American Literature: Activism
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How did Jacob Riis and Stephen Crane contribute to the Crusade for Activism? Easy: they opened a lemonade stand in their front yard and contributed fifty percent of their profits. ...Okay, maybe that's not true and they did some other stuff, but you'll have to watch this video to find out.
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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