This study aims to analyse the representation of Scottish and English national identity in the tv-series Outlander (2014-). By recreating a historically influenced narrative of relations between Scotland and England, in the aftermath of the Union of 1707 and the upcoming Jacobite rebellion of 1745, the series also mediate a disputed collective British identity. Therefore, it is imperative to analyse how pop-culture functionalises memories of nations’ historical past to influence contemporary identities. First, I establish an inventory of semiotic mythic tokens of national identity. I then conduct a contextual analysis of national discursive identity on these. A further theoretical sociohistorical framework of contemporary ideology, mediated through pop-culture, materialises Outlanders impact on viewers’ own creation of identity. Through representations of myth Outlander mediates the stereotypical, romanticised image of Scottish highlanders as “superstitious barbarians” - a dualistic concept of national identity, depending on its context. To the viewer it’s an idealised image of someone rebellious, living outside the industrialised and modernised society. To the English/British soldiers it’s an image of the underdeveloped, uncivilised savage, the soldiers themselves being portrayed in Outlander as the cultivated superior in pursuit of cultural salvation for their inferior. The national discourse of both nations is symbiotic and dependent, each in need of the other’s binary identity to recreate its own. However, establishing a collective British national identity in Outlander also means a cultural sacrifice of the inferior to the superior – the cultural heritage of British identity should build on English national discourse alone. An important conclusion this study draws is the similarity between the dependency national discourses have to their binary “other” and contemporary society depending on the past in the creation of its identity. This recreational process is no longer, in a time of mass media, solely inherited by individual collective communities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-79975 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Hågbäck, Moa |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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