TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND AMERICAN MYTH: THE MANIFESTATION OF AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY IN THE SUPERHERO NARRATIVE

Abstract

Over the last fifteen years, nearly no story has dominated American popular culture like the superhero narrative has. It has come to captivate and entertain billions of people around the world. However, this narrative actually has its roots planted firmly in the past. The ever-changing superhero narrative has drawn on classic American mythology such as the frontier myth as conceptualized by Fredrick Jackson Turner. Tracing the idea of the American superhero from its inception in late 1930s America to post-Vietnam America reveals why the mythic American superhero has outlasted similar stories and myths of the past; the creators and contributors of the superhero narrative have adapted it after every major American conflict. In the 1930s, superheroes battled social injustice and inequality. In the 1940s, they battled the international threats of World War II. After that, they battled the Red Scare of the Cold War, before turning back to social injustice during and after the Vietnam War. The heroes that still reach into the minds of American and international audiences alike do so because they have endured a crucible of cultural change that has produced a new variation on traditional American myths.