Proceedings of the
at the University of Debrecen
on December 9, 2009
Edited by Zoltán Simon
Debrecen
2010
Proceedings of the 1st American Studies MA Conference at the University of Debrecen
Some preliminary notes
As part of their curriculum, first-year students in the North American
Studies disciplinary MA (Master of Arts) program offered at the Institute of
English and American Studies of the University of Debrecen are required
to write and deliver “conference papers” on a freely selected topic within
the broader thematic category of American studies. This requirement is
part of the “Introduction to the Profession of American Studies" course,
one that all first-year MA students in American studies must complete,
which is designed to provide students with an introduction to the field of
American Studies, and in particular the nuts and bolts of the practice of
the profession.
The original idea laid down in the syllabus was that students would choose
a topic for their paper, usually either related to their undergraduate thesis
or already in preparation for a master’s thesis, create an abstract in
response to a “call for papers,” research the primary and secondary
sources available in print and electronically, and present their papers to
their peers in the classroom. Halfway into the semester in the fall of 2009,
when this course was first offered in the newly launched MA program, it
was decided, in consultation with the students themselves, that making
the conference into a semi-public event would be a win-win situation for
all parties involved.
Such a mini-conference, it was thought, would provide an opportunity for
students to present their papers to a larger audience than their immediate
peers. It was believed that students, at this early state of their academic
careers, would benefit from exposure to a wider audience, consisting of
interested faculty from across the Institute, fellow students
(undergraduate or graduate), as well as members of the general public,
who could ask questions and engage the students in an academic
dialogue. The conference was also designed to simulate the experience of
not only participation in, but some aspects of the organization of a
scholarly event. Thus, as part of their preparation for a professional
career, students are given an opportunity to gain first-hand experience in
both organizing and participating in a scholarly event. Further, we believe
that the diverse topics chosen by the students would be of interest and
appeal to a wider audience, both from within and even from outside the
Department of North American Studies.
The procedure adopted in the course is the following. Students select a
topic for a paper within the discipline of American Studies (usually on
topics either related to their undergraduate thesis or already in
preparation for a master’s thesis), which is subject to approval by the
instructor. They create an abstract in response to a Call for Papers,
research the available primary and secondary sources available in print
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Proceedings of the 1st American Studies MA Conference at the University of Debrecen
and electronically, and present their papers to their peers, as well as to
interested faculty and members of the general public. As a follow-up to
the conference, the papers are finalized and submitted, and are
subsequently also made available on the website of the conference
(located at http://amstudconf.comoj.hu), in the virtual proceedings of the
conference—this document.
As mentioned above, the North American Studies MA program at the
University of Debrecen was launched in September 2009, and accordingly,
the 1st American Studies MA Student Conference was held on December 9,
2009 in the Main Building of the University of Debrecen. In addition to
writing the papers, students also participated in the organization of the
conference in a variety of ways from brainstorming for ideas to helping set
up the room and even contributing snacks. The Institute of English and
American Studies contributed by way of providing the venue, along with
the necessary equipment and a most indispensable part of all
conferences—coffee.
It is hoped that the conference will become a regular, annually organized
event, and will attract, provided that it is sufficient publicity, an
increasingly large audience in subsequent years. The potential outreach of
such a conference could include undergraduate students of English
(majors and minors) or even beyond (from other degree programs, such
as history, political science or elsewhere), graduate students in other
programs interested in the work of fellow students in American Studies,
faculty members from within and outside of the Institute, or interested
members of the general public. As far as presenters are concerned, in the
course of the next conference, scheduled to be held in early December
2010, our “by-then-veteran” American Studies students, for each of whom
this conference was the first opportunity to present a paper, will be invited
to return and join the new students (for whom it will be a requirement)
and thus help them also in their own in(tro)duction to the profession of
American Studies.
We are looking forward to welcoming you at the 2nd American Studies MA
Conference. If you wish to find out more about this event, please check
back to the conference website in the fall of 2010, or send an e–mail to
zsimon@dragon.unideb.hu. In the meantime, on the following pages we
present the work of the participants of the first conference.
On behalf of the organizers,
Zoltán Simon
Assistant professor
IEAS, University of Debrecen
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Proceedings of the 1st American Studies MA Conference at the University of Debrecen
Table of Contents
In the online version of this document, please hold down the <Ctrl> key and then click on one of the
titles below to jump directly to the paper.
Ábel Anita
Native American Identity Crisis in the 20th-century United
States
5
Anett Bácsi
A Comparative Analysis of American and Hungarian Rap
Music, Based On Rap Lyrics and Videos
16
Czitai Balázs
The Watergate Scandal and Deep Throat
36
Duró Ágota
Thomas Jefferson’s Antinomic Attitude toward
Miscegenation
45
Horváth Gábor
Post-9/11 symbolism in The Dark Knight
58
Kontér Erik
The Economic Aspect of Mexican Illegal Immigration:
Undocumented Foreign Workers in the United States
69
Nánási Timea
Meaning and Importance of Nature, Ceremony and
Ancestors for Native-American People
92
Pájer Alíz
Effects of World War I on American Literature
101
Rendes Ildikó
The Limits of the Myth of the West: Native, Japanese
and Mexican American Experience in the United States
114
Sáfrány Beáta
Media Coverage of School Shootings
127
Sipos Nóra
Coca-Cola’s Spread Represents the Process of Globalization
142
Szabó Emma
Judgements and Opinions about the Kennedy Assassination
in 2009
153
Uzonyi Anita
Leo Szilard: His Contribution to the Atomic Bomb and His
Crusade for Peace
164
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Proceedings of the 1st American Studies MA Conference at the University of Debrecen
Anita Ábel
Native American Identity Crisis in the 20th-Century United States
When the first colonizers arrived at the North American continent, they came to the
conclusion that the New World was empty. Yet, they had to realize very soon that they were
not alone and that the new land had already been inhabited for a considerable amount of time.
As the early colonizers did not know how to live side by side the Native Americans, the
following generations had also no idea how to maintain good relationship with the Indians.
Unfortunately, the inability to solve this problem has become the common heritage of
American Indians and European Americans throughout the history of the United States. As a
result, a series of historical events and governmental policies had contributed to the
emergence of the present-day phenomenon of identity crisis among the Native Americans.
Besides, there are other sources regarding this state of identity quest such as the cultural
phenomena of stereotyping, discrimination and mimicry as it is perceptible in the relationship
between the members of the dominant white society and Native Americans. In my research
paper, I would like to examine the Indian identity crisis in the twentieth-century United States
through taking into consideration the sources I have already mentioned and highlighting
possible means of survival like Pan-Indianism and Indian literature.
First of all, in order to understand how the historical events, or rather government
policies, of the Indian removal, the launching of the federal boarding school system, and the
Indian relocation helped the development of Native American identity crisis, it is essential to
point out two cultural pillars of Indian life. The Indians’ affection to their land and the power
of their oral tradition are vital components of tribal identity for them. First, I would like to
emphasize the significance of a sense of place for the Native people. For the Indians the
location where their tribes have come to the Earth is the center of the universe, that is, a
sacred place. According to the Native American worldview, imagination creates the world. As
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a result, memory of the land is part of their culture. Tribal history is built upon the stories told
about the land. In the light of these facts, it becomes more understandable how the Indian
Removal in the 1830s have paved the way for the emergence of identity crisis in the twentieth
century. In 1830, the Congress passed the Indian Removal Act under the administration of
Andrew Jackson. The act “ authorized the removal of Indian tribes to a large, unorganized,
‘permanent’ Indian territory west of the Mississippi River” (Hirschfelder 34). The best-known
phase of the removal is probably the Cherokees’ Trail of Tears during the winter of 1838-39
(34). While this forced westward movement of Native peoples meant a great territorial
acquisition for the dominant white Americans, it has engraved upon the mind and soul of
every Native American a sense of incomprehensible loss regarding their culture, traditions
and spiritual power. The fact of the matter is that a tribe can only be in its full spiritual power
where its members have come to the Earth. The farther they move from the center, the weaker
they become spiritually, and their survival based on a strong attachment to their land is
threatened.
Another important pillar of Native American culture and Indian identity formation is
the oral tradition. In the Indian worldview, the Word and imagination have a great creative
and healing power. For the members of a tribe their oral literature is the survival of their
culture and spirituality. In the course of the storytelling event, tribal people preserve and
remember the basis of their culture. The Word places them in the world that is why they
believe that people define themselves with everything they say.
N. Scott Momaday in “The Man Made of Words” shows clearly that the oral tradition
is a vital part of American Indian identity: “an Indian is an idea which a given man has of
himself. […] And that idea, in order to be realized completely, has to be expressed” (Hobson
162). In other words, the individuals as Indians must live spiritually through the idea that
they imagine of themselves. Nevertheless, it is not enough to have an idea within them, the
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individuals must realize that idea in words, in their tribal language. Then, and only then, they
are alive both physically and spiritually.
I think, this brief summary about the importance of the word in the identity formation
makes it very clear what an enormous harm has been done to Indian children at the offreservation boarding schools. After the federal government realized that reservations isolated
the Native Americans instead of solving the tense relationship between them and the
government, Congress decided that the best resolution for the problem would be the total
assimilation of Indians. As a result, federal boarding schools were established outside the
reservations. They were established outside, and quite far from, the reservations. The motto of
this federal policy was expressed by “the Father of the US Boarding School Movement,”
Richard Henry Pratt, in 1890 as follows: “Kill the Indian and save the man” (Hirschfelder
129). That is, destroy the identity of the Native Americans and then build them into the
dominant white society. To achieve this goal, federal boarding schools deprived children of
“all outward and inward signs of […] identification with tribal life, at the same time
instructing them in the values and behaviors of white culture” (128). “Children caught
speaking their Native language or performing religious rituals” (129) were severely punished.
In other words, they were denied to use their own mother tongue in which they could express
the idea within themselves. Without the words of their tribal language, they became unable to
create their own identity because not only the Words were missing but also the traditions and
the spiritual power located in it. Consequently, the emergence of identity crisis was
encouraged with the foundation of federal boarding schools.
At this point, it is worth evaluating the historical background of relocation, another
source of identity crisis, which accompanied the federal government’s Termination policy as
an attempt to assimilate the Native Americans in order to understand it. In the wake of the
twentieth century the “products of the boarding-school system were among the first to
formally organize a Pan-Indian group. The Society of American Indians” (Hafen 9) was
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founded in 1911 and, despite the fact that it collapsed during the 1920s, (9) “their work” led
“to the American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924” (9). After that, in 1928, the Meriam report,
“a shocking study […] exposed the poverty on reservations” (Hirschfelder 148) and “was
particularly critical of the system of federal education for Indian children, especially of the
boarding schools” (Handbook 4: 265). Owing to this survey, the Indian Reorganization Act
was passed in 1934 as part of the Indian “New Deal”(Hirschfelder 148). The act meant that
tribal governments, previously suppressed by federal power on reservations, were renewed. In
addition, it granted religious freedom to the reservation Indians. What is more, it “introduced
federal programs supporting Indian agriculture, vocational education, economic development,
and Indian employment preference in the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs]” (149). To tell the
truth, this was the legislation that the Truman administration wanted to destroy with the
Termination policy (Handbook 4: 270).
Unhappy with reorganization during the 1940s, Congress criticized the costs
of BIA operations and the slow pace of Indian assimilation. A new policy
took shape, aimed at solving the “Indian problem” by terminating the special
relationship between Indians and the federal government, regardless of
whether or not Indians wanted or were prepared for it. In 1953, Congress
defined official congressional termination policy in House Concurrent
Resolution 108. (Hirschfelder 156)
In short, this twentieth-century policy that triggered relocation combined the painful
experience of the loss of tribal land and language. Thus, it deprived the Native Americans of
their tribal culture and the two vital pillars of Indian identity. In urban centers, the Indians
have become isolated without their native community. They shattered spiritually because of
being far from the center of their spiritual power. Among the white citizens, they were
expected to speak English to get a job and stay alive.
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In effect, the historical events of removal, boarding school education and relocation
resulted in a phenomenon of American Indian identity crisis.
After this brief historical overview, I am going to focus on the cultural phenomena of
stereotyping, discrimination and mimicry as it is perceptible in the relationship between the
members of the dominant white society and Native Americans. Homi K. Bhabha’ s book The
Location of Culture explains in detail what these concepts mean by placing the Native
American search for an identity in the context of colonial oppression.
In the third chapter of his book, Bhabha claims that the stereotype is the major
discursive strategy of the colonial discourse (66). In the process of setting up a stereotype, it is
important for the people who represent the oppressive culture to describe the oppressed in
their mother tongue, which is never the native language of the discriminated. This form of
description proves that white people possess the necessary power to hold down Native
Americans, since they can use the discursive strategy of stereotyping. The Indians have
become the victims of stereotyping as a result of the dominant culture having started to use
language as a form of discrimination, which has made it more difficult to the American
Indians to create their own identity.
This latter fact may be in itself a source of the identity crisis Native Americans have to
face, because language and words occupy a highly significant place in their culture, as I have
already mentioned this. During the white man’s constant attempts to colonize and assimilate
the Indians, they were expected to learn the English language, the channel through which they
were discriminated against. The final result of being forced to adapt to the dominant culture’s
language culminates in many Native Americans becoming inarticulate such as Laurel Hole In
The Day in Gerald Vizenor’s Wordarrows (47-53). Thus, they fall into a deep identity crisis
because without the words of their tribal language they cannot express the idea inside
themselves.
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In the course of his analysis of the colonial discourse, Bhabha makes a distinction
between metaphoric and metonymic stereotyping (74-75). In metaphoric stereotyping, there is
a common element between the colonizer and the colonized. For example, the image of the
noble savage is a positive stereotype in the sense that in it the Indian is perceived as the noble,
innocent child of nature, which is a pre-civilization state of humankind, that civilized white
people have lost. This is the aspect of the noble savage image with which white people can
identify themselves and it becomes the link between the colonizer and the colonized. Still, the
word savage contains a reference to the inferiority of the Indian to the white person.
In contrast, in metonymic stereotyping there is no connection between the colonizer
and the colonized. It is about the total disavowal of the ‘Other’ and this kind of negative
stereotyping applies the image of the wild savage, who is aggressive and nowadays frequently
associated with the drunken Indian. This dismissive attitude from the part of the colonizer
turns up in Vizenor’s narrative “Marleen American Horse,” in which none of the responsible
agencies agrees to help the protagonist get rid of her alcoholism and be with her children
again (Wordarrows 38-46).
Whether it is a positive or a negative image that is represented by the two kinds of
stereotyping, both of them remain a means of distinguishing the Indian from the white person.
The mere existence of these images creates an identity crisis in Native Americans. In both
cases, they should adapt to stereotypes coming from outside their culture, created by the
dominant white world. This can be interpreted as colonial oppression, since this form of
adaptation has never been a part of the Indian way of life. The question is whether they accept
the stereotypes, which may result in losing their own Native American identity and traditions
or they insist on being Indians, and reject to adapt to any of these misrepresentations. This
latter decision will certainly exclude them from the dominant white society and they will be
destined to live isolated on a reservation or become inarticulate in both worlds.
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After examining thoroughly stereotyping as a means of colonial oppression and thus a
source of identity crisis, it is worth having a look at another notion called mimicry that
affirms in the Indians the feeling of being lost. In The Location of Culture Bhabha defines this
other means of colonial oppression in the chapter “Of Mimicry and Man The ambivalence of
colonial discourse” as follows: “mimicry emerges as one of the most elusive and effective
strategies of colonial power and knowledge” (85) and “colonial mimicry is the desire for a
reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not
quite” (86). In the case of Native Americans, mimicry means the copying of the white world
and the ways of the dominant white culture. Despite all the efforts made to become a part of
the white society, Indians are destined to remain “almost the same, but not quite” (86).
Mimicry is accompanied with the phenomenon called “partial presence” (88) which
implies that Indians are never completely there in any of the two worlds, neither in their own
nor in the Whites’, because they always have to deny one of them in order to become a
member of the other. So Native Americans are forced to make a decision whether they ignore
the dominant culture or leave fully behind their Indian identity in the course of total mimicry.
If they choose the former alternative, it means that they become outsiders in a society, which
intrudes into their native world via its institutions and rules. In the latter case, they risk losing
not only their Indianness but also their future, because they cannot move forward without
looking back at their past.
Unfortunately, mimicry has another collateral, which Bhabha calls “double vision”
(88). It stems from “the partial presentation/recognition of the colonial object” (88). As a
result, the victims of mimicry have become “the authorized versions of otherness” (88), while
“the observer becomes the observed and ‘partial’ presentation rearticulates the whole notion
of identity and alienates it from essence” (89). For example, during the process of assimilating
Native Americans, those who have chosen to fully adapt to the white world are also expected
to accept the stereotypes white people created for them. This means that these Indians should
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see their own people in the light of these misrepresentations, which they obviously cannot
afford to do, owing to the fact that they have been brought up among tribal people, thus
cannot really break away from their Native American origin.
The partial presence and double vision aspects of mimicry result eventually in losing
the Native American identity which evokes frustration in Indians. One way of coping with
this tension is to externalize it, which manifests in aggressive behavior that gives way to the
wild savage stereotype. Another method of handling frustration is internalization. As a result,
Indians often turn against themselves and even commit suicide in many cases. Owing to the
fact that in mimicry Native Americans will never be the same as white people, that is they
will never become full members of the dominant white society, mimicry turns into a dead end
in the colonial discourse for both the colonizer and the colonized, deepening the crisis of
searching for an identity among Indians.
After the thorough analysis of the historical and cultural background of Native
American identity crisis prevalent among twentieth-century Indians in the United States, it is
time to highlight at least two means of survival. One of these is Pan-Indianism and the
formation of the Native American Church, and the other is the renewal and preservation of
tribal culture and oral tradition in twentieth-century Native American literature.
To my mind, it is worth discussing Pan-Indianism together with Indian literature as a
solution for the identity quest because some elements of this movement can be traced in
Momaday’s novel, House Made of Dawn, and Vizenor’s short story collection, Wordarrows.
As far as I can remember, I have already mentioned that the first Pan-Indian group was the
Society of American Indians, which achieved that the federal government passed the
American Indian Citizenship Act (Hafen 9). Another important part of the movement is, as
Jane P. Hafen claims in her essay, “Pan-Indianism has had one of its most successful
manifestations in the peyote culture of the Native American Church. […], this organization is
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a product of cultural mediation, blending traditional practices with Christianity and
developing new rituals” (9).
Perhaps the best description of the Church can be found in House Made of Dawn,
more precisely in “The Priest of the Sun” chapter. Here Tosamah, the Priest of the Sun, the
minister of the Native American Church in Los Angeles, gives two sermons. In the first one,
he uses Momaday’s concepts about the Word (91-98) as it is discussed in “The Man Made of
Words.” Then he preaches about the Kiowa migration story (House Made of Dawn 127-139),
which can be found in The Way to Rainy Mountain (5-12), another work of Momaday. In both
sermons, the storytelling event is highly significant because oral literature is survival,
maintenance and in the course of storytelling the traditions are kept alive. The most essential
components of telling a story are all perceptible in Tosamah’s speeches. One of these is
flexibility, that is the tale can be changed according to the given circumstances in order to
heal the problems of the tribe, educate, entertain or build community. In the novel, Tosamah
mixes his lecture about the Word with the Revelations of John from the Bible thus showing
the difference between the Native and the white perception of language (91-98). The other
component is the intercrossing of texts, which is a common phenomenon in Indian literature.
For example, the legend of “the stars of the Big Dipper” is described with the very same
words in both House Made of Dawn (131) and The Way to Rainy Mountain (8). While
enumerating the stories that are parts of Indian culture, Tosamah, and thus Momaday and
Native American literature itself, preserves a vital element of identity formation for the
Indians.
To continue with, I would like to emphasize another possibility in oral tradition and
literature that can be regarded as a means of survival, namely the role of the trickster figure in
trickster narratives and in Vizenor’s short story collection. First and foremost, the trickster is a
kind of semi-god, has several lives, that is immortal. S/He establishes traditions for the tribe,
and when he is unable to develop, it reflects that something is wrong with the community in
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which s/he is present. He is a culture hero for the Indians because he is capable of mediating
between the two worlds, the spiritual and the physical in traditional narratives, and in the
twentieth century s/he is able to move between the dominant white culture and the Native
world. In this way, he embodies the Indians’ desire to keep their traditions and be useful
members of the mainstream society at the same time. As the Priest of the Sun helps his people
survive in Pan-Indianism and the Native American Church, Vizenor, disguised as Clement
Beaulieu, assumes the role of the trickster, and tricks his people into a better life. He uses
silence as one of the most important elements of storytelling to generate ideas and answers
from the Indians and all of his readers. In the light of these facts about literature, I believe, it
has become obvious that the renewal of oral tradition in twentieth-century Native American
literature is a healing ceremony for the Indians suffering from identity crisis.
Finally, I want to point out the significance of the Red Power Movement, which is an
offspring of Pan-Indianism in the second half of the 1900s. Similarly, to the beginnings of the
Pan-Indian movement, it has come to life as a result of unfavorable treatment of American
Indians by the federal government. “The Red Power Movement that emerged in the 1960s
was, in part, a response to the devastating impact of termination policies. Ironically, one
consequence of the relocation of Indians to cities was a drive for pan-Indian unity, an
emphasis on self-determination, and a sense of militancy” (Hirschfelder 162). As a result,
three famous events happened at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Native
Americans occupied the Alcatraz in 1969 claiming that it had originally been Indian land in
order to raise public notice of their grievances (162). They also organized a pan-Indian
demonstration called “The Trail of Broken Treaties” (162). “A protest for sovereignty and
treaty rights, it took the form of a march from San Francisco to Washington, DC, in the fall of
1972” (162). In the end, “the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, DC,” (162)
was occupied. In 1973, Native Americans “took over the hamlet of Wounded Knee” (162).
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Once more in history, tribal people and the federal government faced each other at the scene
of the 1890 massacre (162).
In my opinion, the emergence of twentieth-century Native American literature, the
religious movement of Pan-Indianism and more radical militant activities have all contributed
to the destruction of identity crisis among American Indians. What they really lack is the
community, the tribal relations and traditions. That is why, they organize religious occasions
and stand up together for their rights in the form of the Red Power Movement. I think, these
efforts to create a sense of belonging to somewhere help urban Indians overcome the present
state of identity crisis.
In conclusion, I would like to point out that the Native American search for identity
has many sources. In the course of looking for the origins of identity crisis, not only historical
events and government policies like the Indian removal, the establishment of federal boarding
schools or relocation can be blamed for this state, but also cultural phenomena such as
stereotyping, discrimination and mimicry. Yet, where there are problems there have to be
solutions as well. On the one hand, in the Pan-Indian movement Native Americans can feel a
sense of community, which they lack in urban centers. They can get attention and fight for
their rights when they organize mass demonstrations like the occupation of Alcatraz, or the
Trail of Broken Treaties. On the other hand, in twentieth-century American Indian literature,
especially in the works of Momaday and Vizenor, Native people can find everything they
miss either on reservations or in urban centers. Their traditions, culture, belief system,
religion and attachment to the land can be traced in the literary works of art written by Indian
authors. I would like to conclude my paper with Arlene Hirschfelder’s words thus asserting
that the above-mentioned means of survival “exemplify active Indian resistance to cultural
annihilation” (176).
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Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Hafen, P. Jane. “Pan-Indianism and Tribal Sovereignties in House Made of Dawn and The
Names.” Western American Literature 34:1. (Spring 1999): 7-23.
Sturtevant, William C., ed. Handbook of North American Indians: History of Indian White
Relations. (15 vols.)Washington: Smithsonian, 1988.
Hirschfelder, Arlene. Native Americans: A History in Pictures. New York: Dorling, 2000.
Momaday, N. Scott. House Made of Dawn. New York: Harper, 1968.
Momaday, N. Scott. “The Man Made of Words.” The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of
Contemporary Native American Literature. Ed. Geary Hobson. Albuquerque: New
Mexico UP, 1979. 162-173.
Momaday, N. Scott. The Way to Rainy Mountain. New Mexico UP, 1969.
Vizenor, Gerald. Wordarrows: Indians and Whites in the New Fur Trade. Minneapolis:
Minnesota UP, 1978.
Works Consulted
Lecture notes from the Oral Tradition in Native American Poetry and Fiction course.
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Proceedings of the 1st American Studies MA Conference at the University of Debrecen
Anett Bácsi
A Comparative Analysis of American and Hungarian Rap Music,
Based On Rap Lyrics and Videos
It is true that hip hop and rap were born in America, but they do exist in Hungary too, and
though the two nations’ rap cultures are based on similar pillars, they are certainly not copies
of each other. Looking through the performers and the actual products born out of this genre,
we can see that, without reference to one’s nationality, rappers deal with themes like politics,
social criticism, national identity, racism, violence, the role of women, etc. in both countries.
We will see that the major themes of rap music are the same in The United States of America
and in Hungary, but there are numerous differences in their development and in their details.
Moreover, the similarities of the two nations’ rap music and the differences between them
reflect genuinely numerous parallels of and differences between the mindsets of the citizens
of these two nations.
In the first place, I would like to say a few words about the birth of hip hop. In the
second half of the nineteenth century the United States of America went through significant
changes both physically and spiritually. After the World Wars it gradually became the most
powerful country of the world and its leaders started into significant building operations. New
York, more precisely Manhattan, became the so-called “capital of the world” and this title
required amazing architectural projects too. Robert Moses, who is said to be the “master
th
builder” of New York City in the mid- and late-20 century, was the one whose work led to
the situation in which hip hop could born. It was Moses’ plan in the ‘60s, to build tower
blocks and an expressway through The Bronx. The appearance of skyscrapers and highways
did not just change the city-landscape, but also changed the living conditions of New
Yorkers—thousands of families and businessmen move away from the area. African
Americans and Hispanic Americans replaced the former residents in the ghettos, but since
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factories, companies and stores also moved away, unemployment was very high (Kaminski).
Because of poverty and hopelessness, the number of crimes spread. The youth created
numerous gangs and usually fought against each other. As we can see it also in movies about
this period, for example in “A Bronx Tale,” directed by Robert De Niro, sometimes it was
enough to turn the wrong corner or say something wrong and it cost one’s life. Hip hop was
born when people were fed up with these gang fights and searched for something to replace
physical violence.
Hip hop is what connected people, primarily teenagers, who lived in the inner-city in
the second half of the twentieth century and were searching for a way of self-expression and a
way to break out from poverty. This culture formed their behavior, their dance style, clothing,
language and their whole mindset. Based on rebellion against social norms and conventions
four major elements emerged, namely djing, emceeing/rap, break dance and graffiti/writing.
Every aspect still exists and by now has become known in all parts of the world, but the most
popular one is emceeing, or rap in other words which emerged from the habit that DJs hailed
their friends and started to talk to their audience in rhymes, entertaining the dancers and
themselves too. Since playing music needed much attention, DJs let other people, usually a
gifted friend, to entertain the dancers with rhymes. This person was called – and is called
today – the Master of Ceremony (MC), from which the term emceeing derived (Davey 3 ).
MCs gradually started to put messages into their rhyming verses, and took advantage
of the great thematic freedom which rap offered. People living in the ghettos realized that
instead of chanting meaningless rhymes, they should give voice to important issues of society
such as poverty, drug consumption, violence, trespass, racism and so on, and inform listeners
about the bad conditions of inner-city youngsters. These became the most fundamental
themes of rap lyrics which, as the publishing of rap albums fortunately got going in the 1980s,
could by the end of the decade reach not only people in an MC’s close environment, but
millions of listeners all over the world. What started with chanting meaningless rhymes to the
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beat of the music has turned into a musical subgenre by now that calls attention to the
problems of society and describes the difficulties one has to face with in life. Let us see these
fundamental aspects and themes of –American and Hungarian—rap music in details!
The most important theme of rap is politics. “Throughout history, music originating
from America's Black communities has always had an accompanying subculture reflective of
the political, social and economic conditions of the time. Rap is no different” (Davey 1).
Dealing with the events of one’s neighborhood or one’s country and with its public life – in
other words, doing politics is one of the essential pillars of the style. As early as in the 1980s
rappers started to formulate social problems and social messages on their records. They broke
with the tradition of creating hip hop music only for dancing, and began to give voice to their
displease in their lyrics about their environment, their country or even the whole World. They
usually wrote from the perspective of inner-city youth, since this was the life they knew from
experience. This kind of music is usually referred to as political rap and one of its first
examples was “The Message” from 1982 written by Joseph “Grandmaster Flash” Saddler, a
pioneer of hip hop music. There is a very strong political message in this song and its slow
beat calls attention to the lyrics and heightens the strenght of the words further. If one listens
to this song thoughtfully, one can hear the extensive social criticism from the first line to the
last. To mention just a few lines as examples, he says “all the kids smoke reefer, I think it’d
be cheaper / If I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper,” “I can’t walk through the park,
cause it’s crazy after the dark / Keep my hand on the gun, cause they got me on the run” or
“You grow in the ghetto, living second rate/And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate / The
places you play and where you stay / Looks like one great big alley way” (Appendix 1).
This kind of music is not just about dissatisfaction and complaining neither in the
United States nor in Hungary. It is rather about drawing attention to the problems and a wish
to find solutions. Grandmaster Flash talked about alcoholism, homelessness, fights or the
huge gap between social layers in “The Message,” the same way as Thysta, a Hungarian
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teenager, a beginner rapper does in his recent song “Vágom Milyen” (Appendix 2). From
these, we can get information not just about their own past and their own circumstances, but
about the situation and problems of the lower class. These performers are victims of poverty,
racism, violence in family and they are flesh and blood examples for dropping out of school,
searching for solution in alcohol or in drugs, and so on.
Although the main point in the abovementioned lyrics is giving voice to
dissatisfaction, social criticism in rap music does not equal with the desire to leave the city or
the country where the performer lives. Especially not in the States. On the contrary, there is a
very strong national identity and patriotism expressed by most of the American rappers and
by many of the Hungarian ones too. Rappers generally write about problems in order to help
the development of their society and they are really solicitous about the fate of their people
and their country. An example for this pride in spite of having problems can be the “I’m
American” (Appendix 3) written by Stuck Mojo, an American rap-rock band.
While being proud to be American is essential to every citizen of the States from the
birth of its nation, we have to note that expression of patriotism is not so accepted in Hungary,
since, thanks to the recent political events, it is usually connected to the right wing or even to
the extreme right. Fortunately, we still have rappers who dare to emphasize their pride to be
Hungarian and to live in this country or across our borders, for example 2arc from
Transylvania, José from Slovakia, FankaDeli from Kecskemét, Thysta from Ózd, and the IFS
from Szeged usually declares their patriotism in almost all of their songs. The situation is
similar with national emblems. While in America people usually have national flags even on
their houses and flags often appear in music videos, for example in “I’m an American”
produced by American hip hop group La Coka Nostra, it is not so natural in Hungary.
Moreover, we have a national flag, namely the flag of the Árpád House, which thanks to the
recent political events is regarded as fascist and downright objectionable in many people’s
eyes. This is the reason why Ferenc “FankaDeli” Kőházy, one of our most acclaimed rappers,
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has to face regularly with charges that insinuate his involvement with groups such as Nazis or
neo-Nazis because of showing the flag of the Árpád House or the national Hungarian flag in
his videos like “Magyar Földre,” “Palackposta” or “November 1.”
We can see that the connections between rap music and politics in the two countries
are quite different and that rap music reflects peoples’ attitude towards politics. On the one
hand, for citizens of the United States it is natural to declare that they are proud to be part of
their nation, it is natural that they are interested in politics, and they easily talk about which
party they favor. Rap lyrics and videos also show this attitude, moreover, performers often
turn up at political events. A recent example can be the participation of American rappers like
Ludracris, Jay – Z, LL Cool Jr., Scarface or Nas in Barack Obama’s campaign. On the other
hand, the term doing politics is getting more and more negative in Hungarian people’s eyes.
The two major parties strongly divide the nation, expressions of national identity and some
national emblems are widely identified with one given party, and declarations of which side
one favors can cause serious debates even among family members. There are few performers
who dare to resist this strange attitude. Reassuring examples can be José, 2arc, Della MC, the
Suhancos or the above mentioned FankaDeli with all of his songs and his special, lecture-like
videos namely the “Miért?”, “Szikra”, “A Magyarságról”, “Felhívás” and the “Kezdjük el…”
in which he calls attention to problems of our country, for example he talks about patriotism,
national identity, racism, etc. in detail and he tries to educate his listeners by explaining
concepts like nationalism, honor, exclusion, responsibility, faith, and so on. Beside social
criticism the other primary theme of rap music is the description of the bad circumstances
inner-city youngsters have and the difficulties people have to face with in life, which often
results in explicit lyrics. Because of these lyrics rap music is regarded as the most dangerous
and violent music style. The reason for this is that there are many rappers who produce songs
which have destructive impact on society, especially on impressionable youth, since their
explicit lyrics send “a powerful message of hate and violence that is devouring the minds of
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our youth playing a part [in] various problems such as rape, racism, teen pregnancy, suicide,
homicide and even gang violence” (Smith). This is equally true for American and Hungarian
performers. We have to note that only a part of rap performers support these acts, but this part
is still big enough to form negative opinion in people about rap in general. Let’s see some
examples when these themes obviously have destructive effects on society!
