The Gilded Age....Round 2?

I have chosen for my last personal blog post to write about one of the very first topics we discussed in our class-The Gilded Age.

The golden gleam of the gilded surface hides the cheapness of the metal underneath

This phrase coined by Mark Twain primarily was used to describe the time period of the late 19th century in America.   It was a time of new money, big money and rapid economic growth, it was a time after the civil war, there were technology advances, new transportation, corporations, increased wages, mass communication-Life was Good!... At least that is what people were telling themselves, Mark Twain used this term to make fun of the people's and the times ostentatious display.  People were living the good life of high society while completely ignoring deep problems, farmers were going bankrupt, major racism and immigration problems existed, the super rich"Robber Barons" who schemed and cheated to make their mark lorded their money and exploited the middle class and it was overall an era of greed, guile, and corruption.   The sparkly surface hid this, but it existed and after the shiny sparkle wore away, the gilded age ended in the panic of 1983 and a  deep depression.

       I thought about this a lot after I first heard why it was called the Gilded Age, and I caught myself wondering if this time we have been living in could be called The Gilded Age yet again.  Right before this economic recession hit us in America a couple years ago, times were good.   This is an era of materialism, people feel the need to have everything and let everyone know it, huge mansion houses are built, a time of mass communication in the forms of movies, television, the glitz and glam of Hollywood, people buy cars that you can only dream about, corporations are making millions, individuals are making millions, you can go to a store and buy anything you desire, heck you can go online and buy anything you desire.  New technology like the ipod, ipad, iphone, are getting smaller and better and faster, everything you need is at your fingertips. Stores and restaurants everywhere you look, no one even needs to look at price tags, kids are getting an education, having the time of their lives in college-Again life is good!


Maybe the truth is...
Those mansions that people live in will never ever be paid off, abandoned and foreclosed, being sold by the bank now for a sixteenth of what it cost.
Those cars were bought on credit cards and consumer debt has never been higher-at the end of 2008, right before the recession really hit, consumer debt was at 2.5 trillion dollars.
Corporations are just as bad as robber barons and exploit their workers, find loopholes in taxes and kill the small business
People could get rich for selling drugs, you could make millions by cheating, gambling, laundering, however you can.
Hollywood movie stars could feed whole countries with the money they make on one movie, with the money they pay for one fancy necklace they could pay off 10 families homes.
New technology is making us slaves to the internet, destroying family time, handwriting and good conversation
Business and restaurants are going under everyday.
Unemployment has never been higher, people are losing their homes, their jobs.


This could very well be another gilded age-just with credit cards!
Of course, so much good still exists in the world, but I think sometimes we can get so caught up in buying new things, doing what we want when we want, dreaming of the day we are rich, but in the meantime making everyone think we are by going to fancy restaurants, buying fancy cars and furniture and basically just faking it.
Our Gilded Age has ended in a recession, a really bad one, but even then we like to ignore that, pretend that it will be over any day now, pretend that there aren't families without incomes and soon without places to live.  
We ignore the inconvenient truths because faking it is better and way easier!


I don't know, this analysis might be way off, I might be over thinking this, but seriously if Mark Twain thought times were an ostentatious display then...what would he say THIS IS?!

Two Gentlemen of Verona-Perfomed by Two Ladies of Humanities

  This is the fourth paper of our class, it is a paper about our creative project.  My cousin Kylie and I decided to perform a scene for the class from William Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona".  Kylie played the fair maiden Julia and i played her maid/friend/mentor Lucetta. Kylie and i have been acting our whole lives and it was so fun to perform again and to realize we can still memorize 8 minutes of lines....I am just glad she was the one sticking love letters in her bosom in front of the class!
Here is the paper of the cultural significance of Shakespeare, his play and us!

The Man

            William Shakespeare is a name recognized by everyone.  Although he is not American, he has influenced American theatre and American people greatly.    William Shakespeare was said to be born on April 23, 1564 in England, and was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon.    He was married at the age of 18 and had three children with his wife, Anne Hathaway.   Shakespeare began his career in London with a small theatre, acting and writing as much as he could.  With the help of the Earl of Southhampton, Shakespeare’s work became very popular and he became a very well-known playwright in London, being one of the first playwrights to see such success and have popular literature in the midst of his career.  Over the course of his life, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets and although much controversy at the time surrounded his work he has been called the greatest writer of the English language.  William Shakespeare has deeply impacted the world in literature, culture, art, theatre, language and is the most performed playwright still today.  With all his works being translated into every language, it is easy to say that he has been profoundly influential. 

            In American society, besides adding 1700 words to our dictionary, Shakespeare had an overwhelming effect on Americans.  He inspired and influenced many future American writers and all of his works are well known to Americans.   In 1730, there was an amateur performance of Romeo and Juliet in New York City, marking the first recorded production of a Shakespeare play in America.  Although Americans were not fond of anything British at this time, they made an exception for Shakespeare and his works assimilated quickly into society.  By the 19^th century, Shakespeare’s plays were spread by travelling theatre groups into all corners of America.  To attend theatre was becoming very popular and it was seen as a high class activity to attend Shakespeare. 

