Time Magazine in the 1930s

I decided to look at Time Magazine from May of 1931.

The magazine opened up much like magazines today, with a multitude of advertisements. The magazine advertisements were similar to today’s ads in that a majority of them were either for cars, clothes, or beauty products. The ads also pushed owning the latest, and therefor “best”, model of each product. One car ad in particular incorporates a picture of a man buying flowers for the woman sitting in his new car.  This picture uses the glittering generalities technique, and subliminally sends the message that if you buy this latest car model it will change many different aspects of your life, such as romance, for the better. This indicates that 1930s America was a consumer society that valued physical beauty, and progress and innovation. It seems that little has change since then in that regard.

One difference I noticed between the advertisements of 1931 and today was the amount of information they gave about each product. Today, our advertisements contain few words, and instead use some sort of alluring picture at which we can quickly glance. However, in 1931 they printed full pages giving information about the product. At first it was difficult for me to decide which pages featured advertisements and which featured news stories.

I think this is tangible evidence of the idea we have been discussing in class that people are losing the capacity to focus for long periods of time and read deeply. The people of the ‘30s were clearly willing to sit down and read lengthy advertisements. But today’s society wants so much information so quickly that the best advertising strategy is publishing a picture that only needs a few seconds to spark a consumer’s interest. This gives evidence of a more simplistic yet more thorough consumer society in the 1930s. There simply weren’t as many products to evaluate as on the market today, so people more readily took the time to think through their purchases.

I then moved into the news section of the magazine. One of the most interesting differences I observed was how the international news was formatted. The news from each country was isolated into its own section, as opposed to the cross-cultural articles that are printed today. I think this indicates that the way of thinking about the global community was much more compartmentalized in the 1930s. They looked at countries individually, not as a component of the global society. This is reflective of the technology available at the time. The transfer of information globally was much slower, and countries were isolated, so individual cultural identity was more defined. For me, this contrast from today’s articles really highlights how globally blended culture has become today.

Another thing that surprised me about the magazine was the level of religious bias that appeared in the articles. The magazine showed its clear favor of Christianity by publishing articles like “Good Catholics.” This article glorifies Christianity by depicting it as the force battling Fascism, an ideal despised by American’s at the time. Another example appeared in an article about the death of a “great woman”. They listed being a churchwoman as one of her admirable qualities. This bias towards Christianity reflects the elite status of Christians at the time. Little attention was dedicated to understanding the religions and beliefs of the minority. This shows a more rigid mindset. They held the ideal that “my truth is the ultimate truth.” The America of the 1930s was much less egalitarian.

It is interesting to see how some values in our society have remained the same, and how others have completely changed. Americans remain individualists and have a capitalist mentality that leads them to pursue happiness through the latest and most innovative products.  They have become less selective of these products, though, simply due to volume. They have also adjusted to the global community by drawing connections cross-culturally and working to understand all different types of belief systems. 

Results vs Enjoyment: Second Meeting With My Conversation Partner

            Today, on the first floor of the BLUU, theCrew was having an event where could pot your own plant. So naturally, when Jose walked up I was busy planting a flower in a jar. When we sat down we immediately started talking about gardening. Apparently his mom is an avid gardener, but all of the beautiful plants she tries to grow here quickly die. Jose thought this might be because in the US plant’s are pumped so full of fertilizer that they can’t survive, and in Venezuela they just let the plants grow naturally at their own pace. When he said this I thought it was the perfect metaphor for the differences between American and Venezuelan culture. In America, we constantly work to get the fastest and most efficient results that we can. We set goals and run through life furiously trying to attain them, and don’t always stop to observe the beauty of life and enjoy it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, attaining goals can be rewarding. It’s just a different mindset. On the other hand, Venezuelan’s seem to take everything at a natural pace. They enjoy each other’s company and take things as they come. I think that Jose summed up it when he said, “American’s live to work and Venezuelan’s work to live.”

            Jose and I later talked about the differences in the American and Venezuelan school systems, and this was the perfect manifestation of this principle. In Jose’s school he was required to try all of the disciplines. He studied two instruments, singing, art history, architecture, tried all different kinds of sports, and did the other cores subjects all as requirements for graduation. I thought that was interesting because in American high schools we choose our specific interests and tend to stick with them through out high school. The Venezuelan approach is more holistic, whereas the American approach is already beginning to gear you towards certain career.  The Venezuelans take their time and enjoy trying different disciplines, whereas we assign ourselves interests so that we can pursue them more quickly.

            Both approaches have their merits. Neither is better or worse, they’re just different. I think it’s interesting to see how the different mentalities so completely permeate societies.

Outsider's Perspective: First Meeting With My Conversation Partner

Jose and I started off our meeting with basic small talk—our interests, what we studied in school, how we liked TCU, etc. While these are just basic civilities, it is interesting to me that these can be so standard cross-culturally. Everyone enjoys having fun, has friends or family that they are close to and want to talk about, and have interests that they want to pursue and excel in. I really like the idea that all people can connect on this basic level no matter how different they are. All humans can connect by simply being human.

