Month: October 2020

For my paradigm shift project, I have decided to write about the shift in attitudes towards mixed race people in America. As a mixed race person myself, this is a very personal topic and something that I’ve always thought about. Below, I will list some sources that I have found and how they will be constructive towards my paper and presentation. I will continue to find more, and I am very excited to work on this project.

nytimes.com/2011/03/20/us/20race.html

This New York Times article explores the increase of multiracial people in southern Mississippi. It provides percentage numbers of mixed raced people and testimonies from the experiences of mixed race couples. They said that for the most part there weren’t any big issues with their relationship or their children. The article mentioned a shift in attitudes towards mixed race couples and children. What I found most interesting is that the article looks at Mississippi, a deep south state with a history of staunch racism. This article provides solid examples of a paradigm shift with the numbers to back it up.

https://www.thoughtco.com/interracial-marriage-laws-721611

This article provides a timeline of discrimmination against interacial marriage in America. The dates that it provides span from 1644 to 2000. I think this information could be useful in terms of finding context of the time before the paradigm shift occured.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/vv59px/inside-facebooks-totally-adorable-kind-of-racist-mixed-race-baby-community

This Vice article is about the popularity of a social media page called “Mixed Race Babies”. People post pictures of their mixed race children and everyone seems to love it. The article mentions that many advertising companies are looking for mixed race children and how it was such a change from when those kinds of children were labeled as “ethnically ambiguous”. It also talks about how there are still some negative attitudes towars mixed race people as a whole. One woman commented on a picture saying that the mixed race child should have children with a white child so that their babies would be even more beautiful. Overall, this article provides an example of a positive attitude towards mixed race people while also mentioning negative ones.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201905/the-biracial-advantage

This article provides advantages to being mixed race and other elements about it that people find fascinating. One in particular is that mixed raced people are perceived as more attractive due to greater facial symmetry. It has personal accounts from mixed race people about their lives and the positive and negative aspects about having parents of two different races.

This was a funny youtube video I found just a few weeks ago and I knew that it could be useful for this project. Mixed race people in the UK explain certain phrases that you shouldn’t ask mixed race people like “Where are you really from?” or “Is that your real mom?”. I laughed because I’d heard a lot of those phrases myself. While they usually stem from harmless curiosity or interest, it does become a little annoying. I heard about the fascination of mixed race babies from this video and the accounts of actual mixed race people provides solid ground for analysis. It also shows that while the attitudes towards mixed race people might be changing, the terminology and racist undertones still exist.

Born a Crime: Trevor Noah

I read this book during my senior year of highschool for personal enjoyment. This book provides a firsthand account into the life of a half-black and half-white child growing up in Apartheid South Africa. The fascinating thing is that Trevor Noah is a relatively young person, meaning that these events didn’t happen that long ago. He mentions how he was classified as a kid, how he struggled to find a racial identity, and how he couldn’t walk too close to his mother or she would be arrested. Although this takes place in South Africa, it is a relatively contemporary account of the challenges that mixed race people used to face. I would definitely suggest reading it, as I couldn’t put it down until I was finished.

For this blog post, I watched a Ted Talk about the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire. There were many different elements that led me to choose this specific video and why I enjoyed watching it. First off, I liked how organized the website was; it was very easy to find this video. I also like how there was a brief summary of the video and it gave credit to those involved. Regarding the video itself, I thought the animations were a great way to keep the audience engaged while brining the lecture to a visual medium; they definitely made the history subject of the video cooler but also shows how Ted Talks are willing to connect with the audience. The narration is also very calm yet grabs attention; narration and pace is important when giving any kind of speech and this Ted Talk does it well. Finally, the Ted Talk did a good job of mentioning the good and bad aspects of such a controversial empire like the Mongols; they mentioned how the empire was short-lived and was prone to infighting but also mentioned how trade and culture flourished. Overall, I would say this Ted Talk provided an excellent presentation and provides a good model to follow for this next project. I think this specific one about the Mongols is good because people remember them in good and bad ways; I think that can relate to our project because a paradigm shift can include a change in feelings about a certain civilization and the complex legacy of Genghis Khan and his descendants is prone to such shifts.

I have a few ideas regarding the subject of my paradigm shift project. I’ve always been fascinated as to how gangsters, drug barons, and other organized criminals are portrayed in modern culture yet how ruthless and terrifying they are in real life. I think its interesting how they used to be some of the most feared people alive and how today they seem romanticized. My one issue with this is that that lifestyle has always been romanticized in one way or another. Movies such as the Godfather came out at a time when the Mafia was at the height of its power in the United States and before the time of the legendary cruelty of Colombian and Mexican cartels. Either way, I think it’d be really interesting and fun to talk about the shift of how we portray these criminals versus how they are in real life.