The Play

            We performed a scene from Shakespeare’s comedy-Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is speculated to maybe be his first written play.  The plot centers around friendship, infidelity and the battle between loyalty and passion.  The play has many of Shakespeare’s prominent themes and ideas that become more developed in his later plays, such as a girl disguising like a boy, confusion and chaos in the woods and the exchanging of rings.  Today this play is seen as one of his weaker and least accomplished plays.  The plot of male friendship, loyalty and fighting over a girl is a plot we see today in so many movies and television shows that I think that alone is a great influence.

The Performers!

            This play was one of the first plays I had read of Shakespeare’s, it was very hard for me to understand some of the language and what was really going on, but after watching it on stage for the first time, the story finally made sense.  Although this may be acclaimed as a weak play, I love this comedy by Shakespeare and that it was an early youthful one of his hays, maybe written before his success and fame affected him?  I think the scene that we performed depicts girls so perfectly, even modern girls have the same secret loves and dramatic rants, and that is why we chose it, because it wasn’t much acting at all.   I am sure my cousin Kylie and I have had very similar conversations, just with a little different language.   After memorizing and performing this scene, I learned that Shakespeare really did have the ability to showcase so many true emotions in such an eloquent manner and provide such comedy even in the midst of a drama.  I truly enjoyed performing and learning about this play and it will always be one of my favorite Shakespeare moments when Julia is lying on the floor in a scatter of torn love letters “Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will!”

Old Songs.....I actually liked!

For our third paper, we had to review NPR’s-The 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century and pick 3 songs to analyze. Myself, being a very musical naive girl, whose favorite song is referred to in this class as "bubblegum pop" had oh so much to learn.  I enjoyed this project and paper and learning more about musical legends and discovering a world beyond the bubblegum...
This video isn't the best quality, but I have to admit, it would have been pretty amazing to be at this concert...

“Blowin’ in the Wind”-Bob Dylan

            I have definitely heard of Bob Dylan before, I had heard the name, probably everyone has but to be honest I had no idea what one of his songs was.  I didn’t know if he was pop, rock, folk or jazz but as soon as I started listening to this song, I knew somewhere I had heard it before.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” by Bob Dylan is described as an anthem to the civil rights movement, this song literally inspired people, it even still is inspiring when you listen to it and is used today at many protests.  This song to me is like what I think of when I think of hippies and flower power but after listening to the background and description of that song I can see that it is so much more

            This song, the fastest selling single in Warner Brothers history was written in a café and took Dylan 10 minutes, that alone being incredible, when people heard this song, they marched, they sang, and they really wanted to make a difference.  Now when I hear it, I picture this group of thousands marching through a field belting it out and it giving them so much energy.  I think of Peter, Paul and Mary singing it just minutes before Martin Luther King Jr. gave his world famous speech. 

            A member of the group, Peter Paul and Mary who first made it famous said that the ambivalence to the lyrics adds meaning to it and you can’t take the lyrics too literally.  Each person hears in it what they want to hear.  To me, I hear hope and possibility and that is what made it so famous.  I think NPR presented this song perfectly and that they gave it the significance it deserved.  I now wonder, after hearing that Dylan wrote in ten minutes if he really knew what he was writing, if he really knew the significance these words would have on people and that white doves and cannon balls he mentions would become actual symbols for a whole movement of people.

“Light my Fire”-The Doors

            I have never heard this song before, but I liked the name of it so I chose to listen to it.  After hearing the song, it was hard to believe that this song was actually homage to the song “My Favorite Things” by Coltrane, heard famously in the musical “The Sound of Music”.  To me, they didn’t really go together, but after listening to the background beat broken down in pieces, I realized they were a lot alike.

            When the doors first got together they said they wanted to take the freedom they hear and feel in jazz and bring it into rock and roll, this song was the first of its kind.  I can picture these four guys on Venice beach, and as Ray Manzarek said, as the sun is setting into the Pacific Ocean, western civilizations ends, and we invented psychedelics.

Loving the hair 

            When I hear this song, it is not really a song that would be a hit today, but back then it shattered acceptable boundaries of content, length, and was a combination of so many different styles that people loved it.  It never sounded sad to me until I heard they lyrics discussed and realized it was not an average love song, but a song that ended love in ashes and spoke of funeral fire.  I like to think of this band, who they themselves didn’t think would make it, make it big with this song and even set a new standard for a different type of rock and roll. 

