Ideology and Power in Pre-Code Comic Books: Struggles for Cultural Space, Audience, and Meaning - Couverture souple

Philipzig, Jan

 
9783659838118: Ideology and Power in Pre-Code Comic Books: Struggles for Cultural Space, Audience, and Meaning
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 365983811X ISBN 13 : 9783659838118
Editeur : Scholars' Press, 2016

Synopsis

Drawing on the theories of cultural studies, this book delivers a wide range of new and surprising insights into the Golden Age of American Comic Books. It traces the medium’s cultural roots, its rise to popularity, and its persistent struggles for meanings, cultural space, and an audience. Characters, genres, stereotypes, myths, and many other narrative elements are discussed as encodings of ideology, thereby exposing underlying assumptions of class, race, nationalism, sexism, and ageism. Some pre-Code comic books point to themselves as textual constructs, demystifying the fictional sphere by foregrounding their intertextual relationships, as well as their own production or reception. This study pioneers the systematic analysis of comic-book reflexivity. It investigates within a matrix of historical factors the commercial, social, and cultural functions of reflexive devices - an enterprise that reveals deep cultural ambivalences toward the medium and its assumed effects on readers. Combining a solid theoretical frame with in-depth research, the book provides an insightful and entertaining examination of the most popular and influential comic books of the Golden Age.

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Présentation de l'éditeur

Drawing on the theories of cultural studies, this book delivers a wide range of new and surprising insights into the Golden Age of American Comic Books. It traces the medium’s cultural roots, its rise to popularity, and its persistent struggles for meanings, cultural space, and an audience. Characters, genres, stereotypes, myths, and many other narrative elements are discussed as encodings of ideology, thereby exposing underlying assumptions of class, race, nationalism, sexism, and ageism. Some pre-Code comic books point to themselves as textual constructs, demystifying the fictional sphere by foregrounding their intertextual relationships, as well as their own production or reception. This study pioneers the systematic analysis of comic-book reflexivity. It investigates within a matrix of historical factors the commercial, social, and cultural functions of reflexive devices - an enterprise that reveals deep cultural ambivalences toward the medium and its assumed effects on readers. Combining a solid theoretical frame with in-depth research, the book provides an insightful and entertaining examination of the most popular and influential comic books of the Golden Age.

Biographie de l'auteur

JAN PHILIPZIG completed a doctorate in Literary and Media Studies from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel, Germany. He now lives in Edmonton, Canada where he teaches Sociology at Grant MacEwan University.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Scholars' Press
Date d'édition
2016
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
365983811X
ISBN 13 
9783659838118
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
340
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible