Thematic Commonalities between 1930's era banks and Tinkerbell

    The really common, primary school answer for why the Great Depression occurred was the failure of banks, and honestly, in a study of economics, studying how banks work is very important. The stock market crash of 1929 scared common Americans, so they opted to withdraw their money from banks. Banks are a constant money drain, with bank tellers and guards nearby, so they cannot simply store all the money and keep the money around. They invest the majority, making profits which pay the employees and build wealth, and they have enough left to handle typical withdrawals. If everyone wants their money all at once, the bank dies. In essence, banks are fake unless the people believe that they are real. Some rural Chinese banks closed recently due to the same lack of faith, costing all of the customers their money. 

    The primary school answer has some elements of truth in it. Banks crashing absolutely caused a great number of people who had savings to lose their savings, which is where one could really see the aesthetic of the Great Depression- the experienced worker in a business suit being entirely underutilized because his skills were not useful in a city where nobody could afford to hire new workers. The mom selling her kids for profit, those were not families that were perpetually poor, those were families who let their faith in banks slip for a moment, or families who saw their neighbors do the same. 

    In the older Peter Pan canon (though potentially not with the newer adaptations that are aimed at younger girls and ignore the human component of Neverland), Tinkerbell's life force is entirely dependent on those who believe in the existence of fairies. If there are too few people who believe that Tinkerbell exists, her light goes out and she ceases to exist. While this is almost certainly not a metaphor for books in the vein of something like The Wizard of Oz, it does have a few commonalities. Faith in banks may sometimes be fleeting, wait times may be long, and the customer service might be lacking, but if enough people fail to believe in banks, they may perish entirely and take all the money that was stored with them.

Bibliography

Luske, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Oliver Wallace, Edward H. Plumb, and. PETER PAN . USA, 1953.

Moessner, Richhild, and William A. Allen. 2011. “Banking Crises and the International Monetary System in the Great Depression and Now.” Financial History Review 18 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1017/S0968565011000035.

Richardson, Gary. 2007. “The Check Is in the Mail: Correspondent Clearing and the Collapse of the Banking System, 1930 to 1933.” Journal of Economic History 67 (3): 643–71. doi:10.1017/S0022050707000265.

Snorky

     In an attempt to study the various businesses present in America from 1900-1929, one must not forget a very profitable enterprise opened up by the nationwide ban on alcohol- running a gang. While there were many gangs in America at the time, none remain so renowned as one run by Al "Scarface" Capone, a man who would have much rather been called "Snorky", hence the title of this article.

    Al Capone was born in 1899 to Italian immigrant parents, and promptly got involved in organized crime the moment he finished puberty, first as a bouncer, then as a bodyguard, and finally as the leader of the Chicago Outfit gang. While this gang was by no means the only gang, nor the most powerful, what it did have was a leader who absolutely adored the attention he got by being a gang leader. In a situation where illegal activity is taking place, it is customary for the leader of said illegal activity to keep a low profile. Al Capone, instead, used celebrity status, bribes, and threats to ensure that he was unpunished for his various crimes. 

                Capone became the boss of the Chicago Outfit gang at the ripe old age of 26, and died at 48. He had only 22 years in the spotlight, and only 10 of those occurred during prohibition, but that was also the period in which he had the most economic influence. Prohibition cut the supply of alcohol in America heavily, but did less to cut demand- the consumption of alcohol was not illegal, the production was. If someone was willing to risk jail time for the upfront cost, as Al Capone and the Chicago Outfit were, they could profit heavily from the results.

                Al Capone was not frugal with his money. He sold extravagantly and purchased extravagantly, traveling from luxury hotel to luxury hotel, while he kept a permanent residence in Palm Island, Florida. One place that he frequented was Hot Springs, Arkansas. The city was famous for its namesake, hot springs, which Al Capone believed would cure his Syphilis. He contracted Syphilis before the discovery and distribution of penicillin, but in 1942, when penicillin started mass-production, Capone demonstrated a willingness to try new medicine to cure his disease. It did not reduce the brain damage he had suffered through the years, but did extend his life somewhat.

