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- Sadri, Houman, 1971
(författare)
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Mass-Surveillance and the Negation of the Monomyth
- 2018
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Ingår i: Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research. - 2342-2009. ; 5:1, s. 21-33
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The enduring popularity of superhero narratives in the post-9/11 cultural landscape testifies, to some extent, to the continued cultural ubiquity of Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’, but the notion of heroism itself is challenged somewhat by another seemingly ubiquitous product of the terrorist attacks: the proliferation, and absorption into Monomythical narratives, of the tropes of mass surveillance and technologically-aided snooping. It is my argument that the ability to perform such acts of surveillance essentially precludes and negates the Hero’s Journey itself – not for moral reasons, but because these acts represent the use of a power beyond that of a mortal hero, and the essential repositioning of the characters in question as godlike beings. As a result of this repositioning, the Monomyth – a pattern which, after all, describes the progress of mortal humans through dangerous terrain that they do not always understand – no longer applies, and thus neither do the terms hero or heroic. Thus, the Batman of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ’s Nick Fury negate their own heroism and, by committing acts of hubris, invite the miasma and nemesis they are seen to suffer by the respective films’ conclusions. In this way, the paranoia and, indeed, surveillance possibilities of the post-9/11 age can be seen to inform and, to an extent, redefine, both the Monomyth and the very concept of the Monomythical hero.
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| 2. |
- Sadri, Houman, 1971
(författare)
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"Submission is Faith in the Strength of Others": Synthesizing Male and Female Aspects of War in Azzarello and Chiang's Wonder Woman
- 2018
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Ingår i: ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. - 1549-6732. ; 9:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang’s recent six-volume "Wonder Woman" run, the eponymous character is obliged to take up the mantle of the God of War after the death of Ares and in the seeming-absence of Athena, and it is only by combining the attributes of both deities that she is able to prevail in both her new role and her battle with the First Born. This synthesis has several implications, foremost of which is the idea that the embodiment of war represents a series of seeming-oxymorons, with Diana’s ultimate refusal to save the First Born from what he characterises as a fate worse than death seen as an act of, as she puts it, 'Tough Love.' This is a synthesis of violence and mercy, and as such represents the aforementioned fusion of gender aspects and is an affirmation of the original ideas of Wonder Woman’s creator, William Moulton Marston, who believed that triumph could only be achieved within submission, an idea characterised by Diana herself as, 'Faith in the strength of others.' Finally, the trajectory of the heroic journey undertaken by central character of this set of tales hews closely to the monomythical pattern set out by Joseph Campbell in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces."
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