“The Superhero in Our Hearts Is Chairman Mao”: The Structurating of Chinese Sojourners' Conceptualizations of (Super)Hero Identities

ABSTRACT

Forces of globalization pose challenges and opportunities for understanding the impact of global media, especially discourses of superheroes at the intersection of the global and the local. Using the lens of Structuration Theory, the authors examine how Chinese sojourners make sense of media constructions of superheroes. A focus group interview method and thematic analysis of the interview texts were conducted. Findings in this study revealed both culturally universal constructions of prototypical superheroes and culturally specific, localized Chinese (super)heroes. Besides confirming the dominance of Western-centric superhero structures as gendered male and raced White, the results also suggest an emerging hybrid (super)hero archetype that is both real and imagined and embodies both Eastern and Western cultural values and orientations.

KEYTERMS:

• superhero discourses
• identity
• structuration
• Chinese sojourners
• hybridity
• focus groups