中美英雄对比 英语论文

I Introduction

Hero is a somewhat subjective concept. It generally refers to someone whose ability is beyond the ability of ordinary people, they can lead common people to do something meaningful. Of course, heroes also have their own distinct characters, which are different from nations, countries or regions and so on.

In spite of different personalities of heroes, hero worship exists almost in every type of culture. Heroism, result of hero worship, represents special social cultural pursuit of a culture and to some extend influences the development of a society. However, the definition of the social value of heroism differs with cultures. In this thesis, the author attempted to analyse the hero image of Hiccup in movie How to train your dragon so as to discuss the characters of American hero. By this way, we are available to have a better understanding about their values and outlook on life. In addition, by comparing the similarities and differences of heroism in both America and China in detail, we will have a more profound understanding about the cultural differencise between China and America.

II Literature Review

Previous scholars have made a concrete explaination about heroism and have a brief introduction about its background.

2.1 Definition of Heroism

Along with the progress of human civilization, the understanding of heroism has been formed into two aspects. One is the humanitarian spirit values gradually took the place of the past narrow nationalism, nationalism and racialism values. Heroism has a wide range of significance about mankind spiritual. On the other hand, on behalf of many kinds of culture and different national values, the heroism of different countries in mutual collisions have been constantly understanding and learning from each other. Heroism with the trend of human unity and other various cultural values will always be a pair of contradiction. The United States as a representative of western culture system promoted their cultural values with its strong economic strength. To speak more specificly, that s to advocate the concept of American heroism and shape touching hero image to establish the leading position of western culture .As the globalized world today, in addition to the economic strength, it s more important to emphasize cultural persity and the coexistence of various values.

The view above is from a British writer named Carlisle in his book The heroes and the hero worship. He did a simple elaboration about poeple s understanding to the heroism today so as to emphasize the significance of cultural persity and coexistence of different values. Well, the author s opinion is just consistent with my writing purpose. This thesis is based on the contrast of the American hero and Chinese hero to discuss western values and their outlook on life, so that we can better understand the western culture, their way of thinking and their belief to strengthen the ideological exchanges between Chinese and western and promote the fusion of their values.

2.2 Background of American Hero

In The hero complex in American film, the author Zhou Xiaoling claimed that heroes are the product of group life. As early as ancient times, somebody outstanding in intelligence or in physical strength would appear as pioneer when people felt powerless in front of nature. Among these leaders, those who are superior in character than the ordinary people can be crowned by the title of “hero”. The emergence of the hero came as the public psychological worship to hero, the dreaming of supernormal ability and the desire to succeed. In everyone s inner heart, there is a deep hero complex and worship or yearning to the hero which no doubt can cause our resonance. Film is undoubtedly one of the most powerful art forms. Hollywood as the American “dreamworks” has been constantly weaving a variety of fascinating dreams from the day it began to work. “The hero myth” is without doubt one of the most successful and traditional dream modes. Countless heroes came out from the screen, their behaviors have been widely known, hero complex has become one of the distinct characteristics in American movies. Zhou Xiaoling eludicated the reason about the yearing to hero and enabled us to understand mass psychology to hero worship.

In the article The basic conditons of super civilian hero in American film, the author QiJin argued that “superman”, “spiderman” and “swordsman” these three series of film title are translated as “man”, can be called Hollywood “SanXia” movies. While, in these movies, heroes have supernatural ability, at the same time are ordinary people in daily life, so it can be called them super “civilian hero” with supernatural power. The three films has striking consistency in the literature source, building common American modern myths. America s “SanXia” movies are adapted from cartoon, as modern myth persuiting perfection of human, reflect people s deep potential conscious and unconscious. Why “civilian hero” movie like “SanXia” series in Hollywood are so popular? To explain this, we should get to know about the society and several historical events of the United States. The scholars argued that the appearance of this kind of film is closely related with its national unconscious existing deeply in the United States. So to speak, because of the unconscious desire to

the civilian hero among American people, this type of film is provided for a good opportunity to occupy the marketing. The pursuit of American with deep personal heroism complex and affirmation to each inpidual s value render the appearance of “civilian hero” movie. The author mainly analyzed the background and foundation of the born of its civilian hero, presenting a good reference to understand the civilian hero complex in the United States.

Previous scholars have researched people s psychology to the hero worship and …… 此处隐藏：29611字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……