myth of the American Dream

The aim of this paper is to provide and explain the historical development of the concept commonly known as the American Dream with a view to examining its gradual transformation from Franklin's self-made man to ready-made success promoted on social media platforms such as Facebook. Comparing prominent stages in American history, the paper will study the contribution each of them made to the legacy of the American Dream. Finally, we will attempt to answer the following questions: Are the fundamental concepts of the American Dream, such as upward mobility, still present in the digital age? Have the virtues commonly associated with the achievement of any aspect of the American Dream become obsolete? What constitutes the American Dream in the era of social media?

Promising upward social mobility, the American Dream epitomizes freedom, opportunity, ambition, and individuality. This thesis explores how Broadway’s portrayal of the Dream during the twentieth century evolved from a happy-go-lucky idolization of the Dream to an enlightening reflection on American politics. It examines how fourteen Broadway shows portray three aspects of the Dream: 1) the Dream’s unequal treatment of ethnic minorities; 2) its path to corruption; and 3) its fleeting nature. This thesis argues that, before the civil rights movement, ethnic minority characters functioned solely to enable the Dreams of their white counterparts. By the late twentieth century, however, minority characters were re-characterized as undefeatable troopers, effortlessly conquering every obstacle. Through such utopian characterizations, Broadway ignored real-life social inequities. Further, this thesis displays how no character nor American could achieve the Dream without resorting to alcoholism, prostitution, gambling, or drug abuse. These tropes were pinned on ethnic minority characters especially, exemplifying how ethnic minority stereotypes fed into Broadway’s “White Way.” By examining fame’s ephemerality in Broadway’s mid-twentieth century works, this thesis also argues that the Dream does not provide one with the lasting upward social mobility it promises. Ultimately, this thesis analyzes how each show’s book and score characterizes the Dream, and evaluates primary reviews and advertisements from each show, as well as comments from the cast and creative team. In doing so, it shows that Broadway’s portrayal of the American Dream transcends mere entertainment, and is, instead, a rich response to American politics.

Who wouldn't like aspiring American Dream, me, you, everyone and anyone would desire for. "American dream has become a nightmare". (Pearson 645) This research paper delineates the concept of 'American dream' with resilience of myth and politics, the success and failure, illusion and disillusion, by providing characteristic examples from various works of 20 th century. An equal opportunity applicable to every human to achieve anything which can make life better and richer is defined as American dream. It's a recurring theme in American literature. The disappointment comes when the American dream seems to fail in one's life, for instance in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott. Fitzgerald, the helpless and feeble Willy Loman from The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, on basis of 'psychomachia' on the other side the determination and enthusiasm of the old man from The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Azar Nafisi quotes-"the negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn destroys the vision and the dream". (Nafisi) May be Willy Loman could not reach to riches but one should always be secure and content like the old man to restart after fail. Fitzgerald claims American dream a myth and lack of optimism, but where Gatsby craved for the dream at any cost by any means, which led to isolated death. The victory of Obama has been claimed by American dream without considering colour, race, creed, etc.

The meaning of the "American Dream" has changed over the course of history, and includes both personal components (such as home ownership and upward mobility) and a global vision. Historically the Dream originated in the mystique regarding frontier life. As the Governor of Virginia noted in 1774, the Americans "for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled". He added that, "if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west".

The book Ameryka. Rewizje wizualnej mitologii Stanów Zjednoczonych [America. Revisions of the Visual Mythology of the United States] is a critical analysis of the formation and the subsequent revisions of what the author describes as American visual myths. These myths are embedded in the vast field of visuality, models of vision, images, art and other objects of visual culture, such as film. Ameryka was written, first of all, from the perspective of an art historian, but also an Americanist, hence it offers an interdisciplinary scholarly proposition combining reflections in the fields of art history, visual culture studies and American studies. Following an extensive theoretical introduction, all the chapters are separate but correlated with the book as a whole: there are case studies of the creation of myth-images, particularly in the 19th century, in their diverse forms and media and, more importantly, of how they were revised in art and visual culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. Throughout the book, the author draws an important distinction between the United States and America, which is understood as a symbolic-imaginary field or screen within which American mythology is formed, primarily to neutralize difference and unify the heterogenous American nation. The extensive analyses of artworks, popular images and films demonstrate the way American mythology was gradually deconstructed, especially from the mid-20th century, as a result of the awakening of political consciousness of the marginalized groups, the surge of civil rights struggle and changes within the broader social-cultural landscape of the United States. At the same time, despite these internal interventions and the subsiding economic and cultural hegemony of the USA on the global scene during recent decades, by referring to specific cases and issues of American visuality, the author claims that the basic coordinates of the myth continue to serve as a lasting frame of reference.

