Gender Subversion, Acceptance, and American Myths in William Inge’s Picnic

Today, when the media puts studio-era Hollywood and feminism together, the answer is usually Katharine Hepburn. But during her career at RKO and MGM, she did not discuss women’s issues regarding equal pay, career opportunities, or political equality. However, she did state flatly in 1933, “I intend to speak my mind when I please, despite movie traditions,” setting her independence against the Hollywood establishment. She remained uninterested in working with other Hollywood women on-screen or in recognizing the advantages of promoting women’s careers through publicity networks off the set. Katharine Hepburn endures as a product of American myths about pioneering individualism, the Hollywood star system, and the studio-era film industry’s ambivalent investment in strong women. But if, as historian Nancy Cott has argued, “Pure individualism negates feminism because it removes the basis for women’s collective self-understanding or action,” then Hepburn was no feminist. This chapter unravels her myth.

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When girls draw the sword: Dansō, cross-dressing and gender subversion in Japanese shōjo manga

Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture ◽

10.1386/qsmpc_00041_1 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 3-18 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Marta Fanasca

Keyword(s):

Japanese Society ◽

Status Quo ◽

Main Character ◽

Gender Performances ◽

Cross Dressing ◽

And Gender ◽

Shojo Manga ◽

Gender Subversion

This article focuses on the representation of FtM cross-dresser characters in Japanese shōjo manga and their gender performances. The first cross-dresser heroine in manga is Sapphire, the main character from 1953s Ribon no kishi. Following this first example, similar characters have continued to appear in shōjo manga, obtaining very positive responses from the audience. While they are seen as rebellious characters challenging stereotypical views on gender in the Japanese society, the narratives where they appear do not always fully explore this aspect. The aim of this article is to investigate the role of cross-dresser heroines in manga as a tool to reinforce the sociocultural patriarchal status quo and as a different gender embodiment outside stereotyped femininity. It argues that the possibility for those characters to occupy powerful positions and succeed is related to masculinity, symbolized by the sword, stressing how ultimately their revolutionary potential is weakened and limited.

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The Myth of the Innocent Nation

Myths America Lives By ◽

10.5622/illinois/9780252042065.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 198-238

Author(s):

Richard T. Hughes

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

World War I ◽

Golden Age ◽

War On Terror ◽

James Baldwin ◽

American People ◽

World War ◽

Black Soldiers ◽

American Myths ◽

To Come

While the myth of the Innocent Nation weaves a tale that is objectively false with no redemptive qualities, it is one of the strongest of the American myths in terms of its hold over the American people. That myth, like the nation itself, hangs suspended between the golden age of an innocent past (Nature’s Nation) and a golden age of innocence yet to come (Millennial Nation). Suspended in that vacuous state, Americans imagine that history is irrelevant. How could it be otherwise? Nothing destroys a sense of innocence like the terrors of history taken seriously. Anchored by the pillars that stand at the beginning and end of time, the myth of the Innocent Nation flourished during every modern conflict beginning with World War I, but especially when the nation faced enemies like Nazi Germany in World War II or Isis during the War on Terror. The irony was obvious, for even as the nation proclaimed its innocence, black soldiers, for example, returned from World War II only to face brutality and segregation in their own nation. Countless blacks from Muhammed Ali to Toni Morrison to James Baldwin to Ta-Nehisi Coates have protested that irony in the American myth of Innocence.

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The Great American Myths and a Different American Future

Myths America Lives By ◽

10.5622/illinois/9780252042065.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 1-31

Author(s):

Richard T. Hughes

Keyword(s):

White Supremacy ◽

Real Life ◽

The Other ◽

American Myths ◽

American Creed ◽

Christian Nation

The Great American Myths are the commonly accepted stories that, along with the American Creed, convey to most Americans the meaning of their nation. The first edition of Myths America Lives By identified five of those myths: the Chosen Nation, Nature’s Nation, the Christian Nation, the Millennial Nation, and the Innocent Nation. The second edition adds a sixth: the myth of White Supremacy. This chapter introduces the two primary arguments of this book—first, that the myth of White Supremacy is the primal American myth that informs all the others and, second, that one of the chief functions of the other five myths is to protect and obscure the myth of White Supremacy and assure us that we remain innocent after all. Most blacks understand that white supremacy is the primal American myth since they live with its real-life consequences. But those in positions of power are not forced to live with the consequences of this myth. As a result, for most American whites the myth of White Supremacy is like the air they breathe: it envelops and shapes them but does so in ways they seldom discern.

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