One of the major topics that have been present in rap for long is violence. It has been a
dominant element since the 1980s. The first time when people strongly expressed their
discontent was in 1988 when N.W.A. (Niggers With Attitude) published their song “F*ck Tha
Police.” Even the F.B.I. declared their distaste (Erlewine). This song contains direct
references to killing policemen in lines like “A s*cka in a uniform waitin’ to get shot/by me,
or anotha nigga” and it charges policemen with abuse based on racism in lines like “’cause
I’m brown / I’m not the other color so police think / they have the authority to kill a minority”
(Appendix 4). This violent model was followed by numerous performers. Further examples
from these days can be “Ghetto Star” by Tupac Shakur, “Cop Killer” by Ice-T, “Cream” by
the Wu-Tang or songs by Ganxsta Zolee és a Kartel or the Bloose Broavaz.
In connection with violence there are many tracks which are full of racist and sexist
expressions in both countries. Lyrics regularly offend people of different nations or with
different skin color than the publisher of the song. In the abovementioned example, namely
the “Cream” by the Wu-Tang, the author encourages listeners to attack whites or “Isten, Áldd
Meg A Magyart” by Barbárfivérek or “Magyar Gyerek” by Tibbah also contains racist
expressions and supports humiliation of Hungarians. Abasement of women is even more
frequent in this genre. Women are usually dehumanized and several rappers support the idea
that people should view women as sexual objects and not as humans who have feelings. The
situation is even worse, since “[d]ance clubs and backstages of concerts are flooded with
women who express willingness to do anything sexually with a man to get drinks, money,
jewelry, or just to feel privileged and wanted” (Ayanna).The most shocking examples from
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the United States could be lyrics and videos by 50cent, Ludracris or 2pac and by Ganxsta
Zolee, Dopeman or Siska Feenoocchi from Hungary.
There is another enjoyment beside women that is, unfortunately, very popular all over
the World. That is drug consumption. Regrettably it has also become amongst certain people a
sign of being trendy and tough, so many popular rappers talk in songs about their experiences
lived through when they took drugs and it is also frequent that rappers show narcotics in their
video clips. Since a favorite performer can be a real ideal for youth and since these ideals can
easily encourage listeners to adopt their lifestyle, many people – especially teenagers – is
likely to step on the path which leads to drug addiction. Although selling, using and even
possessing marihuana, ecstasy, cocaine or other kinds of narcotics are illegal in America and
here in Hungary too, we can find rap tracks that simply ignore these laws. To mention just a
few from both countries, there is The Game’s “How We Do”, 50 Cent’s “In Tha Club”,
Snoop Dogg’s “Intrology” or Copycon’s “Egy Kicsit”, Mc Gőz’s “Új Világ Épül”, Sub Bass
Monster’s “Négy Ütem”, etc. which literally support drug consumption and by this they have
really destructive impact on society.
Before dealing with violence, racism, sexism and drug consumption in connection
with rap, I have mentioned that only a part of rap performers support these acts. Fortunately,
there are numerous others who declare their discontent with this kind of attitude and
emphasize the importance of performers’ responsibility. Thanks to this discontent conscious
rap was born as “a subgenre of hip hop that focuses on creating awareness and imparting
knowledge. Conscious rappers traditionally decry violence, discrimination, and other societal
ailments” (Adaso). The performers who create their songs and videos according to the
approach of this subgenre try to fight against the destructive impact of irresponsible rappers
who literally support trespass, abasement of people, etc. One of the best examples for
emphasizing rappers’ responsibility and creating songs and videos in the light of this with
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educative purpose is Kőházy “FankaDeli” Ferenc with songs like “Békét 2” (Appendix 5), “A
Pad” or “Álmodtam.”
However, the reason for that people automatically tend to think of violent, explicit
lyrics when talking about rap music, is the wide promotion of gangster or as more often
called, gangsta rap in the media. This is just a subgenre, but outsiders usually identify it with
the whole message transmitted by hip hop. This type of music represents offenders’ violent
lifestyle. It deals with drug business, gun fights, vandalism, prostitution and so on. The
trouble is that many performers do not raise these issues as problems, but rather just promote
these acts. These performers support violence, band fights, alcohol abuse, drug addiction,
misogyny, trespass and the importance of getting more and more money – at whatever cost.
The possibilities that reside in this genre are exactly what the media is fishing for. If you
watch a gangster rap video, you can see that it represents the importance of money, fame,
glitter, big and expensive cars, jewelers, guns, drugs and women of course. This subgenre is
the hotbed of money-centered ideology (Yorick).
This profiteer spirit goes hand in hand with the high need of performers of this style
and at this point we have to deal with the concepts of fake and real gangsta rappers. In the
United States newer and newer rap stars conquer record lists week by week with songs and
videos in which they tell and show the lifestyle of inner-city youth as genuinely as ever—at
least so they say. However, the main point is marketability. The ambitious beginners get all
the support one can dream of: high budget videos, performances in TV shows, worldwide
promotion and a quite favorable deal. In return for these their task is to inspire listeners to
adopt their lifestyle. In the hope of success, fame and wealth fake gangster rappers’ turn up is
inevitable. But actually most of them have no idea about what cost-of-living criminality
means in reality, they do not truly know the power of guns and since they have no actual
experiences about the tough conditions a ragamuffin has to face, they transmit misleading
messages to their audience. Their songs and videos do not moralize listeners at all. With the
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strong support and influence of the media they are just promoting criminals’ lifestyle without
dealing with the consequences. Because of this behavior youth may have an idea that trespass
is acceptable, moreover, it can lead to success and fame just like in these performers’ case.
The main point that causes dividedness amongst people about gangsta rap is the fact
that these rappers do not hide the dark side of their life at all. Moreover, they usually seem to
pride themselves on trespasses. However, this is the difference between a fake and a real
gangsta rapper. While the former supports trespass and immorality indeed, the latter talks
about real, existing problems of society and the way they handled or tried to handle them.
Although real bad boys are said to move in silence, there are people in music life who dare to
talk about their faults. Many of them produce their songs with an educative manner and take
steps to protect listeners from following their example.
As for being educative, I would like to give just a few examples. Ice Cube in his song
“Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It” beside other things calls our attention to the fact that anybody
can find his or her luck and can rise from bad conditions; they just have to find their talent. He
emphasizes equality and questions the importance of luxuriance. The widely known Nas in
his lyrics of “I Can” literally declares that no one should become a gangsta, kids are inspired
to learn more and more and he also emphasizes that one can reach anything in life with strong
will. Maybe a popular example can show the main point, namely from Aliaune “Akon”
Thiam’s “Gangsta Bop” that says “If you only see, what my eyes have seen, you'll understand
why I'm surrounded by G’s” (Thiam). These performers admit that they walked or walk the
wrong path, but now they offer their stories to the listeners to learn from them. Many of them
usually contribute and help the work of foundations in order to create a better life to children
with bad circumstances. Just to mention one specific example, the earlier mentioned Tracy
“Ice-T” Marrow usually gives lectures on his outlook on life in prisons and at universities
such as Harvard or Stanford.
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If listeners can see that a performer is responsible, truthful and straight, they are able
to understand the educative message in their work. One of the most significant reasons why
the genre was born was to describe the hard living conditions of people living in ghettos and
this is still a major theme of rap lyrics. However, it is very important that rappers should
produce songs with responsibility and when describing genuinely their hard conditions or
trespasses in which they got involved, they should offer their stories as examples from which
listeners can learn. Since their lyrics are extremely expressive and influential, they should
never support crimes, violence, abasement of people, drug consumption, etc. Unfortunately,
there are numerous rappers who do promote these acts in their songs and videos, moreover,
they are strongly supported by the media. The task for listeners is to avoid generalization and
to be able to make distinctions between rappers who are genuine transmitters of social
problems and convey constructive messages and the ones who do not care about the
destructive impacts of their works and in return for fame and financial support, with the help
of the media, promote violence and criminality.
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APPENDIX 1
Grandmaster Flash: “The Message”
Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care
I cant take the smell, I cant take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get far
Cause the man with the tow-truck repossessed my car
Chorus: Don’t push me, cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to loose my head
Its like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under
Standing on the front stoop, hangin’ out the window
Watching all the cars go by, roaring as the breezes blow
Crazy lady, livin’ in a bag Eating out of garbage piles, used to be a fag-hag
Search and test a tango, skips the life and then go
To search a prince to see the last of senses
Down at the peepshow, watching all the creeps
So she can tell the stories to the girls back home
She went to the city and got so so so ditty
She had to get a pimp, she couldn’t make it on her own
Chorus
Its like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from goin’ under
My brothers doing fast on my mothers t.v.
Says she watches to much, is just not healthy
All my children in the daytime, dallas at night
Cant even see the game or the sugar ray fight
Bill collectors they ring my phone
And scare my wife when I’m not home
Got a bum education, double-digit inflation
Cant take the train to the job, there is a strike at the station
Me on king kong standin’ on my back
Cant stop to turn around, broke my sacroiliac
Midrange, migraine, cancered membrane
Sometimes I think I’m going insane, I swear I might hijack a plane!
Chorus
My son said daddy I don’t wanna go to school
Cause the teachers a jerk, he must think I’m a fool
And all the kids smoke reefer, I think it’d be cheaper
If I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper
I dance to the beat, shuffle my feet
Wear a shirt and tie and run with the creeps
Cause its all about money, ain’t a damn thing funny
You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey
They push that girl in front of a train
Took her to a doctor, sowed the arm on again
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Stabbed that man, right in his heart
Gave him a transplant before a brand new start
I cant walk through the park, cause its crazy after the dark
Keep my hand on the gun, cause they got me on the run
I feel like an outlaw, broke my last fast jaw
Hear them say you want some more, livin’ on a seesaw
Chorus
A child was born, with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smiling on you but hes frowning too
Cause only God knows what you go through
You grow in the ghetto, living second rate
And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alley way
You’ll admire all the number book takers
Thugs, pimps, pushers and the big money makers
Driving big cars, spending twenties and tens
And you wanna grow up to be just like them
Smugglers, scrambles, burglars, gamblers
Pickpockets, peddlers and even pan-handlers
You say I’m cool, I’m no fool
But then you wind up dropping out of high school
Now youre unemployed, all null n void
Walking around like youre pretty boy floyd
Turned stickup kid, look what you done did
Got send up for a eight year bid
Now your man is took and youre a may tag
Spend the next two years as an undercover fag
Being used and abused, and served like hell
Till one day you was find hung dead in a cell
It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young
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APPENDIX 2
Thysta: “Vágom Milyen”
Lehet, hogy nem igazán értesz mikor
józanul letörök egy üveget vagy
rád tolom a verdám, meg csúnyán nézel rám
ha a dalaimból ordít a harag, ne is vár légyszi mást
Thysta ugyan ilyen marad
Felbontok egy Stellát
és leírom a legbetegebb rímet
és a leggázabb az, pont az hogy igaz
a háztetőn irkálom
a lakásból kib*sztak tízkor
bennem jobb ha nem bízol
te nem vágod milyen ha nincs hova menj
tizenkét évesen mert a balhé áll otthon
úgy éreztem azért vagyok itt,
hogy utáljak, lesz*rjak, gyűlöljek,
és az utcán s*ggeljek
állati jó, a suliban kérdezték hol laksz
én mondtam,nem tudom és akkor lesz*rom
néhány év múlva egy rendőr is kérdezte
miután a fejemet a verdába beverte
ha át éltél ilyet akkor engem szeretsz
ha meg nevetsz
akkor az én sapanom csak zsákban lehetsz
az vagyok amimnek csak látni akarsz
Thysta a nevem ,kéred a rosszabbik felem?
Chorus:
Ha hazamész és balhé van vér folyik a házban
sír az anyád és te is
te azt vágod milyen?
ha éhes vagy egy órája a házból kib*sztak
és lent iszod a söröd
azt vágod milyen?
ha rendőrök vernek össze éjjel az utcán
aztán be akarnak zárni
te azt vágod milyen?
ha bele sz*rsz az egészbe nem érdekel, hogy mi lesz
és csak döltöd a piát
én vágom milyen
Idióták néznek rám, mi lehet a bajom
nekem semmi, ha így járnál te mi a f*szt csinálnál
hirtelen a haragom, meg s*gg vagyok csak azért
mert három éves korom óta viselem a balhét
én nem vagyok drogos, te barom, csak mert tekerek egy cigit
ha ez lennék már feküdnék a föld alatt
nem arra faragtak, fel kell, hogy álljak
túlságosan edzett a lelkem, hogy kiszálljak
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gyere és nézz rám, kérdezd honnan jövök
én nem születtem nagy házba, úgy ahogyan te kölyök
le sz*rom, hogy mit kaptam, nekem ennél több kell
vagy elvágom a torkod egy törött sörös üveggel
de nincs bajom veled, vagy is lesz*rlak
elütlek egy verdával és lesz*rom ha bevarnak
a zsaruknak nekimegyek, adj még egy rekeszt
a sitt előtt meg simán felvehetek még egy lemezt
Chorus
Ha kívánhatnék egyet, azt kérném a világ
egy nagy kocsma legyen, és én mérjem a piát
k*rva könnyű elítélni egy tizenéves srácot
aki tolja a cuccát csak azt nem vágod, hogy
a mostoha apja tudod otthon éppen veri az anyját
ő meg szívja a cigijét és leszarja ki látja
te b*zi te csak reppelsz erről
de életedben drámát még nem láttál közelről
hé én nem akarom, hogy sajnálj, jól vagyok
csak vegyél nekem egy viszkit
annyit sz*rt éltem át
amit más tvből lát
ha rossz pillanatban találsz be átrakom rád
amíg te üldögéltél apuci nagy házában
törölted a verdát
a spanom temette az apját
én s*ggeltem az öcsém sírjánál
igen én ott voltam ha nem ismersz kölyök
jobb ha nem beszélsz rólam
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APPENDIX 3
Stuck Mojo: “I’m American”
I'm an American related to all colors of brethren,
Priests and Pastors and Prophets and Reverends,
Divided we fall united we stand together man,
In this cultural melting pot there's nothing better than,
This land of the free and the home of the brave,
Populated by ancestors of immigrants and slaves
who met early graves,
So we could see brighter days
and we could proudly praise and raise
the stars and stripes as Americans
Hate me
Blame me
You can't shame me
Come and stand with me
I'm American
I'm an American born in these states united,
Where racial discrimination keeps us so divided,
Well we've got free speech so I won't be quiet,
We got a lot of problems here man I won't deny it,
But ain't another place that I'd rather be,
Than in this land of great opportunity,
Where we can be anything that we wanna be,
So until the day I D-I-E, I stand tall as an American
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APENDIX 4
N.W.A.: “F*ck The Police”
Right about now NWA court is in full effect.
Judge Dre presiding in the case of NWA versus the police department.
Prosecuting attourneys are MC Ren Ice Cube and Eazy muthaf*ckin E.
Order order order. Ice Cube take the muthaf*ckin stand.
Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth
and nothin but the truth so help your black *ss?
Why don't you tell everybody what the f*ck you gotta say?
F*ck tha police
Comin straight from the underground
Young nigga got it bad cuz I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority
F*ck that shit, cuz I ain't tha one
For a punk muthaf*cka with a badge and a gun
To be beatin on, and throwin in jail
We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell
F*ckin with me cuz I'm a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searchin my car, lookin for the product
Thinkin every nigga is sellin narcotics
You'd rather see me in the pen
Then me and Lorenzo rollin in the Benzo
Beat tha police outta shape
And when I'm finished, bring the yellow tape
To tape off the scene of the slaughter
Still can't swallow bread and water
I don't know if they fags or what
Search a nigga down and grabbin his n*ts
And on the other hand, without a gun they can't get none
But don't let it be a black and a white one
Cuz they slam ya down to the street top
Black police showin out for the white cop
Ice Cube will swarm
On any muthaf*cka in a blue uniform
Just cuz I'm from the CPT, punk police are afraid of me
A young nigga on a warpath
And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath
Of cops, dyin in LA
Yo Dre, I got somethin to say
F*ck the police (4X)
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APPENDIX 5
FankaDeli: Békét2
Amíg a körmöd fested a szomszéd, veri a lányát
A tehetség jó dolog de a sors szegi a szárnyát.
Vajon ez csak ábránd vagy a színtiszta valóság,
Nagy ház meg szép kocsi egyenlő adóssság.
A linóleum felsikít,megszülte a lépcsőház,
Én már leültem régen, nem értem hogy mér' ugrálsz.
Könnyeim nyomába eredek minden éjjel,
Csak Feri, nem Mc vagy mr. vagy két LL.
Amiben nőttél fel beléd ég egy életre,
Hogy Taki bácsi legyél vagy rohadék vénember.
Engem is csúfoltak éppen ezért vágom,
Hogy a gyerekszoba mélyén is születik rémálom.
Fura mi hogy néha még láthatsz a tv-ben,
Kádárék meg cellába b*sztak volna egy életre.
Ez nem véletlen csak változik a világ,
Én úgy mindom pillangó, Te úgy mondod p*nák.
Tiéd a koszos hiphop, mi csinálunk tisztát,
Ha nem kell, nem gond,ja pacsi azt viszlát.
Én túlélőket keresek a betonházak között,
Múltam szabadon engedtem, mégis visszaszökött.
Chorus(2x):
A holnap még várhat,most éljünk a mának!
Bár nem látod őket, a hátadon szárnyak.
Vasból kilátó, betonból erdő,
FankaDeli Feri: békét 2!!
A szeretet a szemedben, bárkit széppé varázsol
És a dícséret állatira messze van a nyalástól.
Apró kis csapdák, mégis ezen múlik minden,
Addig semmi nem sikerült, míg magamban nem hittem.
Emlékszem arra mikor Feri volt a gáz,
Most meg símogat a tapsod, tele az egész ház.
és a régi nagymenők, csak titokban szipognak,
Én meg élvezem gyümölcsét az atyai szigornak.
Fhú ha engem apám, elkapott volna
De ehelyett a példa, nehéz szekerét tolta.
Anyám is ordított, hidd el éppen eleget,
Akárcsak én, kussolt az egész emelet.
Mégis minden egyes szava, mutatott előre,
Ezért ugatok én is, hogy ne legyél belőve.
A fű az eltompít, hát még a többi
Csak Te tehetsz érte, magadtól nem növöd ki.
Jöhet bármilyen teszt meg, bármilyen doktor,
Akkor sem lettem köcsög, soha semmilyen bortól.
Persze a pia is átver, fontos a mérték,
De, hol lenne Feri, ha szerekkel élnék!?
Chorus(2x):
Sajnos védőoltás nincs az irigység ellen,
Pedig 10 éve csinálom, reppel mégse kerestem.
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Csak beleraktam lét, meg beleraktam munkát,
Az én zeném a srácok nem a rádióból fújják.
Köszönetem jár a Maxnak és a Monksznak
Wherdee-nek,Levinek a Csabinak a Kojsznak.
Ha nem lennének ők, te nem ismernél engem,
Mert a puszta papíron semmit nem ér a reppem.
Egy hétköznapi ember: porból és porrá,
Szavakat terelvén mint, Kodály a kottát.
Az én zenémmel,a saját fájdalmam enyhítem,
Pár gondolat tőlem, vagyis inkább szerintem.
Amit elmeséltem úgy volt, a többi csak talán,
De amíg evezgethetek az emberi lét taván,
Én nem fogom hagyni, hogy befogják a szád,
Mert tény, hogy a világnak szüksége van Rád.
Bármit is teszel, a jó az ott van benned,
Ne kutass kifogást, nem is kell keresned.
De bántani könnyebb, és kényelmes a csalás,
Nekem elég a kis kert, meg egy aprócska garázs.
Chorus
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Works Cited
Adaso, Henry. “What is Conscious Rap?” About.com: Rap/Hip-Hop. 12 Dec 2009
<http://rap.about.com/od/genresstyles/p/ConsciousRap.htm>
Ayanna. “The Exploitation of Women in Hip-hop Culture.” My Sistahs: A Project From
Advocates for Youth. 12 Dec 2009 <http://ealert.mysistahs.org/features/hiphop.htm>.
D., Davey. “The History of Hip Hop.” Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner: Hip Hop History 101 12
Dec 2009 <http://www.daveyd.com/raptitle.html>.
Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. “NWA Bio.” Global Darkness. 12 Dec 2009
<http://www.globaldarkness.com/articles/nwa_bio.htm>.
Kaminski, Kate. “Hip Hop & New York: The Birth of Hip Hop.” 12 Dec 2009
<http://www.uic.edu/orgs/kbc/hiphop/newyork.htm>.
Smith, Joshua. “Rap / Hip-Hop’s Negative Impact on Society.” Socyberty. 27 October 2007.
12 Dec 2009 <http://www.socyberty.com/Issues/RapHip-Hops-Negative-Impact-onSociety.54300/1>.
Thiam, Aliaune. Lyrics. “Gangsta Bop.” Konvicted. CD. CD Universe. 2006. Lyrics007: We
Do Better Than James Bond. 12 Dec 2009
<http://www.lyrics007.com/Akon%20Lyrics/Gangsta%20Bop%20Lyrics.html>.
Yorick. “Gengszter rap: a fekete deviancia árnyékában.” Weblog Entry. Yorick Blog. 4
Nov 2008. 11 Nov 2009 <http://yorickblog.blog.hu/2008/10/04/
gengszter_rap_a_fekete_deviancia_arnyekaban>.
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Balázs Czitai
The Watergate Scandal and the Mysterious Deep Throat
Five burglars made a memorable change in the course of the American political
history on the night of June 17, 1972 by breaking into the Watergate complex, which was at
that time the headquarters of the Democratic Party. News of the burglary spread quickly after
investigation revealed the identity of the five men and shed light on an the appalling fact
according to which one of them, namely James W. McCord, was a member of President
Richard Nixon’s re-election committee. The wiretapping devices that were found in the hand
of the burglars worsened the Republicans situation and generated public mistrust towards the
party. This incident served as the starting point of the Watergate Scandal, which was resulted
in the resignation of Richard Nixon on August 9, 1974. People would have known little about
the White House’s involvement in the Watergate bugging and other abuses of power, if men
like Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, reporters of the Washington Post, and their secret source
Deep Throat had not contributed significantly to the revelation of the concealed conspiracy of
some White House members along with the President to secure the outcome of the 1972
Presidential election. In my essay I would like to elaborate on the process, which started with
a burglary and ended up in the exposure of a much greater malevolent teamwork of the
highest officials of the United States from the perspective of the Washington Post and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. I also would like to show how Deep Throat helped the
unfolding of the case, sometimes with the violation of the laws.
The well-known film adaptation of the book All the President’s Men is based on the
work and efforts of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward placed into the investigation to trace
back the origin of the burglary. It was all started when the night guard in the Watergate
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building, which was the headquarters of the Democratic Party, found one of the doors open
which gave him a reason for suspecting burglary. He alarmed a near-by police patrol car,
which then headed to the building immediately and police officers began to systematically
scrutinize the interior of the complex. Five suspects were apprehended on the spot “wearing
blue surgical gloves, surrounded by electronic bugging and burglary equipment.”1 Having
examined those devices and the money found in their pockets, one could easily guess that
typical burglary is out of question and the motivation of the burglars was clearly to bug the
building so that the Republicans could overhear crucial information about the opposite party,
which they could use to bring disrespect on the Democratic Party’s authority. Carl Bernstein
said to his editor and fellow reporters that “I just think it is obvious that with all that money
and equipment they were not out to work by themselves. Somebody hired them.” 2 By using
common sense, one could easily realize who these people worked for and whose interest
would have been to gather and utilize intelligence. Woodward suspected Republican
involvement when he was talking to the assigned lawyers of the burglars, who anyway “never
would have been assigned to represent the burglars had anyone known the burglars had
arranged for their own counsel, but the burglars could not have arranged for their own counsel
since they never even made a phone call.”3 Later the identity of the burglars was revealed and
allegedly all of them had connections with the Central Intelligence Agency, but the CIA
denied they had ever worked for the agency. It also turned out that one of the five burglars
was James W. McCord, who was a member of the CRP or sometimes pejoratively referred to
as CREEP, which stands for the Committee to Re-elect the President. This was too much of a
coincidence for real reporters like that of the Washington Post’s not to notice that there is
The Times, “Bernard Barker: CIA operative and Watergate burglar,”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6451099.ece (accessed Dec 13, 2009)
2
All the President’s Men. DVD. Directed by Alan J. Pakula. 1976; USA: Warner Bros, 2000. Hereafter cited as
All the President’s Men.
3
All the President’s Men.
1
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something fishy about the case, but they did not have any hard evidence to prove their
assumptions. They were hell bent on getting to the bottom of this case.
In order to start an investigation they required a path along which they can journey on
and the two reporters’ only lead on the case was two address book entries at the burglars that
pointed to Howard Hunt, who was a white house official, a former member of the CIA and
employee of Charles Colson, Richard Nixon’s special counsel. One of Bernstein’s
acquaintances knew a girl who worked in the White House, so he arranged a meeting with
her. She told Bernstein that Howard Hunt was supposedly investigating Senator Teddy
Kennedy and his Chappaquiddick case, which was a car accident in which Kennedy left the
scene, and besides that he borrowed many books from the White House Library. After calling
the White House Library, Bernstein found the librarian strange when she said at the beginning
of their conversation that she had remembered well to Mr. Hunt and the huge amount of
books he borrowed so she promised to look after Mr. Hunt’s borrowings, but moments later,
the librarian claimed that she did not even know Mr. Hunt and confused him with another
person.
Woodward and Bernstein got stranded with their investigation, so Woodward decided
to call Deep Throat in the hope of his support, but calling him was a bad idea since he could
jeopardize the identity of his secret source at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Deep Throat” was the mysterious nickname given to W. Mark Felt, the F.B.I.
official who secretly helped reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
uncover the Watergate scandal. Felt's identity was unknown to the public
during the scandal and for more than 30 years afterward. The name comes from
the nature of the situation, according to which the informant requested
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anonymity and talked about deep background information and the editor of the
Washington Post named it “Deep Throat” after an x-rated movie.4
“The pair had a signalling system to arrange their meetings. If Woodward wanted to meet Felt
he would place a pot plant with a red flag on the back of his balcony. But if Felt wanted a
meeting he intercepted Woodward's morning paper and put a tiny clock face on one of the
inside pages, indicating a meeting time.”5 This time Woodward wanted to rendezvous with
Deep Throat in a dark garage, which they previously designated as a meeting place. “Deep
Throat urged the reporters to follow the money trail from the financing of burglars who broke
into the Democratic National Committee offices to the financing of Nixon’s re-election
campaign.”6 After that, Bernstein met with Martin F. Dardis, who was an investigator and
conducted investigations on the money the burglars received. Among the checks, Bernstein
found a 25.000 dollars cashier check issued by Kenneth H. Dahlberg to Bernard Barker, who
was one of the burglars. Woodward phoned Dahlberg and called him to account for the fact
that 25000 dollars check with his signature ended up in the bank account of a burglar.
Dahlberg stated that he exchanged all his raised money in cash to cashier checks and turned
them over to the Maurice Stans, who was the head of finance for Richard Nixon. At this point
they had some evidence supporting that the CRP financed the Watergate burglars, and several
cover-ups on the CRP’s slush funds, which meant hundreds of thousands dollars unaccounted
for.
As their goal was to reveal White House involvement in the case, they had to continue
their research but for that a list of the members of the CRP was needed, which was classified
information. Woodward and Bernstein knew that their colleague’s ex-boyfriend was working
Who2. “Deep Throat Biography.” http://www.who2.com/deepthroat.html (accessed Dec 13, 2009)
World – NZ Herald News. “New Zealand Man’s Deep Throat Mystery Solved.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10328832 (accessed Dec 13, 2009)
6
U.S. News. “Ex-FBI official: I am ‘Deep Throat.’” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8047258/ (accessed Dec 13,
2009)
4
5
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in the CREEP, so they asked her to do her best in acquiring a list of the CREEP members.
They finally managed to lay their hands on the list, and started scrutinizing and visiting
people on the list. They were encountered with many unfriendly welcomes and doors were
slammed in their faces, when they finally got to someone who was willing to help. Judy
Hoback, who was the bookkeeper for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, let
Carl Bernstein, who started questioning her, in her house. According to Hoback, a huge
amount of money, about six million dollars, was raised within a couple of days by the
CREEP, from which 350.000 dollars were unaccounted for and supposedly used to support
the break-in and the cover-ups. Handling of the money was shared among a group of five
person, who allegedly pulled the strings and were the assistants of John Mitchell, who was the
United States attorney general during the Nixon administration. These people constituted the
so called White House Plumbers or simply The Plumbers, which “is the popular name given
to the covert Nixon White House Special Investigations Unit established July 24, 1971. Its job
was to stop the leaking of confidential information to the media during the Nixon
administration.”7 Being so afraid of the consequences, she only gave Bernstein the initials of
three of the five names working with Mithcell, which were L, P and M, where L presumably
stood for G. Gordon Liddy, M for John Mitchell and P for Herbert L. Porter, but later it is
revealed that P actually stood for John Paisley. The members of the Plumbers and those who
were in relationship with them were G. Gordon Liddy, who was the chief operative, John
Mitchell, attorney general, E. Howard Hunt, a former member of the CIA, John Paisley, a
liaison to the CIA and H.R. Haldeman, an American businessman and political aide to the
Nixon administration. The only way Woodward and Bernstein could carry on their task is to
interrogate Hugh Sloan, who was the treasurer of the CREEP. The conversation shed light on
the five possible slush fund controllers who could authorize Sloan to distribute the money of
Members. “White House Plumbers.” http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/white-house-plumbers/members.html
(accessed Dec 13, 2009)
7
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the CRP. These men were: Mitchell, Stans, Magruder and presumably Kalmbach and
Haldeman. Being the one who had oversight on the others, John Mitchell was considered to
be the main slush fund controller according to the Washington Post.
Bernstein got a new tip from Alex Shipley who was the assistant attorney general of
Tenesse. He was requested by Donald Segretti, who was the head coordinator of Nixon’s
sabotage campaign and responsible for recruiting other lawyers, to join to another group of
lawyers for Nixon’s campaign to sabotage the Democratic candidates, which was financed by
the secret slush fund. Segretti was hired by Dwight Chapin, who was appointed by Haldeman
to the post of special assistant to the President. Deep Throat divulged that the break-in was
more than just a burglary, it contributed greatly to the revelation of something deeper about
the Nixon administration, for instance “they bugged, they followed people, false press leaks,
fake letters. They cancelled Democratic campaign rallies. They investigated Democratic
private life. They planted spies, stole documents and on and on.”8 A good example for
sabotage of the Democratic candidates would have been when Ken Clawson, the deputy
director of the White House communications, wrote the Canuck letter, which led to the loss of
Senator Edmund Muskie, a candidate for the democratic nomination in the 1972 presidential
elections. When the two reporters received hidden confirmations from three different sources
about Haldeman’s involvement in controlling the funds, they went on public with the
accusations, but all they got from the White House is denial and refusal to accept any of the
presumed wrongdoings, which eventually ended up in a appealing cover-up of the events. In
his desperate situation Woodward went to see Deep Throat to gather some information about
Haldeman that could be incriminating, but he just dug himself deeper in the conspiracy as
Deep Throat explains him the situation: “The whole business was run by Haldeman, the
money, everything. Mitchell started doing covert stuff before anyone else. It involves the
entire U.S. intelligence community (FBI, CIA, Justice). The cover up had little to do with
8
All the President’s Men
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Watergate; it was mainly to protect covert operations.”9 He also warned Woodward that their
life was in danger and they were under surveillance.
The inquiry of the two reporters did not stop Richard Nixon from being re-elected in
1972, but they contributed greatly to his downfall in 1974 and to the conviction of those who
were related to the corruption that surrounded the White House at that time.
