Stories Of Everyday People This Cultural Front example essay topic

Jennifer Klein 1066717402/09/04 CES 440 The Cultural Front In the USA, it seems as though there is always a revolution going on. The world is changing everyday. Everyday there is something new going on. Everyday there are people fighting for what they believe in, from social movements to political movements.

Everyday people are working hard for their future. People are just trying to make it in the real world. In the the 1930's, there was so much going on, from WWI to WWII, followed by the depression. The world was in a slump, and people were doing everything they could to make it. The cultural front involves history on the ordinary person, politics, and literature. I wish to compare some of the problems of today, with the problems of the past, discussing politics, culture, hegemony, and the working class.

USA is the richest country and has the most poor people in numbers. Our money isn't spent on education, health, or housing projects for poor people. Recently most of our money has been going to Iraq or weapons for soldiers so they can keep the peace. Our money doesn't go to the ordinary person. Rich people keep getting rich, and the poor keep getting poor! I don't feel our money is put into any investments.

How come our gas prices are so high? Wouldn't it make sense to invest in oil, so the average person can have some spare change to spend on something other than gas to get from point A to B? Our system is unjust and the only way to fix it is to fight for it, and hope that someone in power hears you. When people in power say something, people automatically believe them, even if there is no basis to their knowledge. President Bush had repeatedly said that John Kerry had changed his positions about our war many times. Kerry said it wasn't true, but people believed Bush anyways, because he is a man of power, which is a form of communism.

There are ways to change our system fundamentally instead of going to war with other countries. Most of our money right now goes to our National Defense and Social Security. It's nice the money will be there later for us when we retire, but what about those of us who need social security benefits now? There have and always will be problems with the system, and no matter what you do, you can never make everyone happy!

In the 1930's the big political movement was the power of the CIO, The congress of Industrial Organization. They came to power at the beginning of WWII. It was considered the rise on the left, the radical change and new ideas, unionization. The working class people were representing the lower socioeconomic class, the "left". The working class is anyone who was involved in labor power to production.

Consumerism and culture began to take over. Culture is an entire spectrum of human activities. Everything is a part of culture. Culture is political. Hollywood is a cultural enterprise, it shapes our culture.

Culture has struggle, organizational activism. Capitalism creates situations where people are disassociated. Everything is political, where there is power there is politics. People were starting to see things differently. There was no more segregation. Rich people saw things on the lower level.

Women were starting to work more. Cultural front involves middle and lower class politically and culturally. People were working so hard and not seeing any benefits. The main stream media didn't criticize capitalism, because if they so much as started to question it, they would be fired. This is a form of hegemony, ideological domination, not by force, but by consent.

Many ideas we buy into willingly without question, such as US Democracy, it is contradictory and people get stuck. Hegemony exists in families, institutions, mainstream media, and all states. Gramsci views hegemony as "a movement when social class became detached from their traditional parties, and a situation of conflict between represented and representatives (Denning, 22). As citizens of the U.S. we accept hegemony and pass it on to kids. If the powerless were to become powerful, this would be called counter-hegemony. As long as there is class, it will be impossible to get rid of hegemony.

During the Cultural Front, the State Apparatus created federal projects as a relief for artists and others. Communism came in and shut down what the government created because people they didn't want to be involved were getting involved and the government was scared they would create an alliance against them. Artists and Writers played a very important role in the cultural front. Playwrights, Media, and Ghetto pastorals grew to be very popular. People were entertained, as they tried to forget the depression, and what was going on in the real world. The right side had the American Ballad, which degraded your everyday worker, the "left" side.

The left side had Ghetto pastorals, which were books about people growing up in the ghettos, Harlem, Chinatowns, Little Italy, etc. Ghettos are usually classified as projects for African Americans. They are run down housing projects, where the poorest of the poor live. People there usually are on welfare, and have many kids. People enjoyed reading these stories, because they were stories of everyday people This Cultural front was a revolution in the United States. The Cultural front is part of our history and it is very important to read all perspectives of history.

The Cultural front reshaped history through the everyday people, the writing, play wrights, politics, and social movements. The cultural front shows the perspectives of the poor; it isn't things you will find in a history book. When you read history books you find falsification. White men wrote history, they designed it the way they wanted people to remember it, making past presidents heroes, justifying Christopher Columbus taking land that was not his, justifying slavery, and writing only about people in power. The book the Cultural front shows a perspective from the every day average American just trying to survive.