American Literature: Activism

heart I've been to more protests than i can count

so i'm actually uniquely suited for the subject of the

day activism in the late eighteen hundreds And what about

activism in the seventeen hundreds Or even earlier you might

ask didn't exist If you try to speak out against

authority you'd lose your head quite literally But now that

democracy was on the upswing in the eighteen hundreds the

masses suddenly had an opportunity to talk trash to the

people in charge We call that activism will be looking

at the works of two epic activist today stephen crane

and his novel maggie a girl of the streets and

jacob rees a legendary photographer of his era Both of

these men fought the man on inspired social change using

just words and photographs will kick things off with stephen

crane's novel maggie a girl of the streets The novel

is about a girl named maggie which i think you

might have guessed she lives In a bad part of

town in the bowery in new york city to be

specific this is what the barry looked like back then

Maggie comes from a family of irish immigrants which to

readers of cranes day would emphasize her low social standing

Quick aside you've got to remember the context in which

the novel was written At the time irish immigrants who

were newcomers to america were viewed as well not even

human more like animals to most people different was bad

No thank you They hated the new immigrants and their

strain foreign culture their bazaar irish food incomprehensible slaying and

even their religion catholicism's which was thrown a lot of

shade by the majority protestant residents of america On top

of that americans accused the irish of taking their jobs

which sure doesn't sound familiar now Nope Anyways maggie's home

life isn't great Her little brother jimmy is your average

hooligan and there do well and her mom hits the

bottle hard But maggie is different She has appear heart

so you could understand why she swept off her feet

when she meets pete who's not only a total stud

but also might be our ticket out of the hood

There is just one problem Mom and jimmy despise maggie's

new babe So much so in fact that they boot

maggie out of the apartment And as if family drama

wasn't enough jimmy also chooses tell beat the crap out

of pete Yeah he's That kind of brother peter is

furious and dumps maggie which ultimately forces her toe live

on the streets and become a sex worker From there

the novel gets ambiguous All we know is that maggie

ends up dead When jimi reveals this to his mom

she promises that she'll finally forgive maggie though it may

be a tad late for that mom For our purposes

We're interested in maggie's depiction of poverty that's where crane

flexes activist muscles so to speak One big way that

crane does this is by establishing a creepy atmosphere in

the slums You could also refer to this as tone

the way crane wants us to feel about the whole

sordid affair It's both gothic and realistic Like if edward

scissorhands somehow ended up in a gritty cop drama Let's

take a look at one extended bit from chapter two

to start cranes Word choice Says it was all dark

Gruesome sure doesn't sound like beverly hills Also check out

the use of color Color is one of crane's trademarks

Many of his books use the color red Like the

aptly named red badge of courage The short story the

bride comes to yellow sky employees No not yellow but

green What a fake out Well the blue hotel revolves

around you guessed it The color blue The guy loves

colors more than john sena love pumping iron in maggie

the color red pops up most crain uses it to

describe how maggie's mom skin goes flush when she drinks

to refer to the blood jimmy spills during his novel

opening brawl and to describe the scarlet dress worn by

a singer Drinking fighting and singing sure seems like red

is associated with emotion and passion Right Let's go back

and look at the passage from chapter two again The

last sentence is a floozy There's some personification there Crane

talks about a building as if it had bowels like

a human We do not want to think about that

too hard But check out the phrase the weight of

humanity really lit nerds would call that synnex dickie crain

uses one aspect of people their weight to refer to

humanity at large which both gives a sense of just

how many people are crammed in these tenements and also

how these folks are at the bottom of the social

food chain so to speak the fact that maggie lives

in an irish neighborhood would have made it seem even

sketchier to readers of cranes day who's stereotype irish people

as violent drunks Of course crane doesn't bust those stereotypes

here maggie's mom is always drunk and her brother is

often violent that's two for two for everyone keeping track

at home so don't think that crane was being particularly

woke in his depiction of irish immigrants He's still employed

stereotypes and he just used them to critique society's treatment

of the less fortunate These ideas help establish the setting

of the bowery a working class urban neighborhood with a

dark brooding atmosphere and rampant crime In other words not

a nice part of town wouldn't want to hold a

wedding there This nastiness helps establish maggie as a character

the beautiful pristine flower growing up in the middle of

a garbage dump that doesn't Mean she's not struggling before

we even know her name she's described as a small

ragged girl but we're also told that she has none

of the dirt of rum alley in her veins which

is a weird way of saying that she's a good

kid plus she pretty never basically she's one of the

few kids around here that has a shot at getting

out of the slums Her relationship with peter on the

other hand is totally naive We could tell that he's

no good from the moment we meet him and are

proven right when he dumps maggie without a moments notice

despite the fact that she has nowhere to live But

the relationship is yet another reminder of how maggie is

failed by her environment If maggie lived in a decent

neighborhood with a decent family should be keeping it lit

all day every day but her mom's a drunk and

her brother's a bully which means that neither are interested

in teaching maggie about life love and all that other

tricky but super important stuff On top of that they

