American Heroes In A Media Age

This volume explores the relationship of hero to celebrity and the changing role of the hero in American culture. It establishes that the nature of hero and its function in society is a communication phenomenon, which has been and is being altered by the rapid advance of electronic media.

The end of military heroism? The American Legion and "service" between the Wars / George Lewis -- GI Joe Nisei: The invention of World War II's iconic Japanese American soldier / Ellen D. Wu -- Instrument of subjugation or avenue for liberation? Black military heroism from World War II to the Vietnam War / Simon Wendt -- "Warriors in uniform": Race, masculinity, and martial valor among native American veterans from the Great War to Vietnam and beyond / Matthias Voigt -- My Lai: The crisis of American military heroism in the Vetnam War / Steve Estes -- Leonard Matlovich: From military hero to gay rights poster boy / Simon Hall -- Displaying heroism: Media images of the weary soldier in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War / Amy Lucker -- "From louboutins to combat boots"? The negotiation of a twenty-first-century female warrior image in American popular culture and literature / Sarah Makeschin -- From warrior to soldier? Lakota veterans on military valor / Sonja John -- Virtual warfare: Video games, drones, and the reimagination of heroic -- Masculinity / Carrie Andersen

From the men and women associated with the American Revolution and Civil War to the seminal figures in the struggles for civil and women's rights, Americans have been fascinated with icons of great achievement, or at least reputation. But who spins today's narratives about American heroism, and to what end? In Where Have All the Heroes Gone?, Bruce Peabody and Krista Jenkins draw on the concept of the American hero to show an important gap between the views of political and media elites and the attitudes of the mass public. The authors contend that important changes over the past half century, including the increasing scope of new media and people's deepening political distrust, have drawn both politicians and producers of media content to the hero meme. However, popular reaction to this turn to heroism has been largely skeptical. As a result, the conversations and judgments of ordinary Americans, government officials, and media elites are often deeply divergent. Investigating the story of American heroes over the past five decades provides a narrative that can teach us about such issues as political socialization, institutional trust, and political communication.

On television, in magazines and books, on the internet and in films, celebrities of all sorts seem to monopolize our attention. Celebrity Society brings new dimensions to our understanding of celebrity, capturing the way in which the figure of ‘the celebrity’ is bound up with the emergence of modernity. It outlines how the ‘celebrification of society’ is not just the twentieth-century product of Hollywood and television, but a long-term historical process, beginning with the printing press, theatre and art. By looking beyond the accounts of celebrity ‘culture’, Robert van Krieken develops an analysis of ‘celebrity society’, with its own constantly changing social practices and structures, moral grammar, construction of self and identity, legal order and political economy organized around the distribution of visibility, attention and recognition. Drawing on the work of Norbert Elias, the book explains how contemporary celebrity society is the heir (or heiress) of court society, taking on but also democratizing many of the functions of the aristocracy. The book also develops the idea of celebrity as driven by the ‘economics of attention’, because attention has become a vital and increasingly valuable resource in the information age. This engaging new book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in sociology, politics, history, celebrity studies, cultural studies, the sociology of media and cultural theory.

The Second Edition of Communication and Sport: Surveying the Field offers the most comprehensive and diverse approach to the study of communication and sport available at the undergraduate level. Newly expanded to incorporate the latest topics and perspectives in the field, the New Edition examines a wide array of topics to help readers understand important issues such as sports media, rhetoric, culture, and organizations from both micro- and macro- perspectives. Everything from youth to amateur to professional sports is addressed in terms of mythology, community, and identity; issues such as fan cultures, racial identity and gender in sports media, politics and nationality in sports, and sports and religion are explored in depth, and provide useful, applied insight for readers. Practical and relevant, epistemologically diverse, and theoretically grounded, the Second Edition of Billings, Butterworth, and Turman’s text keeps readers on the cutting-edge.

This collection of essays looks at everyday heroes and heroines--ordinary men, women, and children who are honored for actual or imagined feats. Comparing the United States, Germany, and Britain, it asks both when this particular hero type first emerged and how it was discussed and depicted in political discourse, mass media, literature, film, and other forms of popular culture. Looking across fields of study, countries, and centuries, this book sheds new light on the many social, cultural, and political functions that our everyday heroes have served.

Today's media, cinema and TV screens are host to new manifestations of myth, their modes of storytelling radically transformed from those of ancient Greece. They present us with narratives of contemporary customs and belief systems: our modern-day myths. This book argues that the tools of transmedia merchandising and promotional material shape viewers' experiences of the hit television series Star Trek, to reinforce the mythology of the gargantuan franchise. Media marketing utilises the show's method of recycling the narratives of classical heritage, yet it also looks forward to the future. In this way, it reminds consumers of the Star Trek story's ongoing centrality within popular culture, whether in the form of the original 1960s series, the later additions such as Voyager and Discovery or J. J. Abrams' `reboot' films. Chapters examine how oral and literary traditions have influenced the series structure and its commercial image, how the cosmological role of humanity and the Earth are explored in title sequences across various Star Trek media platforms, and the multi-faceted way in which Internet, video game and event spin-offs create rituals to consolidate the space opera's fan base. Fusing key theory from film, TV, media and folklore studies, as well as anthropology and other specialisms, To Boldly Go is an authoritative guide to the function of myth across the whole Star Trek enterprise.

"A wise, humane and beautifully written book." —Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal From the best-selling author of Benjamin Franklin comes this remarkable work that will help redefine our notion of American heroism. Americans have long been obsessed with their heroes, but the men and women dramatically portrayed here are not celebrated for the typical banal reasons contained in Founding Fathers hagiography. Effortlessly challenging those who persist in revering the American history status quo and its tropes and falsehoods, Morgan, now ninety-three, continues to believe that the past is just not the way it seems.