                Capone was finally apprehended for tax evasion, a sentence that would prove to end his criminal career. He was sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment, starting in 1931, shortly after alcohol was made legal. Upon entering the prison, Capone was diagnosed with syphilis and gonorrhea, cocaine addiction withdrawal symptoms, and a perforated nasal septum from excessive cocaine use. He was put to work stitching soles on shoes, but his mental faculties deteriorated. He was given parole in 1939, not because of good behavior, but because he was so mentally damaged that his wife asked to simply take care of him for his final years. He was rejected by Johns Hopkins due to his reputation of murder and illegal activity, but was accepted by Union Memorial Hospital, and eventually left to spend his last days with his children and grandchildren in Palm Island. He had a stroke in 1947, then contracted pneumonia, then finally died of cardiac arrest.

                Capone demonstrated, more than anything, the failures of prohibition and the corruption in America’s justice system at the time. He gained a great deal of money, spent it in tremendously unhealthy ways, and lost his career and power as quickly as he gained them. While it would be very difficult to call Capone a good person, and very few would even consider it, he was a profiteer from a poorly planned law, and in a roundabout way, managed assist in the effort towards repealing prohibition entirely.

 Bibliography

 

Bousquet, Stephen C. 1998. “The Gangster in Our Midst: Al Capone in South Florida, 1930-1947.” Florida Historical Quarterly 76 (3): 297–309. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=31h&AN=45884517&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Mitchell, John G. 1979. “Said Chicago’s Alcapone: ‘I Give the Public What the Public Wants….’” American Heritage 30 (2): 82–93. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=31h&AN=20848267&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Grossner, Isabel S. 1975. “The Legacy of Al Capone.” Chicago History 4 (4): 260–61. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=31h&AN=45989950&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

 

Antibellum Economy Economics

 Prior to the civil war, Eli Whitney created the Cotton Gin, an invention that not only helped invigorate the cotton industry in the American South, it also helped greatly increase the slave trade. With the abolishment of slavery after the Civil War and the gradual decline of Southern wealth in the Postbellum era, it is worth studying what actually happened to the cotton trade after the dust settled. 

According to "The Postbellum Demand for Cotton Revisited", cotton was in quite high demand after the civil war. This was rather surprising at a glance- between America's diminished population and diminished wealth after a particularly destructive war, one might come to the conclusion that demand for most goods would go down, but this was not the case- European factories had lower supplies after a costly war, and needed more than ever, but this demand was difficult for the war-impoverished south to achieve- it was not a product of a lack of free involuntary labor, but rather a product of poor landowners being unable to generate enough crops with their already tattered economy.

"Legacy, location, and labor: Accounting for racial differences in postbellum cotton production." Notes that black-owned farms in the postbellum period produced significantly more cotton than white-owned farms, concluding that this was due to the legacy of slavery- the white farmers knew how to force slaves to work, they did not know how to work as well as the black farmers, who knew precisely what they were doing. It was a case of the slaveowners becoming rather complacient in their command, and subsequently losing their control, and therefore their relevance in the cotton industry of the time.

"THE "LOCK-IN" MECHANISM AND OVERPRODUCTION OF COTTON IN THE POSTBELLUM SOUTH." details how poor farmers were forced into an unfair commodity trading system that traded copious amounts of cotton and kept corn elusive, keeping cotton prices low at the cost of farmer independence. This system took advantage of the weakened economy of the American south to create a pseudo-caste system, with debtors above farmers.

Bibliography

Craft, Erik D., and James Monks. 2008. “The Postbellum Demand for Cotton Revisited.” Explorations in Economic History 45 (2): 199–206. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2007.12.002.

Canaday, Neil, and Matthew Jaremski. 2012. “Legacy, Location, and Labor: Accounting for Racial Differences in Postbellum Cotton Production.” Explorations in Economic History 49 (3): 291–302. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2012.05.002.

Ransom, Roger, and Richard Sutch. “The ‘Lock-In’ Mechanism and Overproduction of Cotton in the Postbellum South.” Agricultural History 49, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 405–25. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=31h&AN=45984034&site=ehost-live&scope=siteLinks to an external site..

