Artigo Revisado por pares

All New, All Different? A History of Race and the American Superhero

2021; Oxford University Press; Volume: 108; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jahist/jaab047

ISSN

1945-2314

Autores

Ian Gordon,

Tópico(s)

Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies

Resumo

The superheroes that currently account for so much bandwidth in the American mediascape originated in the 1930s and draw on a variety of forms and traditions, from pulps to comic strips. Tales of these heroes, often progressive in tone in keeping with the New Deal, nonetheless replicated and reproduced the discourse of race in America. This book by Allan W. Austin and Patrick L. Hamilton catalogs the extent and variety of ways superhero stories engaged with representations of race, from outright vicious caricatures through to seemingly unconscious duplication of racist tropes by writers and artists. Given that the advent of superheroes in comic books, and in other media including comic strips, radio, animation, and movie serials, occurred just three years before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the ensuing race war in the Pacific that John W. Dower related in War without Mercy (1986), it is no surprise to find...

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