THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF PATRIARCHAL-EMBEDDED CULTURAL NORMS ON MODERN WORKERS IN JAPAN AS INVESTIGATED IN PERSONA 4

open_access
Open Access
Author:
Osmanski, Lauren Elyse
Area of Honors:
English
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Joshua Shaw, Thesis Supervisor
Craig Andrew Warren, Thesis Honors Advisor
Elizabeth Fogle, Faculty Reader
Keywords:
Video Games
Game Studies
Literature
Japan
Womenomics
Economics
Queer Studies
Queer Theory
Feminism
Feminist Theory
Symbolism
Mythology
Persona 4
English
Language Arts
Sexuality
Culture
Cultural Studies
Japanese Games
Society
Foreign Relations
Abstract:
This project aims to perform a thorough multidisciplinary investigation that reveals how individuals of all backgrounds suffer due to the oppressive patriarchal norms that are embedded in their culture by demonstrating how the personal struggles they develop are responses to the perpetuation of these norms within their society’s economic social systems—which harms them on both psychological and economic levels—by responding to the cultural critiques present within the Japanese video game Persona 4: Golden. The traditional patriarchal structuring of modern economic systems pressures workers to conform to the inherently discriminating cultural values of their society through their social positioning in the workforce, which perpetuates the dominant patriarchal hegemony that is enforcing the institutionalized marginalization of non-heteronormative/female populations. This project contends that the lives of people of all gender are limited by the patriarchal context of their labor and economic systems, which robs them of their agency of their own lives as the implicit social pressures within their culture’s gender norms pressure them to conform to detrimental traditional values that psychologically traumatize them by denying the legitimacy of their own gender identities and ostracizing them in their communities.