American Character Research Articles

Asia, Moral Duties, and American Films Noir: World for Ransom and Macao

ABSTRACT Leading American film critics, including, among others, Tony Williams and Robert Miklitsch, have claimed that both World for Ransom and Macao reflect an orientalist, racist, and reactionary worldview. In this article I argue that, on the contrary, these 1950s films noir portray Asian and American characters alike actually carrying out their moral duties. To be sure, these American films employ aesthetic techniques to help illustrate the ethical ambiguities for which film noir is justly celebrated. Still, where the fulfillment of moral duties is concerned, the films’ resolutions are clear. This article enlists the thought of moral philosophers H.L.A. Hart and Daniel Statman to vindicate the ethical outlook of these works, which reward characters who fulfill imperfect, perfect, and/or supererogatory moral obligations. The American protagonists transcend their given circumstances by carrying out high-stake duties in an Asian setting, while forming amorous alliances tested by the aesthetics of film noir. Moreover, I show that none of the protagonists’ moral duties involves maligning Asia. Indeed, were these films noir to disparage Asia, they would diminish the very milieu breathing life into their finest characters.

Liberation via Reliving the Suffering: A Study of August Wilson’s Monologues

The articulation of counter-discourse has long served as a central mechanism for expressing resistance, resilience, and the reclamation of histories centered on marginalized communities. Human history attests to the fact that speech has consistently functioned as a foundational step toward liberation. Yet, the concept of speech extends far beyond the public oratory of a select few prominent social or political figures. Instead, the everyday dialogues of ordinary individuals often carry a more substantial share of the transformative and emancipatory ideas emerging from marginalized communities. Within these dialogues, monologues emerge as a powerful medium for articulating the firsthand experiences of the oppressed. This paper undertakes a deconstructive analysis of the monologues in select plays by August Wilson, interpreting them through the lens of Freud’s theory of repression. It explores how African American characters, through the act of monologue, relive their collective and individual suffering, thereby equipping themselves with greater readiness and resilience to envision and strive for a liberated future. The study positions these monologues as literary instruments of healing, examining them through the framework of speech act theory. Ultimately, the monologues are analyzed as expressions of resilience and liberation, offering both textual catharsis and a reassertion of identity within a broader sociocultural context.

The Investigation of Ideological Representations in Subtitling: A Critical Discourse Analysis Approach

The present study investigates how ideologically-laden words and expressions are subtitled from English into Arabic by taking into account various translation strategies and lexical choices. It also sheds light on the role of the subtitler in this ideologically-constructed transfer. For this purpose, a mixed methods approach is followed to analyze and calculate the occurrence of the selected words and expressions from English movies and their Arabic subtitles by adopting the eclectic model of Farahzad’s critical discourse analysis model (2011), and Baker’s (2011) and Pedersen’s (2011) translation strategies. The results of the study show that the subtitlers try to convey different ideologies from the ones presented in the original dialogues by depicting Muslim characters as negative individuals and American characters as positive individuals who are saviors and defenders. This is revealed through omission, translation by more expressive words, addition, and generalization. The findings further highlight that the subtitlers attempted to match the subtitles to the religious beliefs of the target viewers through cultural substitution. Regarding shifts of agency or participants, the subtitlers employed addition by adding action verbs in the subtitles to change the meaning of the sequence or to alter the focus toward specific agents by using different pronouns. The study thereof shows the role of the subtitler as an unfaithful transmitter of reality in the subtitles.

Freedom of Choice: Re-reading Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie

Abstract: Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s 1827 novel Hope Leslie can be read as one of the first pieces of serious American literature to afford full respect and humanity to Native American characters. The novel’s ending suggests that the whole is about a woman’s right to choose, especially when the choice stands in direct conflict with prevailing authority and tradition. In this light, Hope Leslie can inspire rich conversations about today’s political culture and, as such, deserves a place in the contemporary classroom.