Christopher Buck, “Robert Hayden’s ‘[American Journal]’: A Multidimensional Analysis.” Online Journal of Baha’i Studies 2 (2008): 1–37. 

As America’s “Bicentennial poem,” poet-laureate Robert Hayden’s “American Journal” reveals much about the poet’s treatment of American identity, and of his tropical use of “America” as well. The artifice of “American Journal” is quite interesting: “American Journal” purports to be the field notes of a Martian observer who, by his shape-shifting powers, disguises himself in an array of human personas, and who then reports his findings to his superiors, “the Counselors.” "American Journal” introduces the unlikely figure of an alien observer from outer space, whose field-notes are reported in the poem itself. The alien‘s journal about America (hence the title, “American Journal”) is recorded in truncated form—largely by the poetic device known as brachylogy (condensed expression; laconic speech), as in “oceans deserts mountains grain fields canyons / forests variousness of landscapes weathers / sun light moon light as at home much here is / beautiful dream like vistas reminding me of / home.”

A close reading of “American Journal” assumes that these American social identities act as superegos that overarch and refract on individual identities, to which individual identities may be subaltern. In the opening lines of the poem, the poet describes “the americans this baffling / multi people.” Yet, at the end of the poem, the poet is at a loss to adequately account for “their variousness their ingenuity / their elan vital and that some thing essence / quiddity i cannot penetrate or name.” Nevertheless, internal evidence suggests that Hayden treats American identity in nine dimensions: (1) Landscape Identity; (2) Alien (Individual) Identity; (3) Racial Identity; (4) Political Identity; (5) Class Identity; (6) Material Identity; (7) Religious Identity; (8) American (National) Identity; (9) Human Identity.

Citation: Christopher Buck, "Robert Hayden's 'American Journal": A Multidimensional Analysis." Online Journal of Baha’i Studies 2 (2008): 1–37.

This critical qualitative, autoethnographic research project explored how i came to understand the American dream through stories shared with me during semi-structured
interviews, scholarly literature, and my own lived experience. i utilized critical reflexivity to examine the ways in which race, gender, and class appear in a person’s understanding of their life and the American dream. Critical whiteness theory, critical race theory and critical race feminism, and structuralist constructivism guided my understanding of the American dream and how it influences the ways in which individuals and i understand
our lives. Through what i learned, i discuss how the American dream affects education and the way we understand our lives in the United States. These lessons include ideas such as what are the American dream, meritocracy, social mobility, equity, privilege and oppression, and how to achieve success. Impacted areas include conceptions of equity, equality, race, privilege, gender, class, education, success, family, career, and personal values/beliefs.

If Ernesto Cardenal asks God for Marilyn Monroe, in his poem, it is because the American actress is an emblem of the American tragedy and the US Weltanschauung. And you will ask us, what tragedy are we referring to? In reality, she and the American people are one and the same. She and the American heroes, martyrs, and dissidents are one and the same.

Today, on this so-called "Super Tuesday" of dirty Potomac politics; the United States appears to us under the image of a drifting ship, in almost all its orders; the building of the American Ethos about to collapse, and this is not a simple metaphor; a country in which the "merchants of Twenty Century Fox..." -as Cardenal has written- or any of the "merchants" of the large transnationals, continue to profane the temple of both the moral and spiritual body -sacred- of the American people as well as that of Marilyn Monroe, as a type of the people and of the martyrs of this nation.

Wretched and soulless merchants, the tragedy of Marilyn Monroe is the tragedy of that people, outraged by avarice, greed and arrogance; the tragedy of a Nation, of a culture, of a religion, of the pale hope of the genuine American dream, vivified in the virginal geography of the country, in the verses of Walt Whitman or in the songs of Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson; of a United States with heart and soul, although “…destined by Providence – as Simón Bolívar, The Liberator,  wrote – to plague America with misery in the name of Liberty”. And I would add, with humility, to plague the world with misery in the name of its profaned Freedom, symbolized in that sphinx [Σφίγξ] without the body of a lion and without the wings of a bird but with a torch in its right hand extended towards the sky and whose name is actually “La Liberté éclairant le monde” [“Liberty Enlightening the World”].

