Dissertation
Hegemony at play: Four case studies in popular culture
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
05/2009
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000005985
Abstract
Frequently, the events and people appearing in various popular culture media are dismissed because they are assumed to be meaningless or unimportant. This dissertation explores the social and political meanings of several pop culture phenomena, from icons like Superman and hip-hop artist Eminem to the conservative trends in visual media embodied by televised poker and the reality television show Survivor. This dissertation deconstructs each figure's placement within and outside of various racist, sexist, class, and heterosexist structures at both the local and national levels in order to illustrate how the national imagination is constrained by these structures and how each character's use in various media serves to further strengthen and naturalize those structures. All of these figures make invisible, reinscribe, and naturalize privileged positionalities like whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, wealth, and American citizenship even as they attempt critiques. Even so, the case studies that comprise this dissertation illustrate that there are gaps and spaces between intersecting structures of privilege that allow for heterogeneous and potentially liberatory readings, especially at the personal and local levels.
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Details
- Title
- Hegemony at play
- Creators
- Sarah Elizabeth Bergfeld
- Contributors
- Thomas Vernon Reed (Chair)Nella Van Dyke (Committee Member)Robert F Eddy (Committee Member) - Washington State University, Department of English
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 196
- Identifiers
- 99901055031901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation