Configuring America

Description

ConFiguring America brings together a series of incisive essays that analyse a wide range of such figures: those who embody America’s tendency to produce celebrities and iconic personalities with global reach. Drawing on theoretical insights from a variety of fields – including cultural iconography, visual culture, star studies and history – a diverse group of international contributors sheds light on how these figures and their media representations construct America’s image beyond its borders. An important addition to an expanding field, ConFiguring America will deepen readers’ understanding of celebrity, iconography and their worldwide implications.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Theorizing Iconic Figures

Klaus Rieser

PART I: Icons and the Struggle over Meaning

Chapter 1: ‘Just Like You’, But Not Like Us: Staging National Belonging, Multiracial Femininity, and Collective Memory in the American Girl Family

Karina Eileraas

Chapter 2: Behind the Brown Mask: Joe Louis’ Face and the Construction of Racial Mythologies

Marcy S. Sacks

Chapter 3: LeBron James and the Web of Discourse: Iconic Sports Figures and Semantic Struggles

Michael Fuchs & Michael Phillips

PART II: Appropriating Iconic Figures

Chapter 4: O Superman: The Many Faces of the Man of Steel

Bradley Bailey

Chapter 5: Thirty Are Better Than One: Marilyn Monroe and the Performance of Americanness

Susanne Hamscha

Chapter 6: Queering Cowboys, Queering Futurity: The Re/Construction of American Cowboy Masculinity

Leopold Lippert

Chapter 7: Iconizing Radical Change: How Gary Cooper Led Poland to Freedom

Jolanta Szymkowska-Bartyzel

Sujets

• Energie & environnement
• Éducation
• Marilyn Monroe
• Elvis Presley
• Superman
• Gary Cooper
• LeBron James
• Joe Louis
• Cultural Studies
• General
• Engineering
• Education
• History of the Americas
• Technology
• General officer
• History of art
• Sciences et techniques
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Public Policy
• Power Resources

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 25 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841507620
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2013 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2013 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Melanie Marshall
Typesetting: Planman Technologies
ISBN 978-1-84150-635-7
EISBN: 978-1-84150-762-0
Printed and bound by Hobbs the Printers Ltd, UK
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Theorizing Iconic Figures
Klaus Rieser
Part I : Icons and the Struggle over Meaning
Chapter 1:‘Just Like You’, But Not Like Us: Staging National Belonging, Multiracial Femininity, and Collective Memory in the American Girl Family
Karina Eileraas
Chapter 2:Behind the Brown Mask: Joe Louis’ Face and the Construction of Racial Mythologies
Marcy S. Sacks
Chapter 3:LeBron James and the Web of Discourse: Iconic Sports Figures and Semantic Struggles
Michael Fuchs & Michael Phillips
PART II : Appropriating Iconic Figures
Chapter 4:O Superman: The Many Faces of the Man of Steel
Bradley Bailey
Chapter 5:Thirty Are Better Than One: Marilyn Monroe and the Performance of Americanness
Susanne Hamscha
Chapter 6:Queering Cowboys, Queering Futurity: The Re/Construction of American Cowboy Masculinity
Leopold Lippert
Chapter 7:Iconizing Radical Change: How Gary Cooper Led Poland to Freedom
Jolanta Szymkowska-Bartyzel
PART III : The Mutability and Abstraction of Iconic Figures
Chapter 8:The Embodiment of a Nation: The Iconicity of Uncle Sam and the Construction of a Conflicted National Identity
Louis J. Kern
Chapter 9:Lois Lane: The Making of a Girl Reporter
Peter Lee
Chapter 10:War in Four Colors: The Battle between Superman and Captain America for America’s Hearts and Minds during World War II
B. Keith Murphy
Chapter 11:Myth and Materiality: The Duality of Grace Kelly
Ana Salzberg
Chapter 12:‘Its Own Special Attraction’: Meditations on Martyrdom and the Iconicity of Civil Rights Widows
Brenda Tindal
Contributors
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank the many friends and colleagues whose eagerness to talk about cultural icons at various venues and occasions over the years has contributed to this volume. Special thanks are due to Melanie Marshall of Intellect, who guided this volume from the proposal stage to its final realization, and to the anonymous peer reviewer whose suggestions helped make this volume more focused. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research and the University of Graz for their financial support, which made the publication of this volume possible.
Introduction
Theorizing Iconic Figures
Klaus Rieser
Images are overwhelmingly present in American life, a fact that prompted Fredric Jameson in 1988 to diagnose a ‘transformation of reality into images’ (14) and W. J. T. Mitchell in 1994 to announce a ‘pictorial turn’ (11). Among this flood of visual representations, a limited number of images gain greater prominence and remain in the public consciousness for an extended period of time, thereby becoming icons . 1 In contrast to common images, thus, icons are special markers within the cultural matrix of meaning, highly relevant for the day-to-day integration of the otherwise heterogeneous composition of the American social landscape. But only a narrow set of icons survive the test of time and gain national or global prominence, thereby bonding the nation together on a symbolic level. Resplendent among these super-icons, as we might call them, are iconic figures —from heavyweight boxer idol Muhammad Ali to the legend of Zorro—anthropomorphic figures that truly ‘embody’ American values, ideologemes 2 or structures of feeling 3 , being, as they are, particularly suited for public identification and desire. It is such national iconic figures that the present book seeks to understand, attempting to clarify both their functioning and their function within the American cultural landscape, which, due to the size and heterogeneity of the American population, has always been in particular need of nationally integrative symbols.
Before turning to theories of figurality, visuality, national identity, and iconicity (the key terms of the book’s title), it is instructive to start in a deductive manner. An analytical look at the edutainment encyclopedia America A to Z: People, Places, Customs & Culture (Reader’s Digest 1997), published by Reader’s Digest, itself a U.S. icon, reveals some pertinent aspects of iconicity. Among the figures listed under ‘A’, one finds Woody Allen, Louis Armstrong, and Fred Astaire, all of whom are well-established figures globally, super-icons in the sense defined above. In contrast, other figures in the same section (Hank Aaron, George Abbott, Ethan Allen, and many more), while certainly not unfamiliar, nonetheless cater to special interests: they may be popular only with a certain age cohort, with sport aficionados, or hobby historians. The ranking of iconic figures obviously shifts over time and place, and their position depends on how well they are integrated into national discourses and discursive formations.
What else can be learned from Reader’s Digest? The fact alone that Reader’s Digest publishes such a lavishly illustrated book reveals that iconic figures, a bit like the symbols at airports (such as emergency exit signs or bathroom signs), help people navigate; in this case, through American culture. Moreover, those who recognize a number of these iconic figures are reassured about their membership within a cultural community that shares a cultural encyclopedia. Finally, a look at America A to Z highlights the special status of iconic figures: while similar to other cultural icons in some respects (e.g., they depend on image circulation), iconic figures are particularly adept at inviting cathexis (the conscious or unconscious investment of psychic energy), be it via attraction (libidinal) or via identification. What cannot be learned just by looking at America A to Z , and what has not yet been sufficiently studied in the growing academic field of ‘visual studies’, are the constitutive qualities of iconic figures: how, when, and why are certain images transformed into icons? How do certain people achieve iconic status? What are the cultural and political implications of those icons? Could we do without them? This volume offers clarifications of these essential questions within the emerging critical practice of ‘American Cultural Iconography’ (Hunter & Reynolds 2000).
Iconic Figures and Visuality
For the purposes of this book, iconic figures include both ‘real’ celebrities, such as Grace Kelly, Joe Louis, or Marilyn Monroe, and humanoid fictional figures, such as Lois Lane or Superman. 4 This is, of course, not meant to deny the ‘authenticity’ of human beings, but results from the extraordinary similarity that the two forms of personhood share in their functioning as iconic figures.
Firstly, star and celebrity studies from Richard Dyer onward have pointed out that it is not the private, haphazard, individual aspect of celebrities, but rather their public, constructed, type aspect (or the interrelation of the latter with an assumed correspondence in the former) that accounts for their star status. 5 Of course, stars have corporeal existence, but their meaning is based on their signification in the public field, in discourse. Thus, the meanings that are coalesced or condensed in iconic figures far surpass the flesh-and-blood materiality of the human beings who embody them. Secondly, this book works on the premise that human and humanoid, real and virtual iconic figures belong in a single category not only because of their similarities, but also because of their common difference to other entities. Quite obviously, they differ from non-personalized icons such as the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial or the American flag. However, iconic figures also differ from public persons that do not feature a strong visual aspect, such as most literary authors. In contrast, a recent book on American icons, edited by Günter Leypoldt and Bernd Engler (2010), admits only real human beings into their icon pantheon. Yet it is highly questionable why the real person James Fenimore Cooper should be regarded as an ‘icon’, while his famous characters Natty Bumppo or Chingachgook are left out. Similarly, in terms of visuality, James Dean and Madonna have more in common with Superman or Uncle Sam (not included in Leypoldt & Engler) than they do with James Fenimore Cooper or Anne Bradstreet, authors that may hold a strong commemorative but not an iconic function. Leypoldt and Engler’s American Cultural Icons (2010), a very fine book, distinguishes between ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ persons because the authors chose to bring to attention ‘representative lives’.
In contrast to representativity , the focus of our book is primarily on visuality as a basis for iconicity and on the iconic figure’s constructed status within cultural discourses. The issue of representativity versus visuality has still further effects: Leypoldt and Engler’s selection criteria have the advantage of shifting the grounding of iconicity toward the individual. Yet their insistence on human personhood implicitly forges a link between the celebrity status and the personal agency of human actors. Instead focusing on visuality helps to lay bare the constructedness of iconic figures and their functioning and function in a discursive system. Moreover, our approach highlights the body