Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2005 The iconography of nationalism: icons, popular culture, and American nationalism Dallas Hulsey Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hulsey, Dallas, "The iconography of nationalism: icons, popular culture, and American nationalism" (2005). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2106. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2106 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. THE ICONOGRAPHY OF NATIONALISM: ICONS, POPULAR CULTURE, AND AMERICAN NATIONALISM A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Dallas Hulsey B.A., New Mexico State University, 1997 M.A., New Mexico State University, 1999 December, 2005 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Since my mother is a librarian, I have always had a healthy respect for those who take care of the books and articles essential to readers and writers. While researching this study, my veneration for this profession doubled every time I used interlibrary loan. Writing a dissertation while teaching full-time at a community college is a difficult enterprise, and when the college is located in the New Mexican desert, at least a hundred miles from the nearest research university, dust and cacti are sometimes easier to find than scholarly books. The staff of Pannell Library provided invaluable assistance in overcoming the geographic handicap. I especially wish to thank Sharon Jenkins, who tracked down congressional records, and Cheri West, who, like a genie, granted my interlibrary loan wishes. Without Ms. West, this dissertation would have died before I finished the first chapter. She was tireless in her efforts to locate my sometimes bizarre requests (with a raised eyebrow every now and then) and often renewed books when due dates slipped by me unnoticed. I am going to send her flowers. Many of my colleagues at New Mexico Junior College deserve gratitude, if not flowers, for their help and support. For their encouragement, which occasionally resembled nagging, I thank my fellow English Professors: Sue Bennett, Patricia Bowman, Linda Connell, Greg Hammond, Sonya Jimenez, Pete Mladinic, and Mike Williams. Sue provided emotional support and was always willing to listen. Patricia donated her swimming pool to the cause, which gave much needed stress relief. Greg read chapters, listened to my rambling monologues about icons, and participated in video game procrastination sessions; he is a good friend and colleague. Mike, working on a doctorate of his own, took time to commiserate with me about the tribulations of working full-time while completing a Ph.D. I also owe a good deal to Richard Fleming ($1,500 to be precise) for funding my trip to the Austrian Association for American Studies conference ii on “U.S. Icons and Inconicity.” The support of my comrades and professors at Louisiana State University has also been indispensable. Margaret Clark, Paul Graham, Valerie Holliday, Ben Lanier-Nabors, Daniel McNamara, Amy Montz, Anna Priddy, and Anthony Rintala served with me in the trenches as fellow graduate students and were always supportive. Carl Freedman has been an exemplary advisor. He supported me in my decision to teach full-time and never complained about the long periods of silence punctuated by a flurry of emails and a few quick trips to Baton Rouge for advice. While I frequently neglected to contact him for months, he was always ready with a quick reply when I needed guidance. Elsie Michie gave me insightful commentary on the chapters as I wrote them, and often, she knew what direction my arguments were heading long before I did. Alexandre Leupin taught me everything I know about Jacques Lacan, and I hope I have used that knowledge well. Rick Moreland cheerfully agreed to work with me sight unseen. He took a gamble, and I hope it has paid off for him. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ............................................................ ii Abstract .....................................................................v Chapter One: Spectacles and Icons: Towards a Theory of Cultural Icons . 1 Chapter Two: Infantile Nation: Defining Characteristics of Barbie, Mickey, and Elvis . 44 Chapter Three: Adult Nation: The Imagined Community of Uncle Sam, the Wall, and the Unknown .............................................................90 Chapter Four: Out of Country: Iconic Scapegoats and the Contingencies of Identification . 140 Chapter Five: Iconic Discourses: From Barbie to Bin Laden and Back Again . 185 Works Cited ................................................................192 Vita.......................................................................206 iv ABSTRACT The Iconography of Nationalism: Icons, Popular Culture, and American Nationalism develops a model of cultural icons, defining icons as highly visible, culturally variable, and overdetermined auratic images. Situating icons within the context of mass reproduction technologies and American nationalism, this study seeks to demystify the simple images presented by infantile, national, and scapegoat icons in literature, film, and political rhetoric. This dissertation argues that icons participate in the American nationalist project by channeling citizens’ political and patriotic feelings through seemingly simple images. While acknowledging that icons are necessary to construct what Benedict Anderson calls “the imagined community” of the nation, this study complicates a quick and easy reading of an icon’s manifest content and uses narrative to reveal the latent content in images like Marilyn Monroe, Barbie, Mickey Mouse, Elvis Presley, Pocahontas, Uncle Sam, Big Brother, and Adolf Hitler. v CHAPTER ONE: SPECTACLES AND ICONS: TOWARDS A THEORY OF CULTURAL ICONS In Matthew G. Lewis’ The Monk (1796), Ambrosio, a Capuchin abbot, addresses his nightly prayers to a painting of the Madonna hanging in his chamber that “for two years had been the object of his increasing wonder and adoration” (Lewis 65). Unbeknownst to Ambrosio, this religious icon has been constructed specifically for him. Matilda, who has disguised herself as a male to be near the abbot, commissioned the painting so that the Madonna was recast in her image. When Matilda reveals the machination to the abbot, she says, “Judge of my rapture, when informed that you gazed upon it [the Madonna painting] with delight, or rather with adoration; that you had suspended it in your cell, and that you addressed your supplications to no other saint!” (101). In addressing his prayers to the painting, Ambrosio is praying to Matilda, and through this image he is taught to desire Matilda, who, the reader later discovers, is in league with the devil in a plan engineered to damn the monk. Once Matilda reveals herself, the reader must retrospectively reinterpret Ambrosio’s dreams in which “he pressed his lips to hers [Madonna’s/Matilda’s], and found them warm: the animated form started from the canvas, embraced him affectionately, and his senses were unable to support delight so exquisite [ . .] his desires placed before him the most lustful and provoking images, and he rioted in joys till then unknown to him” (89). Coming before Matilda’s revelation about the painting, the dreams foreshadow the image-to-flesh metamorphosis that occurs when Ambrosio first sees Matilda’s face because her cowl has slipped from her head: “What was his amazement at beholding the exact resemblance of his Madonna!” (101). For Ambrosio, it first appears as though the virgin is incarnated in Matilda. The image of the ideal woman, the virgin mother, comes to life, and, because he desires the ideal image, he now desires a flesh-and-blood counterpart. However, when Matilda 1 confesses, Ambrosio learns that the appearance of Matilda as the object of desire has been modeled for him by the Virgin painting. Since Ambrosio has been raised exclusively in the monastery, he has been inculcated with the image of Madonna as the depiction of the ideal female. She is the only standard available to the abbot for measuring other women. By injecting her likeness into this ideal, Matilda exploits Ambrosio’s valorization of the Virgin so that his desire for the sacred icon becomes entwined with desire for her. Ambrosio does not desire Matilda because she looks like the Virgin; he desires her because the Madonna has been constructed to look like her. Ambrosio has been duped by the illusion, and it turns out that Matilda behaves nothing like the virgin mother. The image is a trap that leads to the loss of Ambrosio’s life and soul. The lesson of the Virgin/Matilda painting is that our desires can be shaped, directed, and redirected by an image. To take a simple example, there is nothing natural about wanting to own a Mercedes Benz; children do not emerge from the womb requesting a Mercedes. Rather, people learn that owning a Mercedes is a desirable thing – a way of announcing that one has “arrived” both