THE MYTH OF PURSUING HAPPINESS IN THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

This research aims to examine how to pursue happiness constructs Americans in the film The Pursuit of Happyness (2006). Pursuing happiness is included in one of the American Dreams which means that everyone in America deserves their happiness. To investigate the analyses, this study uses Roland Barthes' semiotic analysis to find out the happiness in Americans. The results show that pursuing happiness is categorized as one of the American myths and the American characteristics. The characteristics of freedom, happiness, and success describe the American character in pursuing happiness as the myth. In addition, pursuing happiness illustrates the similarity of the narrative when compared to the myth. It analyses in social and cultural of Americans' lives.

Fiction Factory, Part 2

By the beginning of the twentieth century, young writers were part of an economic system that took youth as a commercial value—up-to-the-minute youth provided a fantasy that such new modes of publication seemed to advertise—while also making use of young writers glorying in such hype. Part One of these two essays explored this new character of young people’s writing to indicate an evolving understanding of the juvenile tradition. Young writers now asserted themselves as modern hacks, celebrating their proficiency in dime formulas. In surveying the literary nationalism encoded in dime formulas, Part One also explored how dime fiction kept alive a sense of perennial youth in part through youth’s recurrent and lasting association with the American character. Young writers working in dime formulas by necessity worked within these attitudes—and the baldness of dime formulas made obvious how these so-called “American” attitudes were ideological, encoding troubling assumptions when it came to race and imperialism, part of the manifest destiny and American exceptionalism that cheap print reflected. Part Two is about the afterlife of the dime novel—both in terms of how its formulas continued to haunt American letters, but also in terms of how ongoing literary-critical recovery of texts in the archive of the fiction factory have expanded possibilities for how to regard them. It concentrates on how ideological prescriptions continued to shape expectations, and to shape young writers’ work, in the early twentieth century—after the dime novel seemed to have waned in popularity. At the same time, it foregrounds how the critical afterlife that has sifted that archive informs an understanding of how to read this ongoing work.

Memória de longa duração: um estudo sobre a consolidação das trajetórias de imigrantes norte-americanos no contexto de 1859 a 1870 nas cidades do Rio de Janeiro e São Paulo

Some North American characters contributed to significant social and educational changes in the cities of Rio de Janeiro in 1859 and São Paulo in 1870. This article is interested in pointing out the relationships between some Presbyterian missionaries who came to Brazil, such as Ashbel Green Simonton (1833-1867) and George W. Chamberlain (1839-1902), as well as important educators: Mary A. Annesley Chamberlain, Mary Parker Dascomb, Phebe R. Thomas, and Marcia P. Brown. The "long-term memory", which refers to the emphasis given by the Annales to historical processes or long periods, which surpass the history of events, evokes the problematization that arises: how has the acquisition, consolidation and evocation of the memory of such protagonists been over time? The bibliographic methodology is based on historical sources such as Garcez (1969), Motta (1970), Matos (2004), Braudel (1950), among others. It is hoped that history will be revisited, memory evoked and the relationships between subjects will highlight past facts and point to the gains of the present, in addition to highlighting the permanence of the legacy left by such agents.

Not-Russians on TV

Abstract This article discusses portrayals of a Ukrainian and a Polish character on the US sitcom 2 Broke Girls (2011–2017). The pilot episode reveals that the showrunners used stereotypes of Russian characters to establish different national origins for Oleg and Sophie. The show perpetuates offensive stereotypes of Slavic and postsocialist characters to elide differences from Russians but with notable distinctions—stemming from Oleg and Sophie's economic backgrounds in the struggling postsocialist economies of the 1990s. American television has produced many comedic characters from the European margins (Greek, Czech, Ukrainian, Polish, Latvian, or from invented but East European-coded lands) who were understood as chaotic but loveable. Crucially, however, they were not Russian. From the late Cold War through the 2010s, Russianness onscreen seems to consistently signal dishonesty, danger, or hopelessness for Western audiences. This suggests that while stereotypes persist, in comedy, at least, showrunners use East Europeans to support, not threaten, American characters, further othering Russianness.