1972 was a though year for the Federal Bureau of Investigation since J. Edgar Hoover,
who was the director of the Bureau for more than forty-five years, died. “Over a period of
nearly five decades he had built up the organization from scratch, had ruled it in an autocratic
fashion, and had filled its upper ranks with men acceptable to him. To these men of the
Bureau, Presidents were temporary and Hoover's FBI was permanent.”10 Richard Nixon’s
problem with the Bureau was that under Hoover’s directorship, it became a very independent
organization and he hoped that with the death of Hoover an outsider to the FBI can be
appointed as the director of the agency, thus preventing it from becoming isolated from the
administration. Although an outsider was sworn in the office, FBI officials insisted on
keeping the old methods so a contradiction still remained between the FBI and the White
House. By investigating, “Woodward happened to step onto one of the main political
battlegrounds in the ongoing struggle between the Nixon Administration and the FBI.”11
For the FBI, the case was started with a phone call from the Washington Office telling
that burglars broke into the Watergate Complex. The Bureau dispatched all the necessary
agents to the scene to start investigation. With regards to the Washington Office, the
Watergate Scandal was equal to the break-away from the past, because it had been operated
silently since it was established, but after so many years it eventually dealt with America’s
All the President’s Men
The Atlantic. “Deep Throat: An Institutional Analysis.” http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199205/mann
(accessed Dec 13, 2009) Hereafter cited as “Deep Throat: An Institutional Analysis.”
11
“Deep Throat: An Institutional Analysis.”
9
10
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one of the most famous cases. As the burglars were identified, it was obvious for the FBI to
investigate everybody, who came into contact with them. Unfortunately, “the FBI policy that
declares members of the White House can be interrogated with the consent of the head
office”12, so the interrogation was delayed since one of the burglars was a member of the
CREEP, which belonged to the White House. Nixon did everything in his power to slow
down the investigation by for example hindering information. Similar happened when the
White House asked the Bureau not to look into the way Mexico financed the break-in,
because as Nixon said the CIA wanted to cover up its operations in Mexico. Actually it was
an attempt from Nixon to cover-up his participation in the Watergate Scandal which set back
the investigation only with a few weeks. Agents conducting the investigation were amazed by
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s reports of the status of the case since it was almost the
verbatim of their reports. Agents did not know that Deep Throat was the FBI’s third most
powerful figure, who had access to nearly everything and was willing to share it with the
reporters thus ensuring the information not to be covered up. Unfortunately, it placed the FBI
in the background considering investigation and publicity. As time passed the FBI questioned
almost everybody and the conspiracy slowly began to appear. For example, Mark Felt
conducted unlawful interrogations in order to move the investigation further, but for these he
got a Presidential pardon from Ronald Reagan. Thanks to the hard work of the two
Washington Post reporters, the FBI was able gather enough information on the members of
the conspiracy to bring charges against them. Richard Nixon’s involvement in the matters
became apparent when the FBI obliged the President to hand over the tapes recording the
conversations in the White House. Although two tapes were missing, the ones that were
available provided enough incriminating evidence, which was enough for Nixon to resign in
shame on August 9, 1974 before he got impeached. The following President, Gerald Ford
Ronald Kessler, FBI: A világ legnagyobb bűnüldöző szervezetének titkai (GABO könyvkiadó, 2000), p. 299
Translation mine, Hereafter cited as Ronald Kessler, FBI
12
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gave a presidential pardon for Nixon, who never admitted in his life, what he had committed.
This was created a nationwide stir among the people of nation since Nixon abused his
Presidential power he was bestowed upon by the people of the United States and besides that
he never admitted it. Many of the President’s men got what they deserved and some of them
got less, but they all got punished. For instance:
Howard Hunt pleads guilty to three counts of conspiracy, burglary and
wiretapping eventually serving three months in prison, Jeb Stuart Magruder
pleads guilty to helping plan Watergate break-in, Donald Segretti sentenced to
six months in prison, Kalmbach pleads guilty to illegal White House
fundraising, Chapin is guilty of lying to Grand Jury, Herbert Porter gets 30
days in jail for lying to FBI, Richard Kleindienst enters guilty plea, Charles
Colson pleads guilty to felony obstruction, John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman and
Bob Haldeman are found guilty on all counts and Maurice Stans admits guilt to
charge of illegal fundraising.13
Taking everything into consideration, the whole case was like finding your way out of
a maze where know only little about your environment. Although every possibility would
have been taken into account, the investigation was successful and most of the abusers were
punished by the judicial system, but unfortunately not fairly. Eventually justice overcame
injustice in spite of the fact there were some law violations on the part of Deep Throat, but it
considered to be necessary evil. The Watergate Scandal proved to be one of America’s most
famous political scandals, in which the President and his staff played a great role. President
Richard Nixon may have lived his life without being punished, if it had not been for the two
talented reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, who kept the
story alive and did not let it fall to oblivion.
13
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Ágota Duró
Thomas Jefferson’s Antinomic Attitude toward Miscegenation
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, can be regarded as the man
of paradoxes as there are several inconsistencies between his deeds and his visions concerning
the issue of miscegenation. The president publicly stated in his famous Notes on the State of
Virginia that “among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when
made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is
necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture”
(Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government 19). Jefferson not only made a racist statement,
but at this point he also contradicted his actual deeds. Indeed, the third president of the United
States is believed to have had a liaison with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, and was the
father of some, or all of her children, which was, undeniably, miscegenation. If Jefferson
firmly believed that the mixture of the two races, the black and the white, should be
prevented, then why did he choose to have a woman of black origin as his concubine? There
is a mysterious atmosphere that surrounds the president, and the truth would probably never
surface.
Thomas Jefferson was one of the greatest advocates of the abolition of slavery of his
time. Nevertheless, he wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia that he could only imagine
the manumission of the slaves along with the process of their colonization in a distant
country. First, he raised the possibility of retaining and incorporating blacks into the state.
However, he further argued that “the deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten
thousand of recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations
would make the future lives of both blacks and whites impossible” (Jefferson 64). Jefferson
was convinced that if manumitted blacks and whites would continue to live together under the
same government, a horrible “race war” would break out, and the end-product would be “the
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extermination of the one or the other race” (64). Ari Helo and Peter Onuf in their study about
Thomas Jefferson also affirmed the president’s point of view. They came to the conclusion
that “the blacks could never integrate completely into the white society because of their
retarded moral development after generations of unjust captivity and brutal exploitation”
(613). In this respect, Jefferson was right when he condemned miscegenation, and supported
the removal of the manumitted blacks. However, deportation seemed to be the simplest
solution. In my opinion, what really should have been done was the solicitude to reconcile the
two races, and to eradicate the racist disposition of the whites.
It can be concluded that for Jefferson, today’s ethnically plural America was certainly
inconceivable. He could not visualize that one day white Americans - namely, WASPs would reconcile and live together with other races, e.g. Blacks, Asians, and what is more, he
could not imagine the mixture of different races. In my opinion, the president was unable to
envision the America that today is considered to be the ‘melting pot’ because of his prejudices
against races other than the Caucasians.
As far as history is concerned, Sally Hemings played a crucial role in Thomas
Jefferson’s life. The obscurity about their story still catches the attention of millions of people
around the world. Lots of historians have commented on their liaison and have tried to shed
light on the enigma that surrounds the couple. However, their opinions differ, and their
perspective is often limited because they rely on their own subjective point of view.
But who was Sally Hemings? How did she and the president come into contact? How
did she get into Jefferson’s ownership? According to Pearl M. Graham historian’s
information, Sally Hemings was born in 1773 as the daughter of Betty Hemings, who was in
the possession of John Wayles. Sally was a quadroon; she was much lighter in the skin than
the average black slaves and she was believed to have white father. Contemporary records
note that she was the daughter of her slave master, and consequently was the half-sister of
Martha Wayles, the woman who married Thomas Jefferson in 1772. As a matter of fact, John
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Wayles passed away a few months after the birth of Sally, and as a result, Betty Hemings and
all her descendants were inherited by Thomas Jefferson (89).
In 1784, Thomas Jefferson, together with his oldest daughter, Martha Jefferson,
travelled to Paris, and they remained there until 1789. His other two children, Lucy and Polly
stayed in Monticello. Nevertheless, after the death of his infant child, Lucy, Jefferson fell into
despair and made orders that Polly should come to France immediately. As a matter of fact,
Polly was accompanied by Sally Hemings. There, Sally was given a large amount of latitude;
she proved to be a very privileged slave, and her treatment in France was not to be compared
with the handling of the other slaves in the United States. As there was no slavery in France,
Sally Hemings, had she stayed there, would have become a free woman, and “she would not
have been despised as a Negress and humiliated as a slave anymore” (Miller 164). However,
they left the European country in 1789, but in Monticello, Sally managed to sustain her
exclusive position among the slaves.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the scandal around the president broke out. In
1802, James Thomson Callender, a journalist, published an article in which he claimed that
President Thomas Jefferson “kept one of his slaves as a mistress for nearly two decades and
was the father of her numerous mulatto children” (Burg 128). However, according to the
Pulitzer Price winner historian Dumas Malone, “Callender was one of the most notorious
scandalmongers in American history,” and he had a great propensity for raising a dust
(Jefferson-Hemings Scandal ). For example, he had previously accused George Washington of
being “a scandalous hypocrite [who] authorized the robbery and ruin of his own army,” and
he also charged John Adams with being a “British spy” (Moore and Giangreco 1). On the one
hand, the supporters of Jefferson did not believe the charges, and most historians did not
attach credence to Callender’s accuses. On the other hand, Jefferson’s political opponents,
namely the Federalists, took advantage of the situation; they gossiped about the story for a
long time and tried to depreciate the reputation of the president. Since then, there have been
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predictions whether Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s concubine, and whether they
even had children or not. If the latter is the case, then the president committed race-mixing,
and refuted his words written in the Notes on the State of Virginia.
First of all, it has to be made clear that there is no concrete evidence that Sally
Hemings was the mistress of Thomas Jefferson. Nonetheless, the Hemings descendants have
always firmly believed that between Sally Hemings and the third president of the United
States, there was, in fact, a love affair, and they have Jefferson blood in their veins. For
example, Madison Hemings, the son of Sally Hemings, claimed that his mother on her
deathbed admitted that he and his brothers and sisters were the children of the president.
Moreover, Robert Cooley, today’s living Hemings descendant also said in the Ken Burns
documentary that “Sally was, without a doubt, Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, lover, substitute
wife for 38 years.”
In any case, one thing is certain, and contemporary records seem to strengthen this
fact: although Jefferson hardly stayed in Monticello because of his active involvement in the
political life in the 1790s and the 1800s, he definitely was in his estate always nine months
before the births of Sally’s children (Miller 170). I believe that if the records are reliable, this
seems to be decisive evidence. In fact, Sally’s first child was born during their abidance in
France, and at that time, no other male relatives of Jefferson dwelled in Europe. At this point,
the question can be raised: did their relationship start in France, when Sally was just an
adolescent? If it is so, the president seems to have preached all kinds of principles to the
American people which he never lived up to. Was he really such a hypocrite? The truth will
probably never be revealed, and people can only guess about what really happened. Anyway,
Harriet, Sally’s second child was born in 1795, and this was a year that Jefferson spent in
Monticello, far from the political arena. Sally’s third and fourth children were born in May
1801, and in May 1805. In point of fact, Jefferson is known to have spent the whole period of
August in Monticello during his presidency as his vacation, and the two children were born
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exactly nine months after the president’s holiday (Graham 95). Moreover, Sally’s children
resembled the president very much. However, the advocates of Jefferson claimed that this
observation did not necessarily serve as a decisive proof, because according to them, given
the physical similarities, one of Jefferson’s relatives could easily be the father of Sally’s
offspring. They also argued that if Jefferson had stayed at Monticello at the time of
conception of Sally’s children, then he must have had a lot of visitors, and one of them might
have fathered Sally’s offspring.
To my mind, it was really weird that when Beverley, Sally’s child escaped from
Monticello in 1822, Jefferson made no intensive effort to find him; he let the case easily be
forgotten. Nevertheless, when a slave ran away, the president had the habit of “calling upon
officers of the law to help him pursue and return the fugitive slaves” (96). The case of
Beverley Hemings was considered to be exceptional, and in my opinion, it was a clear hint
that Beverley was not an average slave. On the contrary, Jefferson surely had strong
attachment to him, and I believe that was because Jefferson was Beverley Hemings’ father.
Further evidence for the special treatment of the Hemings children is that they were exempt
from the hard work, they were not made to overwork, like most slaves of the time, and they
were also initiated in craftsmanship. Harriet Hemings was taught how to spin, and her
brothers, Beverly, Madison and Eston Hemings, were trained as carpenters (Miller 165).
In his last testament, Jefferson manumitted five of his slaves, among whom were all
the Hemings children, and also provided that these former bondmen should have the right to
stay in the state of Virginia (Graham 97-98). It is clear that in his will, Jefferson disaffirmed
his former plan of emancipation and colonization. At this point, I raise the question: why were
the Hemings children exceptions to the rule? Why were they allowed to remain in the United
States after their liberation and – despite the color of their skin – freely mix with members of
the white society, when Jefferson was the greatest opponent of miscegenation? In my opinion,
the answer is self-evident: they definitely were the descendants of Thomas Jefferson, and the
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president with his ultimate act strove to compensate them for the grievances he had caused.
The injustices: namely that Jefferson kept them as slaves and never acknowledged them as his
own children, and they even did not receive the same treatment as the other white children of
the president.
The most convincing pieces of evidence that reinforce Callender’s words are the
recent DNA findings of the 1990s, which “proved the perfect match on the Y-chromosome
markers between the Jefferson line and the descendants of Eston Hemings” (Ellis 125).
Jefferson’s descendants stressed that the physical similarities can be explained that Samuel or
Peter Carr, the president’s nephews, had had a liaison with Sally, and they denied the
authenticity of Madison Hemings’s confession. Consequently, the DNA test was carried out
between the Hemings and Carr descendants, too, but there was no match between the two
family, which means that today’s scientists managed to refute the theory of what all members
of the Jefferson line had believed, or wanted to believe so far (125). Now the question
remains: can the DNA revelation be considered as complete assurance or just a possibility? I
firmly believe that today’s scientific evidence is conclusive; although almost two hundred
years have passed since the case, the developed technology of today is able to demonstrate
even the slightest similarity between the now living descendants of Sally Hemings and
Thomas Jefferson. Consequently, the results of the DNA tests indisputably confirmed what so
far had been just an assumption: Thomas Jefferson definitely fathered all, or at least some of
Sally Hemings’ children. Or did today’s scientists make a mistake? Well, Thomas Jefferson
seems to be “more a sphinx than ever before” (138).
Joseph J. Ellis historian, in the light of the DNA revelations, raises another query on
the Jefferson-Hemings controversy that is worth considering. He asks the question whether
their relationship was love, or it was rape (127). First, I would like to examine the more
unlikely alternative, according to which violence occurred. If it was so, I ask the question:
was Sally Hemings able to sacrifice herself for the freedom of her children? Did she become
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the president’s concubine in order to save her children from the evil of slavery? I doubt it. On
the one hand, no one is able to suppose that a man with moral standards like Jefferson would
have been able to commit such an inhuman act. On the other hand, Sally’s children were
manumitted by the president only in his last testament; the offspring were not born to be free.
To my mind, Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson’s relationship was based on true love, and
it was the president’s public and political position that prevented him from admitting the
truth.
According to expectations, Jefferson, throughout his life, “never responded to the
charges of Callender;” nor did he ever avow his paternity over any of the Hemings children
(Video Reports). As far as I am concerned, Jefferson either was skeptic about his parenthood,
or he simply did not want to harm his public reputation by admitting that he fathered one of
his slaves’ children. The latter explanation is more likely, as Jefferson had been regarded “the
exemplar of all virtues,” and I am convinced that the president did not want to lose the ideal
image that had emerged about him in the minds of millions of Americans (Miller 173).
Furthermore, existing records affirm that the president “showed no affection toward
the descendants of Sally Hemings” (167). The first, albeit highly unlikely, explanation for this
attitude is the fact that they were not the children of the president. The second, and more
likely, assumption is that it was simply Jefferson’s public behavior. For that matter, he was
well aware that he had to restrict his feelings otherwise the public would learn the truth, and
this would have cast a stain on his honor. Nevertheless, one thing is true: provided they had
been his children, deep inside his soul, he must have felt special affection toward them.
In addition, Jefferson did not make any notes about the births of Sally’s children.
When Sally Hemings gave birth to her children, Jefferson was far from Monticello, and when
two babies died in their infancy, Jefferson was not present at their funeral, either (166). If the
president was the father of those children, how can we explain his indifference toward his
own blood? It is common knowledge that “Jefferson was overjoyed at the birth of his own
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children and prostrated with grief if they died” (166). This is another issue that raises several
speculations, but no one can tell the exact answer.
It is really surprising that in his last testament, Thomas Jefferson did not emancipate
Sally Hemings. The question is, if the slave woman had been the president’s lover, why did
he not affranchise her in his will? Was this only part of the president’s plan to disclaim all
responsibility about keeping his slave as his own concubine and being the father of her
children? This enigma around the Sally Hemings case will never be completely solved, and
historians can only speculate on what really came about two centuries before.
Many historians of the 20th century deny that Thomas Jefferson would have had a
liaison with one of his own slaves. For example, Dumas Malone states that “such an affair
would have been distinctly out of character, being virtually unthinkable in a man of
Jefferson’s moral standards and habitual conduct” (Hodes 512). In my opinion, Malone
examines Thomas Jefferson only as the third president of the United States, who was the
greatest historical figure of the time when slavery flourished, and as a historian, he excludes
the option that the president might have had a relationship with one of his slaves.
John Chester Miller in his book called The Wolf by the Ears also pronounces in favor
of Jefferson by saying that “to give credence to the Sally Hemings story is, in effect, to
question the authenticity of Jefferson’s faith in freedom, the rights of man, and the innate
controlling faculty of reason and the sense of right and wrong” (176). Like other historians of
Jefferson, Miller also takes The Declaration of Independence as a starting point in the
analysis of Jefferson, and he places confidence in the words of the president and refuses to
believe the Sally Hemings story. The historian rejects the idea that Jefferson really infringed
his own principles, therefore questioning the legitimacy of Madison Hemings’ confession,
according to which Sally on her deathbed had admitted that Jefferson was his and his siblings’
father.
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These two examples truly illustrate how narrow-minded historians have been for some
time regarding the Sally Hemings issue. They tend to protect the president’s reputation, and
“their view was based upon Jefferson's life, character, and beliefs” (An American
Controversy). They refuse to give credence to the words of Madison Hemings. Historians
seems to have supported the perjury of the Jefferson descendants, and they intend to hide the
truth from the people in order to further defend the president’s interests.
However, the 1990s brought a real breakthrough in the Jefferson-Hemings debate.
Annette Gordon-Reed published her famous book called Thomas Jefferson and Sally
Hemings: An American Controversy, which can be regarded as “a critique of the defense
which has been mounted to counter the notion of a Jefferson-Hemings liaison” (An American
Controversy). Gordon-Reed claims in her work that “scholars continued to believe the
statements of Jefferson’s grandchildren not because their assertions had any demonstrable
validity, but because they wanted to believe them” (Hodes 512). She unfolds the long-hidden
truth and tries to prove that Thomas Jefferson really did keep Sally Hemings as his lover and
he did father her children. She also affirms the chief evidence, which was generally ignored
by other Jefferson scholars, that Sally Hemings’ children were conceived at the time when
Jefferson was in Monticello. She takes into account the fact that if Madison Hemings’
testimony is nothing else but a lie, as historians and the Jefferson descendants said, then what
is the guarantee that Jefferson’s grandson told the truth about Samuel Carr being the father of
Sally’s children? She comes to the conclusion that historians were biased, they tried to
exclude slave narratives, and therefore Madison Hemings was nothing but a slave in their
perspective (514). Nevertheless, she seems to take it as convincing proof that in Jefferson’s
life and in his will, the Hemings children were emancipated, and she states that “the
Hemingses were the only nuclear family on the plantation who achieved this feat” (514).
A famous film called Sally Hemings: An American Scandal was also produced
about the love affair of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in 2000. The movie was created
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after the revelation of DNA findings, and in light of that it confirms the belief that Sally
Hemings was in fact the lover of Thomas Jefferson, and they had some children. To my mind,
a film production about a certain issue is really influential all around the world. Nowadays,
people prefer watching movies to reading books or essays, and therefore this version of the
story will become part of common knowledge of the people.
However, even after the DNA findings, the present descendants of Jefferson take it for
granted that the president did not father the children of Sally Hemings, and they try to refute
the DNA proofs as much as possible. Kate Taylor in a recent article for the Slate magazine
summarizes that the 1998 DNA revelations led by Eugene Foster showed out that “there was
a 99 percent chance that Jefferson or one of his close relatives was the father of Hemings'
youngest son, Eston Hemings,” and the geneticist concludes that as the DNA tests with
Jefferson’s nephews proved to be negative, “the simplest and most probable explanations for
the molecular findings are that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings” (2). As a
result, the Jefferson descendants further argue that either Jefferson’s brother, Randolph, or
one his five sons must have fathered Sally’s children, but they eliminate the idea that the
president, concerning his sacred principles about the theory of miscegenation, would have
kept one of his slaves as his concubine. To my mind, this hot debate will never be resolved, as
the successors of the president will always defend his reputation.
Taking everything into consideration, the attitude of the president toward the
amalgamation of races is still an enigma. Jefferson in 1814 wrote in his letter to Edward Coles
that miscegenation “produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of
excellence in the human character can innocently consent” (Onuf 158). When he declared
this, he was alleged to have several mulatto children from his own slave, Sally Hemings. In
my opinion, this was a really hypocritical statement from the president, and I am convinced
that with this, he wanted to bury “his sin” in oblivion. Moreover, the president firmly believed
that blacks, after manumitted, could not live under the same government as whites, however,
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in his last testament Jefferson insisted that the Hemingses should be allowed to reside in
Virginia and they should not be colonized after their enfranchisement. In addition, Jefferson,
who regarded slavery as a fatal stain upon America, remained a slave master all his lifetime,
and even in his last will, he only disenthralled five of his slaves, and the others remained in
bondage. All these facts prove that his visions and his actions are paradoxical. Therefore, the
third president of the United States can be best described with a series of metaphors, which
were emphasized in the documentary about his life produced by Ken Burns: “If he were a
monument, he would be the Sphinx. If he were a painting, he would be the Mona Lisa. If he
were a character in a play, he would be Hamlet. His character was like the great rivers, whose
bottoms we cannot see.”
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Works Cited
Burg, B. R. “The Rhetoric of Miscegenation: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and their
Historians.” Phylon 47.2 (1986): 128-138. November 10, 2009.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/274539>.
Ellis, Joseph J. “Jefferson: Post-DNA.” The William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000): 125138. November 10, 2009. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2674361>.
Helo, Ari, and Peter Onuf. “Jefferson, Morality, and the Problem of Slavery.”
The William and Mary Quarterly 60.3 (2003): 583-614. November 10, 2009.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/3491552>.
Hodes, Martha. “Racism and the Craft of History,” Reviews in American History 26.3
(1998): 510-515. November 10, 2009. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/30030921>.
Graham, Pearl M. “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.” The Journal of Negro History 46.2
(1961): 89-103. November 10, 2009. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2716715>.
“James Thomson Callender and the Origins of the 1802 Jefferson-Hemings Scandal.”
March 1, 2009. <http://www.tjheritage.org/documents/SCReport4.pdf>.
Jefferson, Thomas. “Thomas Jefferson's Thoughts on the Negro: Part I.” The Journal of
Negro History 3.1 (1918): 55-89. November 10, 2009.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/2713794.>
Miller, John Chester. The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery.
Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1991.
Moore, Kathryn, and D. M. Giangreco. “The Myth of Tom and Sally.” The Washington
Times A19 (1999): 1-4. December 7, 2009.
<http://theamericanpresident.us/images/Myth%20of%20Tom%20and%20Sally.pdf>.
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Onuf, Peter S. “Every Generation Is an ‘Independent Nation’: Colonization, Miscegenation,
and the Fate of Jefferson's Children.” The William and Mary Quarterly 57.1 (2000):
153-170. 7 December, 2009. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2674363>.
Taylor, Kate. “Did Thomas Jefferson Father a Child with Sally Hemings?” Slate May 8, 2002.
<http://www.slate.com/id/2065550/.>
Thomas Jefferson. Dir. Ken Burns. Washington: PBS, 1996.
“Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy.” March 1, 2009.
<http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showpdf.php?id=1659.>
“Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government.” December 8, 2009.
< http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1290.htm.>
“Video Report: The History of a Secret.” March 1, 2009.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/video/report4.html>.
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Gábor Horváth
Post-911 symbolism in The Dark Knight
Batman is one of the oldest and most enduring superheroes in American culture, and
he is very well a household name, even if most people only know his name and origins story.
But why would we be interested in what he symbolizes, he’s only a superhero, nothing major.
But he is the reflection of his audience, like all art is. And why specifically him? Almost
everyone can find something in him to like, whether it’s his status as a “regular” human in a
world full of superhuman heroes, his single-minded focus to the task at hand, his strict rule of
non-lethality, or how he uses intimidation and fear to defeat those criminals who use these
tools to get what they want. While Batman’s popularity in comics is strong and stable, on the
Silver Screen he has had mixed luck. The first two films Batman in 1989 and Batman Returns
were well received, and proved to be a faithful adaptation of the comic book superhero. The
next two outings, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin were critical and failures, severely
disappointing fans of both previous films and of the comic books. No movie was made until
the rebooting of the franchise in 2005, with the successful Batman Begins, and the latest
movie and also main subject of this essay, The Dark Knight in 2008. I will look into how his
character has been changed, and how his already existing features have been adopted to new
meanings.
The last two films showcase how the Batman mythos is current, and can be brought
into the 21st Century. They show that Batman can always have the latest gadgets, and that his
quest for justice and moral stability is always current. He is an American vigilante, operating
outside of the law, yet he is aided by the Gotham City Police Department, and his golden rule
of never killing makes him an exception even in that regard. We must not forget, that Gotham
was also based upon New York City, and in this context, the later terrorist attacks by
Batman’s enemies also take up a new meaning. His reason for his obsession with crime58
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fighting is a personal one, and for this reason, his audience can sympathize with him even
though if his world view may seem skewed to some. Yet this very same world view is quite
American. He stands above the law of others, helping regular peacekeepers, and practically
doing their job for them. He has the moral authority to dispense judgment, and while most of
the time this judgment is sound and correct, it is still somewhat hypocritical. In short, he is a
one-man metaphor for America’s role as the “policeman of the world.”
His origin story can be likened to the fall of the twin towers, his parents also being
quite important financially to Gotham city; besides being young Bruce Wayne’s parents of
course. Another important feature of similarity is Batman’s nemesis, the Joker. The Clown
Prince of Crime, as he is called, is an agent of chaos both in the comic books and in the
movies, and quite symbolically, there is very little stability in his portrayal. Both the original
Batman and The Dark Knight can be said to be loyal adaptations, although the Jokers
presented are quite different from one and another. From the perspective of the essay, the
latter portrayal is more important, because of the terroristic features Joker displays: his use of
bombs and other low-tech weapons, using civilians as hostage, no disregard for his own men,
and a seemingly insane goal and perspective. His direct opposition to Batman and his
methods are a total opposite of his as well.
Another important aspect of the movies, a semi-technical one, will be the point of
views of the films: while in the first movie, the identity and very nature of Batman was a
myth for the viewer, thereby we have a first-hand experience of the confusion the criminal
elements – Batman’s prey – feel. On the other hand, in the rebooted franchise Bruce Wayne’s
life is the main story element, his transformation into the symbol that is Batman, so here we
can see Batman after a huge tragedy, the loss of his parents, in a similar condition to how
many Americans might have felt after the Twin Towers’ tragedy, and his pro active approach
towards crime (after a long period of mourning may) seems to mirror the War in Iraq, and the
War on Terror, his own ‘War on Crime’ if you will. Another point in this essay will be the
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POV of the films: while in the first, we are treated to the Joker’s perspective, with Batman
being the legendary figure for the viewer’s as well as the characters in the film. In the latter
productions, we see Batman’s journey through his eyes, we follow him through every step he
makes, thereby making it easier to sympathize and understand him, making him more
accessible.
Batman as America after 9/11
In the first part of the essay, I will examine the similarities between Batman’s reaction
and fight against those who wronged him (criminals) and America’s same reaction against
terrorists. The loss of his parents represent the loss of the Twin Towers in New York: not only
a great loss in life and a personal tragedy for Batman, or every American in the case of the
Towers, but also a great loss for the city, since the Waynes were the ones who strived to
improve the infrastructure on Gotham City, to make it better for everyone, and they were
important members of the social elite, similarly to how the Towers were financial centers,
both represented more than just their physical selves. This tragedy served for the later pro
active actions of both Batman and the United States, for their respective Wars.
Not everything is similar or the same in this comparison though: Batman’s methods
rely upon fear and intimidation, he is a legend, a creature of myth for his prey, while on the
other hand, although the United States is surrounded by myths, it is a very real threat.
Batman’s image of a demon of the night is quite in contrast the image the United States is
wants to project of itself: that of a paladin, a heroic knight in shining armor who punishes the
evil doers. In a stark contrast to Batman, the US presents a clear target in this sense, since
when dealing with the Dark Knight; many criminals simply do not know what or where to
strike to retaliate.
A very important theme in the rebooted Batman movies – and in the whole Batman
franchise as well – is the cost of security and safety, and this theme is quite important in the
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current American political and ideological climate, when the PATRIOT Act is in effect,
sacrificing the liberties of citizens to ensure their safety. In the movies this is represented in
two ways, one direct and the other indirect. The direct one is quite an obvious allusion, and
can be found near the end of The Dark Knight: the instance when Batman uses the citizens’
cell phones, tracking every single call they make, effectively wire tapping them without their
knowledge, invading their privacy, using this to locate the Joker and save the city from more
destruction. This is an obvious allusion to wire tapping following the Patriot Act, yet Batman
also implements a fail safe, which interestingly hinges upon Lucius Fox. Fox is represented in
the rebooted franchise as an overall good man, with a strong sense of morals, science and
finance. He states unwaveringly, that if this machine and system are present in Batman’s
arsenal, he will resign of his position as CEO of Wayne Enterprises, showing his convictions.
In the end we find out, that after he helped Batman locate the Joker, he is given the means to
destroy this machine, this violator of basic human rights. This failsafe method can be
interpreted in many different ways. While the presence of Fox, maybe the character to whom
the term ‘good’ can be best applied to (Batman is quite an interesting character in this regard,
and exploring his morality would take up more space than I can provide in this topic),
therefore he has the authority to overrule and destroy this machine after it has served its
purpose. A question of great magnitude arises: is this scene saying that the United States
government has the moral authority to stop these actions if they overstep their boundary? Can
they be trusted to do this? On the other hand, is Lucius Fox the most fictional character in the
movies? Can a person of such character be located in a place where he can exercise this very
character? This question is not given a direct answer in the movie; in fact, an aspect of
heroism is shown in the Batman franchise that is hard to come by in other American heroic
tales: the sacrifices necessary to become and stay a hero.
The other, more indirect and abstract of representation of liberty versus security is in
Batman himself. But unlike the previous symbol, the wire tapping, this one shows us a much
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more ideal situation in a way: Batman is the one who gave up his liberties to secure the lives
of Gotham’s people. He trained his whole life. When he came back, on the surface he was the
playboy Bruce Wayne. But in reality, he spends his days preparing for the nights, when he
assumes his mask (or face, depending on who do you believe the real Bruce Wayne is), and
risks his life to physically fight against crime and corruption, not just the criminals
themselves, but somehow he beats back these concepts themselves. He is partially worthy
because of the time and effort he spent getting ready for this role. He was not born for it, he
was not chosen. At best, he chose himself. Unlike Manifest Destiny in the United States, this
mission was not given by God. It was not given by man. It was given by necessity. Someone
had to take up the crusade against corruption. No one was chosen, not by a Divinity, not by
the people. If we look at both Batman and Batman Begins, not only the criminals, but the
everyday people and law enforcement officers believe Batman to be either a myth, or a
lawless vigilante. The vigilante motif will spring up later when dealing with the ‘followers’ of
Batman, and the myth aspect was mentioned previously when discussing the Point of View of
the movies. This concept of worthiness and readiness for heroism is best described by on of
the last lines of The Dark Knight: “He is not the hero Gotham deserves, but the hero Gotham
needs.” This complex interpretation of heroism is quite opposite of the “hero riding in the
sunset after achieving his success”, the usual scene at the end of Westerns, when the hero has
defeated his enemy. In this instance, we see the hero riding in the night on his bike, fleeing
from the police, chased for a crime he did not commit, yet willingly took on himself. This
gives Batman the moral justification for his actions, which is similar to the United States’: is
granted by himself, based upon his history, while ‘outsiders’ do not comprehend that Batman
is the one to turn when trouble’s brewing.
One interesting and important feature which reflects upon the American heritage,
which can be found the new Batman movies, is the Applied Sciences division in the United
States. The term ‘applied’ is important, because it tells us that these items are functional. They
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do not deal with how the universe works, but rather they were designed to help people. The
suit that Batman wears was designed for infantry soldiers, to defend them. The Batmobile was
originally designed to build bridges and rescue people. His cape, which allows him to glide in
the cityscape, was also intended for army usage at first. The Batarangs, the trademark
weapons of Batman are remnants of his ties to the League of Shadows, an organization
dedicated to exterminating crime. This item also has the legacy of weapons. This way,
Batman has been linked to the army, establishing a similarity between the American soldiers
in Iraq: highly trained youth who bring justice to the world, the ‘heroes of the United States’.
