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- Creators: Stanford, Michael
Description
Too often are American superhero comics dismissed as childish or simplistic. However, American superhero comics have evolved alongside American society throughout history, and have, in many cases, made a conscious effort to represent progressive movements that have arisen within various respective decades. This thesis will analyze the progression of American superhero comics as they have evolved throughout the decades, this essay will focus primarily on the comic book storylines of DC's, The Green Lantern, throughout the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Modern Ages of comic book history. The Golden Age was defined by war efforts and support for World War II. The Silver Age was under heavy regulation by the Comic Code Authority and had to water down content from serious topics. Despite this regulation, Silver Age comics were able to symbolize and support or oppose social movements during their respective decade. However, the Bronze Age acted as a turning point for comic book plotlines and characterization. After the Bronze Age, censorship of comic book content was nonexistent and more complex plotlines were developed. From then on the Modern Age of comics would continue to openly explore societal movements and serve as a social commentary. To explore this change, the contents of this essay will usher a discourse on how the American superhero was used to first express American propaganda, and how, throughout the twentieth century and even to this day, the superhero was transformed into a medium that examines social phenomena such as political causes and discrimination. To further analyze and compare social movements to American comics, this will focus primarily on DC's The Green Lantern comic books and how the superhero changed throughout comic book history.
ContributorsTomlin, Andrea (Co-author) / Baily, Alka (Co-author) / Arena, Paul (Thesis director) / Stanford, Michael (Committee member) / Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Normally, the United States and most of Europe are grouped into the same category as “Western countries”, yet their ideological differences have become larger in the last 50 years, especially in regards to free speech/expression protections. This raises the possibility that extremely broad free speech/expression protections aren’t intrinsic values of a Western society, but are instead an American experiment that was gradually adopted by Western Europe. Analyzing historical documents from both Europe and the United States, this becomes much more of a probability than a possibility and would help explain the recent differences in case law regarding free speech rights in American and European jurisprudence. Furthermore, Europe is also experiencing a potential threat to social stability in the form of massive, sudden demographic shifts, something that America has not experienced on nearly the same scale. Due to the heightened sensitivity towards hateful expression resulting from such a demographic shift, governmental action in the form of restrictions on racially, religiously, and ethnically charged forms of expressions may be deemed necessary in order to preserve social cohesion. Often throughout history, governments have deemed it necessary to limit free expression/speech and the spread of information in order to prevent any threat to its ability to rule, regardless of whether or not said government is tyrannical or democratized. Although not a direct threat to power, in a representative democracy social unrest created by increased division in the populace rooted in the spread of hateful ideology is nonetheless still a threat to those who depend on social harmony in order to govern in a representative democracy. In analyzing these two possible reasons for emerging differences and considering supporting textual and historical evidence, it becomes much clearer as to what the differences in case law and fundamental beliefs regarding the extent of free speech protections are attributable to.
ContributorsMantz, Noah (Author) / Stanford, Michael (Thesis director) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05