Reform or Revolution? Socialism from China to Asian Communities

“This article examines socialist ideologies in Asian American literature by comparing Karen Tei Yamashita's I-Hoteland H.T. Tsiang's And China Has Hands. Despite both novels centering on Chinese American experiences in the 20th century, they offer differing perspectives on socialism influenced by the authors' backgrounds and historical contexts. Tsiang's work, set in 1930s New York, portrays socialism as an experimental pursuit for Chinese revolutionaries amidst the clash between socialism and nationalism. Conversely, Yamashita's I-Hotel, set in 1960s and 1970s San Francisco, depicts Asian American characters influenced by Maoist socialist ideology, tempered by disillusionment with the Cultural Revolution. Through close analysis, the article examines how each author navigates characters' attitudes towards socialism. In I-Hotel, Yamashita critiques the Cultural Revolution's suppression of art and literature, exposing Maoist authoritarianism. Meanwhile, Tsiang's optimism towards socialism is reflected in characters like Fellow, expressing a longing for reform and unity within the proletariat. Both authors' personal experiences and historical contexts shape their narratives. Tsiang's immersion in New York City's political landscape during the early 20th century informs his advocacy for socialist reform. Similarly, Yamashita's upbringing in a Japanese American family during World War II informs her critique of authoritarianism and advocacy for equitable socialism. In conclusion, this comparative analysis highlights diverse interpretations of socialism in Asian American literature, emphasizing the interplay between personal experiences, historical contexts, and ideological frameworks. Through their narratives, Yamashita and Tsiang offer reflections on the potentials and pitfalls of socialist ideologies, urging readers to engage critically with questions of revolution and social justice.”

A Content Analysis of Asian American Female Representation in Children’s Picture Books

Scholarship has documented concerning trends related to representation in children’s literature with Asian or Asian American characters and cultural themes. Grounded in mirrors and windows pedagogy and AsianCrit theory, this study aims to identify themes in children’s picture books with a female Asian or Asian American protagonist. Themes that emerged in the findings included themes of family, main character identity, culture, and book author identity. Implications for disrupting these trends in publishing and for countering problematic trends through teacher decision making are discussed.

Challenging Stereotypes: Examining Arab Womanhood in “The Negotiator”

This article presents a participant-based film analysis of Brad Anderson’s The Negotiator (2018), a Netflix production. The objective of this study is to examine the prevalent portrayal of Arabs and Muslims as the primary antagonists in American (neo-Orientalist) cinema. By analyzing the development of Arab characters, the article delves into the construction of villainy and its function in juxtaposition to heroism within the film’s narrative. A particular focus is given to the marginalization of Arab women, who are deprived of agency and the opportunity to express themselves. To address this issue, the study includes perspectives from Arab female participants, allowing them to articulate their perceptions and connections to both the Arab and American characters in the film. The research explores the common depiction of Arab or Muslim women as inactive extras or silenced secondary characters in post-9/11 American films. Through this investigation, the article aims to shed light on the representation and portrayal of Arab and Muslim women in contemporary American cinema.

The Politics of American Values in Barack Obama’s Life Narratives: A Rhetorical Analysis of National Ethos

Barack Obama weaves a sequence of his personal story rhetorically to evoke American national ethos, with a special emphasis on American values making them an integral part of his memoirs, especially his The Audacity of Hope (2006). This paper interrogates why he narrates the story of typical American values in his political memoir in general and ascertain them in a dedicated section titled ‘Values’ in particular to explore the implicit dimensions of his storytelling. Form the theoretical parameters of Walter R Fisher’s ‘narrative paradigm’ this paper contends that, by way of recognizing (assimilating or internalizing) typical American values, Obama prepares a ground for Fisher’s ‘narrative rationality’ to identify himself with American character and American people, and thereby evokes American national ethos to assume a statesmanship.

From the lonely crowd to the cyber mob: Fromm on the social consequences of loneliness

In 1950, sociologist David Riesman published a best-selling book entitled The lonely crowd: A study of the changing American character. Famously, he described the ascendant “other directed” person as being haunted by an inner loneliness. This paper seeks to explain the current phenomenon of the cyber mob, an online crowd of peers gathered together to intimidate and “cancel” others, as a form of group behavior founded in profound aloneness and alienation brought about by neoliberal society. While the existence of online groups or mobs is overdetermined, the desire to belong, to feel a part of something larger than oneself, and to escape a haunting inner loneliness may be the twenty-first-century corollary of what Reisman described 73 years ago. With the rise of authoritarianism throughout the world, climate change, massive inequality, pandemic, and the breakdown of moral authority, people on both the Left and the Right cling to cyber mobs to escape aloneness, discharge fear and rage, and acquire affirmation and acceptance through “likes” and “retweets.” While they seem to provide bonding and empowerment, what cyber mobs offer in truth is greater ferocious tribalism and the further undoing of social bonds, fellow feeling, and the remnants of civil society.

Moving beyond the magic Indian Trope in Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series

AbstractIn films, the Magic Negro is a stock character whose supernatural gifts promote the success of a White protagonist. A character with parallel traits found in a number of mystery series is the Magic Indian, who has supernatural connections and abilities unavailable to others. In his Walt Longmire mysteries, Craig Johnson develops a strong supernatural thread with the agency of Native American characters who can be considered Magic Indians. While Johnson's Magic Indians share similarities with Magic Negroes, they exhibit key differences in the way their spirituality is presented that make them more realistic characters serving an educational function.

The Enemy with Human Face? Rehumanization of the Images of Americans in the Soviet Thaw Cinema

Introduction. The article focuses on the changes that happened in the portrayal of U.S. characters in Soviet Thaw cinema. The contribution of the article in the field of cultural Cold War is threefold: for the first time, it studies the American characters’ images through the prism of the concept of rehumanization; establishes common and particular traits of deconstruction of the image of the enemy in Soviet and American cinema; and introduces new materials into scientific circulation. The materials consist of the movies on which Soviet cinematography worked in the early 1960s; reviews in film magazines; and archival data of discussions on movies and their scenarios that took place in film studios. Analysis. Specifics of the dehumanization of ‘enemy number one’ in Soviet cinema. The Soviet anti-Americanism was based on the idea of ‘two Americas’: dehumanization has been subjected only to class and politically alien Americans. Deconstructing the image of the enemy in Thaw cinema. Humanizing U.S. characters was achieved with the help of endowing them with kindness, empathy, creativity, emotionality, moral behavior, ability for love, friendship, and comradeship, emphasizing the similarity of the basic values of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and demonstrating the possibility of peaceful coexistence through cases of mutual aid, cooperation, and the occurrence of friendly and romantic relations. The humanness of U.S. characters becomes less dependent on political factors. The cinema expressed the idea that man by nature was good, and this original human goodness was noticeable most of all in children, including American ones. The limits of rehumanization. The conservative part of the Soviet elite accused ‘abstract humanism’ of forgetting the class principle and juxtaposed it to ‘revolutionary humanism’. Criticism of ‘abstract humanism’ in ideology was accompanied by a tightening of demands for representing America that representatives of the Soviet controlling bodies made. Results. In the 1960s, Soviet cinema (just like U.S. cinema) had the tendency of deconstructing the image of ‘enemy number one’, which took the form of rehumanization. The rehumanization had its limitations.

Significant Trends in Portrayal of Asian American in Hollywood Films and the Role of American Perspective

This research reexamines the relationship of reality and film through examining the significant changes in portrayal of Asian Americans in Hollywood films. The American perspective has played a critical role in portraying Asian characters in film for the longest time. However, the recent shift from portrayal of Asian-to-Asian American characters revealed that Hollywood films are slowly breaking away from dependency on American perspective. Instead, the reality that is started to be portrayed in Hollywood films is from the perspective of Asian Americans which is the long-time goal of Asian American community. The study examines the significant change in portrayal of Asian Americans in Hollywood films by classifying four periods; before 1990s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Two films that represent the significant trend in each period are also analyzed. The study concluded that the increase in Asian American filmmakers and the efforts of Asian American community in utilizing technology aided the positive change. Despite of COVID-19 pandemic, positive change in portrayal of Asian Americans in Hollywood films is expected to continue through constant efforts.

