Ferris Wheel

The world's first Ferris Wheel was built in the center of the Midway  by George W. Ferris, a bridge builder from Pittsburgh. The ride was the fair's most prominent attraction. 264 feet, it offers a breathtaking view of the fair and the city. If the other villages were there for educational purposes, the Ferris wheel, belly dancers, and the amusement park are definitely for entertainment. Being the most profitable amusement in the park, the Ferris Wheel is also the symbol, or in Gilbert's word, the centerpiece of the Midway. " Even the Fair, was the Ferris Wheel", says Gilbert. People would come to the fair just for a ride on it. It was a comfortable ride for the whole family. This crucial characteristic is probably why the Ferris Wheel was so overwhelmingly popular. It moved slow, outlooking a great view of Chicago. Another interesting point Gilbert mentions is the relationship between railroad and Ferris Wheel. They both carry people, in different ways and for different purpose, but have the same idea.  “The Ferris wheel epitomized the triumph of popular culture freed from the moderating controls of classic architecture and censorship." (115)   

How the other half lives

Liza and I talked about this photo in class today. We thought the caption for what Riis was trying to show was exactly the caption in the book: Bunks in a seven-cent lodging-house. We also added "crammed, dark, primitive condition". For the critics caption we said "the repetitive and continuous bunks and ceiling show the hopeless condition." The photo Steph and Marissa talked in class had many people crammed in a room full of stuff, while this picture has no one in it. Yet it is still terrible to imagine when these bunks are all filled with people.  I actually think it is more powerful to show an empty room than a full room to show the horrible condition.

Riis

Riis saw the tenements in the Lower East Side NY as central to the problems of poverty, crime, disease in the biggest city in the United States. In the pictures he took there are lots of back alleys and stairways, crowded apartments, people sleeping in the street. This is not what I think of when I think of New York city, yet the situation is inevitable in any big cities, where immigrants crowd the city for there first settlement. In genesis of the tenement Riis describes the transformation from the old days when the dutch controlled the city to Washington in the 19th century. The poor lives in slums and over populated tenements behind the grand houses the upper class owns. “Neatness, order, cleanliness, were never dreamed of in connection with the tenant-house system, as it spread its localities from year to year.” During the gilded age when economy was boosting and people were celebrating America's rapid industrial progress, the conditions of the poor is often overlooked. Reading this book feels like reading a newspaper, where usually has stories about how capitalists lure the poor to contract them into bad conditioned labor jobs.

Perfect Chicago

I spent my fall break in Chicago, visiting my sister who goes to DePaul University. This was my second visit to Chicago. I now notice how different my two visit are. Last Easter my sister and I went to Chicago to visit Depaul, and of course we went to all the touristy places: Millennium Park, The Art Institute, Navy Pier, Michigan Ave. I came to the conclusion that I love this city and I would definitely go back again. However this time I realized that Chicago was not my favorite city after all. As I was reading Gilbert on the bus back to Minneapolis, I wondered what has changed. Being a tourist and living in a city are different. Like Gilbert says in his book, the dreams of the leaders in Chicago are the generation of a uniform middle-class culture that is surround by different ethnic and religions diversity. Chicago is America's "second city". Leaders envisioned a uniform city that guides the new middle class professionals and businessmen. The connection I found between the chapter we read on Chicago and the previous work we have done is the connection to Ragtime. Ragtime, the novel of American social activism and reform in the Progressive Era, is the result of what was going on the cities in America. Unlike New York, Chicago is more diverse in terms of ethnicity and religion, and it is also more middle class oriented and more cosmopolitan. I found it interesting that Gilbert writes society is the frozen culture and culture is liquid society. I always thought society and culture are interchangeable. Now I find a relationship between the two. Culture is more versatile and society is more definite.    

Revision

Little Boy develops an increased sense of manhood after witnessing the transformation of Father and Mother’s gender roles. Doctorow describes his growth in self-awareness by writing that “He discovered the mirror as a means of self-duplication. He would gaze at himself until there were two selves facing one another, neither of which could claim to be the real one. He was no longer anything exact as a person”(117). The undergoing physical and emotional transition into maturity puzzles him, and he struggles in the mist of gender identities he perceives from his parents. He realizes the dysfunctional gender role Father plays in the family after Father’s return from the Arctic. Father finds it difficult to accept that “momentous change was coming over the United States”, while Mother represents this  “momentous change” (82). For example, Mother acquires knowledge of the family business during the patriarch’s absence, which sounds astonishing to Father that a woman can take responsibility outside of her indoor chores. Moreover, Mother generates a growing consciousness of her sexually and “she was in some way not as vigorously modest as she’d been. She took his gaze”(111). The drastic change Mother obtains annoys Father and confuses Little Boy. Little Boy’s confusion lies between Father and Mother’s converging gender roles. With the progress of shifting gender roles, he matures into the beginning stage of manhood, understanding the importance of coming to terms with a continuously changing environment.