In conclusion

Over the past few months, the New Colossus Initiative has been dedicated to bringing immigrants into America. For many, that might be scary, and that's understandable. New people and ideas can clash with the ideas and culture that one is familiar with, and it might seem like the things that make American culture so unique would fade into the deluge of other ideas. America has less population than many other countries, in a sea of people, the most prominent cultures would be Chinese and Indian, and that can be scary.

I'd like to propose a very radical idea, something that would make everyone from world leaders to tour guides nervous. Countries and cultures aren't real, they are artificial constructs by humans. It's very possible to disagree with me on this one, and I am completely okay if not everyone agrees with me, but here's my logic.

First, appearance.

People look different in different places. That's very normal. Here is a map of average skin colors across the world for reference.



One noteworthy detail is that, despite conquests and government changes, skin color basically gets darker the hotter the place is. Dark skin is advantageous in hot places, since it is less likely to get burned in the sun. Light skin, meanwhile, absorbs vitamin D much more efficiently, so it is effective in cloudy and rainy areas. Looking at America, the darkest areas are in the southeast and southwest regions, places that tend to be rather hot. It's not a matter of cultural identity when you look at statistics, it's a matter of handling the amount of sun that a region has.

Second, culture.

Culture is mutable and subject to change at any time. Vietnam, both Koreas, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were all at one point a part of China. Since then they've separated themselves to a point where the cultures are almost entirely different. In some cases, Chinese companies imitate the practices of those former territories. After Japanese Anime became a worldwide art form, China imitated them with some pretty popular cartoons that follow a similar art style but in a different language. Korean dramas and music became so popular that Chinese boy bands and girl bands have become quite successful, and Chinese dramas have dipped out from their traditional roots and into more contemporary settings. These countries never changed location. Japan and Korea were always just a few days of sailing away, but culture is mutable, it changed, and the people became different as a result.



Here is an image of "The King's Avatar", one of the more successful Chinese anime. Note the style similarities between this and Japanese contemporaries. To compare, here is a show in a similar art style that also received critical acclaim, "One Punch Man".



Protagonist aside, you can see a similar focus on musculature, somewhat exaggerated eyes, understated mouths and noses, and dynamic character poses.

Third, language.

Many people are worried that they will have to learn another language if too many foreigners enter America. I firmly believe that "you're in America, speak English!" yelled by angry people in city streets is not said out of anger, but out of fear. Americans have had the pleasure of speaking a dominant trade language their whole lives. However, the language they are speaking isn't English... at least not really.

Here is the opening line from an old English story called "Beowulf".

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

JRR Tolkien used to read this to his class. However, the language we speak now is actually a combination of this old English, Norman French, and influence from many other nations over the years. The phrase "Long time, no see" is actually a more or less direct translation of a Chinese phrase "好久不见" (Hao jiu bu jien). Our language is made up of different parts of the world already, and it will change. We can accept that the English that our predecessors will speak will be completely different, and that's fine. The other option is to learn other languages. Protect the sanctity of the English language by leaving it as a less international language, and use other languages in trade. This one is out of our hands. The language has shifted, is shifting, and will continue to shift. My personal preference would be to use local languages when trading with the locals of other countries to try and preserve the last bit of logic in the English language, but there are others who are more willing to have others learn English and gain a degree of ownership of the language. There is no bad option in this situation, and no one person gets to make that choice anyways.

To conclude, skin and ethnicity reflect the sun, not the person's character. Culture is subject to the whims of time and politics, and language is prone to mutation and change at the slightest hint of a new people group, even a new generation, taking over.

So what stays? What makes America America?

From my perspective, you do. I do. Our country is made up of people, and no amount of change will erase the simple fact that we existed. But we're not alone, and if we spend our lives trying to preserve a doomed culture, we will miss out on the kinds of cultures and ideas that can only be created together. The world is subject to change and countries are subject to collapse, and no amount of gate keeping can prevent the inevitable decline of society. However, people can. People can make new rules to patch up the old ones. People can bail out the water on this slowly sinking ship, and why practice the same tired old traditions for keeping this thing afloat when there are so many talented people all over the world desperate to come over here and take a turn at the oars?

We're not alone, and we're not special, and from my perspective, that's the most remarkable thing about humanity. Let's embrace the rest of us.