“Good Vibrations”-Brian Wilson-made famous by The Beach Boys

            This song was sadly was one of the only song titles I recognized on the whole list and everybody knows this song, it’s a classic, although I did not know everything that went into this hit song.  When I hear this song, I hear a road trip to California, surfing on the beach, convertible top down, an 80’s dance.  I learned after listening to the clip that this song was a symphony, a piecing together of hundreds of studio hours and Brian Wilson’s greatest work.

            Brian Wilson was obsessed with this song, he knew exactly what he wanted and he made it happen over a course of many years, not letting it be released until it was absolutely perfect.  Wilson wrote the song for The Beach Boys and when they heard it they loved it.  I definitely have a new appreciation for the music now that I learned that he pieced this song together from a pile of different recording tapes that was 3 ½ feet high.  He also used a harmonica and a break our instrument called the Theremin which is what inspired today’s synthesizer. The Theremin sounds like a voice in the background and the song has many different moods, the chorus to me is really upbeat and fast and then it slows down so much for the verses and it is a lot lower pitch.  I had never really listened to the verses before, I just knew the chorus and the lyrics are actually very loving and shows how much this boy loves this girl he is watching and her every move and curve and smell.

            Although this song makes everyone want to dance, I now have a more introspective view of the song and everything that it meant, it was not just about a boy picking up vibes from a girl, but an extremely detailed musical piece, that experimented with instruments, sounds and production of a song.  This song was a huge hit and Brian Wilson’s last big hit and now when I hear it, although I will still picture a Californian adventure, I will also see Brian Wilson in the studio working musicians to the bone to make every single note perfect.  I can appreciate his obsession with this song, because it was very worth it.

To Kill a Mockingbird

At the beginning of the semester, my cousin Kylie and I who is in this same class jumped at the opportunity to go see a classic playing on BYU campus-To Kill a Mockingbird, and at the same time witness a Great Work by an inspiring author.

I had read this book before, actually quite unwillingly, I had to read it for my high school English class, and after just finishing an epic love story like Pride and prejudice, I was not too excited to read this ratty old book, so brings the cliché to mind-"don’t judge a book by its cover”

As I finished this book at late hours of the night, in my room when I should have been sleeping, I found myself sobbing at the end when although it seemed like a slight justice, it just didn’t seem to be enough to rationalize what Tom Robinson had been through.  I, being naïve had never even heard and seen such hateful horrible racism except in movies.  This book made me feel like I was there in that court room, I was boiling with frustration at the blatant one sided trial.

When I sat there watching this film again, I was reminded of the true classic that it is, the story engulfed me completely, I loved Scout and her spunky personality, and how protective Jem was and how they both had to grow up so fast.  Atticus was the true image of a good man and a good father and the moral voice in this book.  Again, I was reminded of the horrible prejudice this book illustrates, and yet the light in which it is portrays reminds you that even amidst the appalling treatment of black people at this time, man is good.  It is hard to imagine a time like that, when such hate existed so openly, it makes me ponder my own values and judgments, if I was there at that time, what side of the courtroom would I be on? 

To Kill a Mockingbird is a story that needs nothing other than its story to make it great, I am usually bothered by black and white movies, but this film I didn’t even notice.  As this book shows us so much social inequality, we can also see, especially through Jem and Scout’s eyes, that there is still good in the world.   Even though they both see such evil, the mob at the jailhouse wanting to lynch an innocent man, the pure racism that exists in the trial and the way people treat Atticus because he is defending Tom.  Scout is so innocent and she believes that amongst the evil acts she sees, that humans are innately good, in the scene at the jailhouse she illustrates this by calling them out Mr. Cunningham whose child she knows and tells him to tell him hey, this makes the men feel ashamed of themselves and they clear out.

Scout and Jem, although difficult continue to see the good in the people around them.  Boo, who they were scared of and made fun of, shows them such kindness and saves their lives, this helps them realize the good in people as well.  It is hard for me sometimes as well to believe that people are good when I hear such tragic, horrid stories of human acts of evil that go on around me.  Like Atticus to his kids, I also have “moral voices” in my life and those examples help me see that there is still so much love and good in our society.  I see so many acts of kindness and maybe those overshadow the evils I see on the news every day.  Fifty plus years later after this film, there is still racism, social inequality and hate crimes, it is sad to see that in so much time, so much change in so many areas, people still are unfair and unjust.  It makes me take a deep look at myself and make sure that I am not judging the people I see, that no matter how they look or act, that I see them as a human being, someone who I have no idea what their life is. 

This story, this film will forever be one of my favorites, it is still a ratty old book and a black and white movie, but I still know that if it was in front of me I would not be able to look away. Atticus's final argument is truly amazing and inspiring and if I was on that jury I could not live with myself if I denied Tom’s innocence.  It is a story that is genuinely timeless and it provides us with so many moral questions and for an introverted look at yourself and our world, but it will always remind us that man is good, and if we see the world like any of them, Jem, Scout or Atticus, we will see the good in people and in our world, and be happier for it.