Another topic I would be interested in covering is how people’s views of mixed race couples and children have changed over time. As a mixed raced person myself, I’ve always been fascinated by this and wondered what my life would have been like if I had been born in 1950s America or during Apartheid rule in South Africa. Many countries, including America, have long histories of racism and discrimmination. Mixed race people were seen in a negative light but now there are more and more mixed people. In countries like Brazil, nearly the entire population is mixed race due to generations of interacial marriages. I even watched a documentary in my Anthropolgy class about mixed race people. I think this would be an interesting topic because it falls under the general umbrella of racial issues in our world; I also feel a more personal element to this topic. I’ll definitely think of more topics but these two were at the top of my mind for this next project.

After listening to my civic artifact speech on Tuesday, I recieved lots of positive feedback from my peers. My groupmates told me that my presentation was very organized; the several different slides corresponded well with my speech while also providing attention-grabbing visuals. I was also told that I provided great analysis of my civic artifact along with summarizing it for people who had not seen the short film. My civic artifact, a Disney short film titled Der Fuehrer’s Face, required some context to understand the purpose of it; my speech provided a sufficient summary for one to understand but not to the point where I was just summarizing the piece instead of analyzing it. Finally, my groupmates thought that my delivery was very good; they noticed that I was attentive and that the speech flowed very naturally rather than sounding too scripted.

I personally think that my speech could have been a little better; I did have to read a little bit off of my computer screen and watching it again during class did look a little awkward. I also believe that I should have been a little more lively while delivering the speech; I recorded it at 5:30 AM so I might have been a little tired. Overall, I would say that I gave a good speech. I spoke well, had a very organized presentation, and provided sufficient analysis of my civic artifact without boring the audience too much or rambling on about the same point.

My peers also had solid presentations of their civic artifacts. One of my group mates used actual quotes from her video while also using a quote from research about the target audience. I thought this was a really good comparison that really showed the purpose of their civic artifact. My groupmates providing lots of context for their civic artifacts whether it was instagram posts or comparing new doll models to original ones I felt very informed regarding what the civic artifact actually was. Finally, I felt that the topics that my peers spoke about were interesting and that they should be discussed more. In particular, I found that Kaylee De La O’s presentation about the Ashley Graham Barbie doll put forth great information about body image and the impact it can have on young girls. I thought that my peers and I all did great presentations and that we could all learn from each other’s successes and mistakes.

The Rhetoric of Der Fuehrer’s Face

On January 1st, 1943, Disney released a short-animated film titled Der Fuehrer’s Face. The film follows Donald Duck as he works in a German factory making missiles for the Nazis. While this seems odd at first glance, the cartoon gives a subtle yet powerful impression of terror, fear, and overall absurdity in Nazi Germany. Der Fuehrer’s Face uses powerful rhetoric and elements of Kairos in order to reveal the hellish, fearful, and horrifying conditions of Nazi Germany in a frivolous way to propagandize the American public in supporting the United States against Germany in World War II. The use of a popular cartoon character like Donald Duck not only makes it easier to undermine Nazi Germany’s image of strength, but also immortalizes it in the minds of the viewers. As a recipient of the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, Der Fuehrer’s Face surely impacts minds young and old alike with the standard cartoon flare, but also with a more subtle and important message about patriotism.

To understand the message of Der Fuehrer’s Face, the audience should also understand the historical context of the cartoon. In 1943, the year that Disney released the cartoon, the United States fights Germany and the other Axis Powers. Having entered the war late, the United States needed to garner support to help fund the war effort. This era saw an unprecedented amount of patriotism that helped the United States defeat its enemies. The United States used propaganda as a powerful tool during this time to convince the American public to contribute to the war effort whether it involved buying war bonds, working in a factory to build war machines, or enlisting in the military itself. American propaganda either involved making the United States look strong or their enemies looking weak. This prompts the audience to believe that the United States has the toughness to overcome any obstacle while also making the enemy less intimidating. Whether propaganda uses a picture of a strong woman flexing her muscles or a picture of a Japanese solider with distorted and almost racist-like proportions, wartime propaganda tries to convince people to support the mother country and to hate the adversary.