can take care of the practical matters either like keeping

a roof over her head And her out of trouble

And here we've reached the ooey gooey core of the

novels view of poverty the center of its gypsy roll

pop if you will crane like many thinkers of his

day believed that individuals are shaped by their environments whether

those environments are beneficial detrimental or anything in between which

is kind of obvious with the hindsight of the future

But was a brand new idea at the time maggie

was failed by her environment her family her neighborhood her

peers and ultimately suffered a really a bummer of a

fate as a result and the fact that her death

was so anonymous that it occurred off screen emphasize how

women like maggie are overlooked My society at large holy

smokes is this stuff getting me fired up I've got

a protest something a sap If you prefer your activism

less literary and more visual however you're gonna lose your

mind over jacob reese Jacob riis was born in denmark

but immigrated to america in eighteen seventy with nothing more

than the change in his pocket which is to say

not much So resettled in new york city eventually scoring

a job as a police Reporter for the new york

herald tribune in particular rees was known for his photography

which was actually a rare skill in the days before

snapchat and selfies He spent most of his time meeting

the rial rough neighborhoods of new york city especially ones

with large immigrant populations which at the time were primarily

irish and italian His approach here is actually pretty similar

to the one taken by crane is now like he

doesn't employ stereotypes of immigrants and working class people After

all his work was meant to shock the audience that

was the reality tv of its day But rees used

these stereotypes to a positive end to show america the

suffering sitting right under its nose This was referred to

as muck racking sensational journalism that exposes corruption and abuse

by the powers that be as you might imagine a

lot people despised res for his work They thought he

was just causing trouble What reason did have friends He

was buddies with theodore roosevelt while the future president was

still the police commissioner of n y c and yes

that is your fun fact of the day Protest always

befriend future presidents It just might come in handy someday

In eighteen ninety three's released how the other half lives

a book that became a smash hit and he's also

considered an early example of published photo journalism The book

combines reasons photos with britain commentary on the awful reality

of urban poverty tenement buildings sweatshops unpleasantness galore On the

positive side the book had a really political impact on

society encouraging new york city officials to reform housing policies

and roosevelt who was still police commissioner to shut down

particularly shady businesses So rees is a great example of

an activist through his actions He literally cause social change

when's the last time an instagram celebrity did that But

are we going to talk this much about a photographer

without actually looking at his photographs Of course not This

is a video that's like talking about twilight but not

actually mentioning vampires The first photo we're going to examine

today is called five cents a spot one of reasons

most famous photos based on the title We can assume

that each of these folks were paying five cents apiece

for their beds which even at that low price seems

hardly worth it that this would be many americans first

look inside of a tenement apartment and reason ensured that

it would be an image that they would never forget

then its roost is another classic photo from race published

back in eighteen eighty eight unlike five cents a spot

which makes us feel sympathetic towards the poor bro's in

the tenement apartments this one definitely makes us feel a

little bit scared Those two g's up front look like

they're about to beat these up and the rest of

them looked like they'd happily lend a helping hand The

framing of this photograph contributes to this feeling of unease

to framing is the way that a photo or piece

of art draws in your focus Notice how the alley

stretches back into the distance behind the troublemakers making us

feel like we're being drawn into the alley towards whatever

creepiness lies at its center Okay okay we've got to

move on or else i'm gonna have a heart attack

The last photo will look at is called street arabs

and sleeping quarters Street arabs is reasons term for young

unemployed children which is super racist of course by calling

homeless kids arabs rees is implying that all our people

are unemployed slackers But hey we are talking about the

eighteen hundreds Casual racism was super hip back then Of

course this photograph is a total heartstring tugger Nothing gives

us the fields like sad children But now more than

anything this photo shows us how reads took his photos

The kids do look posed and it does look like

daytime Not exactly when most people sleep How we've been

lied to nap Not really More than likely res help

the kids get into position for the photograph as he

did with much of his work after all Did you

think that res just stumbled across a gang of young

thugs holding court in a scary alley Not likely This

revelation doesn't invalidate Reese is work He was still documenting

riel struggles that were ignored by the rest of the

world And that deserves props That being said understanding how

res captured these photos helps us better understand them as

well as his unique role as an activist and thus

concludes our trip into the world of eighteen hundreds Activism

What did we learn Well we learned that maggie girl

of the streets exposed the suffering of irish immigrants even

if it did perpetuate a few unpleasant stereotypes of them

to the same could be said about jacob rees and

his photography although he certainly upheld the prejudice of his

era reese also did worlds of goodbye documenting the lives

of the oppressed even inciting riel social change We in

the protest ng business call that next level activism Now

i have to get going Big protest coming up a

lot of powerful people trying to stop it And listen

If you ever find pieces of me and a shredder

just know that i went out sticking it to the 00:12:42.147 --> [endTime] man