When Jose and I started discussing how we liked TCU we quickly transitioned into discussing how he liked the United States in general. I asked him what the biggest difference between here and Venezuela, his home country, and he didn’t even need five seconds to formulate a response. He said that the people here were much less friendly. He told me one of the toughest habits to break was kissing girls on the cheek in greeting. He accidently did it a couple of times and the girls were alarmed. He also said that it is much easier to make friends quickly in Venezuela. You can meet a person one day, and go to a party with them later that night. This was interesting to me because I think one of the greatest things about TCU is the friendliness of the campus.  But I guess I can see how there is a lot of pomp and circumstance in meeting friends in the US. You have to talk with them a couple of times, get their phone number, then do the awkward are-we-close enough-to-hang-out dance. Then when you finally do hang out, what’s appropriate to do? I can see how this would be frustrating for someone who is not used to these customs. It’s frankly frustrating for me too, I just never realized it could be any other way. That just goes to show you that you can’t assume what is the truth to you is the truth for everyone. The “truth” of how life works is all about perspective.  It is also difficult to see details of your life when you’re living it. Sometimes you have to step outside your life and look at it as an objective observer. What you see may be completely different.

I next asked him why his family moved to the US. He told me that they moved to the US for security from the social and economic unrest in Venezuela.  The current president has caused a lot of problems in this regard. Apparently the president is a very compelling speaker, but when it comes to implementing programs helpful to the country, he has not done a good job. He then compared his president to Obama. This surprised me.  I had never thought of comparing the leader of our country to the leader of a country with so much unrest.

Jose then outlined the programs that Chavez has implemented that have been problematic. Chavez is possessing private companies and giving them to the poor, and then not equipping the poor with the education to run the company. They, therefore, end up running them into the ground. Jose was appalled by this program and was using it as an example of what a misguided person the president was. As he was telling me this I wondered if the program originally had good intentions, but then went awry in its implementation. When I asked Jose if this was the case he looked surprised and quickly answered no. This is again brought home the idea that perspectives from the outside are different from those inside.  We both got a glance of an outsider’s view of our own culture and what we saw surprised us.

I think that it is good to have these outside snapshots. It rocks your world just enough for you to give it a second glance. Reevaluating your surroundings is important. It can either completely alter your ideas, or can confirm what you’ve believed along. But either way, it is important to have a firm stance and know why you believe what you do. Hearing other people’s perspectives can help you do that.

Self-Imposed Limitations, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I think the most intriguing part of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is the strange sense of rationality in the experience the woman has. I could tell the situation was not normal and that she was progressively going insane, but I felt the experience along side the character.  Because the story consists completely of the speaker’s thoughts I was able to get inside of her head and feel her emotions. I was personally invested and desperately wanted to understand her and the underlying meaning to the story.

As the story progressed, it was clear to me that this was a feminist piece of writing. The woman felt anxiety from being trapped, but the source of her entrapment was different from any feminist literature I had read previously.

Originally, the woman feels trapped by her husband and brother. The male influences in her life think that they know what is best and her opinion is not taken into consideration.  So the story starts off with man’s oppression of women—not that original. But the story gets interesting when the antagonist starts comparing the effects of the sun and moon on the wallpaper. Sun, the universal sign for man, causes confusion in the wallpaper, but despite that confusion the woman in the paper is still able to escape into the garden. The moon, the universal sign for womanhood, allows the woman to be seen, but she is trapped behind bars and gets caught when she tries to escape. Under the influence of womanhood, the bars and limitations are more clearly seen, but are also more complete. This poses the interesting thought that maybe it is truly women that halt the progress of their own equality. This is further reinforced when the main character starts casting judgment on the woman who escapes during the day. She says it “must be humiliating to be caught creeping out in the daylight” or in other words it is embarrassing to be in the same realm as men. The main character, when contemplating jumping out of the bars of the window, which mirror the bars in the wallpaper, says she never would because it would be improper. So again, she as a woman is restricting herself from venturing out into equality with men. This idea is finally driven home when at the end of the story the antagonist says that she has escaped despite her husband and “Jane.” Jane is not a character that we have been introduced to, so we can only assume that is the main character’s name. She is accusing herself of being her captor.

I had never thought about this perspective on feminism. Men had the power to constrict women’s rights, but only because the women allowed them to have that power. The women were limiting themselves.

With this story, Gilman reinforced the idea that putting limitations on yourself is the worst thing you can do. It is near impossible to escape self-imposed limitations. This is an idea that I have always held dear, and I think that this is why this story resounded so strongly with me. I really enjoyed this selection because it teaches such a timeless lesson. Readers can still gain much from reading "The Yellow Wall-Paper," making it a true classic.