Superman

Monomyth (Joseph Campbell)
1. Hero ventures away from the everyday world into one of supernatural wonder.
2. Hero successfully struggles against fabulous forces.
3. Hero returns to the everyday world to bestow benefits on the people.

American Monomyth
1. A community in harmonious paradise is threatened by evil.
2. Normal institutions fail to contend with the threat.
3. A selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptation and redeem self and community.
4. His decisive victory restores the community to its harmonious state.
5. The superhero recedes into obscurity.

Zorro
Tarzan
Doc Savage
The Shadow
Dick Tracy
The Phantom

Jerry Siegel
Joel Schuster
Action Comics #1 1938

Detective Comics (DC)
Marvel Comics

Superman's first era: Hero as lone redeemer
Puritan captivity myth
Vigilante justice (Westerns, Batman)
Superman's second era: Hero as defender of institutions
World War II
Cold War
Supermans's third era: Hero as modern, sexualized figure
Vietnam
Gets married, loses powers, dies

Disney's America

Walt Disney
Victorianism - repression, rationality, gentility, separtation of reason and emotion
Modernism - rejected separation of reason and emotion, civilization and savagery; embraced instinct and subjectivity, abstraction; embraced folklore, the childlike, the nonrational
1928 - "Steamboat Willie" - first animated talkie
Sentimentality, naturalism - more realism, presentation of perfection as an attainable ideal.
1940 - Fantasia
Sentimental Populism
1955 - Disneyland (Adventureland, Fantasyland, Frontierland. Tomorrowland)
Forced Perspective
Enhanced Reality
Imagineering
Disney World
Epcot Center

The Western

Manifest Destiny
Rugged Individualism
American Eden
Harmony of Man and Nature

Key Novels
1826 The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
1849 The Oregon Trail, Francis Parkman
1872 Roughing It, Mark Twain
1902 The Virginian, Owen Wister

1882 Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show
Sitting Bull
Annie Oakley

Silent Westerns
1894 Thomas Edison - first silent westerns
1905 The Great Train Robbery
Tom Mix (1st "B" western star)
1923 The Covered Wagon
1929 The Virginian

1930s Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy

1939 Stagecoach
John Ford
John Wayne
1952 High Noon
Gary Cooper
1953 Shane
1956 The Searchers
1962 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
1964 A Firstful of Dollars
Sergio Leone
Clint Eastwood
1969 The Wild Bunch
1990 Dances With Wolves
1992 Unforgiven

Self-Help Culture

Progressivism (1890-1920)
Types of Progressive Reform
1. Economic - "Monopoly"
2. Structural and Political - "Efficiency"
3. Social - "Democracy"
4. Moral - "Purity"
Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA)
National Consumers' League
Department of Labor Children's Bureau and Women's Bureau
Settlement Houses - Jane Austin's Hull House (Chicago)
Prohibition (1920-1933)

Self-Help Movement (1890s)
Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1859, UK)
John Harvey Kellogg
Seventh Day Adventists' Health Reform Institute (Battle Creek, MI)
William Griffith Wilson ("Bill W.")
Robert Holbrook Smith ("Dr. Bob")
Twelve-Step Programs
Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA (1935)

The Magazine Revolution (1890s)
Munsey's Magazine (1889)
McClure's, Cosmopolitan
Ladies' Home Journal
Edward Bok
"Beautiful America" Campaign

Etiquette Columns
Godey's Lady's Book
Sarah Josepha Hale
Dorothy Dix
Mary Elizabeth Sherwood
The Howe sisters
Emily Post's Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage (1922)
Irma Rombauer's Joy of Cooking (1931)
The Van Buren sisters (b. 1918): Ann Landers and Dear Abby

Television Age
Julia Child (1960s)
Phil Donahue (1970s)
Oprah Winfrey (1980s)
Martha Stewart (1980s)