This paper examines Knut Hamsun's perception of the American way of living as depicted in his Fra det moderne Amerikas aandsliv (The Cultural Life of Modern America, translated into English in 1969 by Barbara Gordon Morgridge), published in Copenhagen 1889, and in one of his short stories, Raedsel (Fear, translated by Sverre Arestad), which he has published fifteen years after his return from America. Hamsun's American experience was rather different than the one of most immigrants in America, but this article demonstrates that the Norwegian writer's insights into the life in the New World, though bitter and inclined to criticism, must be studied in order to achieve a broader perspective upon the immigrant experience in the land of opportunities.

Yesterday, precisely, at the Capitol, in the “temple of democracy” –as Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi pointed out in her brief speech last night-; we were witnesses, in the first row, of the orgiastic staging of that dark and equivocal “American beauty” that keeps, in its entrails, the “New American dream”. A deeply dark aesthetic that the assailants of the Capitol building did not hesitate to show, under all its equivocal and sinister splendor; as dark as the darkest of black ops., as part of the set and setting for a Made in USA coup d'etait.

When the archaism of a constitution written in the time of candles and sailing ships put once again the United States in a mess (abortion crisis and gun' mass murders, after multiple shutdowns at Congress and election in 2016 of a President with a 3 million voices minority), time is come for America to leave its "old regime" institutions and become a modern political nation.

In the United States, sport stars have provided crucial affirmation of the American Dream ideology despite the considerable evidence that questions the validity and appropriateness of this belief for understandings of American society today. The focus on the individualistic achievement, good character and most importantly humble origins of sport stars in film and other popular representations seems to offer dramatic evidence of the openness of opportunity to those with appropriate ‘values’, including hard work and perseverance, within American society. Sports stars, such as Babe Ruth in the past and Michael Jordan more recently, have been crucial to the persistence of this individualist ethic, a central aspect of contemporary capitalist culture internationally.

Online version of entire article available here: http://www.kinema.uwaterloo.ca/article.php?id=573&feature

This chapter contrasts the myth of America as established in the Lewis Allen  (Abel Meeropol) song "The House I Live In" (1936) with the parabolic or satirical songs of the early 1970s written by Randy Newman and presented on his albums "Sail Away" and "Good Old Boys."

In "Long Day's Journey into Night", Eugene O'Neil puts a family on the stage, each member of which is so haunted by bitter memories of their past. The play is set in a long day sinking into night, which symbolizes the whole life of the family sinking into nothingness, and specifically gradual detoriaration of psyche of the characters. As a consequence of the past's constraint over the present and its annihilation of the possibility of a hopeful future, throughout the play, we observe that these characters lack the sense of belonging and have yearning for their true selves they have lost for a long time.

Questo lavoro si occupa del tema dell'American sadness nel reportage narrativo nordamericano contemporaneo e ha lo scopo di dimostrare la dignità letteraria di questa forma narrativa poco conosciuta in Italia. La creative nonfiction è un genere letterario emergente e in via di legittimazione negli Stati Uniti cui è possibile attribuire due paternità: il New Journalism di Tom Wolfe e il nonfiction novel di Truman Capote. Per creative nonfiction si intende una letteratura della realtà caratterizzata dalla presenza dell'autore sulla pagina. Il reportage narrativo è un sottogenere della creative nonfiction che si distingue per una spiccata vocazione giornalistica e per l'elemento del viaggio. L'American sadness è uno stato di malessere che coinvolge gli Stati Uniti, una condizione di disagio più o meno latente, un'ombra che incombe sul sogno americano. Essa riguarda sia l'"asse dell'Inclusione" sia quello "dell'Esclusione" e si manifesta in modo particolarmente evidente alla convergenza dei due assi. "In Cold Blood" di Truman Capote è un precedente illustre nel reportage narrativo nordamericano contemporaneo in cui è possibile riconoscere le dimensioni costitutive del genere e il tema dell'American sadness declinato sulla totalità dei piani individuati. "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" di Joan Didion racconta la sadness interna all'asse dell'Inclusione; "Ladies and Red Lights" di William T. Vollmann quella interna all'asse dell'Esclusione. Anche Sarah Vowell, David Foster Wallace, John Jeremiah Sullivan e George Saunders sono autori di reportage narrativi collocabili distintamente su uno dei due assi. "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" di David Foster Wallace e "The Great Divider" di George Saunders raccontano la sadness della convergenza. La presenza dell'autore tra le pagine dei reportage narrativi permette di scoprire una via di guarigione per l'American sadness, che si cura con l'empatia e l'apertura nei confronti del prossimo.