The enemies of Batman
Batman is as much defined by his enemies as by his origin story, and he has one of the
best known rouge galleries. They are a reflection on Batman themselves, and as such, they too
are often prone to changes to adapt to the circumstances and needs of the given era. In both of
the newer Batman movies, the enemies faced by Batman are reinterpreted, and represent
something new compared to their comic book counterparts. Specifically, in this given
instance, they represent terrorism, as expected after 9/11. The respective enemies, Ra’s Al
Ghul and the Joker, are adapted into this new Batman mythology which is represented here.
Some common features can be seen in both of them in their recent movie portrayal: both of
them have some obvious terroristic features, and both represent a threat to the whole of
Gotham City, even their criminal elements. Ra’s Al Ghul uses the syndicate crime families in
Gotham for his own purposes, and intends to wipe them out along with the rest of the city.
Joker, on the other hand, initially agrees to kill Batman for them, but in the end turns against
them. This treachery echoes the United States’ policy of not dealing with terrorists, not giving
into their demands, not because of principals, but because they cannot trust their word. Also,
these two characters come literally out of the blue to attack Gotham, especially the Joker, who
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shows and simply starts to wreak havoc. This is similar to the attack that caused 9/11, since
that major attack came without warning and the civilians and the government both were
caught unaware by it.
Ra’s al Ghul is the head of an ancient organization called the League of Shadows,
which has been battling against corruption for centuries now, a seemingly noble goal, yet they
claim to have doomed several civilizations because of their apparent moral deviancy,
effectively waging a Jihad against those who do not conform to their moral code, which they
perceive to be universal. The allusion to the Islamic terrorist organizations is quite obvious,
who attack the ‘Western devils’ because of their immoral culture and principles, at least
according to their own ideas. Peter Senderson at IGN summarizes the situation quite aptly:
“Ra's (al Ghul)is out to destroy Gotham, which he calls America's greatest city, and hence
represents the entire United States” (Comics in Context #89 Batman Reboots,
http://comics.ign.com/articles/626/626762p5.html).
The other direct similarity to terrorism is the method used by the League of Shadows
to destroy Gotham: a chemical which, when inhaled causes the subject to experience
hallucinations and delirium, seeing their greatest fears come to life. This alludes to terrorists
using chemical and biological weapons to cause harm to their targets, as well their very goal
and effect on the general populace: terror, like their designation suggests. Dr. Jonathan Crane
is also used by the League to spread the gas throughout Gotham, alluding to the rumor that
9/11 was an inside job. To complete this plan, Ghul steals a prototype military weapon that
vaporizes all water in the vicinity; again, terrorists are known to use stolen weaponry, and
even other devices and items to complement their attacks, like in the case of the hijacked
airplanes. Both represent the intangible nature of terrorist organizations, how they cannot be
attacked directly, since they are not out in the open, but they have hidden training grounds,
scattered throughout lands where they can find shelter even from modern technology, like the
deserts and mountains in Iraq and Afghanistan. This fact is represented by the League of
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Shadows, which itself is an organization waging a Jihad on crime and corruption, according to
their beliefs. Joker, on the other hand, is legally non-existent. He has no name, no
background, no ID, no fingerprints. He just appeared from nowhere, bringing chaos and
destruction with him. And why is he causing so much trouble, hunting Batman? For his own
sick amusement, nothing else. This, in turn represent how alien some of the reasoning and
motivations of terrorists seem.
On the mention of hijacked vehicles, I would like to examine a scene, near the end of
Batman Begins, when we see the final battle between Ghul and Batman, in the monorail built
by Bruce Wayne’s parents, heading toward Wayne Tower, with the high tech weapon on
board, aiming to start the destruction of Gotham city at its very center, the Tower which
represents the good in the darkness of the city, blinded by their own righteousness, unwilling
to consider other options then termination. This scene directly references the September 11 th
attacks; both were done using hijacked transportation devices, and aimed to attack towers
which were of a great importance, in terms of symbolism and practical value as well. But this
is not the only building that Ghul aims to destroy. He destroys Wayne Manner, in an attempt
to kill the only man capable of stopping him. Wayne Manor is a representation of traditional,
aristocratic American manor, symbolizing this greater goal of destroying Gotham and the
Western Civilization as well.
Joker is also depicted in a terroristic light, unlike in his first appearance in the original
Batman movie in 1989. There he was shown as a criminal, working himself on the ladder,
ruthlessly killing those who stand in his way. Although he uses a poisonous gas to kill
civilians in Gotham, I believe this was not an allusion specifically to terrorism in the era the
movie was made. Although these two depictions are quite different from each other, both are
loyal and faithful adaptations. The reason for this is lies in how the Joker has been portrayed
in the comic books throughout his history: in very different manner, with very little
consistency, with the really important element of his character being his opposition to
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Batman. Thus both movie versions are generally regarded as among best comic book to film
adaptations.
In this movie, he uses bombs as his main weapons; he even has a suicide bomber near
the end of the film, although an unwilling one. He first hires himself out to the Gotham Mafia,
aiming to kill Batman for them, thus representing the suspicion of the ‘inside man’ again. His
targets include hospitals, schools and other public institutions, and he shamelessly takes joy in
his deeds. While leading up to the climax of the movie, Joker places bombs in two ships, one
filled with inmates, the other with civilians, and gives both the means to blow up the other
ship. If they do not comply, both will be destroyed. This choice, one between moral loss and
actual loss, mirrors the attitude in the United States, how the threat to terrorism, and the
response to that threat have divided the public, and how some believe that by taking up drastic
measures for their own safety, and giving up their liberties, they are giving up their principals
and morals as well. Joker’s use of relatively low-tech weaponry, guns and bombs, stands in
contrast to Batman’s high tech, non-lethal gadgets and devices, evoking how the United
States with all their highly trained military personnel and technological advantages still have
trouble isolating and defeating the terrorists who have no such technological marvels.
Conclusion
All in all, we can see how the figure of Batman and his enemies has been carried over
to the 21st Century, and how they represent the aftereffects of 9/11. Let us look into how his
existing trappings have been adopted to this new century: his origin story is quite parallel to
the fall of the twin towers, his parents representing more than just their own lives. After their
deaths, he was looking for a way to overcome his tragedy, similarly to how America was
looking for a way to offset 9/11, to retaliate. Batman’s War on Crime, whether motivated by
justice, revenge, or a mix of the two, is almost a direct reference to the United States’ own
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War on Terror. His training and his equipment has been changed slightly, mostly in their
origins, how he learned his skills, and what his gadgets were originally intended for. This fact,
that he is highly trained, and equipped with the latest technologies, which as stated previously
were originally intended for military use, show him quite similar to how the United States’
soldiers are described, as heroes who have the latest technology and the best training there is.
While his wiretapping device is not strictly original, I hesitate to call it something exclusively
new, since it fits right into his portfolio, so I will retain it as a method of adopting his
character. Since Batman is almost as defined by his enemies as by his own origin, his enemies
have also been updated, highlighting their terroristic tendencies and methods, their motivation
also being shown in a more terroristic light. And since Gotham is New York City in this
universe, Ra’s al Ghul’s attacks on Wayne Tower, as well as Joker’s bombings take up a
whole new meaning. Batman is also shown as an ideal to which the United States should live
up to, since he is not the “hero Gotham deserves, but the one it needs” (The Dark Knight).
Batman is a complex metaphor which is especially relevant in the current political and social
circumstances in the United States.
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Works Cited and Consulted
The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008
Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2005
Batman, Tim Burton, Warner Bros. Pictures, 1989
Pearson, Roberta E., William Uricchio, eds. The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical
Approaches to a Superhero and his Media. New York, Routledge. 1991.
Senderson, Peter. “Comics in Context #89: Batman Reboots. Batting Batman Begins”.
IGN.com. June 18, 2005. December 15, 2009.
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Kontér Erik
The Economic Aspect of Mexican Illegal Immigration:
Undocumented Foreign Workers in the United States
The number of those trying their fortune in the United States even nowadays indicates
that the popularity of the country is seemingly constant and that the developed image about the
“Promised Land” still exists in people’s minds. This is well depicted also by Mexican workers,
who arrive in America with great expectations and in the hope of easy money. Several works
have been written about either legal or illegal immigration to the United States, however, little
attention has been devoted so far to their actual consequences and results, especially those
affecting economy. This issue may gain particular importance regarding Mexico as the highest
level of illegal immigration to the U.S. is rooted there, thus resulting in a huge number of
undocumented workers. The aim of this paper is to present the economic aspect of Mexican
illegal migration by focusing on such issues as economic backgrounds of the two countries in
question, root cause analysis, impacts and consequences of undocumented labor, attitude of the
U.S. towards the problem, and management. By examining the topic through these factors, my
essay is very likely to serve better comprehension of what illegal immigration actually means for
afflicted countries.
When discussing migration, two essential terms are required to be familiar with: pull
factors and push factors. Basically, these refer to causes that encourage or force someone to leave
his/her native land and settle elsewhere, either temporarily or permanently. In connection with
migration to the United States, we definitely have to mention Mexico as it is “the most important
source country for U.S. immigration, accounting for 34 percent of total immigrant arrivals since
1990” (Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 869). The most common causes of leaving (push and pull
factors) Mexico for the United States are said to be the high standard of living in the U.S. and the
poor economic status of Mexico. By taking a look at the economic backgrounds of the two
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countries, we can admit that this statement is only partly true. Economy does play a crucial role
in migration in this particular case, however, not exactly the way many people would think.
According to the general belief, Mexico is considered to be a poor country, which was
actually true during the 1994 economic crisis (also known as Mexican peso crisis because of the
strong devaluation of the Mexican peso). However, after the crisis the country achieved a
remarkable recovery and since then, Mexico is firmly established as an upper middle-income and
newly industrialized country with significant development in its economic status. Based on the
2008 report of the International Monetary Fund, Mexico is the 11th largest economy by
purchasing-power-parity, has the 13th largest nominal GDP, and also the largest GDP per capita
in Latin America. The country has an export-oriented economy with more than 90% of its
trade being under free trade agreements with more than 40 countries, like, for instance, the
European Union, Japan, Israel, and much of Central and South America. The most influential
one among its several free trade agreements is the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), which came into effect in 1994, and was signed in 1992 by the governments of the
United States, Canada and Mexico.
The main feature of the economic system of the country is its modernity and diversity,
and according to recent statistics, Mexico had 16 companies in the Forbes Global 2000 list,
which collects the world's largest companies in the year 2008. American bank holding
company, Goldman Sachs, based on its 2007 research, suggested that by 2050, Mexico is
going to be member of the largest developing economies in the world and that the current
acronym referring to these will presumably change from BRIC to BRIMCK (the first one
contains Brazil, Russia, India and China, however, this may be widened by Mexico and Korea
as well).
The main concern for the country that causes real and serious problems is actually the
uneven distribution of income and as a result there are enormous gaps not only between rich and
poor but also between northern and southern regions and urban and rural areas. The latest United
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Nations Human Development Index report for Mexico stated that two northern cities, Benito
Juárez (a district of Mexico City), and San Pedro Garza García have a similar level of
economic, educational and life expectancy development to Germany or New Zealand while
Metlatonoc, in the southern state of Guerrero, has a Human Development Index similar to that
of Syria. Further problems include commercial and financial dependence on the US, low real
wages, and underemployment for a large segment of the population. In the light of these
issues and statistics we can mark the above-mentioned factors as a push factors in relation to
migration.
As opposed to the economic background of Mexico we can count also that of the
United States as a pull factor. The economic status of the U.S. may be self-explanatory; we do
not have to analyze it thoroughly. Still, it may be worthy of note that “U.S. real wages far
exceed those in many other countries. Large wage differentials, coupled with binding and
slowly changing quotas on U.S. legal immigration, create queues to enter the United States”
(Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 871). “Geographic proximity” can also be attached to the
economic statuses of the countries as it “allows unauthorized migrants from Mexico to move
to the United States relatively quickly” (Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 872). The number of
factors causing migration depends on several issues and in connection with the Mexico-U.S.
migration, Gordon H. Hanson, Professor of Economics at the University of California, San
Diego, lists further examples that can possibly be push and pull factors, encouraging workers
to move:
Wage differentials between the United States and Mexico are hardly a new
phenomenon, yet illegal migration from Mexico did not reach high levels until
recently. An increase in the relative size of Mexico's working-age population, greater
volatility in U.S.-Mexico relative wages, and changes in U.S. immigration policies are
all candidate explanations for increasing labor flows from Mexico. (Hanson, “Illegal
Migration” 872)
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Thorough researches and studies discovered a surprising fact, which can also attract
Mexican workers: there is actually a strong demand for unauthorized labor in the U.S.:
Several U.S. industries, including agriculture, construction, and restaurants and hotels,
appear to employ large numbers of unauthorized workers. The U.S. Department of
Labor (2005) reports that, over the period 1999 to 2002, 54 percent of the U.S. farm
laborers it surveyed were in the United States illegally. At harvest time, in the late
summer and early fall, many of these workers are plainly visible at farms in California,
Texas, Washington, and elsewhere in the western United States. (Hanson, “Illegal
Migration” 912)
The reasons for this demand are basically the many advantages offered by
undocumented labor. For instance, “by hiring irregular workers, an employer can avoid
paying payroll taxes” or “other advantages for employers include the possibility of paying by
piece-rate, avoiding the constraints imposed by trade unions and labor legislation, and flexible
labor utilization in terms of working hours and layoffs” (Djajić 98). “While legal residents
normally participate in the underground economy as a matter of choice, illegal aliens, because
of their very status, are compelled to do so” (Djajić 98).
The impacts and consequences of unauthorized labor in the United States constitute a
quite controversial issue because some studies claim that these are not so measurable factors
in relation to migration while others state that they actually are. The research of the effects of
illegal immigration is a very complex matter as a number of factors have to be taken into
account in order to provide valid information. As one study argued, one has to focus on
border regions when examining impacts because “border areas […] are the regions most
directly affected by illegal immigration” as “most illegal immigrants embark from a Mexican
border city and choose a U.S. border state as their final destination” (Hanson, “Border
Enforcement” 73). Furthermore, it is heavily suggested that “whatever the impact of illegal
immigration, it is likely to be strongest in border labor markets,” thus the examined regions
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include “southern California, southwestern Texas, and Mexican cities on the U.S.-Mexico
border” (Hanson, “Border Enforcement” 73).
The results of these researches suggest that “in both countries, the cross-border flow of
labor appears to have affected the structure of wages, the intranational distribution of
population, and the pattern of industrial specialization” (Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 870).
Slobodan Djajić, Professor of International Economics, in his study, “Illegal Immigration and
Resource Allocation,” has also discovered a number of impacts that are strongly related to
unauthorized labor in the United States:
It is argued that illegal foreign workers displace low-skilled natives, depress wages,
and neutralize market pressures that would otherwise result in a rising trend of wages.
In addition, it is said that the availability of unskilled legal and illegal migrants lowers
the pace of structural adjustment and technological progress, reducing the economy's
competitiveness in the international market. If capital is mobile across sectors, illegal
immigration may draw capital to the underground economy, depriving the rest of the
economy of capital and causing it to stagnate. Illegal aliens are also said to draw
benefits from the host country's social programs without always making the
corresponding contribution to the programs' budgets. (98-99)
What is more, he suggests that the impact of undocumented labor is a “dubious story”
because, as opposed to the above-mentioned attitude towards unauthorized migration, “those
who advocate legalization of the status of illegal immigrants argue that low-skilled foreign
workers are needed and that their presence benefits the economy” (99). Furthermore, he
explains the reasons of advocates in this way:
In the U.S.A., inflows of illegal foreign workers often meet labor market shortages that
even the Labor Department considers genuine. If the domestic labor market is
sufficiently segmented, native workers are largely insulated from the direct
employment effects of illegal immigration. Moreover, foreign workers, in the role of
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consumers, contribute to an expansion of the market, stimulate investment spending,
and further the process of employment creation. For some sectors of the economyagriculture […] the availability of cheap, clandestine foreign labor is essential to the
survival of a large number of enterprises. Finally, goods and services produced by the
migrants are likely to cost less, benefiting the nation's consumers. (99)
Evidences suggest that the general belief in connection with undocumented labor is
that foreign workers take jobs away from U.S. citizens and lower the wages and working
conditions of native workers, however, according to Thomas J. Espenshade, Professor of
Sociology, “it is difficult to find strong evidence of negative effects on native workers” (208).
As a conclusion we can say that “studies of labor market impact have found that the effects of
immigrants (both legal and undocumented) on the wages and earnings of other labor force
groups are either nonexistent or small (and sometimes positive)” (qtd. in Espenshade 208).
An interesting issue regarding illegal immigration is the attitude of the United States
towards the problem, her attempts to stop or at least to reduce the level of unauthorized
immigration and the effectiveness with which she fights against it. The primary “tools” of the
government against illegal immigration are basically policies controlling and determining the
number of non-legal migrants, either in a direct or in an indirect way. “The enforcement of
international borders and the monitoring of hiring practices by employers, affect illegal
immigration directly” (Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 909). Authorities are able to regulate
flows of unauthorized labor, for instance, by increasing border enforcement. However, the
competency of U.S. immigration authorities has been questioned and “there is active debate in
policy circles about the effectiveness with which [they] deploy the resources they have
available” (Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 912). The actual problem causing obscurity is the
following:
The United States has undertaken a massive increase in the resources that it devotes to
border enforcement. Yet, the apparent impact of this increase has been modest. While
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expanded border enforcement has reduced attempted illegal entry at what used to be
major crossing points in California and Texas border cities, it appears to have had a
small effect on deterring illegal immigration overall (measured either in terms of
changes in smuggler prices or the average probability a Mexican national migrates to
the United States). (Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 914)
U.S. immigration authorities defend themselves by saying that “they are overwhelmed
by current levels of attempted illegal immigration,” or “they have been unable to staunch in
the inflow of unauthorized migrants because the number of those attempting to enter the
United States illegally has risen too fast” (Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 912). On the other
hand, it is argued that the ineffectiveness of these authorities is intentional due to “strategic
motives” or due to constant political pressure on the part of employers and other groups
benefiting from unauthorized labor (Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 912). As a consequence, it is
claimed that authorities simply overlook cases of infringement and operate “in a manner that
allows large numbers of illegal immigrants to enter the country” (Hanson, “Illegal Migration”
912). Furthermore, these authorities are accused of intentional avoidance of locations where
undocumented workers can be found in huge numbers.
Beyond border enforcement and other direct policies, there is another type of
immigration policies and these are the indirect ones set by Congress. The main feature of
these is that they are long-term policies; usually they need a long time to take effect and what
is more, they change slowly over time. Such policies include “quotas for permanent or
temporary legal immigration, the rights of immigrants to draw on public assistance, and
minimum-wage requirements” (Hanson, “Illegal Migration” 909). The first significant
attempt to fight illegal immigration effectively can be connected to President Ronald Reagan,
who signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) into law thus reforming
U.S. immigration policies. As a result of this act, recruitment of undocumented migrants
became illegal, employers were required to attest to their employees' immigration status, and
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amnesty was granted to certain illegal immigrants who entered the United States before
January 1, 1982 and had resided there continuously. What is more, the IRCA of 1986 allowed
the possibility of legalization to certain agricultural seasonal workers and immigrants who had
been continuously and illegally present in the United States since the above-mentioned date.
As regards the impacts of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, it caused
discrimination against foreign-looking workers on the part of employers and as a result there
was a slight decrease in the level of Hispanic employment. In certain instances, wages were
being lowered to compensate employers for the perceived risk of hiring foreigners and the
hiring process also changed as employers turned to indirect hiring through subcontractors,
which basically meant the following:
Under a subcontracting agreement, a U.S. citizen or resident alien contractually agrees
with an employer to provide a specific number of workers for a certain period of time
to undertake a defined task at a fixed rate of pay per worker. By using a subcontractor
the firm is not held liable since the workers are not employees. The use of a
subcontractor decreases a worker's wages since a portion is kept by the subcontractor.
This indirect hiring is imposed on everyone regardless of legality. (Massey 143-145)
Another example in relation to immigration policies is the significant national debate
in connection with immigration (during the presidency of George W. Bush) to the United
States. First of all, in 2006, Bush planned to create a "temporary guest-worker program,"
which would have allowed more than twelve million illegal immigrants to work in the U.S.,
however, the Congress rejected this proposal. The then-President argued that millions of
people who face dangers of poverty and exploitation have been bereft of the protections of
U.S. laws and despite the demand for immigrant labor employers have been penalized, due to
the lack of legal status.
The following year, the Bush administration proposed another bill, the Comprehensive
Immigration Reform Act of 2007. This act would have provided legal status and citizenship
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for the approximately 12 to 20 million, currently residing illegal immigrants in the United
States. The bill basically meant a compromise between providing citizenship for illegal
immigrants and increasing border enforcement: it included funding for 300 miles (480 km) of
vehicle barriers, 105 camera and radar towers, and more than 20,000 Border Patrol agents and
finally, it would have simultaneously restructured visa criteria around high-skilled workers.
This proposal was strongly criticized by both the right wing and the left wing and was
actually never voted on so attempts at solving the problem of unauthorized labor and illegal
immigration have failed so far. Generally, we can conclude the attitude of the United States as
follows: “while U.S. laws mandate that authorities prevent illegal entry and punish firms that
hire unauthorized immigrants, these laws are imperfectly enforced” (Hanson, “Illegal
Migration” 869).
As we have seen, illegal immigration and especially undocumented labor means a
huge concern not only for the United States but for Mexico as well because the country faces
a constant outflow of labor and the significant number of workers are forced to look for jobs
abroad. Seemingly, both countries try to do their best and make considerable efforts in order
to reduce and completely eliminate unauthorized migration between each other. The
phenomenon of illegal immigration is very complex, which is rooted in several different
factors, so we cannot simply accuse one of the countries of being responsible for it or for the
ineffectiveness in fighting it. However, the effectiveness with which the two of them work
against non-legal migration may be questionable. As a conclusion, we shall not ignore that it
is a difficult task to act in a way that causes no harm to individual rights of people but fulfills
the aims and lives up to expectations at the same time.
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Works Cited and Consulted
Bach, Robert L. “Mexican Immigration and the American State.” International Migration
Review 12.4 (1978): 536-58.
Djajić, Slobodan. “Illegal Immigration and Resource Allocation.” International Economic
Review 38.1 (1997): 97-117.
Espenshade, Thomas J. “Unauthorized Immigration to the United States.” Annual Review of
Sociology 21 (1995): 195-216.
Hanson, Gordon H., Raymond Robertson, and Antonio Spilimbergo. “Does Border
Enforcement Protect U.S. Workers from Illegal Immigration?” The Review of
Economics and Statistics 84.1 (2002): 73-92.
Hanson, Gordon H. “Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States.” Journal of
Economic Literature 44.4 (2006): 869-924.
Jones, Richard C. “Immigration Reform and Migrant Flows: Compositional and Spatial
Changes in Mexican Migration after the Immigration Reform Act of 1986.” Annals of
the Association of American Geographers 85.4 (1995): 715-30.
Joppke, Christian. “Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration.” World Politics 50.2
(1998): 266-93.
Kossoudji, Sherrie A. “Playing Cat and Mouse at the U.S.-Mexican Border.” Demography
29.2 (1992): 159-80.
Massey, Douglas S. Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York:
Russel, 2007.
The Global 2000 Special Report. Chart. Forbes. 15 Dec. 2009
<http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/18/biz_2000global08_The-Global-2000Mexico_10Rank.html>.
Wilson, Dominic and Anna Stupnytska. “The N-11: More Than an Acronym.” 28 March
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2007. Goldman Sachs’ Global Economics Paper No: 153. 15 Dec. 2009
<http://www.chicagobooth.edu/alumni/clubs/pakistan/docs/next11dreammarch%20%2707-goldmansachs.pdf>.
World Economic Outlook Report 2009. Chart. International Monetary Fund. 15 Dec. 2009
<http://www.imf.org/external/data.htm>.
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Zsófia Maczák
Native American Belief Systems
Through Navajo and Cherokee Creation Accounts
The relationship between white peoples and Native Americans has long been one full
of misunderstanding, unkindness, hostility, and unmerciful treatment. As Lewis Spence put it
down in his book entitled The Myths of the North American Indians, “[t]his noble, manly, and
dignified race has in the past been grossly maligned, chiefly by persons themselves ignorant
and inspired by hereditary dislike” (359). The indigenous people of North America had to
endure immerse amounts of harsh and unmerciful treatment through many-many centuries,
the reason of which may lead us back to the simple fact of the unknown nature of the Native
tribes’ culture for the white people. Originating from this, they have long been looked down
on, and white people still very often tend to think of them through oversimplified stereotypes:
existing as one group of people, sharing the same characteristics, and holding primitive and
not civilized beliefs and traditions. Angie Debo in her work A History of the Indians of the
United States, clearly rebuts these conceptions about the Native people of North America
when she states that “[a]lthough these aboriginal Americans varied widely from the ‘western’
stereotype- they did not all live in tipis, wear Sioux war bonnets, or speak one ‘Indian
language’- yet they had many common characteristics. These have influenced their history,
persist to the present day in their descendants, and form their unique contribution to the
American spirit” (3). Indeed, the indigenous nations living on the American continent are not
at all the same, but rather own distinct and varied beliefs and conceptions about the world and
about the parts of it, yet the common distinctively Native American culture is part of, and can
be found, in all tribes’ culture. The aim of his paper is to scrutinize the creation myths of two
geographically distant tribes—the Cherokee and the Navajo—in order to point out the
features of the commonly shared native culture regarding their world view as well as to detail
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the two tribes’ own specific beliefs and conceptions in connection with the issue. After all
these, one may at the end of the paper have a somewhat clearer image of these peoples’ view
of the world, and, as a consequence, turn towards them with much more understanding and
appreciation.
The choice to these two tribes to be analyzed has fallen out of the reason that they are
quite well known today, as well as because they belong to different families, and are located
in two geographically distant cultural regions. The Cherokee, belonging to the Iroquoian
family, occupy the Southeastern mountainous territory “extending from North Carolina into
South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and eventually Alabama” (Perdue & Green). The other
tribe subject to analysis, the Navajo, are members of the Athapaskan language family and are
located in the Southwest, on a desert area stretching “across the Colorado Plateau into
Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico” (Crystal ).
The second layer of focus of this paper is the creation accounts of these two tribes.
These stories about the creation of the world form an essential part of Naive American
culture. There is no tribe without a story about their nation’s first appearance on the earth and
about how the world and other specific components in it were created. These views are
different from tribe to tribe, yet there is some commonness observable in these stories that
makes them uniquely Native American. (Lecture notes)
In approaching the focus of the paper, the Cherokee “Cosmogonic Myths” as
compared to the relevant headings of the same issue from the Navajo myths (“The Creation or
Age of Beginning,” “The First World,” “The Second World,” “The Third World,” “The
Fourth World,” “The Fifth World”) are going to be analyzed side by side in the following
with special concern to the particular traits as well as the generic ones. To mention first in this
regard, the conceptions of the two nations about the origin of the universe are going to be
scrutinized, according to which both the Navajo and the Cherokee see the beginning of
everything through the image of massive water with the earth floating in it: as “a floating
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island in mist or water,” “a great island floating in a sea of water” (O’Bryan 3, Mooney 240).
According to these tribes of the North American continent, the earth we are living on came
into existence from the water that covered everything in the beginning. For the Navajo it can
also be mist that encircled the Earth, for they mention both water and mist in their myths
under the chapter “The Creation or Age of Beginning”. Water, together with mist, which is
going to be regarded under the label water in this paper, is of high priority in Indian creation
myths since in their world view it is water that dominates everything, and that is the
beginning of everything.
At this point, however, we must distinguish between the two tribes in their
representation of the earth’s position within this massive water. The Cherokee hold that the
earth is “suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord hanging down from the sky
vault, which is of solid rock” (Mooney 240). Under it can be found the water in which it is
floating as an island. The Navajo in this respect have a somewhat different view. For them the
world is also “a floating island in mist or water”, one should, nevertheless, notice that in their
eyes the earth is not hanging from the sky (O’Bryan 3). According to this tribe of the
American Southwest, the earth is simply levitating on the surface of the water. From all these
facts we may arrive at the conclusion that the Cherokee seem to be an earth centric tribe with
their world standing steadily beneath the massive sky vault, while the Navajo in this regard
has rather a water oriented view of the universe, where the world is floating unsteadily on the
water without being fastened to anything.
Other important elements of these creation stories are the four cardinal points, which
symbolize the four directions: North, East, South and the West. These points of the compass
have a significant role in the stories of the Navajo and the Cherokee and in Indian culture in
general, and they many times reappear in tribal stories and myths in the form of number four,
one of the Indians’ sacred numbers beside six and seven. Both the Navajo and the Cherokee
indicate these orientations of the earth in their myths, which, in the case of the Southwestern
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tribe have even four clouds over them with different colors: East=white, South=blue,
West=yellow, North=black. We have to lay down after these that “a peculiar sanctity is
attached by the aborigines to the[se] four points of the compass” (Spence 131).
The next important issue we must draw our attention to is the tribes’ opinion about the
sky. As Lewis Spence pointed to it, “[t]he sky was looked upon as the All-Father from whose
co-operation with the Mother Earth all living things had sprung” (80). The cope of heaven is
visualized by the Native Americans as something strong, steady, monolithic, and which
emanates security and safety to the people as well as to the earth they are living on. From
these we can see that the conception of the sky in native cultures is one splitting them again: it
is found above our earth, and it either has the role of a holder, to which our globe is fixed, as
in the case of the Cherokee, or has simply the role of being above us and signifying safety to
all the living, as in the case of the Navajo.
In view of the mentioned facts, it is clear for us now, that the water is the beginning of
everything and the giver of life to our earth according to the Indians. The Cherokee, however,
go further in their myths, and see the end of the existence of our planet as returning to the
water. In the light of this belief, water is also vested with the connotation of being a threat to
the earth. This peculiarity of the Southeastern ideology can be traced back to the fact that for
the Native American people nothing is exclusively good or bad, this way water is not only
seen as the giver of life but also as the terminator of it (Lecture notes): “When the world
grows old and worn out, the people will die and the cords will break and let the earth sink
down into the ocean, and all will be water again. The Indians are afraid of this” (Mooney
240). In this regard, the earth, endowed by the qualities of life, and sharing the feature of
getting old, is conceptualized as alive just like people. At the end of its life it is going to
return to the water from which it came into existence. We have to notice, however, that in the
myths of the Navajo there is no such a view about water. They see water rather as only a
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substance, in which the earth exists, but nothing more, this way contrasting the Cherokee
where it is further identified with the termination of the earth.
If we go further, we can see that in the ideology of the Navajo, the earth’s shape is
explicitly laid down as having the shape of a square, with four clouds over its corners. These
clouds are given different colors as I have already unfolded it in an earlier paragraph of the
paper. In the case of the Cherokee, nevertheless, there is no mention about the shape of their
globe, this way this paper is going to regard it as having an oval shape, close to the oblate
spheroid shape of our real planet. The fundamental difference between the two tribes,
however, is that there are no cords in the world of the Navajo upon which the earth would be
hanging down from the sky, this way making the earth simply levitating in the ocean. While
in the Southeastern ideology, the globe is solidly fixed to the sky vault.
Furthermore, the Navajo and the Cherokee exhibit marked differences from each other
in the way they distinguish the different worlds through which they went before they arrived
in the final one, the present world we live in. In the case of the Navajo, there are four worlds
depicted in their myths after which they arrived to the fifth, or the present one. Each of the
worlds they went through has not only different colors, just as the four cardinal points, but
distinctive characteristics as well. From their myths we can briefly collect the most prominent
features of the particular words. Their first world, referred to as the World of Darkness and
Dampness, was a black and small world. This world had four corners and was levitating in
mist. Above these poles appeared four clouds with different colors representing the four
directions. What is an important issue here, is that the elements of this world were contained
in these clouds, not on the earth itself. This world was small and crowded. The Second World
or the Blue World was dominated by all the blue beings, and from the myths it is quite
obvious that living in this world was really troublesome: “The powerful swallow people [...]
made the Second World unpleasant [...]. There was fighting and killing” (O’Bryan 5). The
third world, the Yellow World, was a really symmetric world regarding its build-up: both its
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geographical layout, and the layout of the beings living there. In this world appeared the
substances of the six sacred mountains of the Navajo, which later became the real mountains
they worship today. We should also mention here that all the people (plants, animals and man
were all called people, this way revealing Native Americans’ concept about equality in the
world) were similar up to this point: “[A]nimal just the same way like man. He talk,
everybody understand. Fur and skin he put on and take off just like coat. Same way
everybody—animal, birds, and fish” (Clark 81). Moreover, the “[t]rees, the winds, the river
[…], all possess[ed] life and consciousness in […] their eyes” (Spence 80). These people had
no definite forms, but were named according to the features they owned. The last but one
world was the White world. This world was not a large place either, as they say. And this was
still dark. The last world, the one we live in is the Many Colored Earth or Changeable Earth,
with the sun, the moon, and the living beings in different forms. On closer examination of the
colors of their worlds we can identify them with the four points of the compass, the first world
being the North, the second the South, the third the West and the Fourth the East. In this way
we can conclude that the order of the worlds they went through during creation may involve
the tribe’s migration, as a result of which they arrived at their present territory in the United
States. We know from several sources, like Page Bryant, that the tribes came from the North;
however, there are no accurate details and no evidence for the further migration of this tribe.
