Publications

Publication details [#63178]

Khrebtan-Hörhager, Julia and Roberto Avant-Mier. 2017. Despicable Others: Animated Othering as Equipment for Living in the Era of Trump. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 46 (5) : 441–462.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Routledge

Annotation

This paper comparatively explores U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Mexican interculturality in the Despicable Me movie franchise. It asserts that cultural transformations of the main protagonists – Russian Gru and Mexican El Macho – are politically significant cases of U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Mexican interculturality, reflected and constructed by popular culture in general, and by animated cartoons in particular. Conceptualizing and analyzing animation as “equipment for living,” it shows how these cases serve as epistemological and pedagogical tools of confirming U.S.-dominant ideology, and discursively and visually constructing (Russian and Mexican) Others the way that they are currently understood and treated in (the non-fictional) U.S. society.