Out of Kansas
I find it on the high bookshelf—Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. I’ve heard about it. It’s about the Holocaust. Mice play the Jews, and cats play the German Nazis. I understand it already. Cats are predators to mice. That’s easy enough. I start reading. The Polish people are pigs. Wait a minute, I don’t get it. Why are they pigs? I’m getting confused. I want to give up. Instead, I pick it up and start again.
We begin as moody troubleshooters: we see a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit—we either chop off a corner or throw the thing away.
What is a stereotype besides a way of grouping things in order to understand them in a complete and perfectly organized way? To say that something didn’t fit would be an admission that we are unsure of the world we are living in—a frightening thought. Further, we are often conditioned through art to recognize these stereotypes without thought and to react identically as a community—a means of creating and controlling an ideal society. Theater theorist and playwright Bertolt Brecht says of European theater, “It is well known that contact between audience and stage is normally made on the basis of empathy” (136). The goal is often to make audiences identify with the characters and the stories so that they will reach a natural state of controlled catharsis at the end. Many audiences have thus learned to expect and enjoy such a style.
Audiences seek art that will pick them up and pull them along for the entire ride. Underground comic, illustrator, and magazine editor Art Spiegelman meets that desire in his novel-sized comic Maus. Spiegelman describes his work: “The goal was to get people moving forward, to get my eye and thought organized enough so that one could relatively, seamlessly, be able to become absorbed in the narrative” (Jun 10). A story that absorbs the audience into its own unslowing whirlwind sounds a lot like Brecht’s description of the cathartic theater of control. However, Spiegelman’s works haven’t always had the same goal. In his early career, the question that motivated his art was, “How many obstacles could you put in somebody’s path before the reader just caved in and couldn’t handle it anymore?” (Juno, 8). The goal was to stilt catharsis—to kill it in its tracks in order to provoke active thought. I read his 1972 comic strip “Skinless Perkins.
John M. Murrin’s essay Coming to Terms with the Salem Witch Trials helps detail the events of these trials and explains why they might have occurred. The witch trials happened during a “particularly turbulent time in the history of colonial Massachusetts and the early modern atlantic world” (Murrin, 339). Salem came to be in 1629 and less than seventy years later found itself in a mess of witch craft.
Hinds, Maurene J. Witchcraft on Trial: From the Salem Witch Hunts to the Crucible. Library ed. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2009. Print.
The term witchcraft is defines as the practice of magic intended to influence nature. It is believed that only people associated with the devil can perform such acts. The Salem Witch Trials was much more than just America’s history, it’s also part of the history of women. The story of witchcraft is first and foremost the story of women. Especially in its western life, Karlsen (1989) noted that “witchcraft challenges us with ideas about women, with fears about women, with the place of women in society and with women themselves”. Witchcraft also confronts us too with violence against women. Even through some men were executed as witches during the witch hunts, the numbers were far less then women. Witches were generally thought to be women and most of those who were accused and executed for being witches were women. Why were women there so many women accused of witchcraft compared to men? Were woman accused of witchcraft because men thought it was a way to control these women? It all happened in 1692, in an era where women were expected to behave a certain way, and women were punished if they threatened what was considered the right way of life. The emphasis of this paper is the explanation of Salem proceedings in view of the role and the position of women in Colonial America.
"Salem Witch Trials of 1692." Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Ed. Douglas O. Linder. Linder, Douglas O., Sept. 2009. Web. 6 Dec. 2009. .
What is an archetype and what is a stereotype? That was the question I was asked on the first day of class. It was something that I had never thought of for more than a minute, but I would soon learn that archetypes and stereotypes show themselves in everyday media and have walked, hand and hand, throughout time. Of the many archetypes and stereotypes that popped into my head, one has rang true throughout the quarter, the idea that we, as a society, make monsters out of those people or cultures that we fear or do not understand. This can be seen throughout time, but the most noticeable ones are: the myth of vampires, especially Dracula, from Eastern Europe, the urban legends that surround homosexuals, and the stereotypes that society has about the Muslim religion.
In 1692, the occurrence of “witchcraft” began after the Massachusetts Bay Charter revolution and the outbreak of small pox. The rebellion caused hysteria and a sad injustice. Friends were pinned against friends; upstanding citizens were forced to flee for their lives and men and women were put to death (Jurist Legal News and Research Services 2008).The fear of the devil influenced the cruelty that took place. Most of the settlers that established their homes in the colony were puritans, a member of a group of English Protestants who revolted against the Church of England. The belief that God punished sinful behavior with misfortune did not help circumstances. The puritans targeted outcasts, people who never really fit it in; they wanted to rid the towns of these suspected sinners.