All the same, we can still conclude that the creation stories keep the past of the tribe
accurately since they build up their myths in accordance with their history and culture passing
them on from generation to generation. This way we can see the migration of the Navajo as
having taken place from North towards South, and then towards West, and finally towards
East, and after all these they might have finally arrived at their present-day territory. The
Cherokee on the contrary, however do not distinguish, and go thorough as many as five
worlds, but see the beginning of every being as appearing above the arch, in Gälûñ'lätï. From
this place starts everything: after bringing up some mud from the water and waiting for the
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earth’s formation from this, these beings begin to move down to the earth to live on it. In this
sense the Cherokee distinguish only two words they went through during creation these being
the place above the arch and our present world.
Moreover, a further significant element of Indian cultures is the segmentation of the
present world into several worlds. If we look at the Navajo myths first in this regard, we can
see that they allude to the presence of two further worlds above the present one. These are the
World of the Spirits of Living Things, and the Place of Melting into One. All these point to
the conclusion that the Navajo distinguish basically three types of worlds: the Underworld
(first four worlds), the world we live in (the Fifth World), and the Upper World (the world
above us). In this respect we can again refer to the similarities of the two tribes. The Cherokee
differentiate between the aforementioned three types of worlds the same way as the Navajo.
They imply it in their myths as: “Gälûñ'lätï, beyond the arch” referring to the world of the
spiritual beings, the earth referring to the present world, and “another world under this”
referring to the Underworld (Mooney 241). In fact, as Tom Hills and Richard W. Hills laid
down in their work titled Creation’s Journey: Native American Identity and Belief, “[m]any
native cultures explain the universe in this way, as a layered structure, with the earth [...]
between the vault of the Sky World and the murky realm of the Underworld [...]”, and they
also provided a clear explanation for this component of the tribes’ views of the world:
“Humankind must mediate between the Sky World and the Underworld in order to preserve
the well-being of the earth. The slightest change in the harmony and balance of the natural
world would summon the powers of these antithetical forces” (22).
To sum up, the paper laid emphasis on the two tribes’ views about the creation of the
world and their nation’s appearance on it. As we have seen, both tribes agree that the earth
came into existence as an island floating in massive water containing the four cardinal points
of the compass. This is a key element of the distinctive native culture shared by the tribes of
the North American continent. The fundamental difference between the two tribe’s
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conceptions is the presence, on the one hand, and the lack, on the other hand, of the four cords
on which the earth is hanging down from the sky vault. The sky is pictured for both the
Cherokee and the Navajo and for native tribes in general as providing safety and security with
its solidity, and water is seen as the supreme dominant substance of the universe. However, in
their views, the Southeastern tribe turned out to be earth centered, while the Southwestern one
is rather considered water oriented. Regarding the worlds the nations claim to have gone
through before arriving to their place in the world, we can see how the tribes hold five and
two worlds separately, through which they went during creation. The final prominent issue
drawing our attention was the segmentation of the present world into three: the Upper world,
the earth, and the Underworld. From all these we can now put our picture together about the
indigenous people of North America as a nation having indeed a complex view of their world,
with distinct tribal conceptions along with the commonly shared Native American culture.
Although these conceptualization are sharply diverse from ours, we can yet acknowledge that
there is no reason to look down on them and simply call them uncivilized or unintelligent, as
there is much coherence in their myths (and this way in their world views), “ [...] which help
to create and unite [...] [their] nation,” (Iverson xxxii).
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Appendix
Figure I. Cherokee view of the earth
SKY
Four
cardinal
North
points
West
EARTH
East
South
= Water
Figure II. The five worlds of the Navajo
Our world Fifth World (Many Colored Earth, Changeable Earth)
↑
East Fourth World (white)
↑
West Third World (yellow)
↑
South Second World (blue)
↑
North First World (black)
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Figure III. Navajo view of the earth
North
Black
Yellow
White
West
East
EARTH
Blue
South
= Mist or water
= pine
= the four clouds over the four
corners of the earth
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Works Cited and Consulted
Bíróné Nagy Katalin. “Native American Literature after the Second World War.” American
Literature III. Lecture.
Brugge, David M. “Navajo Prehistory and History to 1850.” Handbook of North American
Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. 10. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1983.
Bryant, Page. The Aquarian Guide to Native American Mythology. Great Britain: The
Aquarian Press, 1991.
Clark, Ella E. Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest. Berkeley: University of California,
1953.
Crystal, Ellie. “Navajo Nation.” <http://www.crystalinks.com/navajos.html> (date of access:
17 December 2009)
Debo, Angie. A History of the Indians of the United States. Norman and London: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1986.
Garrett, Michael Tlanusta and Michael Wilbur. “Does the Worm Live in the Ground?
Reflections on Native American Spirituality.” Journal of Multicultural Counseling &
Development. 27.4 (October 1999): 193.
<http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=2377742&site=eh
ost-live> (date of access: 17 December 2009)
Hill, Tom and Richard W. Hill Sr. Eds. Creation’s Journey: Native American Identity and
Belief. Washington: Smithonian Institution, 1994.
Hodge, Frederick Webb. “Cherokee Indian Tribe.”
<http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/cherokee/cherohist.htm>
acces: 17 December 2009)
Iverson, Peter. The Navajo Nation. Alburquerque: New Mexico, 1989.
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Josephy, Jr., Alvin M. The Indian Heritage of America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1991.
O’Bryan, Aileen. “The Dîné: Origin Myths of the Navaho Indians.” Bulletin 163 of the
Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. <http://www.sacredtexts.com/nam/nav/omni/omni00.htm> 1956. (date of access 17 December 2009)
Mooney, James. “Myths of the Cherokee.” Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of
American Ethnology 1897-98, Part I.< http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/cher/motc/>
2001. (date of access 17 December 2009)
Spence, Lewis. The Myths of the North American Indians. New York: Dover Publications,
1989.
Vann, David. “Cherokee by Blood – Traditional Stories.”
<http://www.cherokeebyblood.com/cherostories.htm#F> (date of access 17 December
2009)
Versluis, Arthur. The Elements of Native American Traditions. Great Britain: Dorset, 1993.
Winson, Terrie. “The Navajo”. <http://www.anthro4n6.net/navajo/> (date of access: 17
December 2009)
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Tímea Nánási
The Meaning and Importance of Keeping Their Tradition Alive
for Native American People
Since white men appeared in the continent of America, they are only destroying the
ancestral cultures. Native Americans are looked down upon, and are often mentioned as
primitive and barbaric people. Many tribes –like the Aztec— have totally vanished, almost
without any hint. For those who survived, it was forbidden to practice their religious
ceremonies, which would have been hard anyway because of the deportations. The
conquerors could not see the native point of view, and could not understand their way of life
and thinking. Unfortunately they could not find the beauty in it. They looked at Native
Americans as enemies from the very beginning and they just wanted to abolish them. Because
of all the terrible historical events, the wonderful cultures of many Native American tribes
seem to be disappearing by now. It looks as if they could not survive in our material and
modern-technology world, among the cruel people of today.
Fortunately many from those people who have Native American origins have a need to
know and pass on their culture from generation to generation; they have a strong desire for
their culture to become whole persons. Most of Native American writers are primarily Native
Americans in their soul and just secondly Americans. They have to struggle with their sense
of belonging, because many of them have to work outside of the reservations, so they also
have to find their places in the white men’s culture as natives. But it seems that even those
natives, who are living now in big cities –far from where they originate—have a need to go
back from time to time, to satisfy their needs and to be close to nature and to the spirits of
their ancestors. Many Native Americans are very proud of their blood; they try to maintain
their culture and their best tool for it is writing and storytelling. Oral tradition is very
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important for them in order to express themselves and pass on all of their ancient stories and
with them their beliefs, creation accounts, historical events, etc.
Before the conquerors went to America, it was mostly inhabited by American Indians,
who had rich and diverse cultures. Their beliefs differed in some ways because of the tribal
distribution; all tribes were ornamented with several different local aspects. However, there is
one part of their belief, which has been always commonly shared among all tribes: the deep
and religious respect of earth, Mother Nature and family. According to their ancient point of
view, everybody has to honor and respect the earth. It is feeding and protecting, and only
those people can reach balance who can live in harmony with nature. White men are just
exploiting it, which is considered a sin in Native American cultures. Respecting nature is a
key element of their beliefs, which includes the respect of the earth, the land, all the animals
and plants and other objects which we can find in nature. This interlocks with their belief in
the spiritual world. They truly believe that every phenomenon has an existence even without
physical appearance. They also truly believe in immortality. The key figure between the
spiritual and the physical worlds is the shaman, who connects, heals, foretells and serves the
tribe while strengthening their cultural identity and sense of belonging. Many stories are about
the traditional healing ceremonies, hunting events, the shaman’s foretelling, origins of many
habits, tribal tricksters, or about the birth of the tribe.
Native Americans tribes hold lots of ceremonies; there is one ceremony at each
turning point in their lives: when a baby is born, when a child shoots up, when a youngster
chooses profession, at marriage, when someone reaches the old age, and when somebody dies
within the tribe. These ceremonies are combined with other social, economical, naturerenewal, balance-resettle elements, and they always express their gratefulness to the Creator
and the earth.
Storytelling is also essential for the Native Americans; they also keep their culture
alive through storytelling. According to them every spoken word has a significant and
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powerful meaning, that is why they claim that oral tradition is very important in order to
remember, teach younger generations and thus preserve their culture. One can never hear the
same story twice, because the storyteller always changes the story, may put in or take out
certain elements according to the audience. The stories are not just for children, adults also
need to hear stories. Moreover, one story may be born out of someone’s vision or dream.
Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Call That Story Back” is a great example of how a Native
American writer can bring forward how a ceremony is held, and makes it easier for us to
understand their point of view, and their opinion about white people. This ceremony is held
by witches in such times when there were only native people in America. The witches
gathered to hold a competition: which one can frighten the others better. Almost all of them
showed only disgusting objects, but there was one who said a prophecy for the others, which
sounded very frightening for them: a prophecy about the whites’ coming to their beloved
land. Silko puts it down very beautifully:
“They see no life
When they look
They see only objects.
The world is dead thing for them
The trees and rivers are not alive
The mountains and stones are not alive.
The deer and bear are objects
They see no life” (Vizenor 185).
We can clearly see in these lines how differently Native Americans look at the world around
them. According to them everything has a spirit and whites only destroy the world because
they only see objects.
Native-Americans longing for their native land –their home—is also gorgeously
expressed in Maurice Kenny’s works. He lives in a big city, in Brooklyn during the
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wintertime, but as soon as spring comes, he has to go back home. He needs to be close to
nature, to the forests, rivers and hills, and he wants to be where his ancestors lived or some of
them still live. It is a common belief among native people that if nature provides us so much
food, medicine, shelter and usable objects, then it is obligatory for us to do also our best to
protect nature and everything that is connected to it. They truly respect it and they feel
balanced only if the circulation of giving-receiving is complete. Maurice Kenny also shares
with us how important wild strawberry is for his tribe—for Iroquois people. What is just a
normal spring fruit for the white people, that fruit is the symbol of life for them, they even
held the feast of strawberries in spring.
He does not go back just for this, he is also impressed by the land and that
surroundings, where he grew up and where his ancestors raised him. He also gets new ideas
for a new poem or writing; the whole time spent there is an inner renewal for him. He refers
to his strong desire for going home in his poem “Going home” and shares with us what it
means for him to return to his native land:
“to songs I could not sing
to dances I could not dance
From Brooklyn bars and ghetto rats” (Course Packet).
In these lines he refers to the fact that he feels trapped in Brooklyn, the songs and dances only
connect him to his beloved land, where he can be free, happy and whole, and where he can
create again something of high value. Brooklyn stands in this poem in the opposite side, it
symbolizes the violent part of the country, where there is dirt, muck, faithlessness, isolation
and danger.
His other very impressive poem, “They Tell Me I Am Lost” can be understood in
many ways. Generally the poem had a very deep meaning; the author uses very powerful
words describing himself. These metaphors are very natural, everyday expressions connected
to nature, like “earth”, “valley”, “thunder”, etc., or words connected to the tribal life, like
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“arrow”, “drum”, “turtle”, etc. He is writing about how strong he is, and the title refers to the
fact that he should not be in the city. It can be clearly seen that this poem was written in
Brooklyn, and he was wondering why he is there, instead of being in his native land. This is
like an outcry for being at home; he is recalling many memories form his time spent there.
The power of his words can be clearly identified in the following lines. It suggests that he is
there in his mind always, in the valley and in the mountains; it is locked in his heart forever.
“my feet are elms, roots in the earth
my heart is the hawk
my thought is the arrow that rides
the wind across the valley
my spirit eats with eagles on the mountain crag
and clashes with the thunder” (Course Packet).
Kenny feels that the people living around him in the city can not understand him,
maybe they even do not know his origin. He has to hide his real self there, he can not show it
freely, he can only express it through writing, but most of the white people will not
understand it anyway. He does not feel comfortable at all in this materialist, fake and ugly
world.
“though I hide in a sack, a prison
though I hide in a word, a law
though I hide in a glass of bier
or high on steel girders over the city
or in the slums of that city” (Kenny 20).
The attitude towards cultural duality can be also found in Nia Fransisco’s works. As a
Navajo woman she says the following about the self and one’s culture: “It is said that a person
knows the self if one knows the clans or ‘the people’ one belongs to” (Bullon 70). In her
poem, entitled “Story Tellers Summer, 1980” she writes about the importance of storytelling
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and the need for storytellers. In a way she is also a storyteller and through her poems she is
able to teach and also elaborate and clear her mind in order to understand where she belongs
to. The poem starts with a spring thunder, in which the thunderstorms unsettle everything;
here spring is unsettled. Spring refers to new ideas, new life, to the beginning. It is only the
forerunner of summer, which stands for fulfillment. The line “Four runners ran Children
toward the four directions” (Bullon 70) could indicate the forerunners and it can also refer to
the four seasons. The existence of the four directions is extremely important for Native
Americans, as they believe that the net of life stands in the centre and all the individuals are in
this net on all hands, depending on their role in the culture. The four seasons can refer to the
circulation, since the belief that every individual has to stand fixed, has to feel stable in
his/her place, spirit, but at the same time he/she has to participate in the net of life, which also
mans constant moving in a sense. The net, in which life itself keeps moving by the
participating individuals. If a person does not participate in the community’s life, he/she can
be excluded, which is the harshest punishment for Native Americans.
At the end of the poem, it can be understood that the author claims that today there are
two kinds of storytellers: the most important ones who are within the tribe, who help to
preserve oral tradition. They told and still tell the stories in their native language to the
members of the tribe with the aim of teaching, educating and keeping their culture alive. They
are the original storytellers, the experienced and wise ones, who are able to teach children and
also adults with their often moral stories.
The other type of storyteller –which is the modern one—is the media. “Listening to
the latest news of the acts of the Navajos and federal government being told on KWYK radio
in Navajo” (Bullon 73). It is an extremely important fact that in the modern world the Native
Americans can also use modern tools for cultural purposes. Nia Fransisco indicates that the
Natives still have a culture alive, but nothing is the same as in the old times, they can keep
and further develop their culture with modern tools and techniques, so they can “listen their
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culture in the radio, too” (Bullon 73). She would like to put a great emphasis on that there is
not only a Native American or only American world in the United States, but both the Natives
and the Americans have to accept that the other is also there, still has a culture of his/her own
and the two have to live together and show respect towards the other. The author helps this
way to other people to understand this duality and live according to it. She does not stand out
from many other Natives who feel themselves lost between these different cultures, but she
tries to strengthen their sense of belonging and spiritual freedom.
The message of one of Geary Hobson’s poems carries a similar message about this
duality. In the poem “Going to the Water” Hobson also tries to express his longing for nature,
its calming and purifying power even on the riverbank of a big city, where he can find himself
again. The whole poem is like a personal ceremony, which makes him renewed, calm and gets
him back to balance: he can reach his harmony by praying at the riverbank. Actually he is not
only praying, but he is thinking about the important feelings for him, about his dreams which
did not came true and about all the things which make him sad. Sharing his inner feelings and
thoughts with the river and with the spirits makes him powerful again. This poem can make
the readers calmer, in has such an inner power because if one imagines the area and
concentrates on the meaning of it for the poet, the poem can bring the reader to calmer state as
well.
“sunlight on the river’s surface
Diffuses into peacefulness
And adds luster
To the current of my soul
An undertow of grief
Lost in fragments of dreams
Broken on rocks
Carries me calmly
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Into the eddy” (Course Packet).
The poem’s finishing part is tobacco-burning, which is like the end of a ceremony, when he
thanks to earth and the river that he could be there, and the river listened to his words. The
habit of burning tobacco comes form an ancient tradition, and with that he still tries to
maintain it even in the city, where he could find a little piece of nature.
Belonging and being faithful to the land were we were born is also the main topic of
Joy Harjo’s works. She puts down in her introduction that “I feel strongly that I have a
responsibility to all the sources that I am: to all past and future ancestors, to my home
country, to all places that I touch down on and that are myself, to all voices, all women, all of
my tribe, all people, all earth and beyond that to all beginnings and endings”. I think she
summarizes in her one sentence what is important for all Native Americans who are proud of
their cultural identities. She claims that one should know the tribal language, because the
English language is not spiritual enough, they can not express many feelings and expressions
in English because that is kind of empty, a “male language”.
In her poem “3AM” she tries to open Native Americans’ eyes that it is never too late
for them to go back to their tribal land, and thus find their real selves. 3 AM is a time which is
in equal distance from the night and the morning. According to her the places we have been,
thus especially the place where we were born is a huge part of ourselves, and one has to be
there and explore it in order to explore and uncloak the real self inside.
“a twenty five dollar ride
To the center of himself
3 AM is not too late
To find the way back” (Harjo 114).
A trip home often does not cost a lot of money, but it is worth doing it, and it is never too late.
She puts the emphasis on the ending part, which makes the poem more powerful: it is
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essential for Native Americans to turn back to their own cultures. It is never too late to realize
that they belong to their people, to a culture in which they will never be outsiders, like in the
white world.
Many white people should take Native Americans’ way of life and thinking as an
example and then our world would be safer, calmer and better place. It is amazing that
through literature we can get to know this beautiful culture which is so far away form us but
with the help of their writings we can clearly understand their feelings about the important
conditions in life for them. Their culture differs totally from ours but the poems can bring it
very close to us.
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Works cited
Brill de Ramírez, Susan Berry. Contemporary American Indian Literatures & the Oral
Tradition. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1999.
Bullon, Bertha. American Indians of the Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1990.
Harjo, Joy. She Had Some Horses. Emeryville: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2000.
Kenny, Maurice. “Wild Strawberry.” Dancing Back Strong the Nation. Buffalo: White Pine
Press. 1981.
Oral Tradition in Native-American Poetry and Fiction – Course Packet
Vizenor, Gerald. Native American Literature – A Brief Introduction and Anthology. Ed.
Ismael Reed. Berkeley: RR Donneley, 1995.
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Alíz Pájer
The Effects of World War I in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine
After the First World War huge cultural and social changes appeared in the United States.
However, America entered the First World War only in 1917, but the experience that people
had to face with in the battlefield greatly affected the lives of American people. Before World
War I what characterized American society were individuality, values, prosperity, order and
culture, but the First World War denied these attitudes. World War I caused moral and
psychological destruction and security was also destroyed. Several American people went to
the war and what characterized them was “a sense of the need to experience danger (or
observe it), a vague feeling that in a time of war all other activities (such as going to college
or earning a living in the States) were unimportant, a great curiosity about matters of courage,
injury, and death–these were for the most part the prevailing motives” (Hoffman 72). New
fatal weapons were invented and used in the war, and the soldiers soon realized that survival
was not the question of bravery and skillfulness, but luck, and they believed that it was not a
real war but a massacre. The anxiety to experience war turned into a nightmare and the
soldiers returned home hurt and disillusioned. “The danger in many cases became real, and
thus quickly changed the dispositions of many Americans” (Hoffman 72). The well-known
American attributes such as positivism, optimism and the faith in the American Dream ceased
to exist in the 1920s, and I intend to show what impacts of the First World War had on
literature and society.
First of all, the shock of the war is represented well in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun
Also Rises. Hoffman claims that after the war “what was left was the isolated person” (75).
This isolation is present in all the three works of art I would like to deal with in this essay.
The isolation in The Sun Also Rises appears in the sense that there is no real relationship
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between the characters, not even between Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes. Linda Patterson
Miller illustrates well this isolation by saying that:
Trapped within a superficial and misleading image determined for her by
others, Brett Ashley feels increasingly isolated, which Jake recognizes when he
says that Brett ‘can't go anywhere alone’. She fears being alone precisely
because she is alone, more so than any other character in the novel. Because
Jake understands her entrapment and isolation, she relies upon him in her
struggle to break free of the image that both defines and smothers her.
Their relationship is a special one because it is unconditional. The effect of the First World
War on Jake is that he got injured that made him physically, mentally and spiritually
impotent. Brett mentions several times that if Jake were not impotent they would be a perfect
couple. Personally I doubt it, because Brett needs somebody, and in this case Jake, to
emotionally rely on and I think she exploits him and Jake’s impotence has nothing to do with
their failure to be a happy couple. This is only a scapegoat, and this is how Brett tries to calm
herself down that deep down she is a respectable woman, and if she had an honest and
straightforward man in her life she would not sleep with men. I think this is only an excuse
for her because he only tries to take the blame on something to tranquilize herself.
Furthermore, Jake says several times that he does not really like Robert Cohn. So the
characters are alone and isolated and only two things connect them and these are drinking and
the war. Linda Patterson Miller describes this isolation with the picture when “Jake is sitting
‘at a table on the terrace of the Napolitain.’ Robert Cohn has just left him, and the growing
darkness, along with the circling crowds, emphasizes Jake's isolation (which parallels that of
Brett).” All characters have a senseless and aimless life. They are disillusioned, irresponsible,
they have no values, and there is bitterness and hopelessness in them. According to Zsolt
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Virágos, the hero of The Sun Also Rises, “Jake Barnes is often considered the archetype of the
generation,” and this is the Lost Generation (49-50).
Second, we see the characters after the war, and we feel that something happened in
the past that still affects the present. This shock of the war and the disillusionment appear in
the novel in such a way that everybody turns to alcohol, because this is the only way they can
get rid of the memories of the war. Conspicuous consumption appears in the novel as one of
the characteristic features of the Roaring Twenties. According to Professor Virágos, “the lost
generation writers keenly felt the loss of traditional values as a result of the war and other
social evils. […] They were also disillusioned by the pervasive materialism of American
culture in the years following the war” (50). The characters buy alcohol in almost every
minute and they do not care how much do they cost and they are not interested in the prices at
all. They have this hedonistic lifestyle and they are not concerned with what will happen
tomorrow, they live only in the present. They go from one bar to another, get drunk and return
home. This starts the next day again.
Third, carelessness is another important feature of the novel in the respect that Brett does not
care if she breaks the hearts of several men, for example Cohn. What is more, this careless
behavior is typical in the relationship of Cohn and Frances too. Jake narrates the following:
“Her attitude toward Robert changed from one of careless possession and exploitation to the
absolute determination that he should marry her” (Hemingway 5). Moreover, Mike picks at
Cohn and hurts his feelings throughout the novel on purpose, and Mike is not affected by the
fact that Cohn has arrived to the merge of a breakdown.
In addition, the desire to escape characterizes the novel because the characters are
always in the move. Even at the beginning of the novel Robert Cohn wants to persuade Jake
to go with him to South Africa. While Jake responds that “Listen Robert, going to another
country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by
moving from one place to another” (Hemingway 10). Surprisingly, Cohn did not serve in the
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war, though he is still affected by it. Jake states that it is no use moving to another country,
because the problems are within you, and if you move somewhere else those problems are
still with you. However, even Jake cannot stay at one place because he is travelling between
France and Spain.
Faith in the American Dream collapsed in the 1920s as in the characters in The Sun Also
Rises. The characters have an aimless life and they are only interested in drinking. In addition,
the faith for religion is lost too, because when Jake enters the cathedral in Pamplona he starts
to pray but he is not interested in the religion itself. During the prayer several things comes to
Jake’s mind, except God. He narrates this event in the cathedral that
I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the
bull-fighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest. Then I
prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was
getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would
be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing. (Hemingway 85)
In the 1920s a new type of woman, the flapper appears, who breaks away from the
traditional values. Norman Foerster describes the flapper that she “played a leading role in a
revolution of morals and manners. […] She bobbed her hair, swore like a boy, smoked
cigarettes, took to gin and corn and got drunk (‘blotto’), made the most, or least, of the short
skirts […] , and often rolled her stockings on the calf. […] Outrageously, she spoke whatever
came into her head” (134). Brett represents this woman with her shocking behavior, sexual
freedom, masculine characteristics, short hair and short skirt. Brett’s sexual power is very
dominant and every male character is attracted to her. However, Romero, who has not
experienced the danger and shock of the war, wants to change her by claiming that she is not
feminine enough, which is very contradictory. The clash of values between the old and the
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new can be observed in this scene because Brett denies to be the old type of woman. Brett is
unable to change and to settle down with anybody because, she thinks that there is no way out
from this lifestyle and she cannot get rid of the nightmares of the war. Brett represents a
senseless and meaningless life. She always wants to have a bath after being with men because
she feels dirty. Actually she feels dirty, because she is sick of this lifestyle and war experience
that are burden in her life, and in all of the characters’ lives.
The problems of consumer society and the collapse of the value system appear in F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby as well. In 1919 the US government passed the
Prohibition Act which forbade the consumption of alcohol which led to bootlegging and the
smuggling of alcohol. This new way of money search is illustrated in The Great Gatsby
because Gatsby is “a product of the opportunity for quick wealth offered by Prohibition
(Hoffman 135). Gatsby is a perfect example of the self-made man who managed to break
away from his past and became rich. His American Dream became real in the sense that he
became a well-to-do person, however his other American Dream to take possession of Daisy
collapsed. Gatsby is led by his American dream, this is his only aim. However, we get to
know his real personality when he dies and his father comes to the funeral. His father brings
his son’s diary that Gatsby wrote when he was a little kid. It shows that he is very determined,
precise, strong, and if he takes something into his head he gets through with it. Here is a
section from his childhood diary:
Rise from bed …………………………………… 6.00
A.M.
Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling……………
6.15-6.30
“
Study electricity, etc……………………………
7.15-8.15
“
Work …………….……………………………
8.30-4.30
P.M.
Baseball and sport ……………………………
4.30-5.00
“
Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it …
5.00-6.00
“
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Study needed inventions ……………….…….
7.00-9.00
“ (Gatsby 180)
As I have already mentioned, consumer society, materialism and money play an
important role in all the three works of art. In this novel materialism is also reflected as a
negative image as in the other two works. Firstly, Gatsby uses all of his wealth to impress
Daisy. He buys things which are not important to him, for example he equips his huge library
with special and expensive books, however he does not read these books at all, they are uncut.
If we take into consideration his car we can state that he uses it to make a great impression on
Daisy. He let her use his car and this is very compelling to her, but at the end the car causes
the tragic end of Gatsby. In the novel it matters a lot if your money has tradition or not. It is
important which family do you come from and what do you represent. Gatsby’s money has no
tradition and this is why he is not accepted and respected by the upper-class people, for
example Tom Buchanan hates him and not only because Gatsby loves Daisy. Gatsby is
isolated in the sense that he is looked down on by those people who are aristocrats. In
addition, Gatsby’s isolation is present at his parties too, because he separates himself from his
guests. He does not enjoy these parties, the only reason he organizes them is to enchant Daisy.
The valley of ashes is not often mentioned in the novel but people do not like noticing it. But
no matter how hard they try to hide it, it is always present. For example it was in the valley of
ashes when Daisy ran over Myrtle. This act brings about the question of carelessness. When
Daisy ran Myrtle over she did not seem to regret what she had done. Moreover, both Tom and
Daisy have lovers and none of them care about it, it is very natural in their marriage. Kathleen
Parkinson takes the symbol of the valley of ashes to describe society in the novel: it “acts as a
powerful symbol of a callous, careless society and of its underlying despair. It is a huge
dumping ground for the detritus of a modern industrial society totally absorbed in
materialism, which the many references to dust and ashes link inextricably with sterility and
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death” (18). In my opinion, it was the society’s, especially Daisy’s careless behavior that
caused Gatsby’s death.
Another similarity between The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises and The Adding Machine is
the lack of real relationships. In this novel these are based on lies. For example, the
relationship between Tom and Myrtle is not based on love but on lust. Then, Gatsby’s and
Daisy’s relationship is idealized because Gatsby is looking for something that does not exist.
He wants to bring back the past, while Daisy only wants to have some fun with him. She does
not take him seriously because she does not want anything from him and she has never
thought of leaving her husband. The relationship between Daisy and Tom is very indifferent.
There is no love between them only money. They want to show that traditional values are
important and try to show to other people that they love each other very much. If we take a
look at Gatsby’s and Nick’s relation we can conclude that their relationship is the only that
represents true emotions and values. From the very first time Gatsby trusts Nick and vice
versa. Not to mention that Nick was the only one who went to Gatsby’s funeral.
Gatsby can be connected to the war in the sense that on the one hand, he served in it and on
the other hand, his mansion is described as a “factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in
Normandy” (Gatsby 11). There are speculations and rumors about Gatsby that he was a
German spy, he belongs to a royal family, killed a man, he inherited his fortune and that he is
in the bootlegging business. In addition, the Lost Generation is present in the novel according
to Kathleen Parkinson. Her opinion is that Tom and Daisy “are members of the ‘lost
generation’, but their great wealth insulates them from awareness of this“ (19). To sum up, the
First World War is still present in The Great Gatsby with its careless and materialistic society,
and with the feeling of physical, spiritual and mental isolation. The belief in the American
Dream is present but it turns out that Gatsby’s dream made him blind because he did not
realize that her love was fake. Casie E. Hermanson thinks about the novel that it “is
conspicuous in its lack of a religious belief system; God is absent from the skies over East and
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West Egg. Part of the restlessness of a postwar generation may describe the quest for a belief
that can fill the void created by this loss, or the results of a hedonistic lifestyle that will
distract people from it altogether.”
The effects of World War I on economy is that the 1920s became an age of efficiency,
when the most important factor in companies was to reduce time and make production as fast
as possible. The individuals are only objects and numbers in the system and they are
changeable. In this machine system there is no room for creativity and individuality. In the
Roaring Twenties “the average man had access to the new means of convenience and pleasure
pouring from the factories of the Machine Age” (Foerster 132). Elmer Rice tries to represent
the cruelty of the machine age and business. He wrote The Adding Machine in 1923 and it
became one of the icons of American drama. Walter J. Meserve points out that “numerous
plays began to caricature aspects of society,” and this motivated Elmer Rice too (8). If I
would like to sum up Rice’s aim about this play in one sentence I would turn to Anthony F.
Palmieri who summed up that:
As a playwright Rice's dominant concern is with the attainment of ‘freedom of
the body and of the mind through liberation from political autocracy, economic
slavery, religious superstition, hereditary prejudice and herd psychology and
the attainment of freedom of the soul through liberation from fear, jealousy,
hatred, possessiveness and self-delusion.’
Zero is a middle-aged man who is obsessed with his job and is very proud of himself
that he has never missed a day in twenty-five years and he has never been late. He is a passive
figure in the play who never wanted to really achieve anything. Zero says before his execution
that “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I want to live!” (Rice 325) Actually, he was
already dead and this machine age made him dead and careless. He does not care about other
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people. When he talks to his wife in prison Zero only cares about his scrap-book that, who is
going to take care of it if Mrs. Zero dies. He is oppressed at home and his wife dominates and
rules. I think he is impotent, like Jake, in the sense that he has no free will at home and in his
workplace. In the play the adding machine is the symbol of industrialization and consumer
society. According to Hoffman, “the soul of Zero is the soul of the small-time worker, whose
acts are duplicated a million times, in all phases of history, who doesn’t grow at all but merely
changes his work as mechanical progress dictates” (252).
