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Warning! Contains spoilers: reading post-‘9/11’ US security discourses through superhero films
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Schmid, Julian (2020) Warning! Contains spoilers: reading post-‘9/11’ US security discourses through superhero films. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3710621
Abstract
This PhD thesis demonstrates how post-‘9/11’ US security discourses are co-constituted through Hollywood’s superhero genre, specifically the productions of Marvel and DC. In doing so it contributes to important debates within International Relations and Critical Security Studies that address the connections between popular culture and world politics. My interdisciplinary and inter-textual film analysis reveals that artefacts of popular culture have to be seen beyond their merely representational potential; on the contrary, popular culture becomes an important site to make sense of political issues as part of the mundane and the everyday, increasingly blurring the line between reality and fiction.
Looking at American history and the development of the American Monomyth shows how superheroes were not created on a blank slate but were already born out of a specific narrative of the American nation in the 1930s. For those past 90 years, superheroes have been constant co-producers of crisis and conflict, making sense of foreign policy to domestic and global audiences. Their reinvigoration since 2001, leading into large-scale productions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe, corresponds with the crisis of ‘9/11’ and the ‘War on Terror’. Throughout the presidencies of Bush, Obama, and Trump they have been shaping the discursive elements of US security and foreign policy. The thesis argues that by engaging with superhero films, not as trivial pieces of entertainment but as important cultural artefacts that co-constitute political reality, scholars might find new ways to make sense of violence and conflict and seek new paths to a more peaceful world.
| Item Type: | Thesis or Dissertation (PhD) | ||||
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| Subjects: | E History America > E151 United States (General) J Political Science > JK Political institutions (United States) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Superhero films -- United States -- History and criticism, Superhero films -- Political aspects., War on Terrorism, 2001-2009, in mass media, September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001 | ||||
| Official Date: | September 2020 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
| Theses Department: | Department of Politics and International Studies | ||||
| Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
| Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | McCrisken, Trevor, 1968- ; Moran, Christopher | ||||
| Format of File: | |||||
| Extent: | 191 leaves | ||||
| Language: | eng |
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