Stereotype is a sweeping statement standardized image about a person or group with little or no evidence. The primary purpose is to hurt one’s feelings or to attack one’s character. Have you ever stereotyped someone or felt like you were being stereotyped against? How did being stereotyped affect you, or how did it make you feel once you got to know the person or persons? All kind of people make up our society. Within society, there are a massive amount of groups, most of which have been stereotyped in one way or another. We develop stereotypes when we are reluctant or incapable to obtain all information needed to make fair judgments about people or situations. In the absence of the unknown statistics, stereotyping allow us to “bridge the gaps.” Four of many different groups of people are the prime sources of stereotypes in our society are politicians, tattooed persons, feminists and senior citizens. If the thought of these groups of people mentioned directed some sort of negative icon within you then you are a protagonist of stereotype.
Stereotyping is used in our everyday life in things such as advertisements, movies, books, magazines, and other types of entertainment. It is pointed out to be negative and causing too many problems, but it can be used to motivate us to act a certain way, or buy certain things. Stereotypes are the most useful way to influence people to change and better themselves.
A stereotype is the grouping of all members of a certain common distinction into a set of standardized rules and aspects (Moore 36). Common areas people stereotype are race and gender; however, people also use sexual preferences, age, religion, and attractiveness as distinctions to group. The use of stereotypes is ethically wrong and not always correct. People use these judgments as a way to separate a...
Everyone has heard the saying don’t judge a book by a cover. Sadly every minute of the day someone gets judged because of assumptions that are not correct. These assumptions overtime eventually lead to stereotypes. A stereotype is an image or idea of a particular type of person. Stereotyping a person is seen in many differents aspects such as race, groups, beliefs, appearance, etc. An individual may ask why people are stereotyped or stereotype. In reality stereotyping helps people categorize the different type of people. It narrows down the options of who one might want to associate with. Stereotyping can have its negatives, it makes people ignore how others really are. It may lead to a person not wanting to hang out with another person because of the stereotype that persons group has. Everyday the general public use cars for the means of transportation. But what about when people use their car for more than transportation, car enthusiasts often modify their cars to their likings. Enthusiasts often join car clubs to share their common interests with other car enthusiasts. Often the people in car clubs have a stereotype of being juvenile, racing a lot, low-life bums, and ghetto when actually most do not have those characteristics.
Stereotypes play an important role in today's society and particularly in Propaganda. According to the Webster's Dictionary stereotyping is defined as a fixed conventional notion or conception of an individual or group of people, heldby a number of people. Stereotypes can be basic or complex generalizations which people apply to individuals or groups based on their appearance, behaviour and beliefs. Stereotypes are found everywhere. Though our world seems to be improving in many ways it seems almost impossible to liberate it from stereotypes.
... concept of the stereotype. He was a journalist and media critics, who criticized the media for a false reality construction through stereotyping. The author argues that media influence views and give us ideas and the audience accept it as correct ones. ‘The media is producing simplified pictures, because stereotypes are the most common form of coercion, which may construct the world. We learn about many things, we had no experience about. Stereotypes are accepted as a leading process’.
The term “stereotype” originally referred to a stamp used in the printing industry to make multiple copies from one single block. The first one to adopt this notion, to describe the way society categorized people, was social psychologist Walter Lippmann in 1922, in his book on media democracy, Public Opinion. He described the term as “the picture (of the world) that a person has in his/her head”. He was convinced that a picture it is definite, and reduces the world to simple characteristics which are represented as permanent by nature (Lippmann, 1997 [1922], p. 233).
Stereotypes are a side of our everyday life. We tend to hear stereotypes every day and everywhere. Frequently, we can find ourselves in a position where we make stereotypes for a big category of people. Every one of us, young or old, is characterized with either positive or negative stereotypes. Stereotyping is a method that people characterize each other. Each set is called by name, that doesn 't really able to everyone in that particular set of group. Stereotypes influence people’s public lives, emotions or mental state, and how people communicate with their community. Gender, sexual, and Racial traits are one of the largest stereotypes. Others may include ethnicity, religion, or other categories. These stereotypes can be seen in T.V Shows
A stereotype is a over-exaggerated view of someone or something. The exaggerations are often not even realistic. In this case it has led to the creation of two different movements. These movements are called the feminine and masculine movements. In these movements the one that is mainly focused on is the feminist movement. This is because throughout history