Iconography, Popular Culture, and American Nationalism develops a model of cultural icons, defining icons as highly visible, culturally variable, and overdetermined auratic images. Situating icons within the context of mass reproduction
technologies and American nationalism, this study seeks to demystify the simple images presented by infantile, national, and scapegoat icons in literature, film, and political rhetoric. Religious imagery is prevelent in most sub-cultures in one way or another, creating a visual blanket of similarities. The visual language of symbols being introduced into the main-stream has abstracted many of their origins and meanings, because people are responding to them on a surface level only. The way that they look/make someone look has become more important, thus making the universality of them highly personal and yet not at all. This phenomena has created an "Imaginary Community" where icons are essential to the physical world being brought together but create a falsehood of togetherness. Our desires can be shaped, directed and redirected. Through a system of cultural beliefs, desire is modeled for subjects. The art of looking, lusting and acting is very influenced by our visual world, especially now that it is so high touch/tech. However, as productive
and reproductive technologies have advanced into the era of mass culture, the shaping of desire with images occurs on a mass scale.
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