The Modern Succubus: Selling Sex

Mythology contains many fantastical characters; however, the creature known as the succubus is often overlooked. Because of its nature, the succubus has failed to gain the popularity of vampires or werewolves. A succubus is a creature that is powered literally by physical attraction and the sexual desire from men. Many women today seek and attain power in a similar way to the succubus.

Whatever morality one has, it cannot be denied that women attain power through their appearance and their desirability from men. One example of this practice comes from former Disney Channel star Miley Cyrus. Her descent into scandalous behavior shows that she believed her image of a conservative country girl was not going to further her career. After a change in her branding, Miley Cyrus’s newer music videos, ones in which portray raunchier and more scandalous behavior, broke viewing records. Technically, if her goal was to become a more popular musical icon, then she was successful. Other music stars have achieved fame in similar ways; examples include both Rhianna and Nicki Minaj, who use strong sexual undertones in their endeavor.

The issue of accepting this method of marketing has become more prominent in recent years due to an increased number of female stars marketing their sexuality . Actresses, singers, and reality stars use a method pioneered by American icons such as Marilyn Monroe. Monroe’s sex appeal cannot be denied. Her most iconic images involve her in suggestive poses, such as the image of her dress being blowing up and exposing herself as she walks over a subway grate. Her undeniable appeal even sparked rumors that she had an affair with the most powerful man in the world, the President of the United States.

This type of solicitation can be detrimental to a female star, especially those that start out young in the entertainment industry. Lindsey Lohan and Amanda Bynes are examples of stars who melted down from the pressures of the American spotlight. When they reached an adulthood, Lohan and Bynes tried to change their image to gain more power and popularity; their plans backfired and ruined their lives.

It is undeniable that women may achieve power through this form of sexualization. But as a society, America must ask if selling ourselves as mere sex objects is an appropriate way to achieve power. Shouldn’t women be able to achieve success without sacrificing conservative clothing and unsuggestive words? If not then the young girls growing up in today’s society will have more difficult time not exploiting themselves in a sexual way as they age.

Batman Part Three of Three: The Bat Family

The third and final key to the success of Batman is his relatability. He seeks justice for the death of his parents. While doing this over the years, he has acquired a new family. This allegory of how many families are not conventional helps the reader relate to the series.

Batman, otherwise known as Bruce Wayne, obviously is the most important factor of the Batman comics. His relentless pursuit for justice offers an image of apex humanity. His origin story is not terribly bleak; even though he becomes an orphan, the wealth of his family keeps him afloat. Both his wealth and morality make him accessible to readers; he is the person the readers themselves want to be.

When he was made an orphan, he was put into the care of his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred is the second most important character in the Batman comics. He serves as the new father figure to Bruce and the guardian of his interests. For a long time, he was the only person Batman trusted with his secret identity. His love for Bruce and the Wayne family cannot be denied, especially after the portrayal by Michael Caine in The Dark Knight trilogy.

As Batman fights justice, he takes on a protege. The first one is named Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Robin. Dick Grayson’s character evolves from sidekick to an independent hero named Nightwing. Other characters are introduced throughout the comics including Batgirl, Batwoman, Red Hood, and Oracle. Batgirl becomes Oracle when she is handicapped while fighting crime. This character serves to show the importance of diversity in comics. The Batman comic offers up a crippled character who is still able to serve and aid the community. This diversity and representation is shown throughout the Bat family.

Without the series’s ability to change over time and relate to evolving audiences, combined with its villains and setting, Batman would not be an American cultural icon.

Batman Part Two of Three: The Villains

A protagonist can only be as heroic as his antagonists are wicked. This is one of the keys to Batman’s success and popularity. His comic have produced the world’s most memorable baddies. From their various ailments to their differing psychological diseases, the villains in the Batman comics truly make people love to hate them.

Batman’s villains can be classified in two major categorizes: those with physical enhancements and those with psychological warfare. The first group of villains, those with physical enhancements, represent the fantastical realm of possibilities within the comic book genre. Members of this order include Two-face, Poison Ivy, and Mr. Freeze. One of the physically enhanced villains, Clayface, was an actor who became deformed in an accident. Though he is not widely popular, this shapeshifter should be heralded as a champion for overweight and large people everywhere. While Marvel comics has their main shapeshifter Mystique (a skinny, nude, blue skinned mutant, most recently played by Jennifer Lawrence) as a sex symbol, any popularity attained by Clayface has come from his sheer villainy. Clayface should feel accomplished since he is not “selling sex” like other villains in the comic book genre. On the other hand, it is all but impossible to find a female villain not clad in skimpy costumes. Poison Ivy, for example, wears little more than underwear and plants (most recently played by Uma Thurman). She is a brilliant scientist and environmentalist who falls into chemicals and becomes mutated with the plant poison ivy. These villains tickle the imagination and come to life vividly in both cinema and cartoons.

