Cartoon Controversy

This cartoon is a simple political satire cartoon often seen by Americans everyday. After studying this cartoon, I feel there are three possible meanings for it.

1. Obama is as dumb as a monkey.

2. The plan is so poorly written and stupid that even a monkey can do it.

3. All politicians are just a bunch of foolish elites (or monkeys), and the plan proves it.

With the major news stories of chimps attacking people in the last few days, the cartoon creators intertwined that story with the stimulus plan to create this. It is kind of a two for one in terms of speaking their mind. The police were taking down a violent monkey and in the process realized they killed the likes of the stimulus creators. THAT is what this cartoon is about.

I do not think this cartoon says Obama is a monkey. Nor do I think racism plays ANY part of it. In this day and age, political correctness is all too common and people get offended at almost anything. Often, they do not even think about it before getting outraged. I think the better explanations are the second two interpretations I offered. The stimulus bill is a waste and is very poorly written. I think the creators of this cartoon are anti-stimulus. The crazy and corrupt lives of most politicians are represented as an unintelligent creature such as this monkey.

Modernism and Post Modernism

The words modernism and postmodernism are merely words attempting to describe an era in history. There are too many assumptions involved to place an accurate description of each. However, we can look at trends and see where each is going and what they are like. 

Modernism- Began sometime after the enlightenment age to describe society and technology in the current age. Everything was modern and "right." The industrial revolution, capitalism, and colonialism defined a civilized country. The way people thought makes up the majority of modernism. In a sense, "modernism" is the way in which people tried to associate themselves with a culture or society. There are two ways of looking at modernism according to the text. One is the relationship between modernity, modernization, and modernism. The second, and more clear, is the opposition to the old, traditional past of society. Modernism describes the "current" state of things and therefor is no longer part of history. Obviously, everything becomes history sooner or later, but the present never does.

Postmodernism- If you break this word down, you get post and modernism. Post means after so post modernism to me is about the era we live in today which takes place after the modernistic era. Postmodernism is about the changes that occurred throughout time. Modernism could not exist forever and those changes led to the post. Postmodernism is stated to be the return to simpler things. I believe that it only looks at the finer parts of society's tools. Take capitalism for example. Modernism was about making vast profits. That changed over the years and postmodernism is about maximizing the efficiency of these firms. Distribution and service are now paramount to making a profit. Postmodernism takes a step back I think, and focuses more on the personal side of things as opposed to corporate culture. 

It is interesting to note that both modernism and postmodernism can be related to art. It seems to reflect the times and design things based around the current, common thought.