Overlapping spaces and identities in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Water by the Spoonful: a metatheatrical approach

This article discusses the overlapping relationship between setting diversification and character creation as experimented by Puerto Rican American playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes (1977–) in her metatheatrical drama Water by the Spoonful (2011). The play, which emerges in a second chronological order in Hudes’s so-called Elliot Trilogy, presents diasporic characters of different ethnicities and mixed cultural backgrounds as operating interactively within three different, though intersecting, realms or spaces: the real world, virtual cyberspace, and metaphysical space. The real world of the play features interacting Puerto Rican Americans, Japanese Americans, African Americans, and White Americans in a way that highlights their ethnocultural diversity in real American, Puerto Rican, and Japanese settings. Some of these binational, bilingual, and bicultural characters, who belong to different generations (20 s, 30 s, 40 s, 50 s), also occupy, and actually favor, the virtual realm or cyberspace of the internet where they assume unreal identities but negotiate real issues spurred by real life circumstances and reveal secrets about themselves and their families through online group therapy sessions. The metaphysical space is used as a magical realist element and is exclusively reserved by Hudes for exposing her Puerto Rican American characters’ restless spiritual and mental struggle with the obsessive feelings of nostalgia, homesickness, regret, and displacement. The three realms or spaces intersect and collide in a way that determines the social attitudes and psychological moods of diasporic characters.

The Rhetoric of Origin: American National Ethos in Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father

This paper examines how Barack Obama ruminates on trials and tribulations from his past and ponders over his root in terms of biracial identity to explore his American ethos in his first memoir Dreams from My Father (1995). The paper argues that Obama struggles hard to locate his ethos out of the complexities of the relationships that his parents underwent in terms of their mixed marriages. Eventually he settles to his American identity, which is essentially biracial. From the perspective of Kenneth Burke's notion of 'identification', Obama evokes an awareness of American national ethos identifying with the American character as such and with this he explores his sense of purpose in life to be a public figure. He asserts that one of the fundamental characters of American national ethos is the biracial or multiracial that emanates from the contemporary American mixed society.

The Representation of Earlier African American Vernacular English by Charles W. Chesnutt

This article examines the validity of regional speech represented in the writings of an African American short story writer, essayist, lawyer, and stenographer Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932) with a corpus of dialogues extracted from his literary works (approximately 40,000 words). As a touchstone for exploring its accuracy, the Atlas data from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and the surrounding regions in Cape Fear and Pee Dee Valley− a region where the author spent his youth and his stories are set−are compared with the speech of his African American characters. The result reveals that the Atlas records and Chesnutt’s dialogues share many expressions in their regional lexicons ranging from single words to phrases. Considering the difficulty of recording all the synonyms and semantically related words from the same informant during the interview, the overall agreement between the two provides further evidence that as an African American writer who spent his formative years in a rural community in North Carolina, Chesnutt’s literary dialect offers a glimpse of earlier AAVE spoken in the region in the mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, this article touches on Chesnutt’s racial identity and what led him to enter the literary world as it is pertinent to his linguistic background and the motive behind the use of literary dialect.

Non-Verbal Communication of Jack Mc Call on A Thousand Words Movie

Individuals interact through two components, namely verbal and nonverbal communication. The two components are inseparable. This article aims to examine the nonverbal cues exhibited by the American character, Jack Mc. Call, portrayed in the film "A Thousand Words". This is a high-quality document. It contains two categories of information. The primary data is obtained from the film's screen captures that emphasize Jack's nonverbal cues. The supporting data encompass additional information that bolsters the examination. The method employed for gathering data involves conducting research at the library and utilizing the subsequent procedures: viewing the film and capturing screenshots of the scenes that pertain to Jack's nonverbal communication. Analyzing data is executed by utilizing the principles of nonverbal communication. Initially, the American way of communication is distinctly dissimilar from the Asian approach, which often involves showing respect by bowing during conversations. Secondly, as Americans speak more attentively, they frequently rely on gestures and facial expressions, as mentioned previously. Jack represents American nonverbal communication.