Computers and Cartoons

Since everyone else has provided their thoughts on the computer experiment, I guess I’ll throw in my two cents as well. Like Kaitlin, I enjoy trying different things in class, and I thought this was an interesting program to try out. I found it interesting to see the different ways that our groups went about searching for sources to prove or disprove the validity of Stephanson’s argument, and I think that it is also important to take into consideration the validity of an argument when reading a text like Stephanson. Like most of the class, however, I don’t think that this program worked out very well. We spent a good portion of class time just looking up different things on the computers instead of being in discussion. Because we spent so much time on this question, both in research and in sharing our conclusions, we didn’t really get to spend much time in the text, which is too bad when you have a text this interesting. Also, the technical difficulties and the delay between the sending and receiving computers were distracting. Finally, I also hate Macs (never owned one, but had to suffer through them being the only computers my school district would use).

Despite all of this, I found the different approaches our groups took to the question to be interesting. It’s interesting to see just how little political correctness mattered in society back when those cartoons were produced, but at the same time, not all that surprising. Even cartoons I’ve seen from the early 1930s are sometimes blatantly racist, witness Plane Dumb, featuring Van Buren’s Tom and Jerry, which doesn’t have anything to do with propaganda. It’s just racist.