I Love Lucy

I love Lucy. You love Lucy. It's a quintessential part of American culture. Some parts of the TV show, such as the chocolate factory scene, have become such a significant part of American television and entertainment that it's impossible to imagine where we would be as a culture without them.


Just looking at this picture, I can hear the strict chocolate factory lady in perhaps her most enduring television role demanding the most frightening line any would be chocolate factory worker can hear: "Speed it up a little!" I have tested this, this scene is funny regardless of culture or time period.



Here is an imitation from that scene in a sitcom aimed towards children back when I was younger called "Drake and Josh". I thought it was the pinnacle of comedy, and to a degree, it was! This setup and delivery can work in any time period with any given type of edible produce, given two proficient actors and a decent set. There are so many parts of I Love Lucy that have become a staple of American television, I don't even know where to begin.

Would you believe me if I told you the show was partially run by a Cuban immigrant less than ten years before the Cold War?



This man, named "Desiderio Alberto Arnaz yi de Acha III" which is usually shortened to "Desi Arnaz". The program was partially written by Desi Arnaz and his then wife, Lucille Ball, and the marketing and casting for the show was done almost entirely by the two of them. Desi Arnaz also composed all the music for the show and frequently sang numbers in episodes, since the plot had him as a stage performer. Even when America and Cuba were at their worst, Americans would tune into their televisions to watch reruns of a show about a Cuban immigrant and an American woman living happily married together.

This isn't a huge deal in diplomacy, by any means, but I like it. It shows that people and countries are different, and even at our worst, we can still get along. I think even the countries that may dislike Americans still have people that America needs, and if we decide to be the more mature nation, if nothing else, we will get some fantastic television shows.

Let's talk about cartoons

For years, America has been inspired by the works of other countries. The Spanish music seen frequently in I Love Lucy stands as a testament to the importance of foreign concepts in American media. However, recently, there has been an increase in many western cartoons in "smoothness", so to speak. Older cartoons like the 1960's Spiderman show were very rigid, and motions were very sudden. This was due to an issue in art that Americans had long since figured out, and basically separates into two key terms: key frames and between frames.

Key frames are the planned poses for a character. For instance, in Titanic, there is a scene where the evil husband-to-be of the heroine flips a table. If someone were to animate that, key frames might include him bending over, his arms moving up to flip the table, and a neutral stance after the table flip is complete. This looks fine in drawings, but in animation this looks kind of jumpy.

The other aspect is in between frames. These occur between the key frames to grant a scene a more smooth appearance. While the key action of flipping a table is in place from the three pictures I have described, it looks kind of chunky, and the action lacks force unless the motion has more in between frames.

Older American shows would either meticulously hand-craft these frames at incredible price (like Snow White) or reduce the number of frames needed by using stiff poses and still frames with moving mouths (like He-Man), but regardless, in between frames are expensive. The answer, many people come to is to outsource the work overseas.

The following is the most entertaining explanation of this process. They are very open about involvement with other countries in the creation of in-between frames. This was published publicly by Disney studios, and produced by Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh, two creators of a cartoon known more for its writing than smooth animation, Phineas and Ferb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UaOO7hyb4c

And here is an example of an in between frame. These are small pictures, frequently distorted, that allow characters to move from action to action without looking stiff or unusual.

You would never notice this picture in action, but it is nonetheless important to your subconscious appreciation of the scene, and it's thanks to a Chinese animation company that this is allowed.

The moral of this long-winded story is that even things that people assume are very American frequently aren't. Shouldn't we be excited to let people from countries that have helped shape the lives and entertainment of American children into our country?

Indian cooking class

This is an Indian family that speaks exclusively Hindi. Understandably, it's hard to communicate. They were more than happy to welcome a foreigner into an exclusive cooking class. I was able to help their daughter with her science homework, and they waved to me as I left. It was honestly really sweet, and Indian food is delicious. Rice pudding is a level of flavor that cannot be matched by anything else, and I think we could use people like this in America. Not these people, obviously. They are quite happy with their lives, but there are people like this with the itch for adventure, and appreciation for American culture, and a mind full of recipes that we really need to have better access to.

Their recipe for rice pudding is safe with me though. It takes a trip to Jaipur to get this kind of firsthand knowledge.