• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.34
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• pp.219-235
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• 2014

The term 'noble savage' is a literary stock character that expresses the concept of an idealized person who has not been corrupted by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. Fictional noble savage characters that are raised by wild animals such as Rudiard Kipling's Mowgli or Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan were created over 100 years ago but are still repeatedly reproduced as movies and TV series. Since films that depict noble savages tend to criticize civilization, popularity of these film could be due to the hidden anxiety of masses towards civilization and technology. Characters in commercial films about noble savages tend to be leveled, sharpened, and assimilated as Allport and Postman argued in The Psychology of Rumor. It is probably because films, as mass medium, need to be understood easily to the public. Characters in animations with cartoon style images are more likely to be leveled, sharpened, and assimilated even further than live-actions. Films show social stereotype of the time through assimilation process. Comparing different versions of film based on the same novel about noble savage how those social stereotypes such as gender roles and idea of evil change.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.99-125
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• 2010

This paper explores the political significance of a literary work, the hidden side beneath the ideology of founding America in Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok which reconstructs the history of the colonial period. The ideological strategy of founding America on racial discrimination is given a repeated representation in 19th-century American novels. Most works shed a negative light on Native Americans, whereas Hobomok stands out by presenting a positive picture of a miscegenation between a Native American man and a white woman, the acculturation of a half Indian into the white society. Furthermore, Child undoes distorted stereotypes about native Americans, exposing the Puritans' intolerant and exclusive attitudes and criticizing men who forced women to be obedient for the cause of nation and religion. However, Child also shows that she could not be free from the ideology of founding America which insisted on the superiority of the white's racial identity and excluded the Native Americans as beings who were destined to vanish gradually but eventually. Although Hobomok revises stereotypical representation of Native Americans as the other, it also serves for a political purpose, showing a politically inseparable relationship between literary works and the ideology of founding America.