These people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naive, spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destruction（39).

Helga, under Larsen's depiction, exclaims such disagreement to the so-call advocates in racial issues. This is especially common in the black communities, where people fight for anti-discrimination and African American suffrage and rights detest the fact of them being black. "These people" in the passage above could refer to those people mentioned above, or it could also be applied to some of the white leader at the moment. It is the "love of color", the" joy of rhythmic motion" that's the most important for embracing one's race, not merely privileges. This topic relates to Gay NY we just finished last week: How people struggle within regulations and laws but forget to celebrate themselves. 

US Media

Public media in America is one of a kind in this world. When Mary asked the question about why mainstream America pop culture has such big influence not only in America but also across the world, along with Liza bringing up Lady gaga and her iconic gay rights' campaigns, the first thing that popped to my mind was what we see, read, and hear all the time. The discussion of American media and its impact on society has been addressed by many people, including concerning parents and educators. It is unquestionable that we have lots of sex and violence in the media we constantly receive, and also inaccurate portrayal and stereotypes of the minorities, especially the LGBT communities. On the other hand the advocating from a celebrity like lady gaga can be a big influence on dissolving the stereotypes the media has trapped us into. Can the media be somewhat campy?We usually find something as attractive and appealing because it is bad and ironic. The media grabbed our interests in continually viewing the extreme, on whatever ends, a good thing. 

DADT

Now that don't ask don't tell is gone, it is inevitable that unequal treatment is still present.  How does one soldier's sexual identity deviate from the military? Why is the topic of homosexuality within the military a taboo subject? What are people so afraid of when it comes to the homosexual lifestyle? Chauncey summarizes that "the anti-gay laws of the 1920s and 1930s were enacted in response to the growing visibility of the gay world and to the challenge it seemed to pose to fragile gender and social arrangements" (356).  Don't ask don't tell was issued to "stabilized a fragile gender and social arrangements" in the army if what Chauncey said was right about anti-gay laws. There wasn't much of a gender issue and social disable here to be discussed. The repeal of DADT took too long. For 17 years, gays and lesbians were required to remain neutral on their sexual preferences, all the while ignoring who they really were. Also, there's still the issues concerning transgenders and women in the military. In Gay New York, Chauncey reiterates again and again that gay men did not have to choose a "gay identity". They could be engaged in homosexual activities and still be consider straight. The situations are way different now. You can't be engaged unless you have a label. 

My section for tomorrow dealt with the common hangout place, including cheap restaurants and cafeterias.  Chauncey categorizes two kinds of Gay men. There were people who "boldly claimed their right to gather in public", and also the majority, men who "did not make themselves so noticeable, but claimed space in a large number of restaurants on a regular basis"(176). In describing the gathering place, Chauncey gives several examples of restaurants. They are usually inexpensive and have long hours of service, which is a predictable place in the 1960s NY for gay men to meet each other. I found it interesting that different restaurants and cafeteria had different tolerance. Who set these attitudes? Was it the owners of these restaurants or was it the gay men? There is a passage in the book talking about how gay men intermingled with the straight costumers, hard to be distinguished bu the police and others; and thus did not cause an uproar in the neighborhood regarding to this issue. People who didn't make themselves noticeable could enjoy the intimacy of each other without interference and they were happy about it. However, like Alex brought up in discussion Monday, there were people who wanted not only to be recognized by the gay communities but also by the straight communities. So choosing from the two were up to individuals. I think I would rather live a peaceful life even though I was not recognized by the society.   

It is interesting that I just finished my Ragtime paper examined gender roles and gender issues, and we are transitioning into Gay NY. Enich's blog Gay Labels http://enichamcon.blogspot.com/2011/10/gay-labels.html/ really helped me to think about gay culture and the problem of labeling: "Succeeding is linked to abandoning one's label or taking the most positive aspects of said label and using them for the best". His blog was lingering in the background of my head until I read a chapter about gay people in New York trying to create multiple  identities to participate in the gay world and the "normal" world as it called in the book. I think this is another way of labeling, except labels are not identities, although it has been used interchangeably. I think the difference between label and identity is that labels are being put on someone and we create our identities. We love to label one another into groups, sections and organizations, but creating our own identities is not as easy as assigning labels to others.Homosexuals in 1960s New York, were fighting against these labels and  trying to identify themselves. "There segregation from one another allowed men to assume a different identity in each of them, without having to reveal the full range of their identities in any one of them" (134). They couldn't be themselves, fearing that the revealing of one's self would cause seriously damage to their social status, yet at the same time they also want to reveal parts of the identity, making the process and resulting in complication.