and the images in our stories and films of superheroic loners who save the day, often disobeying orders and ignoring bureaucracies portrayed as slobbish or incompetent.

They collect the superheroic ideals and tropes and call it an "American This is a fantastic book. They collect the superheroic ideals and tropes and call it an "American Monomyth.

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Still, they raise the question of what small parts of the monomyth we might internalize? Chapter by chapter, the studies are a bit clunky, but over the course of the book, the reader builds up a very clear awareness of the sort of things Lawrence and Jewett are noticing and describing. There are several very interesting conversations about the role of women in the monomyth particularly as "Heidi" or "Mary Poppins" style redeemers , and the renunciation of sexuality the exclusion of female world views of nurture, etc.

The closing chapter lands very powerfully, briefly and simply describing that the actual heroism in the September 11th attack did not involve invincible caped supermen, nor disobeying orders, but rather citizens doing their jobs, volunteering, losing their lives, and even voting on whether to take back the cockpit of one hijacked plane. The simple message is that whatever our entertainments, we must recall that they lift up a truly fictional account of how we can save and serve our world.

As a priest, I read this with a deep awareness that I know of another story that does save the world and calls people to different values. As a lover of science fiction and superheroes, I found much in the book to chew on as I watch the stories of today I believe many of the movies coming out now are disrupting aspects of the monomyth -- the loner, invincibility, having no romantic partner -- and I'd be curious to read Lawrence and Jewett's later work to see if they note that too.

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Five stars for being a work that changes how I'm looking at the modern world! Monomythic expressions now include highly violent video games and worldwide terrorism.

John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett provide a framework for critiquing a wide range of movies and literature, including the Disneyfication of the nation and the lethal patriotism of Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski. The dangers of fascist elements in Star Wars are confronted as well as the dangerous apocalypticism of the Left Behind books and films.

Ultimately, the authors are sincerely worried about the shape of Western democracy as it is threatened by cheap resolutions of complex political and theological issues. This book will be a major component in my honors course on the heroic model in life, literature, and film. As a tool for understanding the dangers of the traditional hero model, The Myth of the American Superhero has no competition. It is the sort of book that educates one for a lifetime. Mundane democratic institutions, impotent or corrupt, can't cope. With a convulsion of redemptive vigilante violence, the selfless, singleminded, sexually repressed, and misogynistic superhero restores the community to its pristine state and fades into obscurity.

The authors trace this generic story and its variants through many guises: Lawrence and Jewett trace the frightening imitative Werther effect' of this myth of vigilante redemption in the antisocial violence unleashed by Bernard Goetz, the Unabomber, and Timothy McVeigh, among others. The power of this myth to radically undermine the prized American institution of democracy is ably illustrated in their retelling of the Ramboesque antics of Oliver North and of even more appalling North's striking popularity. In the aftermath of September 11, , and the unilateral extralegal violence promised by the Bush administration to destroy evil on a worldwide scale, exposing and challenging this American monomyth is of the utmost importance.

Lawrence and Jewett's fascinating and accessible volume does just that.

The myth of the American superhero

Required Field Not a valid email. There were no related products found for this item. Of course, their argument is an audacious one that can, admittedly, seem silly at first. Ultimately, though, the claims they make of American culture are well supported by close textual and cultural analysis, which allows their argument steadily to accumulate more credibility as they progress from one narrative study to the next. They are content to offer just one possible explanation for why a people so easily and overwhelmingly acceded to particular political actions — an explanation that, at bottom, points towards the politics of fear, but that also shows in careful detail how those politics stimulated very particular cultural receptors that have occupied a place in American public life for the greater part of a century.

If there is a problem with the two books, it is that Jewett and Lawrence exhibit such enthusiasm for their own conception of the axial decade as the generative force behind the American monomyth that they do not adequately explore its roots in earlier centuries and its origins in different — but related — cultural myths. In particular, while they credit Richard Slotkin as a major theorist of cultural mythology, they pay far too little attention to Slotkin's encyclopedic study of "the myth of the frontier," "the conception of America as a wide- open land of unlimited opportunity for the strong, ambitious, self-reliant individual to thrust his way to the top" Slotkin 5.

This reticence to engage with Slotkin is a shame because, rather than being sharply distinct from the myth of the frontier, the Ameri- can monomyth seems to me to be a more evolved incarnation of it. Whereas the myth of the frontier conceived and promoted a radically individualistic value system throughout the nineteenth century, its Modern Language Studies Whereas the myth of the frontier posits that one cannot prosper if one shirks self-reliance in favor of communal or governmental assistance, the American monomyth posits that those who have thus prospered cannot rely on communal or governmental efforts at maintaining law and order in order to safeguard their prosperity or that of others.

The American monomyth essentially conceptualizes superheroism as an extreme manifestation of the radical individualism promoted by the myth of the frontier, which is to say that it takes for granted the dominance of the frontier myth as theorized by Slot- kin. I would have liked to see Jewett and Lawrence offer more attention to the overlap between these two cultural myths in order to identify the means by which the first gradually evolved into the second, yet the most they offer is a brief discussion in The Myth of the American Superhero on the nineteenth century popularization of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show Nevertheless, the remainder of that book and its successor jointly supplement Slotkin's work in a way that allows those readers familiar with Slotkin to eas- ily identify the kinship between his myth and theirs.

The Myth of the American Superhero - John Shelton Lawrence, Robert Jewett - Google Книги

Spider-Man is a hero inextricably bound up with New York, administering vigilante justice against villains for whom innocent people are collateral damage in a war against established authority. Captain America has a more international outlook, usually taking any action against a seg- ment of American society as an attack on America at large and pursuing the attackers into international spaces.

The simplicity of that logic is galling for some but appealing to many, as the popularity of narratives that invoke it would suggest; and although Jewett and Lawrence concede that it will likely remain popular for a time yet to come, they at least equip their readers with an awareness of how to recognize it when contemporary popular culture allows it to manifest in attractive, entertain- ing, and seemingly innocuous forms.