At first glance, it may seem that Der Fuehrer’s Face depicts Donald Duck as a Nazi. He works in a Nazi factory, salutes pictures of Hitler, and has Nazi paraphernalia in his home. However, the true themes of this short film seek to tear down the image of a Nazi dystopia and persuade the audience towards the American Dream. The short film starts off with a band marching through a small Germantown playing a song about saluting the Fuehrer. The band consists of Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Hideki Tojo, Benito Mussolini, and Hermann Göring, all prominent leaders in the Axis Powers. Der Fuehrer’s Face portrays them as cartoonish; they all have exaggerated bodily features and act in a preposterous manner. Not only does this contradict the idea of Aryan superiority, but it uses their own propaganda tactics against them. Many works of propaganda revolving around demeaning a race of people use these conditions to make those people seem subhuman. By reversing this back against the Nazi leaders, it appears as if they are subhuman while preaching their own racial superiority; Der Fuehrer’s Face does not hold back on pointing out irony. Once he arrives at work, Nazi soldiers continue to yell and scream at Donald while he works on the assembly line. This eventually drives him insane and he wishes that it would all go away. At the end of the film, Donald wakes up in his bed still traumatized from his nightmare; he initially starts the Hitler salute but then realizes it was all a dream. He then looks at a small statue of liberty and says, “God bless America”. This wraps up the message of Der Fuehrer’s Face; living in Nazi Germany under the wrath of Hitler would force someone to endure the grueling conditions of their evil dictatorship while the United States offers people opportunity and hope. The use of exaggerated caricatures fits well with the representation of the Nazis to make them look foolish but also more diabolic. It then culminates in Donald waking up from his dream building up the idea that the United States can prevent ordinary Americans from ever having to endure that misery.

Der Fuehrer’s Face helps to set the precedent for using humor to help convey a more powerful message. Just as Der Fuehrer’s Face employs wit and banter to criticize the Nazi’s, the film Jojo Rabbit adopts a similar approach to condemn Hitler and his ideology. The film follows Jojo, a ten-year-old boy, and his imaginary version of Hitler navigating through life in Germany near the end of World War II. Since the on-screen Hitler comes from the perspective of a young child, he plays more of a comedic role than a malicious one. Instead of inspiring Jojo with hate speech, they joke around together. Hitler still tries to force the Nazi attitudes towards Jewish people towards Jojo, but instead of making it serious like Hitler’s speeches, the movie realizes this through short comedic banter. For example, at dinner one night, when Jojo sees his imaginary version of Hitler, he has a unicorn head on his plate instead of actual food. In another scene after having a conversion with Jojo, Hitler says he has to go and simply jumps out of the window instead of using the door. In both of these instances Taika Watiti, who directs the film and plays the role of Hitler himself, uses child-like humor the same way that Der Fuehrer’s Face does in order to make Hitler look stupid. By making Hitler look unintelligent, it makes his hateful ideology also appear simpleminded. Both mediums also critique the “Heil Hitler” salute in similar ways. In Der Fuehrer’s Face, the cartoon literally opens with a song about saluting Hitler; the band marches through a small town where everything, including bushes and trees, have the shape of a swastika. Even a rooster yells out “Heil Hitler”. Once Donald arrives to work at the factory, the guards force him at gunpoint to salute every picture of Hitler. While Donald works at the assembly line putting together artillery shells, a picture of Hitler starts to appear with each shell forcing Donald to say “Heil Hitler” fifteen times in a row. In Jojo Rabbit, the SS knocks on Jojo’s door in order to search the house for Jews. Jojo must great all six officers with “Heil Hitler” and they respond the same way as they all enter his house. In total, the characters utter the phrase “Heil Hitler” over thirty times in less than a minute. Both of these films demonstrate the absurdity of the ritual by overemphasizing it. They use logos to undermine the credibility in actually saying it, reducing the phrase to more of a formal greeting than actually stating subservience to the Fuehrer. Both works use the same rhetoric in order to get the audience to understand the fallacies of Nazi ideology; by reducing its protocols to repetitive jokes it cripples the effectiveness of its hateful rhetoric.

Since its initial debut, Der Fuehrer’s Face stands as a civic artifact that sets the precedent for using goofy content in order to convey its rhetoric. The wacky depictions of Nazis attempt to make them look scary while also making them look idiotic. This seeks to inspire Americans to fight their enemy while also making them look like an easy fight. Der Fuehrer’s Face’s use of humor and wit to castigate the Nazis sets a precedent for other works, like Jojo Rabbit, to do the same. In order to reach an audience, using out-of-the-box methods like a Donald Duck cartoon can have a greater impact than just saying negative things about the enemy. The cartoony elements of this film display the dreadfulness of Nazis in a simple way that even children can understand. Overall, Der Fuehrer’s Face uses unique methods of rhetoric in order to inspire audiences of all ages; its controversial appearance