The second group contains many more villains. The group founded on psychological warfare includes such villains as Ra’s al Ghul, Harley Quinn, Scarecrow, Edward Nigma a.k.a. the Riddler, and the infamous Joker. As the most famous of comic book villains, the Joker has become an icon in himself. As a patron of chaos and anarchy, the Joker represents complex and hypocritical ideas of social order through chaos (represented best on screen by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight). Other villains compel the stories forward with nothing more than their regular human intellects. They show that one does not need fanciful gadgets or gene manipulation to be powerful; they only need their minds.

Many of these villains push Batman to face ethical, physical, and psychological barriers that challenge the reader mentally.

Batman Part One of Three: Gotham

The Fox network’s new show Gotham, based on the comic book character turned American cultural icon, attempts to portray the origins of the characters in the Batman universe. Batman has appealed to a greater fan base than other heroes for decades. This fan base comes from the writers’ ability to portray real life scenarios in the Batman comics. So, the first key to the success of Batman is the setting, Gotham.

When he first appeared to the public, Batman was clad in a blue-grey suit, in sharp contrast to the modern dark batman. At the beginning of the comic book era, Superheros were bright and colorful with little depth. They fought outlandish villains who seemed distant from reality. Over time the comic book world has evolved into the rugged, gritty parallel of society, but the city of Gotham has always been this way.

While Superman lived in Metropolis, an allegory of the best parts of urban living, Batman lived in Gotham. Gotham was and still is the slum of the superhero world. No fictional city is able to inspire a reader to the extent of Gotham. Just the mention of the name Gotham, a dirty, gritty city comes to mind. The setting is one of the most important parts of story telling; Gotham has become home to everything from organized crime, as seen in the show Gotham, to terrorism, as seen in The Dark Knight Rises.

The old adage that says, “the players may change, but the game stays the same” is false for the Batman franchise. His opponents never change, but their methods have become more sinister as the years progressed. His villains have adapted their crimes to parallel society in innovative and provocative ways. The Joker was introduced in the very first issue of Batman, and he has continued to change over the years. In a more recent reincarnation of Gotham, the Joker is not  a clown, but an insane psychopath obsessed with chaos. Batman has achieved such a high level of success because of his and his setting’s ability to adapt with the times.

PSAT/NMSQT

Over one and a half million juniors take the Preliminary Scholarship Aptitude Test or the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test each year. This test is used to measure students across the nation in reading comprehension, mathematics, and English skills. In the new age of social media, juniors across the nation took to twitter, tumbler, and other social media sites to talk about the test. As a high school tradition and now a social media phenomenon, the PSAT/NMSQT has become an icon of teenage America.

Beginning as a scholarship program in 1955, the National Merit Scholarship Program adopted the PSAT as the national qualifying test in 1971. The test continued to evolve into its present form with math, reading, and English sections. There has been some scandal concerning the addition of a second verbal section after a flood of Asian immigrants, who excelled at math, began qualifying for scholarships. With high scores on the PSAT, a student can receive higher scholarship money for college. It has become an almost compulsory activity in high schools around the country and a staple of teenage development.

One of the things that PSAT/NMSQT stresses most about the test is its secrecy; however, since America entered the social media era, this secrecy has all but disappeared. Teenagers have taken to the internet to mock the test. This humorous and avant-garde form of humor breaks many of the testing rules society has set in place. The complete mockery of the PSAT/NMSQT is not a completely vulgar affair. Quite the contrary, this form of ridicule has surprisingly unified teenagers across America.

The educational value of the PSAT can be questioned. It can be called illogical to judge the merit of students based on one test. However, the ability of this test to unify Juniors across the nation is a surprisingly priceless quality. Even without the benefit of scholarships, this American icon needs to remain a staple of high school to unify the otherwise divided cliques of high school.

Christopher Columbus

Every second Monday in October in America is Columbus Day. It is a day dedicated to the discovery of the New World and to all the perceived wonderful things that have come out of European intervention in the Americas. However, many people fail to notice all the tragedies and terrors that were brought about by the man known as Christopher Columbus. Before the era of Anglo settlement in America, the Native Americans lived undisturbed. They formed great civilizations and deep cultural traditions. The Native American way of life was destroyed by Columbus and explorers like him.

Columbus himself wrote, “As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.” One of the very first things Columbus did in the New World was take slaves. His sole purpose was to find rumored hordes of gold and bullion to take back to his employers in Spain. It is a shame that America celebrates a holiday named in honor of a slave trader and murderer. As they were leaving the island of Hispaniola, Columbus and his crew were trading with local Indians. Columbus wanted more than what they were willing to sell him. The Indians were killed, and Columbus headed back to Spain. Back in Spain, he told tales of the mass amounts of gold that could be used by the Spanish so that Spain would finance another voyage. Columbus had seen a little gold in rivers and on Indians but nowhere near the amount he was promising to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

Columbus’s attitude of conquest and lack of mercy set a precedent for all future explorers in the New World. Some may even go as far to say that Columbus was the founder of slavery in America; after all, he did take the first slaves ever in the New World. America should be more culturally sensitive to those Native groups that were slaughtered by Columbus and his men by not honoring him with a federal holiday. History cannot place this false hero and other conquistadors like him on a pedestal to be honored.

