Captain America, masculinity, and violence: the evolution of a national icon

The NPRP9-394-1-090 project “Pearl Oyster: from national icon to guardian of Qatar's marine environment” had as main aim to develop and apply an integrated suite of chemical and biological methods as early warning tools to assess the “health” of Qatar’s marine environment. The central theme consisted in an investigative monitoring program around the use of the pearl oyster, Pictada imbricata radiata, as a sentinel or guardian species. We have characterized the main environmental contaminants of concern at a selected number of sites around the Qatari coast (UmmBab, Al Khor, Al Wakra and Simaisma), during 2 years, in summer and winter. Potential ecological effects of contaminants (targeted and untargeted) were investigated at different biological organization levels (gene, chromosome, cell, individual, population), through a multidisciplinary approach, using classical and genotoxicological endpoints, integrative histopathology and transcriptomic responses to the different environmental stresses. To our knowledge, this is the first time an integrated approach connecting all these disciplines has been applied in the Qatari marine environment. We present here the main results, of this 3 years project, obtained in all different disciplinary approaches. The results of this project will leave a legacy of resources for future Qatari researchers, including an open access transcriptome data base and the first description of common pathologies observed in the pearl oyster P. i. radiata. Moreover, they will also represent a sound science-based baseline data essential for conservation and management planning, by integration of the data from all the different disciplines applied in the project to assess the potential ecological effects of contaminants at different biological levels.

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Fetishizing Captain America’s sidearm: iconography, exceptionality, and the politics of representing guns

Palgrave Communications ◽

10.1057/s41599-019-0323-9 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Tim Posada

Keyword(s):

News Media ◽

Cultural Landscape ◽

State Of Exception ◽

Giorgio Agamben ◽

Captain America ◽

Fan Communities ◽

Digital Discourse ◽

Digital News ◽

The Times

Abstract In 2007, Captain America, or Cap to his peers, died outside the courthouse where he would answer for leading a band of superheroes against the government’s Superhuman Registration Act in a plot line Fox and Friends took issue with, condemning Marvel Comics for killing Cap “while we’re at war,” referring to President George W. Bush’s war on terror. In 2008, former sidekick Bucky took up the Cap banner. Legacy characters are common in comics, but fans noted an unexpected addition to the costume: a handgun. Cap’s shield, a symbol of defense, now had an offensive accent. News media outlets lauded the new gun as a “sign of the times,” as Rolling Stone said, considering it a critique on the post-9/11 cultural landscape, but fan communities felt uneasy about the decision. The gun’s presence on Bucky Cap’s belt marks a continuous period of exceptionality, the kind Giorgio Agamben warns against in State of Exception. When Bucky’s predecessor would return to the role of Captain America, the sidearm would no longer remain, but the character would confront issues related to guns, and media and fans would once again respond. Even though Cap only encounters guns a few times during the 2010s, reception to these moments is more significant than that of characters who regularly use lethal weapons. Fetishistic emphasis on Captain America’s gun exposes the state of exception inherent in all superhero media, prompting a digital discourse across professional and amateur platforms on gun-related subjects. This project analyzes how superhero media portray gun use and the subsequent reception from both news media and digital fandom. A sampling of comics, television series, and films are textually analyzed, along with digital news media and online fan forums pertaining to those examples.

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Navigating Gender and Patriotism in Captain America Trilogy Movie

Globish: An English-Indonesian Journal for English, Education, and Culture ◽

10.31000/globish.v8i2.1737 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Cut Novita Srikandi

Keyword(s):

Michel Foucault ◽

Gender And Sexuality ◽

Heterosexual Men ◽

Sexual Discourse ◽

Captain America ◽

Queer People ◽

Result Show ◽

Standard Culture ◽

History Of ◽

American Society

This articles revisits Michel Foucault and Judith Butler’s work on the gender and sexuality by examining contemporary cultural spectacles of heterosexual men, exemplified in the movie Captain America Trilogy. We will re-evaluate the queerness based on Foucault’s Sexual Discourse by thinking about the intersections between queer heroes and queer soldier. Result Show that struggle queer individuals endure with heteronormative standard culture forces them to change standard culture things and forms to create them applicable. Captain America shut relationship with Bucky provides for a queer reading and therefore the history of Captain America among the relative queer freedom caused by socio-historic conditions of war II find this queer reading during a larger queer history. And by claiming Steve Rogersand Bucky as their own queer people create space to express their identities and reaffirm the place of heroic queer people in Americanhistory which, as the descendants of that patriotic past, merits them a place within that history and within modern Americansociety.Keywords: Gender in American Society, queer heroes, gender identities

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