There is no trace of real friendship and relationship in the play. If we examine the
marriage of Zero and his wife we can state that they are not happy at all. Because of the lack
of communication and misunderstanding between the couple their marriage went bad. The
first scene begins with Mrs. Zero’s dialogue. She is talking to Mr. Zero but there is no
reaction from the husband. He seems to be indifferent and he never answers his wife. What is
more, when they have company at home Zero is almost silent during the conversation, he
does not enjoy people having around him. In addition, Zero’s relation to Daisy is fake too,
because he does not love her, he is only attracted to her. When he talks to Daisy at work, they
do not talk to each other because those dialogues are inter-dialogues. The characters do not
look at each other and there is no eye-contact between them. However, in the afterlife they
can talk about their feelings, while in real life they are inarticulate. Actually, Zero is an
isolated person and for him life is punishment. He is so obsessed with his job that when he
has to leave afterlife, he is forced to stop working on the adding machine. What is more, the
lack of communication is true for Zero’s boss as well. He does not even know his employee’s
name. He talked to Zero only once in twenty-five years.
This machine age made everybody look the same and talk same. There is no
originality in people in the play, everybody is alike. They look the same, talk and behave the
same way. “The men are all shapes and sizes, but their dress is identical with than of Zero in
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every detail. Each, however, wears a wig of different color. The women are all dressed alike
too, except that the dress of each is of a different color” (Rice 312). Zero even compares
numbers with people and he sees no difference between them. Actually he thinks that people
has no feelings, they are not men of feeling just like numbers. What is more, he believes that
he is a number too. Before the jury he says about numbers that “They’re funny things, them
figgers. They look like people sometimes. The eights, see? Two dots for the eyes and a dot for
the nose. An’ a line. That’s the mouth, see?” (Rice 316)
Zero is only motivated by business and efficiency. Actually, he is the adding machine
who cannot stop working and who is part of a large machine. His American Dream is all
about work and his desire is his job. When Zero was young his dream was to be a bookkeeper,
but that was only a kindling. And in his middle-ages his only wish is to have a job, to feel that
it is worth living and he is not useless. He cannot bear the fact that he cannot continue his job,
this would just break him. Rice is aware of this and this is why he planned the afterlife scenes.
Rice tried to represent the importance of time which played a very important role in the
Roaring Twenties too. When Zero is working he says to Daisy that “Go on, go on. We’re
losing time” (Rice 304). This era set the pace and no one could rest, not even for a minute.
Rice’s opinion about Zero is that:
.
I hope that this sounds very complex. For I conceive Zero as a complex
being. A bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions, of impulses and fears,
of desires and inhibitions. His conduct in a general sense is determined by
hereditary influences, childhood environment, education and the social
inheritance, but more particularly it is influenced by the state of his digestion,
the weather, his internal secretions and the multitudinous sensory stimuli of
light and sound, touch and temperature, taste, motion and pain. Since all these
elements are never present at once, nor in the same proportions, it follows
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that at no two moments in his life Zero (or anyone else) in precisely identical
psychological and physical situations, and that therefore he is at no two
moments precisely the same person. (Murphy 150-1)
I hope I managed to show that beside the Harlem Renaissance and people’s satisfaction in
buying goods, there are themes that were constant problems in the Twenties, for example the
issue of isolation, lack of communication, carelessness etc. According to Zsolt Virágos, “the
Lost Generation is only a brief chapter in American literary history. Its characteristic blend of
public suffering and private pleasure begins to disappear with the onset of the 1930s” (51).
People were not ready for the sudden industrial and economic development and the together
with the shock of the war these problems came to the surface. I believe that this decade has
left a great impact on American society that several writers felt the urge to inform people to
be aware of these threatening dangers.
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Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin, 1994.
Foerster, Norman. Image of America: Our Literature from Puritanism to the Space Age. Notre
Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1962.
Hemingway, Ernest. Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises. London: Arrow, 1994.
Hermanson, Casie E. „An Overview of The Great Gatsby in an Essay for Exploring Novels.”
Literature Resource Center , Literature Resources from Gale. 11 Dec. 2009
<http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRG&u=debre>.
Hoffman, Frederick J. The Twenties: American Writing in the Postwar Decade. New York:
Free Press, 1965.
Meserve, Walter J. “Sidney Howard and the Social Drama of the Twenties.” Discussions of
Modern American Drama: Discussions of Literature. Ed. Walter J. Meserve. Boston:
D.C Heath and Company, 1966. 8-17.
Miller, Linda Patterson. “Brett Ashley: The Beauty of It All.” Twentieth Century Literary
Criticism 203 (1995): 170-184. Literature Resources from Gale. 11 Dec. 2009
<http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRG&u=debre>.
Murphy, Brenda. American Realism and American Drama, 1880-1940. Ed. Albert Gelpi.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
Palmieri, Anthony F. “Elmer (Leopold) Rice.” Dictionary of Literary Biography 4 (1980).
Literature Resources from Gale. 11 Dec. 2009
<http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRG&u=debre>.
Parkinson, Kathleen. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin, 1988.
Rice, Elmer. The Adding Machine. COPY
Virágos, Zsolt. The Modernists and Others: The American Literary Culture in the Age of the
Modernist Revolution. Debrecen: Institute of English and American Studies, 2008.
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Ildikó Rendes
The Limits of the Myth of the West: Native, Mexican and Japanese American
Experience in the United States
During the history of the United States, the American West has been considered to be
a place of new starts and beginnings with abundant opportunities. However, the shadows of
this myth were often ignored, since the opportunities of the land of promise were not open to
everybody. Among those who were mostly affected by the dark sides of the American West
were the Native, Mexican and Japanese Americans. These non-white ethnic groups really had
to struggle to make a living and to share the myth of the West. In a country where every
person was supposed to be equal, they did not have the means to obtain the ideal life they
dreamed of as they had to face discrimination and abuse. We can discover in their experiences
similar limitations and exploitations regarding their properties, lands, civil rights, education,
etc. which forced them to realize the harsh realities of life for ethnicities in the United States.
After the arrival of Columbus in 1492, a new era of Native American history began.
During the process of colonization and the westward movement, Indians were gradually
deprived of their lands and their traditions. The justification for these actions included the
declaration of the Native Americans to be uncivilized savages in need of saving, and this
process often involved violence which was considered to be “an instrument of progress”
(Takaki 86) in order to advance civilization. Indian removal and land seizure began already
under the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who summarized his purposes the following way:
“I must destroy those deluded victims doomed to destruction by their own restless and savage
conduct” (qtd. in Takaki 85). His opinion reflects the prevailing idea of the era: westward
expansion with all of its consequences regarding the Native Americans was justified with the
“idea of innocence,” according to which the expansion was a “mission to extend the domain
of Christian civilization” (Limerick 36). However, the Native Americans perceived their
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encounter with whites differently: “[t]he men who had brought us whiskey and the smallpox
had come with the cross in one hand and the gun in the other” (Dog 93). Mary Crow Dog’s
opinion clearly expresses the devastating effects of white migration and conquest during
which the number of Native Americans heavily declined, as “disease, warfare, enslavement,
starvation, and exposure resulting from the destruction of traditional modes of living all
contributed to the high mortality of the native peoples” (Bahr 38-39). Although these actions
were defended on the bases of Christian tenets, the deprivation and oppression of the Indians
primarily violated their rights to their own lives and their rights to decide what is good for
them, or in other words, whether they want to be ‘civilized’ or not.
Underlying the ‘innocent’ purposes of the Europeans, there were the removal of
Indians and the seizure of their lands. The removal of the Native Americans culminated under
President Jackson who believed that “efforts to civilize the Indians had failed” (Takaki 87),
and forcing the Indians into reservations was necessary. One of the most damaging removals
happened in 1829, when the Cherokee Indians in Georgia were uprooted and they had to
march in the dead of winter. As “the exiles were defenseless against the weather and disease”
(Takaki 97), many of them died during the journey. Moreover, “removal meant separation
from a special and sacred place” (Takaki 97) and the Indians had to leave not only their lands
behind but also their source of traditions and beliefs.
Introduced by President Thomas Jefferson, “the land-allotment program became the
principal strategy for taking territory away” (Takaki 88). The extension of state authority over
the lands of Native Americans soon became a general principle due to which the Indians lost
their lands and their rights to claim them. One of the most devastating policies was the
General Allotment Act of 1887, which entitled the whites to seize lands on the reservations
“by allowing individual Indians to sell their allotments and by permitting white homesteaders
to take land not assigned to individual Indians” (Bahr 39). The program was also intended “to
break up the reservations and accelerate the transformation of Indians into property owners
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and US citizens” (Takaki 234). However, although the act was designed to incorporate
Indians into society, their life standards and living conditions actually deteriorated as the
lands sold to the white settlers were of the best quality, and Native Americans could not
benefit from the poorer soil left to them.
The subsequent devastating results were further complicated at the beginning of the
20th century by a new policy promoting the assimilation of Native Americans into white
culture whereby the missionaries advocated the idea that “you must kill the Indian in order to
save the man” (Dog 22). Thus, besides the seizure of their lands and their enforcement into
reservations, there were now attempts to destroy the traditional ways of life that still prevailed
among the Native Americans.
The changes affected all aspects of life. The white reformers argued that in order to
civilize the Indians, “the tribal system had to be destroyed, for it was perpetuating ‘habits of
nomadic barbarism’ and ‘savagery’” (Takaki 235). After the reservations were broken up into
individual parts, the ‘tiyospaye,’ the extended family group was also destroyed, as it was “a
barrier to what the white man called ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’” (Dog 13). The family
model was replaced by that of the ‘nuclear family’ tearing apart family relations. Furthermore
- as the members of the new generation - children were taken away from their families and
were sent to boarding schools outside the reservations to learn the white ways of life.
Although “education was accepted by both sides as the solution to the Indian-white struggle”
(Bahr 407), these children were badly affected by this change which Mary Crow Dog
described as an act of kidnapping (29). In the boarding schools, all physical and internal
evidences of being Indians were tried to be suppressed, and “one of the most detrimental
effects of education on Indian existence has been the abandonment of the old ways and
particularly of the old knowledge about the world” (Deloria 42). Deloria lists the deterioration
of Indian health due to the loss of traditional medicines and cures as a serious consequence.
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Adding insult to injury, the conditions in the schools (inadequate diet, overcrowding,
beating, hard work [(Bahr 407), (Dog 34)]) only led to low academic achievements, which
reinforced the conviction that Indian children are not able to acquire academic knowledge,
and “until the mid-1960s Congress believed devoutly that Indians could not master academic
subjects but greatly preferred to learn skills where they could use their hands” (Deloria 41).
The conflicts were further fuelled by the better treatment of lighter skinned Indians, as “girls
who were near-white, who came from what the nuns called ‘nice families’ got preferential
treatment” (Dog 34). Furthermore, due to the fact that these children were taught to live
according to white standards, they suffered from identity crisis when they returned to their
homes. “When they found out – and they found out quickly – that they were neither wanted
by whites nor by Indians, they got good and drunk, many of them staying drunk for the rest of
their lives” (Dog 50). Drinking, the lack of working opportunities and the poor living
conditions all led to the emergence of a crime wave, creating a vicious circle where Indians
and whites were blaming each other.
Although whites tried to assimilate the Native Americans into white culture, racism
and the fear for cultural purity still prevailed and there were attempts to decrease their already
declining numbers. While earlier, Native Americans were decimated in bloody wars; in the
second half of the 20th century, “for a number of years BIA doctors performed thousands of
forced sterilizations on Indian and Chicano women without their knowledge or consent” (Dog
79). The latter action can be perceived as a cultural genocide just as the former one, which
again violated the civil rights of Native Americans. Parenthetically, civil rights and American
citizenship were not given to the Native Americans until the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act
(although they had lived on the continent for hundreds of years before). Even then, there were
certain restrictions regarding their rights, and “it was not until 1948, when the Supreme Court
declared unconstitutional the disenfranchisement clauses of the Arizona and New Mexico
state constitutions, that all the rights of citizenship were extended to them” (Bahr 375).
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Many aspects of the Native American existence were repeated in the experiences of
Mexican Americans who also had to face the harsh realities of opportunities in the USA. First
of all, like Indians, Mexican Americans were also exploited in terms of their lands. During the
1800s, the United States extended its boundaries to territories which were claimed by the
Mexicans. Conflicts and tensions followed, and after the American annexation of Texas, an
armed conflict, the Mexican-American War broke out. At the end, the Mexicans surrendered
and the USA acquired even larger territories in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. “In
it, Mexico accepted the Rio Grande as the border to Texas and ceded the Southwest […] to
the United States for 15 million dollars” (Bahr 55). Although the Mexicans living in these
territories had one year to decide whether they would like to remain or to leave and to go to
Mexico, only a fraction determined to return to their former country. Therefore, the majority
of the people on the Southwest were of Mexican origin, becoming American citizens. They
were guaranteed “the enjoyment of all rights of citizens of the United States according to the
principles of the Constitution” (qtd. in Bahr 55). Although in the original version of the
Treaty, there was a provision, Article X, which guaranteed protection of “all prior and
pending titles to property of every description” (qtd. in Takaki 179-180), this provision was
not included in the final version of the treaty. Instead, the United States offered to Mexico a
‘Statement of Protocol,’ claiming that “the American government by suppressing the Xth
article… did not in any way intend to annul the grands of lands made by Mexico in the ceded
territories” (qtd. in Takaki 180). However, the Mexicans could not prove their claims to their
lands and they lost their properties. Limerick’s conclusion that “[l]ike Indians, Hispanics in
the borderlands had been conquered. Like Indian treaties, their treaty had been much violated,
especially in the loss of land claims” (253) greatly reflects on their similar situations to the
Indians.
Parallels with the Native Americans can be drawn not only on the basis of breached
treaties and lost land claims, but also on the basis of the justification for the seizure of their
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lands. In connection with the Indians, there was a general impression that “they were not
using the land productively and properly and […] therefore, dispossession would be not only
easy but also right” (Limerick 232). This was also applied to Hispanics as a validation for
taking their lands away, since “[they] were improvident and undeserving of California’s vast
resources. Living in a promising country, they failed to use it properly” (Limerick 240).
Therefore, similarly to Native Americans, Hispanics were also looked at as an incompetent
and inferior people. Moreover, the loss of their lands meant devastating consequences in the
Mexican Americans’ life as well, since it “altered the nature of the economy, radically
changed the land tenure system, and resulted in economic exploitation of the Mexican people”
(Camarillo 113).
The exploitation of the Hispanics was largely economy-based, as the Mexicans were
willing to work for lower wages and therefore the Southwest depended on their work.
According to Chacon, they provided “much of the labor that built the industrial and
agricultural infrastructure of the nation” (191). Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that their
labor was deeply needed, their contribution to the building of the nation was ignored and
neglected. The fact that the services of Mexican Americans were only a means for the USA to
generate profit can be clearly observed in the Americans’ policies regarding immigration from
Mexico. After the Mexican American War, due to the working opportunities, the number of
the legal and illegal Mexican immigrants to the United States increased. Until the end of the
1920s, Mexicans were welcomed. However, at the time of the Great Depression, as there was
a scarcity in work places, a repatriation program was initiated “to send Mexican Americans
back to Mexico where they ‘belonged’” (Bahr 56). Although the official intend was to send
the illegal immigrants back to Mexico, many Mexican Americans (that is already American
citizens) were also repatriated.
Later on, when the WWII created a labor shortage, Mexican Americans were again
welcomed in the country through the Bracero Program (1942), which “promised the Mexican
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worker steady employment, a minimum wage, and adequate housing” (Bahr 57) allowing
Mexican workers to stay in the USA for a certain amount of time. Therefore, the program
provided the necessary unskilled labor for farmers during the seasons, without having
Mexicans staying permanently in the country. Nevertheless, the opportunity to work led to an
increasing number of people entering the United States illegally. To curb their numbers, a
number of measures were initiated, e.g. the Operation Wetback (1954) with the aim “to locate
and return illegal aliens to Mexico” (Bahr 57). However, this threatened the cheap labor force
in the agriculture and therefore, as Bahr mentions, the Bracero Program was continued while
deporting illegal aliens back to Mexico under the Operation Wetback, thus creating a circle, at
the center of which was the exploitation of Mexican workers for profit. Today, illegal
immigration is still a crucial problem, and one of the most important and debated measures
against illegal aliens is the militarization of the border which began in the 1970s.
Unfortunately, border militarization did not decrease the number of people who enter the
country illegally, it just made the process more dangerous as it “has not stopped migration; it
has only imposed deadly rules upon it” (Chacon 205).
However, the measures intended to prevent the entering of Mexicans illegally into the
USA can not only be explained with the changing needs on the labor market. While Hispanics
were welcomed as cheap labor force, at the same time, by allowing them into the country, the
“fragile purity of white Americans” (Limerick 247) was at stake. Besides the fear that the
large number of immigrants would endanger the job opportunities of the whites, there was
also a general fear of strangers in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century (nevertheless,
due to their economic necessity, Mexicans were consistently left out of the resulting
restrictions on immigration). Acknowledging the important role Mexicans played in the
agriculture of the USA, there were some proposals “to allow white Mexicans the privilege of
open immigration while prohibiting the entry of dark Mexicans” (Limerick 247). This
differentiation can be clearly paralleled with the preferential treatment of lighter skinned
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Native Americans, who had a greater chance of acceptance by and assimilation into the
dominant culture.
Moreover, anti-Mexican sentiments surfaced during the WWI as well, when after the
exposure of the Zimmerman telegram (offering a deal for Mexico in which the Germans
would assist the Mexicans to retake their lands if the Mexicans support them against the
USA), there was a ‘Brown Scare’ in America, whereby the police “began arresting Mexicans
and government agents stepped up their surveillance of the Mexican community” (Limerick
252).
The loss of lands, the powerlessness, and the unfamiliar and antagonist environment
created a harsh reality for the Mexican Americans. These factors led to the ‘barriorization’ of
the Mexican population, to “the formation of residentially and socially segregated Chicano
barrios or neighborhoods” (Camarillo 53). Their enclavement involved exclusion from other
fields of life, and as Takaki observed, “they were isolated by the borders of racial
segregation” (326). This isolation also extended to the sphere of education, as Mexican
children had to attend segregated schools, resulting in low academic achievements. In setting
up the classes, “assessment systems based on assessments of language deficiencies or other
individual needs […] were used to separate Hispanics from Anglos” (Fraga 852). Their dropout rate from school was very high, and their education did not involve much prospect since
the ideal aim was to train them “to become obedient workers” (Takaki 327) in order to
reproduce the cheap labor force. The marginalization of Mexican Americans reflects the
ambivalent nature of the attitudes prevailing towards them, “with Americans eager to take
advantage of their labor but less enthusiastic about accepting them as permanent residents”
(Kerr 226).
The shadows of the myth of the West were experienced by even those immigrants who
were at first welcomed and appreciated, for example the Japanese Americans. The first
Japanese immigrants appeared in the USA in the second half of the 19th century, due to “an
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agreement between Japan and Hawaii providing for Japanese laborers to work on Hawaiian
sugar plantations” (Bahr 84). Later, the Japanese succeeded the Chinese as workers on the
railroads and in the mines. At this time, they were considered to be a model minority, and the
Americans believed that “the Japanese were better [than other Asians] […]. The Japanese
seemed adaptable and progressive, willing to modernize and Americanize, given the
opportunity” (Limerick 269-70). The Japanese were really more than willing to integrate into
the American culture, and they cautioned their children “not to bring disgrace upon the family
or community and exhorted them to do their best in everything” (Matsumoto 257).
However, at the beginning of the 20th century, as the number of Japanese immigrants
increased and as they succeeded in opening shops, restaurants, etc, anti-Japanese feelings
surfaced and the Japanese Americans were labeled as “a new yellow peril” (Bahr 85).
Attacks against Japanese people, shops, restaurants, etc entailed, and in 1906, the resentments
grew so high that there were even attempts to segregate the “Mongol hordes” (Bahr 85) from
the American students. This measure was aimed at reducing the crowding in schools after an
earthquake in San Francisco that destroyed many school buildings. However, “out of 25,000
students it turned out that the feared ‘horde’ consisted of only 93 Japanese” (Bahr 85). The
Japanese government was greatly offended by this discrimination and protested against it to
President Roosevelt. As a result, the Gentlemen’s Agreement was reached in 1907, “pledging
both governments to discourage Japanese immigration to the United States” (Bahr 85), and
“restricting Japanese immigrants to nonlaborer positions” (Roos 280-81). Japanese had to face
prejudice and discrimination that “limited their access to entire sectors of the economymanufacturing jobs, the professions, and public service” (Roos 281), causing similar
experiences in their limitations to those of the Native and Mexican Americans.
As the industrial jobs were closed to them, the Japanese immigrants turned to farming.
However, “the prejudice against Japanese farmers increased to such a point that in 1913 the
California legislature passed the Alien Land Act designed to halt Japanese land acquisition.”
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(Bahr 86). With this act preventing Japanese from acquiring lands, the anti-Japanese
sentiments died down for a few years. But when Japan became a significant military power
and more and more immigrants went to the USA, the resentments towards them increased
again, and there were even talks about the Japanese “effectively colonizing the Pacific Coast”
(Limerick 270). At this time, there was a general fear of strangers, and in 1924, Japanese
immigration “ceased entirely, with the passage of the Oriental Exclusion Act” (Morgan 324)
which was a part of the major restriction act imposed upon immigrants that year.
The characteristics which earlier entailed the acceptance of the Japanese Americans
were soon turned against them. As they were more intelligent and civilized than other
immigrants, they were also considered to be more dangerous and suspect: “if they appeared
to plan no trouble, they were all the more definitely up to something” (Limerick 270). The
resentments culminated at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which, coupled
with rumors that the Japanese are planning an invasion on the West Coast, resulted in the
Executive Order 9066 “arbitrarily suspending the civil rights of American citizens by
authorizing the removal of 110,000 Japanese and their American-born children” (Matsumoto
258). Japanese Americans were looked at with fear, hostility and racism (which bears
similarity to the situation of Mexican Americans after the exposure of the Zimmerman
telegram during the WWI, resulting in their persecution), and they were relocated into camps
where their lives changed essentially. First, their possessions were taken away from them and
they were given
limited opportunity to dispose of their property and speculators were able to buy land,
houses, furniture, and other goods for only a fraction of their worth. In addition, the
assets of Japanese Americans in banks were impounded by the federal government.
The Federal Reserve Bank estimated that Japanese Americans suffered a 400-milliondollar property loss as a consequence of relocation (Bahr 86).
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The relocation of the Japanese Americans can be paralleled with the repatriation of Mexican
Americans during the Great Depression: both cases are instances of how their civil rights
were violated. Moreover, just like Native American communities on the reservations,
Japanese American had to live among primitive living conditions as “the camps were built in
isolated areas and lacked the utilities and services most Americans take for granted” (Bahr
86). Nevertheless, there were “great many stories about the luxurious facilities provided by
the Government for the Japanese in the centers” (Morgan 327), which additionally fuelled the
tensions. Furthermore, families were also torn apart as they did not have the atmosphere they
needed to uphold the traditions and relationships, and “many family members began to spend
less time together in the crowded barracks” (Matsumoto 260). The common mass halls and
the lack of privacy weakened not only the family relations but also the communal bonds.
The process of moving away from the customs was further facilitated by the fact that
many Japanese American children were given the opportunity to learn in white schools,
therefore widening the cultural gap between the generations. However, just like in the case of
the Native Americans, the white way of education not always proved to be sufficient and the
“Japanese Americans faced hostility, crude living conditions, and a struggle for jobs”
(Matsumoto 270). Nevertheless, while the Native Americans tried to protest against these
injustices by creating organizations, etc.; the general principle among the Japanese Americans
was “Shikata ga nai” or “it can’t be helped” (Matsumoto 259) as an indication of their
peaceful nature, and their willingness to assimilate and to endure their conditions.
After the war was over, “some government officials recognized that the relocation
prisons constituted a serious breach of the basic civil rights of Japanese Americans” (Bahr
87), but the dissolving of the camps and the reintegration of Japanese Americans into society
proved to be difficult as the possessions of the interned were taken away and they had no
homes to return to. Therefore, in 1948, government passed the Japanese American Evacuation
Claims Act, “providing partial compensation for economic losses suffered as a consequence
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of relocation” (Bahr 385). However, the losses had to be documented, which was almost
impossible and therefore, “millions of dollars owed to Japanese Americans were never paid”
(Bahr 385). As Bahr concludes, the Japanese Americans in spite of their sufferings, quietly
started a new life without any expression of anger, corresponding to their general principle,
“Shikata ga nai.”
All in all, Native, Mexican and Japanese Americans could not benefit from the
‘abundant opportunities’ of the American West due to the racism and hostility developing
towards them. Although today there is a greater extent of assimilation and acceptance,
Patricia Roos argues that “the current positions of these two ethnic groups [Mexican and
Japanese Americans] are conditioned by their [. . .] historical experiences. While assimilation
has occurred, integration into the economic mainstream apparently has been limited by earlier
occupational exclusion” (299). Consequently, the large portion of Mexican Americans are
employed in those positions for which they have been “historically recruited” (291), and over
half of the Japanese Americans work in those sectors to which they turned after the Alien
Land Act in 1913. One can argue that the present situation of Native Americans is also a
factor of their historical treatment especially concerning the fact that they are now mainly
dispersed in urban centers working in positions needing vocational skills.
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Works Cited
Bahr, Howard M. American Ethnicity. Lexington: Heath, 1979.
Buenker, John D., and Lorman A. Ratner, eds. Multiculturalism in the United States: A
Comparative Guide to Acculturation and Ethnicity. New York: Greenwood, 1992.
Camarillo, Albert. Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American
Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930. Cambridge: Harvard
UP, 1979.
Chacon, Justin Akers, and Mike Davis. No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State
Violence on the U.S.-Mexican Border. Chicago: Haymarket, 2006.
Deloria, Vine Jr. “American Indians.” Buenker 31-52.
Dog, Mary Crow. Lakota Woman. New York: Grove, 1990.
Fraga, Ricardo Luis, et al. “Hispanic Americans and Educational Policy: Limits to Equal
Access.” The Journal of Politics 48.4 (1986): 850-76.
Kerr, Louise Ano Nuevo. “Mexican-Americans.” Buenker 215-30.
Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American
West. New York: Norton, 1988.
Morgan, Cecil. “Relocating the Japanese-Americans: A Progress Report.” Journal of
Educational Sociology 18.6 (1945): 323-30.
Roos, Patricia A. and Joyce F. Hennessy. “Assimilation or Exclusion? Japanese and Mexican
Americans in California.” Sociological Forum 2.2 (1987): 278-304.
Takaki, Roland T, ed. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little,
1993.
Valerie Matsumoto, “Japanese-American Women during World War II.” The American West:
The Reader. Ed. Walter Nugent, and Martin Ridge. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999.
255-74.
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Beáta Sáfrány
Media Coverage of School Shootings
Springfield, Oregon; Littleton, Colorado; Hillsborough, North Carolina; Blacksburg,
Virginia; DeKalb, Illinois. These are some of the “infamous sites of school violence that have
captured headlines across the country and reaped hours of coverage on network television”
(Maeroff 3). Violence is a tragic event but when it happens in schools, it is an extraordinarily
shocking occurrence. Hence, school shootings touch the public more deeply than any other
crime news.
When something as horrible as school shootings happen, people try to find out the
reasons by nature, thus they turn to the media to provide them with information, explanation
and interpretation (Li 670). (If they did not attempt to do it, it would indicate that they have
no desire to control it (Saltzman 29.)) In the twenty-first century the explanation for such
behavior has always been the media. Many people blame dime novels, violent video games
and violent television programs for creating serial-killers. But while the focus is placed on the
influence mass media might have had on late school shooters, the effect media coverage
might have on would-be shooters is generally overlooked by the public.
As a matter of fact, the public does not attempt to criticize media coverage at all, since
it needs their reports to get accurate information about the particular event. The public expects
the media to relieve uncertainty, to calm people and to make sense out of the situation (Li
671). The media have responsibility over the reactions of the audience. In the case of school
shootings, people’s response is extremely important, since it either proves that the reports
have achieved their goal and urged people to take the first steps in preventing such events, or
they attained the opposite and encouraged others to imitate the shooter(s).
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In the pursuit of fame
The media news is driven by violence. This notion is defined in the popular
expression: “If it bleeds, it leads” (Brendan). There are some reasons that explain why crime
is such a common topic in the news. First, violent news is cheap and easily accessible and
second, it generates viewer interest thus raising the program rating. The media prefer to report
on school shootings because they are not only violent but also unusual and dramatic events.
The truth is that school shooters were fully aware of the predilection of the media for
bloody events. They thought that gaining posthumous fame through the media is better than
no fame at all. When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold videotaped their plans for Columbine,
they recognized that their rampage could make them internationally famous. They also
discussed which famous director – Tarantino or Spielberg – should make the film version of
their story (Gibbs et al).
But Harris and Klebold were not the only ones. After nineteen-year-old Alvaro Rafael
Castillo had killed his father on the morning of August 30, 2006, in North Carolina, he
videotaped himself confessing what he had done and explaining what he was going to do
(Lieberman 7). Although his videotape is available on youtube, no news has ever reported that
Castillo had an influence on other school shooters. In fact, it is understandable since his video
is not as shocking as that of Seng-Hui Cho’s.
Cho sent a video to NBC that decided to air it. Apart from the violent images showing
Cho with guns, knives and even with an ax, the video is violent in terms of content as well.
He shocks the audience with a series of questions: “Do you know what it feels like to be spit
on your face and to have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what if feels like to
dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have throat slashed from ear to ear?
Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive?” If you think that someone who put such
questions can not declare something more disgusting, you are wrong. Cho compares himself
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to Moses, who splits the sea and leads his people: “the weak, the defenseless, the innocent
children of all ages.”
I believe that Cho and the other shooters did not intend to simply die and be forgotten.
They chose to become school shooters because they thought this was the only way they could
make history. Yet, they did something more. Harris and Klebold may not have done it
intentionally but in the case of Cho it is obvious that he knew he could inspire others who felt
weak and defenseless to commit similar acts. I think the purpose of the NBC was to make
people learn from the video but it neglected the fact that it could influence other disturbed
minds. At this point, the question whether media have encouraged would-be school shooters
to imitate their predecessors arises.
Copycat effect
Teenagers are known to have difficulties in facing the challenges of life, and if they
see on television or read in the newspaper that kids at the same age solve their problems by
killing others and then committing suicide, they may get under the delusion that if they do the
same, they will get rid of their troubles.
The media sometimes describe a school shooting as totally different from previous
school shootings. Differences can be observed in the age of the shooter, in the location of the
shooting or in the number of victims, but the pattern is usually the same. However, the
Littleton shooting was not the deadliest school shooting in the history of the United States; it
has always been referred to as the most notorious one and served as a sort of recipe for
copycats. Since April 20, 1999, many shooters have declared obsession with Columbine.
Alvaro Rafael Castillo, Seung-Hui Cho and Stephen Kazmierczak were all influenced by
Columbine. Castillo sent an e-mail to the principle of his school in which he wrote: “I
remember Columbine. It is time the world remembered it” (Lieberman 7). Cho mentioned
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Harris and Klebold as martyrs in a written manifesto mailed to a TV network (Nicholson).
Kazmierczak was simply fascinated by Columbine (Burns 112). In the meantime there were
others who have not only been influenced by Columbine but have also tried to follow in the
footsteps of Harris and Klebold.
The most shocking Columbine copycat was planned to be carried out this year, on the
tenth anniversary of the massacre by two British teenagers. Matthew Swift, 18, and his friend
Ross McKnight, 16, hoped to kill thousands in an attack on their school and on a shopping
centre. Shortly before the tenth anniversary of the massacre, McKnight drunkenly told a girl
they were going to shoot as many people as possible in their school (Carter). Fortunately, the
girl did not keep silent like so many others did before, but she called the police, who raided
the homes of the boys and discovered their diaries with details of the plot. For Swift and
McKnight, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were the role models. They wanted to imitate them
in their plan of using bombs. In their diaries they wrote that Harris and Klebold will rise again
(Tozer). Swift and McKnight not only illustrate the copycat effect of Columbine but also how
school shooters around the world are influenced by each other through the media. They
admired Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who killed eight in November 2007 at Jokela High School,
Finland and Tim Kretschmer, who shot dead 15, and himself near Stuttgart in March 2009
(Byrne).
The plan of the Swift and McKnight duo was only one shot to copy the horrible deed
of the Columbine shooters. I am sure there were several other attempts that the media did not
talk about. From the moment the media made the public aware of the shooting and published
the photos of the Eric and Dylan portraying them during their rampage, students who had the
same mentality desired to become an Eric Harris or a Dylan Klebold.
