Immigration and Caricature Images Questions
- What information can we gather about the era, especially relating to immigration, by analyzing these caricatures?
- What is the significance of incorporating Uncle Sam in some of these caricatures? How does his representation differ from one caricature to another?
- There is a difference in visuals/illustrations throughout the caricatures, which can be seen particularly between “The Anti-Chinese Wall” and “The Salons of New York”. Why is that? What factors could have affected the illustrators' choices in creating those visuals?
- What were the various functions that these caricatures served? Did they exacerbate or attenuate the political climate of that time?
- Without knowledge of the historical context around these caricatures, would they still be useful or meaningful in any way?
By analyzing the photos from the days of early immigration, we are able to understand the fear, trepidation, and ignorance, that people currently living in the U.S. expressed toward immigrants coming in. The caricatures of the immigrants personified the most stereotypical traits regarding the specific ethnicity of the immigrant (i.e., Jewish immigrants always had hook noses in the drawings) that fortified the present animosity toward the immigrant working class, hindering some of their chances of upward mobility.
ReplyDeleteWithout historical context of these images, they still hold value. Even without vast information on the background of the image, one can still sense the paradoxical nature and elements of the people and deduct that they are being reduced as archetypes. There is a malicious quality that each artist is attempting to explore in their portrayal of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Each caricature did serve various purposes; firstly, to accentuate the type of person that each immigrant was, in a distorted and albeit bigoted way. Secondly, they served to emphasize the political position that immigrants at the time occupied at the time. In rendering the drawings as helpless and insignificant, the artist's highlighted the United States displacement of these peoples.
The presence of Uncle Sam in these pictures served as an indicator of the power of white male privilege had (and still has) in America. Uncle Sam was originally used to recruit men for war in the early 19th century and this ploy of characterizing him in the cartoons serves to demonstrate how immigrants were given a nationalistic and idealized perspective of the U.S. before immigrating, enticing them to do so. This is ironic because so much of the immigrant story is founded within hardship and discrimination from "actual" citizens.
Rachel's thoughts and ideas of these caricatures are pretty spot on. They perfectly identify and embody the bad vibes current Americans living in the nation at the time thought of these people going into their country. The notion these photos were trying to get at was that these immigrants spanning from all parts of the world (mainly Europe) were so simple minded and had no functioning basis of typical American ideology. To use a metaphor, they were "cups without a lid". These immigrants could be easily toppled over because of what they do not know and how they cannot correlate themselves with American values. Beyond Ellis Island or (Castle Garden per se) they were on their own.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to the bad vibes, Rachel put it best. There was a drastic level of bigotry, racism and unethical stereotypes back during the turn of the 20th century. In addition to the Jews being portrayed "as having big noses”, there was also a glowing perception of them being money grubbing and also being skeevy/two-faced around people. The caricatures made them out to look almost like gremlins. Not only did Jews have a bad rap, but so did Asians. The portrayal of Asians made them look like they were untrustworthy and ready to attack at any given second.
All in all, the feel I got from these drawings was that when Immigrants entered the country, it was almost like the Americans had their fingers crossed behind their backs. These caricatures proved that American love and trust was almost hypocritical. Every scene Uncle Sam partook in, in my mind he was unwillingly the angel of death.