Seuss’s Little Secret

No American children’s author has achieved the same amount of recognition as Theodore Seuss Geisel. He has achieved the status of American cultural icon due to his authoring of various children’s books that have become the canon of juvenile literacy. His status is that of a modern Hans Christian Andersen or a Grimm brother. He is a revered writer; however, his book The Seven Lady Godivas is a far stretch from his normal children’s reading.

Seuss is known for whimsical characters, fantastical locations, and convicted morality. The Seven Lady Godivas at first appears to diverge from that notion entirely. The story centers around seven nudist sisters who, according to the text, “were simply themselves and chose not to disguise it”. In the book after their father dies, the sisters vow not to marry until they have found a “horse truth” that will better man’s understanding of horses. These truths turn out to be classic adages, such as “don’t put the cart before the horse” and “you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink”. The Godiva sisters are nudists who search for enlightenment after the death of their father. While many say the inclusion of nudist protagonists is a vulgar metamorphosis for Seuss, this book still reads like one of his classic children’s stories.

Seuss used this nudity as a focal point to draw in the reader; but what keeps one reading is the characterization of seven distinct personalities and the crafty way he incorporates common phrases into a moral lesson, very similar to a fairy tale. For those who do not know, fairy tales were originally for adults; however, modern views have distorted them into children’s stories. Seuss fully establishes himself as one of the greatest American authors with this story. He takes a chance. He crafts a beautiful story of love, devotion, and a desire for social advancement.

The themes of this story appear much like they do in the fairy tales of old, before many were distorted. He characterizes the sisters as nude to show that society focuses too much on race and beauty. In the book, the sisters were smart enough to come up with modern adages still in use today. He shows that anyone can advance society including women and nudists. He also shows that people can sacrifice love for the benefit of society, just as the sisters do not marry until they find their “horse truth”.

All in all, this book is a must read for grown up Seuss fans and those wanting a story where love is not the end-all emotion. The Seven Lady Godivas should be more prominent in the Seuss canon for the simple fact that is challenges society to view these nude women as smart and sophisticated individuals.

Who will be Governor of Texas?

Continuing on the topic of Texas, power in Texas is being shifted to their governor. The two last governors have been a President and a presidential candidate; furthermore, the next governor of Texas will be in charge of the lives of 26.45 million people. So the question the country is asking, who will be the next governor of Texas ?, can be answered with either Greg Abbott or Wendy Davis.

Greg Abbott is the Republican Party nominee for governor. He most recently served as Texas Attorney General, and he proudly proclaims his thirty plus lawsuits against the Obama Administration. He has been elected three terms as Texas Attorney General and served on the Texas Supreme Court. A patron of conservative views and anti-Obama politics, Abbott appears very similar to the retiring Governor Perry.

Wendy Davis is the Democratic Party nominee for governor. She most recently served as a senator for the Ft. Worth area. Davis gained national fame due to her filibuster against anti-abortion laws. Her pink sneakers, worn during the filibusterer, have become an icon of her candidacy. Her liberal views on abortion and her desire to reform education make Davis an underdog; but in recent polls, she has been gaining ground.

The cultural impact of this election cannot be overstated. If Texas votes for a democratic governor, then the next President of the United States will most likely be a democrat. One of the key issues of debate is the reforming of education. While many candidates promise different things, standardize testing cuts among them, the greatest significant is the precedent. Education is the key to future generations, and beginning to look at further reforms and innovations will make Texas successful in the future.

The future of Texas and America is in the hands of Texas voters. Political patterns and new ideals may pave the way for a powerful political shift in the south, or conservative views may hold intact for another political season.

Texas

A cultural phenomenon in itself, Texas has been an American state since 1845. This former republic has an intriguing mix of beliefs and a unique “state nationality”. Due to its unique ideals and political standing, Texas is one of the most important, if not the most important state in America.

Texans love their state. Possession of this deep pride sets Texas apart from other states; it is not only a state but also an idea. Texas is viewed as a powerful entity by its subjects like a living organism. Phrases, such as “Don’t mess with Texas”, attribute to this belief in a living Texas. The phrase treats Texas like it is a friend that one would protect if someone tried to harm it. Furthermore, the state has been turned into a celebrity. As a celebrity, Texas developed itself into an endorsement juggernaut. Texas things or Texas natives use the state as a spokesperson to bolster their image. The state has evolved into a persona that is bigger than life itself, and it uses its image to influence society.

Perhaps the most important factor to the power of Texas is its political weight. With thirty-eight electoral votes, Texas has the second most electoral votes in Presidential elections. It is the cornerstone for the republican ballet and a coveted area for democrats. If the democrats could turn the state in their favor in addition to their other territories, they would be unstoppable. The nation is holding its breath to see what the outcome will be in the 2014 gubernatorial election. The nation is waiting to see if Wendy Davis can tip the scales in favor of the liberals or if Texas will remain conservative.

Whatever the outcome of the Texas election will be, one can predict that the rest of the nation will follow. This state is a trend setter and a prideful beast. Without it, American pride and American culture would be missing a fundamental building block in the blueprint of the North American continent.