The usual mistake the media make is the covering of shootings in minute detail. In the
case of Columbine, reports talked about the inefficiency of the propane bombs which could
have killed 500 people if they had not failed to explode. On the one hand, knowing the fact,
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that Harris and Klebold would mainly have relied on their homemade bombs and not on their
guns, may lead us to stop putting the blame solely on the easy accessibility of guns for school
shootings, and it may also get us to search for other reasons. However, on the other hand,
reporting the details can be quite dangerous especially if the media do not pay attention to
their choice of words. For instance, using the word ‘failed’ clearly suggests to viewers and
readers that someone should keep trying again until they ‘succeed’” (Coleman). Swift and
McKnight definitely wanted to accomplish what Eric and Dylan failed in. This time the media
do not inspire others by words but by the very report itself. There may be another duo
somewhere who may believe it is their destiny to realize the plan of the Columbine killers.
I wonder whether the history of school shootings would have been diverse if the media
had downplayed the Columbine massacre and other rampages carried out by other students.
Would there have been less or no school shootings at all? Unfortunately we will never get the
exact answer to such a question since school shootings are always breaking news and are
printed on the front page of newspapers. As for Columbine, it was not simply a breaking
news; it was the largest U.S. news story of 1999, and the seventh highest rated media event of
the 1990s (Muschert 96-97). With Columbine, the media did not only raise the problem of
copycat crimes but also questioned the safety of suburban schools (Muschert).
Media generated fears
Schools have always been perceived as places where kids enjoy maximum protection
against the dangers of the outside world. It was the media that have created a misperception
that schools are dangerous (Burns and Crawford 151) through their interpretation of school
shootings. After the broadcast of Columbine, students, teachers and parents became terrified
that schools were no longer safe, even though the facts showed they were safer than ever. It is
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still believed that there is a higher possibility for a kid to die at home or on the street than at
school (Columbine Coverage).
Nevertheless, the media depict schools as a life-threatening place due to the presence
of bullying and the consequences of discrimination and failed relationships. Schools are the
places where most bullying occurs. Unfortunately it is common that the bullied person gets
fed up with the torture and decides to take revenge on his oppressor by shooting him to death.
But his revenge runs the risk of injuring or even killing others as well. Furthermore, young
adults but especially teenagers are not capable of respecting students of foreign extraction and
of accepting others who have faith. The media’s claim, that in the Columbine shooting one
student was killed because he was black and that two girls were murdered because they
expressed their faith in God, has made people believe that schools are places of racial and
religious discrimination. Moreover, the media also contributed to the fear of mothers for their
daughters, since the reason of some of the school shootings was reported to be the break-up of
the shooter with his girlfriend.
The media have best triggered fear with making images available to the public. Images
have more power than written words and they persist in memory much more powerfully than
written words. Images of school shootings usually reflect sorrow by portraying the survivors
and parents crying bitterly or by providing photos of the funeral. They also give the public an
insight into the horror of the massacre by showing pictures of frightened students streaming
out of school and pictures of the injured while bleeding or even of the killers lying dead.
Either they talk about sorrow or about horror; such pictures make people realize that the
phenomenon of school shootings does exist and that it does result in unfixable damages. By
looking at such pictures, students may fear that one day one of the students of their school
will carry out something similar and get them to experience the horror; teachers may fear that
they could not save the life of their students if they were involved in the horror, and parents
have two reasons to fear: they fear that one day either their child will be part of the horror or
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their child will be the perpetrator of the tragedy. They eliminate the assumption that ‘it can
not happen here.’
Apart from planting the fear that schools have ceased to be the safest place for kids,
the media also “enabled society to press even harder upon the ‘juvenile crime panic button’”
(Burns and Crawford 156). As for the latter, the FBI statistics shows that juvenile arrests for
violence have gradually declined (Puzzanchera 4). By making these assumptions, the media
have succeeded in generating a moral panic, a panic which suggests that the social order has
been irreversibly disrupted. However, in the case of such disruption, people still attempt to
restore order by increasing security.
Taking steps toward security
Besides inspiring copycats and generating public fear, media coverage of school
shootings has triggered another effect: it has led the leaders to take the necessary steps to
prevent such tragic events. Among the steps were hiring additional security officers in
schools, installing metal detectors in schools, reducing access to schools, a guidebook
compiled by a presidential panel to alert teachers, parents, and students to early warning signs
of potential violent behavior and to provide strategies for preventing and responding to
violence, requiring at least a few school teachers to carry concealed weapons at school (Burns
and Crawford 152).
Media coverage “causes subsequent government decisions.” Columbine generated far
more media coverage than any other such event, and it “precipitated the most intense period
of legislative activity on school violence of the 106th or any prior Congress. Thirty-five
percent of all bills introduced in the 106th Congress dealing with school violence were
introduced in April and May 1999” (Birkland and Lawrence 1195). Thus, it is said that school
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shootings created the conditions for ‘positive feedback’ between the media and the Congress.
One classic example of this ‘positive feedback’ is the effort of tightening gun laws.
After the Colorado shooting spree, it was barred to give a firearm to a juvenile without
the consent of the parents, and the penalty for possession of a weapon by a felon was
increased. The Virginia Tech massacre resulted in the decision by court to get mental health
treatment to be added to a database of people barred from buying guns (Matti). Germany
raised the minimum age for the possession of recreational firearms from 18 to 21 following
the shooting in Erfurt (Matti). After the 2008 shooting in Finland, the Peace Union urged the
government to tight gun laws in requiring applicants for gun licenses to undergo a mental
health assessment, to provide character references by spouse, ex-spouse, family doctor
(Finland).
The issue of gun control always occupies the central place in news in the aftermath of
school shootings. It is believed that if people had no access to guns, they would have no
reason to be afraid of losing their children in a school shooting. Obviously, if there were no
guns, the phenomenon would not be called school shooting. Personally I do not believe that
gun controls would reduce the number of school shootings. School violence has been present
for a long time. Adolescents are rebellious by nature and if they want to kill, they can use
bombs, knives or baseball bats instead of guns to satisfy their murderous intent. Eric Harris
and Dylan Klebold would have relied mainly on their home made bombs from propane gas
canisters and not on their guns – we should not forget that! Their guns served only as plan B.
Conclusion
This time last year I thought I had found the possible reasons for school shootings. I
was certain that Satanism, failed relationships, anti-depressant drugs, violent video games,
violent movies, lyrics of Marilyn Manson and that of Ozzy Osbourne, and parent abuse led
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most of the shooters to carry out their rampage. Although, after having studied the role of the
media in the spread of school shootings, I am definitely not that certain about the reasons. To
some extent, I still believe that the factors mentioned above could be denoted as the root
causes of some of the school shootings. However, an article found on the official website of
CNN has shaken my belief.
The article claims that many of the initial reports of the Columbine shooting were
wrong. Journalist and author, Dave Cullen challenges what the media reported about the
rampage in 1999. He denies that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were members of the Trech
Coat Mafia, that they were bullied and they targeted athletes or African Americans.
Moreover, the media initially reported that Cassie Bernall answered ‘yes’ when she was asked
whether she believed in God before she was shot to death. However, “investigators and
student witnesses later told Cullen that it was another student, Valeen Schnurr, who avowed
her belief in God as she was shot. Schnurr survived” (Chen). Furthermore, Harris and Klebold
were described as social outcasts and loners in the early days of media coverage. Cullen does
not believe that they were abnormal and thinks that it was just easier “to set them apart from
other students and for schools to distinguish future potential shooters” (Chen).
As for me, I do not know what to believe. I first thought Cullen might be right because
whenever a school shooting happens, the media try to provide the public with as many details
as possible and sometimes they may base their reports on myths in order to satisfy the needs
of the audience. Then, however, I realized that we can not exclude the possibility that the
media have dragged up Columbine again with the purpose of not only paying tribute to the
victims and of debunking the myths that beset the event, but also of using it as an issue to
raise the popular rating and to generate a public debate. Though, the article asserts that what
we believed to be the reasons for Columbine are false, it does not offer new reasons, and thus
it leaves us uncertain about the causes and the possible ways to recognize potential shooters.
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Nonetheless, what I am convinced of is that the media function as another reason for school
shootings due to the copycat effect of their coverage.
Unfortunately school shootings seem to have become a fashion among the youth. With
the help of the media, young adults get the idea that if they are fed up with life, they can
follow the latest fashion: they can easily get a gun and let the steam off by shooting people at
their school to death.
Media coverage of school shootings does not trigger positive effects. Even the steps
people tend to take in order to increase school security, including gun control, can not prevent
such tragic events. However, I think the media are in the position to stop the phenomenon and
make teenagers realize that school shooting is not something to be copied but something to be
stopped.
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Works Cited
Burns, Gary. “Here It Comes Again, That Feeling.” Popular Music & Society 32.1
(2009): 111-12. Ebscohost 12 November 2009 <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost>.
Burns, Ronald., and Crawford, Charles. “School shootings, the media, and public fear:
Ingredients for a moral panic.” Crime, Law and Social Change 32.2 (1999).
SpringerLink 19 November 2009 <http://www.springerlink.com/content>.
Byrne, Paul. “Teens planned to bomb Manchester.” Mirror 2009. 23 November 2009
<http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/09/03/i-will-kill-them-with-abig-smile-on-my-face-115875-21644004/>.
Carter, Helen. “Manchester duo.” Guardian 2009. 1 December 2009.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/02/uk-columbine-anniversary-bombplot>.
Chen, Stephanie. “Debunking the myths of Columbine.” CNN.com 2009. Cable news
network 2 December 2009.
< http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/20/columbine.myths/index.html>.
Coleman, Loren. “The Copycat Effect: School Shootings and Recommendations.” NY:
Simon and Schuster/Paraview Pocket, 2004. 29 November 2009
<https://www.riskinstitute.org/peri/component/option,com_bookmarks/Itemid,44/c
atid,30/navstart,0/task,detail/mode,0/id,796/search,*/>.
“Columbine Coverage Shook the Nation.” USA Today Magazine 132.2699 (2003): 14
Ebscohost 29 November 2009 <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost>.
“Finland: Second School Shooting in a Year.” Iansa 2 December 2009
<http://www.iansa.org/regions/europe/finland_school_shooting_08.htm>.
Gibbs, Nancy et al. “The Columbine Tapes.” Time 1999. 15 November 2009
<http://www.state.co.us/columbine/Appendix_E.pdf>.
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Huuhtanen, Matti. “After attacks, Europe hurries to tighten gun laws.” Signon 2009. 2
December 2009 <http://www3.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/mar/11/eu-europegun-laws-031109/>.
Lawrence, Regina G., and Birkland, Thomas A. “Guns, Hollywood, and School Safety:
Defining the School-Shooting Problem Across Public Arenas.” Social Science
Quarterly 85.5 (2004): 1193-1207. Ebscohost 23 November 2009
<http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost>.
Li, Xigen: “Stages of a Crisis and Media Frames and Functions: U.S. Television
Coverage of the 9/11 Incident During the First 24 Hours.” Journal of Broadcasting
& Electronic Media 51.4 (2007): 670-87. Ebscohost 30 November 2009
<http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost>.
Lieberman, Joseph. School Shootings. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2008.
Maeroff, Gene: “A Symbiosis of Sorts: School Violence and the Media.” New York:
Columbia University, 2000. Eric 1 December 2009 <http://www.eric.ed.gov>.
Maguire, Brendan., et al.: “Network news coverage of school shootings.” Social Science
Journal 39.3 (2002): 465. Ebscohost 25 November 2009
<www.sciencedirect.com>.
Muschert, Glenn W. “Frame-changing in the media coverage of a school shooting: The
rise of Columbine as a national concern.” Social Science Journal 46.1 (2009): 16470. Ebscohost 25 November 2009 <www.sciencedirect.com>.
Nicholson, Kieran. “Cho: Killers at Columbine ‘martyrs.’” Denverpost 2007. 1
December 2009
<http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5699066>.
Puzzanchera, Charles. “Juvenile Arrests 2007.” Juvenile Justice Bulletin 2009. 2
December 2009
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<http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/225344.pdf?mc_cid=0202274bf8&mc_eid=
5d0771113e>.
Saltzman, Joe. “The Same Old Story, the Same Old Blame.” USA Today 128.2650
(1999): 29. Ebsco 16 November 2009 <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost>.
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Works Consulted
Belsie, Laurent. “The dilemmas of covering youth violence.” Christian Science Monitor
91.124 (1999). Ebscohost 27 November 2009
Deppa, Joan. “Coping With a Killer's 'Manifesto'.” Chronicle of Higher Education 53.3
(2007): 64. Ebscohost 27 November 2009
Ebert, Roger. “News coverage feeds the tragedy.” Electronic Media 18.18 (1999). Ebsco
30 November 2009
Gravois, John., and Hoover, Eric. “In Media Res.” Chronicle of Higher Education 53.34
(2007). Ebscohots 30 November 2009
“Group blames media for negative teen stereotypes.” New York Amsterdam News
91.28 (2000): 18. Ebscohost 22 November 2009
“Kids reflect on media's responsibility during tragedy.” New York Amsterdam News
98.21 (2007): 20. Ebscohost 29 November 2009
Rohr, Janelle, ed. Violence in America : Opposing viewpoints. San Diego, CA:
Greenhaven P., c1990
Stearns, Peter N. “The Evolution of Grief.” American Interest 4.1 (2008): 100-107.
Ebscohost 28 November 2009
Stephen, Andrew. “The unmentionable causes of violence.” New Statesman 136. 4842
(2007): 20-21. Ebscohost 29 November 2009
Tozer, James. “Teenage ‘Columbine copycats’ planned.” Mailonline 2009 2 December
2009 <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210708/Teenagers-plannedcopycat-Columbine-massacre-school.html>.
Trump, Kenneth S. “Lessons Learned” District Administration 45.4 (2009): 26-30.
Ebscohost 1 December 2009
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Wood, Daniel B. “Are media acting as a publicity machine for shooters?” Christian
Science Monitor 93.83 (2001). Ebscohost 2 December 2009
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Nóra Sipos
Global Presence of Coca-Cola
1886 was the year when a unique taste attracted the Americans; later, this flavor
gained reputation all over the world. The invention of Coca-Cola was one of the most
significant events of that year in the United States, and Dr. John Stith Peberton’s name was
inseparable from it. The Coke’s fame owes undoubtedly to its promotional campaigns which
went off so well that now the beverage is present both physically and ideologically not just in
America but in all the other parts of the world: people encounter it in their home by switching
on the television, reading the daily papers and also in the streets they see the posters and
billboards of Coca-Cola.
Its impact on our world has gone much farther, as Coke is to be seen as one of the
most visible sign of globalization. If I had to summarize the main point of the process, I
would say that globalization is an umbrella term which refers primarily to the increasing
connection and interdependence of the world’s market that has, besides the economic
influence, powerful political, cultural, ideological and social dimensions. All these happens
under the leadership of the United Sates and an argument according to which globalization is
nothing more than the imposition of the American culture on the entire world is not far from
the truth. The subject matter of this essay is to provide a comprehensive examination of the
phenomenon how this soft drink has become so strongly associated with the process of
globalization with reflecting upon all aspects.
I am going to divide my paper into to two major parts. The first section provides a
synopsis of not only how this soft drink has gained reputation as a flavor, a product, but also
how through its growing success it has developed into the symbol of globalization. After a
short introduction of the basic concepts behind the drink, I will continue with highlighting the
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why certain eras were so significant. Following this serious part, which involves history and
politics; the second half will deal with easier topics, mainly with popular culture.
First of all, it is important to emphasize the ideology behind the beverage, because the
construction of its philosophy has made it popular among more and more consumers, thus has
helped its turning into a global brand. The more universal its ideology will be, the more
people will be able to identify with it and the more beneficial it will be for the company.
Therefore, the pillars on which the Coca-Cola’s ideology lies are such fundamental positive
emotions as happiness and freedom. Throughout the Coke’s history, The Coca Cola Company
has been striving for incorporate as many meanings as possible into this apparently
commonplace positive-view-of-life idea. What has always been hinted that the soft drink
originates from America and represents the American culture and values. Thus, buying a
Coke is appeasing thirst on the literal level, while figuratively it could imply purchasing the
above-mentioned “items”, too.
The 1920s was the time when the ideology of the Coca-Cola did not seem to be a
utopia. That is the reason why I do not start from 1886; because in my opinion the first years
were essentially used for the publicizing the product, while the twenties was the cradle for the
fundamental image building phase. At this point, the dichotomy that characterized the
Twenties must be mentioned. On the one hand, hat made the twenties especially colorful was
the unprecedented economic boom, fordism, the appearance of wild music and dances,
technological innovations, and the concept of the modern woman. America represented a
general welfare state with skyscrapers indicating the new locations of business deals and the
large scale urbanization. On the other hand, one should not forget that this was a post-war
decade, which meant huge disillusionment and the loss of life’s teleological sense. Under the
surface, America suffered from such internal struggles as the division between the city and
country or think of just the prohibition, the red scare and the Ku Klux Klan. Obviously, what
mattered for the Coke’s ideology was the former.
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Young businessmen and the newly-born women, the flappers were appropriate for
embodying wealth and success of the era. “The advertisements depicted the rising middle
class participating in activities once reserved for the elite in society […], created images that
the people of America aspired to emulate. And with the great prosperity of the nation, such a
dream was within easy reach” (Jones, “Coca-Cola at Home”). Average people were
manipulated to believed that they could gain social status and as an employer their
performance could improve, because Coca-Cola contributed to the material comfort with
providing a pleasant pause by claiming the following: “commonly accepted assumption that
men and women work better if given a few breaks in their work day” (Jones, “Coca-Cola At
home”). In an era like the 1920s’ America it was not hard to believe these ideas.
Having jumped into the 1930s, we had already gone through the Great Depression,
however, drinking Coke was still refreshing especially because Santa Clause also chose the
luscious drink to appease his thirst. Thus, we have arrived to why the 30s was considered to
be a cultural milestone. Nevertheless, the common misconception concerning Saint
Nicholas’s image is that it derives from the Coca-Cola’s advertisement. Haddon Sundblom’s
figure of the bright, stout, elderly man in red-and-white clothing just popularized it (“Coke
Lore: Coca-Cola and Santa Claus”), because such people as Washington Irving, Clement
Clarke Moore, John Pintard and Thomas Nast took a hand in creating Santa’s figure before
the graphics employed by The Coca-Cola Company (Mikkelson). The modern look of
Christmas Father debuted in 1931 in The Saturday Evening Post and since then we have
encountered him annually in December. Thus the achievement of the decade was to develop a
permanent symbol associated with Saint Nicholas Day and Christmas, the most important
celebration in the Christian tradition. The same man greets us in Peru, in Sweden, in Japan or
in France.
While the reverberating success of the 1930s was attributed to Santa Claus’s
appearance, the following decade’s prominence lied in the soft drink’s definition during the
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20th century’s most devastating event, the Second World War. Coke got involved in politics
and became so much part of the warfare that
[t]he War Department agreed […] that Coca-Cola would provide a boost in
morale. Therefore, they had the U.S. government fund the installation of sixtyfour bottling plants behind Allies lines. Entire bottling plants were shipped to
the front lines with other supplies. And as soon as the battle front moved, so
would the bottling company. When America went to war, Coca-Cola followed.
(Jones, “Coca-Cola Goes to War”)
At that time the president of The Coca-Cola Company was Robert Woodruff whose famous
declaration of the company’s wartime policy was the following: “We will see that every man
in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents wherever he is and whatever it costs” (qtd.
in Jones, “Coca-Cola Goes to War”). US soldiers drank their homeland’s product while they
served abroad. It was the most excellent method of reinforcing their national identity adding
another common connotation to the soda not just at the period of the worldwide confrontation.
(This will have significance later at the examination of The Coke Side of Life campaign) The
beverage went beyond the border which evidently reinforced the identification of Coke with
its homeland, by this time it had become a true American icon abroad.
Being one of the major settings of the global conflict, Germany has become The CocaCola Company’s largest and most important foreign market indicating that the Third Reich
helped constitute an ongoing Americanization. “The Coca-Cola GmbH and the Nazis needed
one another. The former took advantage of the latter’s economic and territorial expansionism,
while the latter needed modern companies like Coca-Cola as role-models for massproduction” (Jones, “Coca-Cola Goes to War”). The problematic aspect derived from the
power relationship, as the two nations fought on opposing sides. Although selling their
product was beneficial economically, this conduct was questioned. Such a powerful and
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influential country as the United States could not afford to be looked at with suspicious eyes.
The Allies had a solution in the form of prohibition of trading with Germany.
In my opinion, Jeff R. Schutts had absolutely right claiming that “[e]xamining CocaCola as a corporation demanded not only business and economic analysis (e.g. franchising,
branding, and management); it also cleared a path to the wide-open fields of study on
‘globalization’ and consumer culture” (Schutts). After all, Reinhold Wagnleitner’s adding of
the ‘-ization’ suffix to Coca-Cola was not surprising in 1989. His book about how the
Austrian welcomed the U.S. occupation had the title of Coca-Colonization and the Cold War:
The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War.
A discourse concerning coca-colonization, a new kind of imperialism, began after the
war. The essence of the counter argument for this on the Coke’s side is illustrated perfectly
with the sentence that “all the thing (Coca-Cola) wants to do is t refresh you, and it is willing
to understand your culture, to be meaningful to you and to be relevant to you. Why is that
called Coca-colonization?” The next citations will illustrate ho harshly the reactions against it
were expressed. “You’re using the power of the media to brainwash people. Or make them all
the same? Homogenize the world?”, “[t]he overall idea of Coca-Colonization more than
anything manifests the reduction of quality and national culture to the level of cheap trash and
inferior kitsch,” not to mention Regis Debray’s words according to which “[a]n American
monoculture would inflict a sad future on the world, one in which the planet is converted to a
global supermarket where people have to choose between the local Ayatollah and Coca-Cola”
(qtd. in Schutts). These sentiments sound the same as contemporary responses against
globalization.
Several European countries opposed the Coca-Cola bottling plants’ arrival in their
home and among them it was France where serious controversy broke out. It was just one out
of many. What is sure in all cases that the entire issue around Coca-Cola in the post-war era
did not concern the drink itself, it was rather ideological question. How different nations dealt
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with these problems reflected the U.S-Soviet influence within each country. That is why in
France the debate worsened to a great extent, the Communist forces did everything to
supplant the representatives of the rival power. Richard F. Kuisel gave a detailed,
comprehensive picture about how the Cold War situation was growing deeper through the
debate over the Coca-Cola. The main points of the entire essay entitled “Coca-Cola and the
Cold War: The French Face Americanization” composed around what happened when the soft
drink entered the country Communists (directly) together with the domestic beverage industry
(indirectly) raised their voices with reference to defending the nation’s economy and public
health. They argued for their own winegrowing and fruit juice industries and questioned the
so-called “7X”, the secret ingredients with the caffeine content, as well. The answer Kuisel
provided for the question why the Coke won the battle, I think, was considerably acceptable
and reasonable. Two of his sentences in his summary give the reason of the whole discourse
briefly, [i]n retrospect the war was over Coca-Cola was a symbolic controversy between
France and America. […] Coca-Cola aggressively announced the arrival of consumer society
at a time when the French were not yet ready” (Kuisel).
One would believe that after we have already been through the Cold War, The CocaCola seized to be associated so strongly with such serious issues; however, speaking about the
Coke later was still not just a matter of taste. No better way of support can be found than Paul
Vallely, Jon Clarke and Liz Stuart’s article, “Coke vs. People”, which was published in The
Independent, in 2003. They depict not how citizens of Kerala (a state in India) resisted to the
establishment of a bottling plant, but how the factory destroyed local people’s life; they made
their livings on the rice farmlands, since the irrigation went dry, because water was used up
by the factory. The most outrageous was the ignorance manifested by the responsible side.
As I marked at the beginning, it is worth mentioning that the important role of the
marketing should not be ignored. On the one hand, Coca-Cola advertising strategy has been
so successful from the beginning that the word unique suits principally the product and brand
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as an attribute. This uniqueness has been present since its invention, because Coke is not a
drink like a juice which tastes like a fruit, Coke itself is a flavor. Thus, the advertising
campaigns played prominent role in achieving popularity. On the other hand, they have
become part of popular culture. Andy Warhol, one of the leading figures of pop art, made
Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe into icons and so did the green contour bottles of Coke. He
detached the product from its original context, from the material world and put it on the
canvas. As pop art was a movement nourished by the mass culture, Coca-Cola must have had
place in it.
In addition, Coke’s standing for globalization has always been expressed
(intentionally) through the media. The year 1971 was unique in the sense that the Hilltop14
television commercial debuted; it was also released in radio. As it has simple and catchy tune,
it was fast recognized and crooned. Why this is so outstanding? Because this commercial
alone could serve as the metaphor of the message what I am trying to point out, and what the
Coke wanted to be thought about. A group of teenagers sing a melody that flatters the ear on
the top of a hill. What makes the bond between them is the bottle filled with the flavor of
America. Special attention should be paid to the choir members who belong to different
ethnic groups. It has a double function. Primarily they symbolize the world with its separate
countries and at the same time they remind this world of another one, where these diverse
nations can live together in “perfect harmony”. The commercial offers a uniform (in the form
of a soft drink) and simultaneously highlights multiplicity.
Ted Friedman made a remarkable comparison between the Coca-Cola’s unifying force
and the “Family of Man”15. He claimed that “although different cultures may have many
fascinating and picturesque superficial differences, deep down we’re all the same” (Friedman)
14
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvTqW6on8MA>
Family of Man: Edward Steichen’s photography exhibition consisting of more than five hundred
photographs. The display was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. (“Edward Steichen at The
Family of Man, 1955.” MoMa: Museum of Modern Art. 5 April 2009
(<http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/archives/archives_highlights_06_1955> )
15
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– this is the essence of the exhibition that could be applied to Coca-Cola. If his words are
applied to the Coke commercial, sameness implicitly means the consumption of Coca-Cola.
The recent Coke Side of Life campaign can also exemplify how the world is
approaching the concept of a global village. A village, where same images with distinct
graphic welcome the audience. The explosive and colorful illustrations with a Coca-Cola
bottle silhouette are trotting the globe. Apart from fascinating us, the campaign’s novelty rests
in its comprehensive depiction. It transcends the sphere of advertising with the posters that are
referred to as artworks. Several artists/agencies/collectives from around the world felt
inspiration to create their own version16.
“Coca-Cola is a global brand with local connections and meanings, The Coke Side of
Life offers each country an opportunity to interpret their own moments” (“Welcome to The
Coke Side of Life”) Accordingly, in a hoarding found on the wall of an apartment block in
Debrecen the Great Church and an old tram greet us, while in Antwerp The Antwerp
Cathedral of our Lady fulfills the same function. Both buildings are constructions the
inhabitants are proud of: they dominate the cityscapes, and bring reputation for the given
place.
Besides, two years ago “The Happiness Factory”17 campaign was released, which was
innovative, as it applied a revolutionary method that is called trans-media storytelling.
Through this, Coke succeeded to get into the cinema. A professor of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology introduced this idea in his book entitled Convergence Culture,
published in 2006. Gunther Sonnenfeld introduces well this entirely new direction we are
heading for by saying that trans-media storytelling “represents a process where integral
elements of a fictional narrative get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery
16
The collection of posters consisting of 163 items has been uploaded to the Internet at the following
site: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/coca-cola_art_gallery>
Here you can watch one of the campaign’s most famous advert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwCnD5xFdc
17
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channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.”
(Sonnenfeld) In his article he mentioned the television series, “Lost”, as an example and what
The Coca-Cola Company did under making its product even more popular. First, the
television commercial came, which was the inspiration for the movie version. It is like today’s
favorite animation, a tale of one worker in the factory with great success at the end. As usual,
movie is accompanied by a CD containing the tracks from the film. Now it did not happen
otherwise: you can have an Open Happiness album, what is more, listen to the song in various
versions, read the lyrics and watch videos online on MySpace.com18. Thus, Sonnenfield has
right that “[t]ransmedia development is not a repository for the window-dressing that has
become a host of fairly innocuous integrated solutions. What we're really talking about is
building conversational elements with their own personalities that are endemic to a particular
touch-point in which each channel has its own voice in the collective arc of a storyline”
(Sonnenfeld).
Taking everything into account, global existence (in every sense of the words) of the
drink is undoubted. As this paper is divided, the way of looking at Coca-Cola is two-fold.
Through countless meanings and metaphors can be attached to the idea that is behind this
beverage, all will be analogous to the two sides of globalization. There were, are and always
will be arguments for and against the global village as well as nationalist ideas. Nevertheless,
those who just drink soda without thinking of any above-mentioned aspects of the product are
spilt. It means that there are Coke drinkers (like Bill Clinton, J.F. Kennedy or George
Michael) and non-Coke drinkers, who can be referred to as Pepsi drinkers (like Madonna,
Elvis Presley, Nixon or the Spice Girls). Taking it more seriously, if anything is present to
such a great extent, it will certainly have dichotomy inherently, and Coca-Cola (as it was
elaborated) pervades many fields of life.
18
http://www.myspace.com/openhappiness
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Works Cited
“Coke Lore: Coca-Cola and Santa Claus.” The Coca-Cola Company. n.d. Web. 9 October
2009 <http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html>.
Friedman, Ted. “The World of The World of Coca-Cola.” Cultural Studies and Critical
Theory. n.d. Web. 5 November 2009. <http://theory.eserver.org/world-of-cocacola.html>.
Jones, Eleanor, and Florian Ritzmann. “Coca-Cola Under the Nazis.” Coca-Cola Goes to
War. University of Virginia. n.d. Web. 5 November 2009
<http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/coke/coke2.html>.
---. “Coca-Cola Under the Nazis.” Coca-Cola at Home. University of Virginia. n.d. Web. 5
November 2009 <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/coke/coke1.html>.
Mikkelson, David P, and Barbara. “The Claus That Refreshes.” Snopes.com. 18 December
2008. Web. 25 November 2009.
<http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp>.
Kuisel, Richard F. “Coca-Cola and the Cold War: The French Face Americanization, 19481953.” 17.1 (1991): 96-116. JSTOR. Web. 5 November 2009. <http://www.jstor.org>.
Schutts, Jeff R. “Coca-Cola History: A ‘Refreshing Look at German-American Relations.”
GHI Bulletin 40(2007): 127-42. Web. 17 October 2009. <http://www.ghidc.org/publications/ghipubs/bu/040/127.pdf>.
Sonnenfeld, Gunther. “The Revolutionary Power of Transmedia Storytelling.” iMedia
Communication. 8 September 2009. Web. 7 December 2009.
<http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/24342.asp>.
Vallely, Paul, Jon Clarke, and Liz Stuart. “Coke vs People.” Countercurrents. 25 July 2003.
Web. 25 November 2009. <http://www.countercurrents.org/glo-coke250703.htm>.
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“Welcome to ‘The Coke Side of Life.” The Coca-Cola Company. n.d. Web. 7 December
2009. < http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/presscenter/index.html>.
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Emma Eszter Szabó
Judgements and Opinions about the Kennedy Assassination in 2009
The Kennedy assassination is one of the most cruel and most organized murders, if not
the one, in the history of the United States of America. Since then, many investigations have
been set up but nobody knows which one is the true one. Being a tragic milestone in
American history and politics as well, the J.F.K. assassination is still in the focus of interest
for many people. As I am also interested in this topic I wrote my BA thesis on the Kennedy
assassination and now I would like to highlight the two main theories and introduce the
results of my survey which is about how American citizens feel, what they think about and
how much they were taught about it in schools.
First of all, it is good to know the main facts about the assassination because they are
the only things which we can count on; they are the basic things and the ones which surely
happened.
The 35th president of the United Stated of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy travelled
to Dallas, Texas to increase the number of his voters in the next election and to make his
political power stronger there. He was travelling with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy. On 22nd
November 1963. they arrived at Dallas and were welcomed by the governor of Dallas and his
wife. Then they started their route through the city to Trade Markt where the president was
supposed to hold a speech. Along the way to the place they stopped several times so the
president was able to meet his citizens.
What is also true, according to the Jim Garrison investigation, that the route of the car
was changed. The limousine should have gone straight on Main Street where the original
route was planned but instead it turned to another direction, so it was easier for the assassin(s)
to get closer to the president. From where can we know this? Well, according to a newspaper
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published just a day before the assassination the route of the presidential limousine was drawn
on Main Street and not on that route the car was actually going.
Just some seconds later when the car then turned to the left in front of the Texas Book
Depository shots were heard. In about 6-7 seconds at least there were 3 shots from which 2 hit
the president and one hit the governor of Texas. Kennedy suffered a fatal headshot and a
throat or a back shot. But the main thing is that unfortunately the one which hit him on his
head caused such a big wound that the doctors were not able to save his life.
