Description
Science fiction films are culturally ubiquitous, but beyond their functions as entertainment, they also have implications for the attitudes and ideologies of their audiences. Their fantasy settings and situations position them to allegorically reflect and constitute the experiences and values of a culture. My focus in this thesis is to further understand how such allegorical narratives function in relation to American Exceptionalism. Using Milford and Rowland’s (2012) situated ideological allegory as a theoretical framework, I analyze the films Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), and Star Trek Beyond (2016) in order to explore how the rhetorical functions of each film contribute to the ideological framework of American Exceptionalism. Situated ideological allegory is a critical tool that I use to examine how a combination of subversion and reinforcement of dominant ideologies within a text can provide insight into inter- and intra- ideological values and identities. Keywords: Situated ideological allegory, American Exceptionalism, science fiction, myth
