American Arete: the Man of Steel As a Rhetorical Model
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AMERICAN ARETE: THE MAN OF STEEL AS A RHETORICAL MODEL A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF TEXAS WOMAN’S UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, SPEECH, AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES BY JONATHAN C. EVANS B.A., M.A. DENTON, TEXAS DECEMBER 2014 DEDICATION For my wife, Allie, and my daughter, Annabelle, thank you for your love and support. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To begin to thank all of those who have been there and supported me on this journey, and strange as it may seem, there is one person perhaps most responsible for this course in my academic scholarship. That person is Grant Morison. Though we have never met personally, his and Frank Quitely’s interpretation of Superman in All-Star Superman opened my eyes to the potential that character has and how many years I have belonged to those who overlooked his true power. After Mr. Morison, I want to thank Dr. Russell Greer and Dr. Shaun Treat. Dr. Treat I want to thank for his fantastic class on comic books and rhetoric that helped me stumble upon the connection between the two loves of mine and just how connected they were. Dr. Greer I want to thank for a multitude things, including becoming my dissertation director, as well as introducing me to Chaim Perelman and his and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric. His classes and his mentorship have helped make me ten times the scholar and writer I was before. I would also like to thank the other members of my dissertation committee as well. I want to thank Dr. Souris for all of the guidance and experiences we have shared working together in his online classrooms. I learned and gained a great deal by his guidance. To Dr. Thompson, I want to thank for not only her professional guidance and assistance, but also her kind and personal touch as a professor. Her humor and kindness have always made me feel welcomed during my time at TWU. I want to also thank Dr. Fehler for his willingness to step in at the last minute and help out on my committee. iv Special thanks needs to be paid to my colleagues who aided me on my scholarly path of exploration in this venture. I want to thank Katt Blackwell-Starnes for all her attention and aid to me in my early days at TWU. I want to also thank other students of Dr. Greer’s who joined together from time to time in what he liked to call “The Justice League of Rhetoric”: Jaime Jones, Courtney Patrick-Weber, Harry McMaster, and Elizabeth Hamm. In addition, I want to thank other colleagues: Tawny LeBouef-Tullia, Jason Forrest, Paula Kent and anyone else I am forgetting. In particular I would like to specifically thank Ryan Reid, Jayme Bunch, Marie Carrier, and Erin Russell for their aid as outside readers willing to look over and proof my final draft of my dissertation for me. I want to thank everyone I have met along the way, many who go unnamed but who provided me with valuable sounding boards and moments of insight. This includes all of the wonderful and fantastic people I met on the two occasions I had the privilege to attend Inter-disciplinary.net’s 1st and 2nd Global Conference on the Graphic Novel at Mansfield College at Oxford University. In particular, I would like to extend a special thank you to Johnathan Wilson. I have been fortunate to have a wonderful working relationship with Johnathan over at the TWU Library. In particular, I want to thank him for his help with my dissertation. His expressed interest in my topic and willingness contributed a great deal to the research of my Literature Review chapter. I am also thankful for his willingness to help promote my academic career by allowing me opportunities to share my research and promoting my research to others. v Beyond my professors and colleagues, the most important and greatest support has come from my wife, Allie, and my daughter, Annabelle. From my wife I have received encouragement, a constant cheerleader in my corner, love, support, and most of all the permission and time to follow my dream of accomplishing this dissertation and this degree. I could not have done this; I could not have finished this task without her by my side. To my daughter Annabelle, though she is only a few months old, I want to extend my appreciation for being a motivator. She has motivated me by her presence and my desire to transition into the next phase of my life so that she and I both can grow. More importantly though, I want to thank her smiles for serving to always brighten my day and motivate me. Of course I must thank my mother and father for all their encouragement before, leading up to, and I know beyond this dissertation. My parents have always pushed me to do what made me happy in life and pursue those things that drew my interest. Without them I would not be here today, literally and figuratively. I want to also acknowledge the support I received from both of my younger brothers, David and Tim, in the pursuit of this goal and creating this dissertation. I am also thankful for my wonderful in-laws, Betty and John Lang my mother and father-in-law, Tammy and Neal Lang my sister and brother-in-law, as well as their kids Chris, Alyssa, Bethany, and her husband Zach. I would like to extend thanks also to all of my family, particularly my grandfather, who told me wonderful stories about what it was like to be there in 1938 when Superman appeared on the scene in the public imagination. vi Last, but not least, I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to my friends. I want to thank my best friend Casey Franklin and our mutual friend John Hatley, along with my friends Marsha and Marty Greenway, Rebecca Oberlender, Dave Andrews, Megan Nieves, James Prescott for sharing my love of comic books. In addition, though I know they love them and me in their own ways too, I want to thank my friend Robin Fuller and her husband Chris for all their support in this, particularly putting up with my love of comic books and talking about it so much. Same goes for Jennie Andrews, Kate and Wes Gibbons as well who have tolerated me in this pursuit. I would also like to thank my wife and I’s friend Christina Svec, me in particular, for going through a similar process of creating a dissertation as well. She is one who understood my pain so to speak. vii ABSTRACT JONATHAN C EVANS AMERICAN ARETE: THE MAN OF STEEL AS A RHETORICAL MODEL DECEMBER 2014 There have many criticisms and explorations of Superman throughout his 75 plus year history. The character has become so engrained in the American psyche and culture that he is almost instantly recognizable. However, through all of this, he is a character who is rarely fully understood. Much of this stems from failures to understand “what” Superman is or what he potentially really and truly represents. Superman’s continued endurance in American culture is the result of his embodiment and function as a model of American cultural excellence, of what the Greeks called arête. In all the treatments of Superman there has never been a true exploration of the character that has sought to connect, rhetorically, the persuasive power of Superman as a model to the promotion of an American conception of Greek arête. Superman’s function as a model, as a rhetorical model, according to the definition given by Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric, operates as a guarantee, in a archetypal level the very best qualities, of virtues that have taken root in America since its conception as a nation. Superman is no mere comic book character, but rather the amalgamation and embodiment of classical concepts of excellence and virtue evolved and refined through the lens of the American immigrant experience, and given form. By understanding or beginning to understand how this came to be represents a viii potential point for understanding what America is as well. This dissertation does not propose to fully answer this question as much as it wishes to draw critical attention to how powerful and impactful a character like Superman can be on a culture at large. By doing this it is hoped that greater recognition and understanding of fictional superheroes as epidictic expressions can be better appreciated and studied by a culture at large as it continues to accept such heroes already as entertainment. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION ............................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. viii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 II. LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................... 10 III. METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................. 33 IV. ANALYSIS PART A .......................................................................................... 46 Introduction to Social Construction and Self-Fashioning .............................. 46 Coming Down from Olympus: Superheroes as Modern Myths .................... 54 Myths of Creation and Myths of Amalgamation ........................................... 60 Superman: The Early Narratives of the Golden Age ..................................... 69 Appearance, Expansion, and World War ......................................................