Well, besides these information nothing else is for sure. Or we can take it from another
side: for one group the remaining things are also for sure, for another the remaining things are
also for sure but from another point of view. What do I mean here? As I have mentioned at
the beginning of my work, there has been set up a lot of theories from which I would like to
highlight the most famous ones - if I can call them this way: the lone murderer theory and the
conspiracy theory. What is the difference between them? We can figure it out from their
names already, but I do think that it is worth taking a closer look at each of them so we will be
able to differentiate them on our own.
First of all, I would like to start with the lone murderer theory. The Warren
Commission was made up by Lyndon Johnson just one week after the assassination of
Kennedy. The one and only theory they could, so-to-say, create was the lone murderer theory.
Lee Harvey Oswald. That was the name to which they attached the assassination. They
claimed that the murderer gave three shots from behind the presidential car and that the
person did it alone without any help. The Commission also said in its report that the murderer
killed the president in one of his weak moments.
To be able to put together the pieces, we also need to know that the supposed killer
was assassinated also only two days later, on 24th November 1963. He was shot by a night
club owner, Jack Ruby in front of dozens of policemen.
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The Commission in its report published the outlines of the hearings of the witnesses
and many other information about the trials and auditions. They set out all the necessary
background information the public needed to understand the story.
The Warren Commission closed the case 9 months later and unquestionably stated that
John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States of America was killed by a man,
called Lee Harvey Oswald who planned the assassination on his own without the help of
anyone else.
Now we, let me say, know one side of the coin. I think it is time to get to know the
other as well.
The other main investigation was set up by Jim Garrison who was the District
Attorney of New Orleans at that time. He called his theory the conspiracy theory. His main
idea was that the president was killed by the main and most important organizations of the
United States, namely the CIA, the FBI, and besides including the mafia and other individuals
who did not agree with Kennedy’s politics. What were they against off? Kennedy had a
somewhat peaceful policy: he refused to give weapons to the CIA to break into Cuba, he
wanted to end the cold war and he wanted peace in Vietnam – just to mention some of the
most important plans and actions.
Jim Garrison was sure about that there were more shots from more directions. He said
that if there were more shots there must have been a conspiracy. Because if there are more
people were firing at the president at the same time, they must have planned something. The
best material for understanding his theory is “On the Trail of the Assassins”. The title also
suggests that there were more assassins in Dallas on that day in 1963. He said that the shots
could not come from the Texas Book Depository as: (1) witnesses saw a person on the socalled Grassy Knoll, and many of them heard the shots coming from there; (2) when he was
examining the case, the place itself and the route of the limousine together with the headshot
of the president he realized that the shots could not have come from behind the car, they must
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have been shot from the right side. When examining this, there was one special proof at his
side: the famous Abraham Zapruder film. Mr Zapruder recorded the whole assassination with
his camera and according to it, and as according to Jim Garrison the shots came from the right
side, from the Grassy Knoll. He believed that it was not Oswald who planned it and it is not
true that he did it in one of his weak moments. This is a lie. Oswald used these words when
the police arrested him: “I’m just a patsy!” in which he was true according to Garrison. He
thought that the conspirators needed a person who can be arrested and taken to prison and the
young Oswald was perfect for this role.
All in all, the investigation by Jim Garrison clearly states that there were more people
firing at the president and there were organizations which planned the assassination.
As you can see here, the two investigations and theories are really far from each other
as if they were just two sides of a coin. It is true in a way since both of them wants to prove
their own truth. And obviously both of them cannot be correct at the same time as they are
just the opposite of each other.
Since 1963 the citizens of the Unites States of America cannot decide which one is the
right theory, or they have already chosen one according to their beliefs and the influences
which were made on them. This case was a real tragic moment in the history of the United
States and I think it is obvious that everybody is searching for the truth. And it is also true that
some people believe in one theory and others in another one. In the last forty years, I can say,
people have been divided between the two most famous theories and I think that the situation
is the same today.
Now that we are a little bit cleverer about the theories of the Kennedy assassination, I
think it is time to share the results of my survey. I made this questionnaire because I am really
interested in this topic, I do agree with Jim Garrison’s investigation and I was curious about
how American citizens think about this case, if they thought it is still important in the life of
the country, if they agreed with any of the theories or they set up their own theories, if this
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assassination was taught in schools or not. Actually I do think that this survey can show us
how people relate to this question in 2009.
To tell the truth, I sent out about fifty questionnaires and my friends also sent them to
their friends, but unfortunately only 8 answers came back to me. I agree with the fact that this
number is nothing as regards to the population of the United States of America but I think it is
worth taking a look at them because at the same time they have many similarities and they
have many differences as well. In my survey paper I asked six questions which are the
following ones:
 How old are you?
 Which schools (namely) did you attend to (primary, high school,
college/university)?
 How much had you known about Kennedy’s assassination before you
learnt about it in school?
 Which theory did you learn in school?
 Which theory do you agree with and why?
 Who had the biggest influence on you in understanding any of the
theories? (family, schools??)
With these questions I wanted to highlight the main points I was interested in. Of
course, I could have asked more questions, but as regards to the numbers of my responders,
maybe they would have reduced the answerers. And to tell the truth, these answers do fully
satisfy my interest and do answer all of my dubious questions.
First of all, there were people aged between 22 and 62 who answered my questions.
They are 22, 26, 32, 35, 52, 55, 58 and 62 years old. I do think it was important to get to know
the responders’ age as they represent different generations and we can clearly conclude things
from this: whether somebody has been already living at the time of the assassination, whether
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they have heard about it from somebody who has already been living in 1963, and so on. It
turned out from the second question that except for one person everybody has a college or
university degree, there are even doctors among them. So I can say that a very wide range of
the population helped me as regards to their education and their age as well.
By asking which high school, university or college they attended I wanted to highlight
that these people are not from the same area but in spite of this they learnt and heard the same
things in school. There is a person who graduated in Indiana, there is one who finished school
in Illinois, another one in Vermont and California, and there is a responder who graduated in
Virginia. So it is also true here that they are very varied as regards to school as well.
The answers for my third question - how much people had known about the
assassination before learning it at school – can be divided into three groups. There are those
people who have already lived at that time so they remember something from hearing about it
from their parents, or they were informed by the media: read it in newspapers, or saw it on
television. The second group knows nothing at all about the Kennedy assassination, they did
not hear about it or they just do not remember anything if they had heard something before.
The third group says that they remember something that the president was “shot by a man.”
The country here is very divided as we can see because the groups they either know nothing
or know some things and there are people who remember the whole thing clearly and they are
obviously interested in the investigations. The major part of the country may not care about it,
but definitely there are people who still want to find out the truth.
Now we have arrived to the most interesting parts of the survey. As I have mentioned
it before, the official investigation was set up by the Warren Commission. People answered
differently for the question: which theory they learnt at school. There were people who learnt
nothing about the assassination at school. Maybe it could have been because people did not
declare the assassination as an important case. Somebody said that the president was shot by a
man. Actually, as we know it from the investigations it is the theory of the Warren
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Commission, so it means that they were taught the official investigation. Others answered –
and this was the most common – that they were taught the Warren Commission’s report with
the lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. For me it was very obvious that there were no other
theories which could have been taught in school as the official investigation is the one and
only which is true – as for the government. And I believe that if other theories had been
taught then the government would have found itself in a very difficult and dubious situation.
So the government did not let other theories be taught. I think as regards to these answers
citizens should be told about all the investigations and if one of them is interesting for the
people, then they will search for the answers they do not get in school.
The next question is about people’s subjective judgement, beliefs and opinion about
the theories: which theory they agree with. Here I would like to quote the most interesting
answers:
 “The President was killed by the Mafia. They had the connections within the
CIA, they hated the Kennedy Brothers, and murder is a way of business with
them.”
 “c.i.a in a plot with exile cubans..because of the failured of bay of pigs
invasion.”
 “I think Oswald was operating for Cuba, retaliating for Kennedy's assassination
attempts on Castro.”
 “I don't know much about all the different theories swirling around. I've heard
about mafia connections, the second shooter from the grassy knoll, and of
course there's always the possibility of the Russians or Cubans having done
something,
or
even
the
FBI
or
CIA
having
a
hand
in
it.
I don't really feel that I know enough to say for certain there's one theory that I
agree with, although I tend to discount some of the crazier theories, such as the
FBI or CIA killing Kennedy. Even the mafia theory's pretty far-fetched.”
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 “No particular theory. The lone gunman theory is the one most often accepted,
in my experience. A CIA/Mafia plot with a shooter on the grassy knoll seems
the most likely, if there really was such a plot and the lone gunman theory is
false. But I’m still unsure myself about the exact truth. The “facts” discussed
among friends, plus films (pre-Oliver Stone type films and discussions) were
the most influential for me.”
 “What theories are you talking about? I don’t believe in a conspiracy theory. I
think it was an isolated incident committed by an unstable man.”
 “He was shot by a man.”
From these answers it turned out for me that people are very unstable about judging
the Kennedy assassination, the theories, the whole thing, the assassin(s). Of course, nobody
knows the truth, but for me it was a relief when I was collecting all the main ideas and
answers about this particular murder from the questionnaires. Why is it so important to me?
Well, if you read the answers carefully, you can see that people were taught about the official
investigation in schools. But what do you see here? That most of the answers are about
different conspiracy theories about the C.I.A., the FBI and the mafia killing Kennedy. Is not it
strange? I think it definitely is. It means that people are still interested in the assassin, they
would like to really know who killed Kennedy, if it was really a conspiracy or the Warren
Commission was right. There are only two people who say that it was the lone murderer, Lee
Harvey Oswald who shot Kennedy to death on that November day. In my opinion the whole
U.S. population is divided between these answers, between the conspiracy theories and the
lone murderer theory. And obviously those people who believe in the conspiracy reject the
official investigation set up by the Commission. And yes, it is strange that people after fortysix still do not care about the theory of the government and they prefer other investigations.
In the last question I asked the people that who had the biggest influence on them in
understanding the theories. The answers were the following: Jim Garrison; the person’s own
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study of the tragedy; school; the media, mainly newspapers against the Warren Commission’s
report; family; discussions with friends, films; teachers and classmates. All in all I can say
here that people, as usual, tend to accept those relatives’ and friends’ opinions that they feel
close to themselves because they can speak with them however they want to and they can
express themselves more than with strangers. For those who answered that the biggest
influence on them was either the media or Jim Garrison it seems that they were and still they
are against the official investigation, they wanted to know more about the case, they refused
the answers and reports of the Warren Commission and they thought that there must have
been something bigger in the background than just a lone man killing the president for
seemingly no reasons in one of his weak moments. I think they want to suggest with their
answers that still people should be told the truth in spite the fact that there may be living only
some people who really know the truth about the assassination. They are not satisfied with the
lies they were and they are still given, they need something more. But I think, and I do think
that it is not my sole opinion that the real truth, the actual happenings of that day will never
ever be revealed. And a lot of us can guess why. There are only two ways of answering this
simplified but complex question. One way is that it was really a conspiracy against John
Fitzgerald Kennedy and those who were in it whether do not want to talk about it as they
planned it and they are members of the biggest organizations and institutions of the United
States or they have already died. The other way is that – as one of the people wrote who filled
out my questionnaire – we already know the answer; the fact is that we cannot accept it. But
who is there to answer this question and to tell us the truth? I think nobody. The fact that
something can be changed in the past is on the one hand scary and on the other hand it is
unbelievable and unimaginable.
To sum it up, I think I can just repeat myself and the answers as well that this tragic
issue in the United States of America is obviously not solved. Or we can take from another
side: the case is solved but it has more varieties as regards to the solutions to the case. We can
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see it from the answers of the citizens that they still doubt the happenings which occurred
there; they themselves cannot even decide which theory they should believe in, what would
be the right way to choose. I think I have chosen a very interesting but at the same time very
complex and dubious issue which will never be solved although everyone would deserve the
truth. And I think that even my survey had only a few answers, they – the answers – can still
represent the thinking of the American citizens and I think it would not have been more
different if I had answers from the whole population.
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Works Consulted
Anders, Pat. An Introduction to JFK Conspiracy Theories. JFK Conspiracy Theories 17 April
2009.
<http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/4/jfk.htm>.
Burner, David. John F. Kennedy and A New Generation. New York: HarperCollins, 1988.
Dealey Plaza Special Edition. J.F.K. Assassination Historical Journal.
Fox, Sylvan. A Kennedy gyilkosság rejtelmei. Budapest: Kossuth, 1966. (Original title: The
Unanswered Questions about President Kennedy’s Assassination)
Garrison, Jim. JFK Gyilkosok nyomában. Budapest: JLX, 1992. (Original title: On the Trail
of the Assassins)
Makai György. A Kennedy-gyilkosság kulisszái mögött. Budapest: Kossuth 1964.
McAdams, John. JFK / The Kennedy Assassination Home Page. 23 March 2009.
<http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm>.
Németh István. A Kennedy-gyilkosság. Összeesküvés-elmélet. Élet és Tudomány 23 Jan. 2009:
112-115.
Reitzes, David A. JFK Online: JFK Assassination Resources Online. 3 March 2009
<http://www.jfk-online.com/>.
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Anita Uzonyi
Leo Szilard: His Contribution to the Atomic Bomb and His Crusade for Peace
Leo Szilard was a prominent physicist, biologist, and arms-control activist around
World War II (Lanouette, “Szilardian Science”), who not only contributed to the invention of
the atomic bomb, but subsequently also took serious measures to keep the use of nuclear
power on non-destructive paths. He was “a scientist who, not content to remain in the
laboratory, went beyond its walls to attend to the larger causes of humanity” (Feld 37).
Undoubtedly, along with other Hungarian scientists, such as Edward Teller and Eugene
Wigner19, he was essential to the Manhattan Project’s success; Lanouette goes even as far as
to say that “[w]ithout Szilard’s tireless efforts … it is unlikely that nuclear weapons would
have been ready in time for use by the end of World War II” (“Leo Szilard”). Furthermore,
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wigner said that “[i]f the A-bomb project could have been run
on ideas alone, no one but Leo Szilard would have been needed” (qtd. in Hawkins xvii).
Leo Szilard was born in Budapest on February 11, 1898. Because of his HungarianJewish origin, he had to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s, where he had studied and taught
physics at the University of Berlin. He escaped first to London, but his final destination was
the United States, where, in spite of his appointment at the University of Chicago, he dreamed
of a “roving professorship,” allowing him to work at several different institutions (Hargittai
140). Although he managed to build a career at Columbia and Brandeis Universities, he
became famous mostly for his conception of the nuclear chain reaction, “a process that was
the basis for developing nuclear weapons” (Poolos 13), and his participation in the Manhattan
Project.
19
Wigner, Eugene: physicist and mathematician; he postulated and proved the theories used in quantum
mechanics and in testing atomic nuclei at Princeton. He collaborated with the Princeton Physicists to push for the
Manhattan Project at the beginning of WWII (Brown).
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Many say that in technology there are no real breakthroughs nowadays because the
different achievements are built on former findings. This statement seems to hold true for
Szilard’s conceiving of the nuclear chain reaction, since he based much of his theory on
Ernest Rutherford’s, Otto Hahn’s, and Fritz Strassman’s observations concerning the splitting
of atoms. In 1919, at Manchester University, Rutherford split the nucleus by bombarding
nitrogen with naturally occurring particles from radioactive material, and observed a proton
emitted with energy higher that the alpha particle (Campbell). Einstein also examined this
phenomenon, but in the 1930s he and Rutherford deemed that the normal speed of decay of
atomic particles could not be improved on; thus, the release of the energy from atomic decay
or half life was thought not possible to improve on (Brown).
Then, in 1939, at the
Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics, attendees received some breaking news: the
German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman had discovered fission: bombarding
uranium with neutrons, they had split the nucleus and released a great amount of energy (Wilt
13). This announcement became a crucial step in the way to the making of the atomic bomb.
Relying upon Rutherford’s theory of the splitting of the atom and Hahn and Strassman’s
discovery of the usability of uranium in the implementation of this theory, Szilard and Enrico
Fermi20 withdrew into the laboratory, where they confirmed that a splitting nucleus could
release enough additional neutrons to start a fission chain reaction. Szilard later described the
experiment: “We turned the switch, saw the flashes, watched for ten minutes, then switched
everything off and went home. That night I knew the world was headed for sorrow” (qtd, in
Poolos 16-17). His friends reported that he was as disappointed and overcast on the eve of the
chain reaction as when he became certain that the bomb would be dropped on Japan
(Lanouette, Szilárd Leó 241). Interestingly enough, literature also provided further impetus
for Szilard, because at this time the great science fiction writers H. G. Wells and Edgar Rice
20
Fermi, Enrico: Italian born American physicist; his contributions included quantum theory and statistical
mathematics; awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938.
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Burroughs incorporated atomic bombs and radium engines into their stories; when Szilard
was trying to conceive nuclear chain reaction he said he was influenced by those science
fiction stories (Brown).
After the successful experiments in the laboratory, Szilard realized that the chain
reaction would lead to nuclear power and nuclear weapons (Norris 74). Thus, he regarded it as
his “responsibility to alert Americans to the possibility that German scientists might win the
race to build an atomic bomb and to warn that Hitler would be more than willing to resort to
such a weapon” (Gosling vii). Lise Meitner21, Fermi, and Szilard were certain that the Nazi
general staff had already become aware of the possibility for developing a doomsday weapon
based on the laws of fission, for which the scientists had good reason: the young physicist
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker worked for Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, and
his father was the secretary of state in Germany, thus the channeling of information on the
Hahn-Strassman experiments from son to father was seen as a real threat (Abonyi 20). This
fear was even more confirmed when the fascist Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and
banned the export of uraninite from its only noteworthy European deposit (Abonyi 20). To
prevent Nazi Germany from being the first to use the devastating power unleashed by the
explosion of such bombs, Szilard resolved to reach the leadership of the United States in order
to obtain funding for research. Since Szilard was not really famous in high quarters, he asked
for the help of scientists of international fame and reputation. First he “urged colleague Enrico
Fermi to report on their nuclear fission work to the U.S. Navy, but in Washington Fermi was
ridiculed and ignored” (Lanouette, “Baiting Brass” 74). Then he called on Albert Einstein,
whom he got to know while he was studying at the University of Berlin; later the two
cooperated in the development of an electromagnetic refrigerator pump, as well. A possible
reason why Szilard decided to ask Einstein to send a letter to the President of the United
21
Meitner, Lise: collaborated Otto Hahn in studying radioactivity; she published the physical explanation of the
evidence for nuclear fission.
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States is that Einstein was known to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, while Szilard was not;
moreover, as Szilard put it: “The one thing most scientists are really afraid of is to make a
fool of themselves. Einstein was free from such a fear and this above all is what made his
position unique on this occasion” (qtd. in Lanouette, “Szilardian Science”). Roosevelt
responded by setting up a so-called Uranium Committee, of which Szilard, Wigner, and Teller
became members. On the whole, the letter to the President proved to be successful, since the
scientists got the necessary money for carrying out experiments on the atomic bomb. Thus, it
becomes understandable why it is believed by many that “Szilard was directly responsible for
the Manhattan Project because of the letters he dictated to Einstein for delivery to President
Roosevelt” (Brown n. pag.).
Prominent scientists from different parts of the world came together to produce the
atomic bomb based on Szilard’s theory of the nuclear chain reaction. Some examples besides
Teller and Wigner are Philip Abelson, inventor of the Liquid Thermal Diffusion isotope
separation technique, Danish born Niels Bohr, who developed significant contributions to the
understanding of atomic structure and quantum mechanics, Arthur Jeffrey Dempster, a
Canadian born American physicist who discovered Uranium-235, and Robert Oppenheimer,
who was the scientific manager of the project (Brown). Up until 1941 the physicists organized
the work under a veil of secrecy, because soon after uranium fission was discovered, Szilard
insisted that his fellow scientists keep their nuclear research secret (Lanouette, “Baiting
Brass” 73). This was considered a “heresy in science” at the time (Lanouette, “Szilardian
Science” 3), since “in academia it is customary to share experimental results with colleagues
even if they are employed by your country’s enemies” (Brown). Thence, in Szilard’s view,
the most powerful weapon to result from the Manhattan Project was not the A-bomb but the
“SECRET” stamp; and even though this imposed secrecy on nuclear research was, in fact,
another one of his own inventions, he later decried it (Lanouette, “Baiting Brass” 73-74). The
work was being carried out under the code name Manhattan Project, named after the New
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York City borough where early research on the atomic theory had been implemented; this
project “would cost an estimated $2 billion and contribute not only to the end of World War II
(1939–1945) but also to the United States’ prominence as a world power for decades to
come” (Poolos 21).
In 1941, the U.S. Army thought it was time to take control of the making of the atomic
bomb and thus it appointed General Leslie Groves as the director of the Manhattan Project.
This step was important in order to speed up the process and also to provide absolute secrecy.
General Groves was an engineer with outstanding credentials, including the building of the
Pentagon, and, most importantly, had strong administrative abilities (Gosling 13). However,
knowing nothing about physics, he needed somebody who would connect him to the
scientists; so he chose Robert Oppenheimer22 to be responsible for the holding together of the
scientific members of the project (Poolos 49). Groves and Oppenheimer formed a very good
team, which was essential to the success of the secret operation on many different sites, such
as the Los Alamos and the Oak Ridge sites. Thus, “by the fall of 1942 the bomb project came
under the firm control of General Groves’ Manhattan Engineer District: industrial in scale,
international in scope, and organized with military precision” (Norris 75).
However, even though Groves was an acknowledged authority figure, he encountered
problems when it came to the issue of secrecy. As Robert S. Norris put it: “It was a clash of
cultures between the military and science, never resolved” (63). For instance, the work at Los
Alamos, which housed about 6,000 people, including scientists, technicians, and their
families, was of such secrecy that most people who lived there were not permitted to know
what others were working on; moreover, code names were used for all references to materials,
processes, and locations (Poolos 84). Norris puts much emphasis on Groves’ widespread use
22
Robert, Oppenheimer: (1904 -1967), American born Theoretical Physicist who was the scientific manager of
the Manhattan Project. Although suspected of Communist connections and stripped of his security clearances by
the anti communist lunacy of the post WWII era he was later reinstated. He is often referred to as “The Father of
the Atomic Bomb”. He was a proponent of sharing nuclear technology with the world.
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of compartmentalization, which he did not invent, but implemented on a scale never seen
before. For instance, any communication between the Manhattan sites had to go through
Groves’ channels, and scientists could not travel from one site to the other, except with
Groves’ permission. It was partly because of this large-scale secrecy that Szilard came to
loggerheads with Groves, since it not only slowed down the project, but also made the
development of the bomb exposed to the absolute use of the Army. Norris continues to say
that
for Groves compartmentalization was not only a method to maintain secrecy, it was
also the source of his power. All of the boxes in the wiring diagram led to him. He,
and he alone, knew everything and because of that was able to shape the substance
and the pace of events. Some of the scientists claimed that compartmentalization
hindered the free interchange of ideas that is essential to scientific discovery and
progress, and thus slowed development of the bomb. It is true that any
communication between the Manhattan sites had to go through Groves’ channels
and any trips were strictly regulated. (65)
Furthermore, Groves had problems with Szilard also because of the scientist’s Jewish origin.
As István Hargittai put it, “today it would be unthinkable for a U.S. general to be openly antiSemitic as Groves was—and get away with it” (108). Groves did not take kindly to Szilard’s
attitude to strict secrecy rules. In a letter to Lord Cherwell he even expressed doubt about
Szilard’s reliability saying that “[f]rankly, Dr. Szilard has not, in our opinion, evidenced
wholehearted cooperation in the maintenance of security” (n. pag.). It is undeniable that
Groves did not a little to blacken Szilard’s character. When Szilard was granted U.S.
citizenship in 1943, the FBI constantly followed and investigated him, on Groves’ initiative
(Hargittai 109). However, Szilard refused to give in and he oftentimes ridiculed the FBI
agents, for instance by “offering them a cup of coffee or his umbrella when it rained heavily
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(the agent preferred, though, getting thoroughly wet)” (109). Hargittai adds that Szilard
compared Groves’ “methods to those of the Nazis” (109).
Szilard felt suffocating under the veil of secrecy. To formulate his deprecation, he
decided to write a memorandum to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in March of 1945. This
memorandum was not only written because of the complaints about the level of secrecy the
scientists were under, but it also would have served as a warning about the possibility of a
nuclear arms race between Russia and the United States, had it reached the President in time.
Szilard realized the potential dangers that would presumably result from the inappropriate use
of nuclear power and started to take steps to prevent them already in 1944, when he warned
Vannevar Bush, Carnegie Institution president and director of the wartime Office of Scientific
Research and Development, that only an international control scheme could avert nuclear
catastrophe. In 1944, he suggested controlling all world uranium deposits "if necessary by
force" (Lanouette, “Baiting Brass” 75), and now, in his memorandum to Roosevelt, he
proposed that the use of the atomic bomb should be delayed, international control should be
set up, and scientists should be heard on issues concerning atomic energy (Lanouette, Szilárd
Leó 230). Again, Albert Einstein was of great help for Szilard, since he supplied a letter of
introduction to his document. However, their joint effort did not succeed this time, because
the President died before receiving the letter.
Szilard was a person who cared more about the future of humanity than about his own
scientific advancement. Thus when it was becoming apparent that the Germany would soon
surrender early in 1945, he started to wonder whether the continuing of the development of
the atomic bomb had any use and also how the bomb would be used should it be ready before
defeating Japan (Marx 71). When the development of the atomic bomb reached the phase
when the doomsday weapon could be employed in military action, it was obvious for almost
everybody that there was no danger of German atomic bombardment. (As a matter of fact, in
1943, British intelligence discovered that the German project on the development of atomic
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bombs was discontinued, but this very important piece of information was not forwarded
either to Los Alamos or to Chicago [Marx 70]. But if it had been, there is no proof that the
leadership would have decided to stop the project.) The Nobel Prize-winning Joseph Rotblat
was putting forward a similar opinion to that of Szilard when he said that “[w]e needed the
bomb for the sole purpose of making sure that it would not be used by [the Germans].” Now
that Hitler was not casting an “atomic shadow” on the world, some scientists began to wonder
why they had to press on with the building of the bomb. This puzzlement was further
strengthened by the fact that, as Oppenheimer put it, they worked on the bomb even more
intensively after the German capitulation than before that, since the Americans considered
Japan as their archrival (Marx 71).
Harry S. Truman as a vice president had not been informed about the Manhattan
Project, thus Szilard had to start his crusade again to make the potential dangers resulting
from the use of the atomic bomb known to him. But he was really energetic and found a very
astute way to get into the White House: he tried to find a fellow scientist from Kansas City,
Truman’s political base, and persuade him to procure a meeting at the home of the President
(Lanouette, Szilárd Leó 231). Surprisingly, Szilard was given an appointment, but on the day
of the meeting he was directed to James Byrnes, who was to be the Secretary of State and
“who thought that Szilard wanted to participate in policy-making, which he did not welcome”
(Hargittai 111). Szilard left disappointed, but he did not give up.
In the meantime, other scientists were also on the move to stop the bomb. Their first
joint effort, part of the so-called “scientists’ movement,” culminated in the Franck Report of
June 11, 1945. They tried to prevent the atomic bombing of Japanese cities and proposed,
instead, a demonstration of this frightening new weapon, hoping that it would make the
Japanese surrender—and thus the doomsday weapon and the following nuclear arms race
would not cause the death of many. The document was prepared by Eugene Rabinovitch, who
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said that the fundamental points of the report came from James Franck and Leo Szilard.
However, the proposal was rejected by the Interim Policy Committee on Atomic Energy.
After this defeat, it was obvious for Szilard that they could not talk the government out
of using the bomb in Japanese cities. He wrote later the only thing scientists could do was
make it clear that they opposed this step (Lanouette, Szilárd Leó 236). Szilard returned to his
plan to find a direct way to the Commander-in-Chief. So he composed a scientists' petition to
President Truman, which was circulated not only in Szilard’s workplace, the Metallurgical
Laboratory in Chicago, but also in the Oak Ridge and Los Alamos sites. According to István
Harrgittai, “[t]his was an important moment in the history of the Manhattan Project, because
the person who is credited with initiating it went on record as opposing the deployment of the
bomb” (111). In it he claims that “Until recently, we [Leo Szilard and 69 co-signers] have
had to fear that the United States might be attacked by atomic bombs during this war and that
her only defense might lie in a counterattack by the same means” (Szilard). However, it
turned out that now the Army wanted to use the atomic bomb not for the country’s defense,
but for an attack against Japan. With this letter Szilard and his fellow scientists wanted to
warn the President that “a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated
forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the
door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale” (Szilard). However, in the first
formulation of the petition, he had ignored the fact that a great number of Americans would
die in an invasion of Japan, so, on July 16, he revised the petition and approved the use of
atomic weapons after warning the Japanese and giving them opportunity for surrender under
known conditions (Hargittai 111). He did not know then that the A-bomb was tested near
Alamogordo that very day, a few hours before his revising the petition. The document was
sent up to the Army chain-of-command on July 17, but, unfortunately, it did not succeed in
convincing the President not to use the atomic bombs against Japan, because General Groves
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held it back till August 1, when he got the message that the bomb was ready to be used in
military action.
On August 6, “Little Boy” exploded over Hiroshima killing approximately 140,000
people. Lanouette adds that “despite its horrors, Szilard said that Hiroshima brought him ‘a
feeling of relief’ because ‘suddenly the secrecy was dropped’ and the scientists could speak
out” (“Baiting Brass” 77). However, when he learnt more about the devastation the bomb
caused in Hiroshima, this “feeling of relief” soon gave place to dismay, which launched
another wave of proposals and activities for peace (Lanouette, Szilárd Leó 243). For instance,
he wanted a delegation of scientists to go to President Truman, but this remained an
unrealized hope. The dropping of “Fat Man” on Nagasaki, which killed about an additional
70,000 people, evoked an even more perplexed reaction from him—he quoted his colleague
Samuel K. Allison: "Dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a tragic mistake. Dropping the
bomb on Nagasaki was an atrocity." (qtd. in Lanouette, Szilárd Leó 243).
His reaction to the doleful happenings in Japan reflected the popular feeling in the
United States. Eric F. Goldman commented on the atmosphere in the big cities of America:
…everybody talked of ‘the end of the war,’ not of ‘victory.’ The President himself
talked with a mixed tone. . . . [H]e appeared beaming with Bess on his arm and
proclaimed this a ‘great day.’ His face quickly sobered as he added warnings of an
‘emergency’ ahead—a crisis ‘as great … as Dec. 7, 1941.’ . . . Over all the victory
celebrations, the fact of the atomic bomb hung like some eerie haze from another world.
(4-5)
Now that the bombs had demonstrated their power to the world, Szilard began to publicly
fight against nuclear arms race. One of the greatest problems he faced in this regard was that
the military wanted to retain control over the continuation of the nuclear research program. To
this effect, Representative Andrew J. May and Senator Edwin C. Johnson introduced a bill.
Hearing this, Szilard, together with the Federation of Atomic Scientists, became resolute to
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stop the bill. From Wardman Park Hotel, “he alerted scientist friends around the country
(running up massive phone bills in the process), met with senators and congressmen, and
testified at hearings” (Boyer 52). Full victory seemed to be at hand with the passage of the
Atomic Energy Act of 1946. However, as Alice Kimball Smith put it, it was “a qualified
triumph . . . full of ironies,” since the military got almost everything it wanted (qtd. in Boyer
52). Later Szilard mediated between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, and formed the
Council for a Livable World with a group of scientists. Still, he was not the most successful
arms control activist, because, as William Lanouette put it, “he was too visionary, too
rational, too clever, and too impatient” (qtd. in Hargittai 144-45).
One more attempt of Szilard in fighting for peace should be mentioned here: his book
of short stories, The Voice of the Dolphins. The collection was written during the time when
he was fighting bladder cancer. After seeing that his honest and outspoken speeches and
writings had fallen short of his expectations, he said that “[i]f they cannot take it straight, they
will get it in fiction” (qtd. in Clemente 379). In Barton Bernstein’s opinion, the stories “are
ironic, imaginative, clever, and rich with both warning and hope,” and thus could influence
those whom Szilard was not able to reach with mere scientific analysis (qtd. in Clemente
376).
All in all, Leo Szilard’s scientific pursuits and “crusade” for peace might seem
contradictory, but if one considers the responsibility that Szilard, feeling the weight of the
atomic bomb, consciously and remorsefully took upon himself, one can see the correlation
between the two. This strange combination is also reflected in Szilard’s idea of himself as a
scientist and an activist for peace at the same time: “I am a scientist and science, which has
created the bomb …, has no solution to offer to [the problem of peace]. Yet a scientist may
perhaps be permitted to speak on [this problem], not because he knows more about it than
other people do, but rather because no one seems to know very much about it” (qtd. in
Clemente 373).
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