„Brooklyn’s newest affordable rentals: Lottery open now“ – steht in Großbuchstaben auf dem Flyer, der bei der Sitzung der lokalen Bürgervertretung in Bedford Stuyvesant (Brooklyn) an das Publikum verteilt wird und der dazu auffordern soll, sich bei der angekündigten Wohnungslotterie zu bewerben. 181 ‚bezahlbare’ Neubauwohnungen der insgesamt 363 Wohnungen in der Dean Street 461 werden durch eine Lotterie per Zufallsprinzip an die Bewerber_innen verteilt. Die tendenziell eher einkommensschwächeren Anwohner_innen des von Gentrifizierungsprozessen geprägten Viertels werden innerhalb der Lotterie bevorzugt berücksichtigt, wie die Direktorin der Wohnungsgesellschaft, die diese Wohnungen managt und für die Durchführung der Wohnungslotterie zuständig ist, erklärt und sogleich alle Interessierten auffordert, zu einer Informationsveranstaltung ein paar Wochen später zu kommen.

In 1949 the German-born auteur Max Ophüls made two films that addressed issues of post-war ideology and society in America. Caught engages with the commodifica- tion of the female subject and the preoccupation with capitalist success, both of which are promulgated through aspects of the media as represented in the film. The Reckless Moment examines the stultifying confines of the family unit and the hypoc- risy surrounding notions of class and social standing within American society. Ophüls uses his trademark visual style to frame and interrogate the characters and themes; and in both films the British actor James Mason takes lead roles, his European ‘otherness’ providing the filter through which Ophüls’ indictment of the dominant social order in the post-war period is viewed.

According to Stephen Walt writing in Foreign Policy, “American exceptionalism presume[s] that America’s values, political system, and history are unique and worthy of universal admiration.” However, sustaining the myth of American exceptionalism in an increasingly interdependent world becomes progressively difficult. I intend to show that globalization challenges the American sense of exceptionalism through: China’s developing space program, United States’ (US) resigning control over parts of the internet, and through the weakening American political process.

This critical qualitative, autoethnographic research project explored how i came to understand the American dream through stories shared with me during semi-structured interviews, scholarly literature, and my own lived experience. i utilized critical reflexivity to examine the ways in which race, gender, and class appear in a person’s understanding of their life and the American dream. Critical whiteness theory, critical race theory and critical race feminism, and structuralist constructivism guided my understanding of the American dream and how it influences the ways in which individuals and i understand our lives. Through what i learned, i discuss how the American dream affects education and the way we understand our lives in the United States. These lessons include ideas such as what are the American dream, meritocracy, social mobility, equity, privilege and oppression, and how to achieve success. Impacted areas include conceptions of equity, equality, race, privilege, gender, class, education, success, family, career, and personal values/beliefs.

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.-Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks We obviously understand that projects are 'an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and designed to achieve a particular aim,' but to what end is a project attempted and "completed" successfully-organically , rather? Often do we strenuously 1 make collaborative, if not individualistic efforts to achieve our own goals. Yet, when we place notions of a project in the context of whiteness, white supremacy, and structural oppression, we realize that something is amiss-an aspect of the modes from which Euro-Americans 2 navigate the world that is bereft of an organic interiority-and in fact, it is not erroneous to 3 also add that it's white people across the globe. Collectively, white people are conditioned to the myth of white superiority, and in weaponizing that so-called "superiority," manifests the permeation of whiteness. Therefore, to white people, it is not enough for them to rudely encroach on non-white people quite literally and symbolically. And when we observe their behavior(s)-and the linearity from 1 ​ The term is used to suggest liveliness-stemming from life. 2 Americans of European ancestry. 3 One who thinks and acts organically (from within) as opposed to in a contriving manner.

Sally Kral, an assistant member of the Cornell University Graduate School's communications and outreach branch, interviewed me for the Graduate Student Spotlight series whose archive may be found on the Cornell Graduate School website and which was distributed as part of the weekly Graduate School announcements e-mail.

This study is an attempt to shed light on the hollywoodization of the myth of the  Frontier ― a seminal one in constructing American history and identity ― and E. L.  Doctorow's take on it in his Welcome to Hard Times. Considering ideas regarding the importance of cinema in creating a simulated and hypereal world as well as the 1960s counter-culture, the writers try to demonstrate the way one of the major writers of postmodern fiction aspires to challenge, parody and demythologize this central myth and its Hollywood versions. Central to the discussion is how Doctorow foregrounds the very complexity of this 'demythologizing' venture.

Keywords: E. L. Doctorow, Welcome to Hard Times, hollywoodization, the myth of the
Frontier, postmodern fiction, parody

This essay is the second in a three-part series about ideology and space on AMC's lauded television show "Mad Men." See the attached link to "Flow"'s website, where the article was published, for embedded videos intended to be viewed alongside reading the essay.