Time Magazine- December 24, 1965

            I chose the December 24, 1965 issue published on Christmas Eve. In contrast with the 1920s magazine I had looked at before, Time magazine in 1965 was centered on national affairs and the problems that affected Americans within their country. The cover of the magazine immediately caught my eye with a detailed and colorful diagram of the “space race” depicted on the cover and a banner across the corner stating “Rendezvous on the Road to the Moon.” Though the issue was published on the holiday, the cover completely ignored this in favor of a more scientific approach to the magazine. This issue of Time had both color and black-and-white print, but it was clear that black-and-white was still the norm for the magazine as the majority of the articles were not in color.

             Although the cover and the greater part of the magazine went over the affairs of the country, it was clear throughout the magazine that it was Christmas time in the United States. Contrary to what we would see in more recent magazines, the issue did not focus on the holiday season as a whole including all the holidays associated with every religion. Time clearly focuses on the Christian holiday of Christmas and proclaims “Merry Christmas” instead of the more neutral “Happy Holidays” that we use in many forms of publication today. One of the letters to the editor at the forefront of the magazine was written solely on the meaning of Christmas to American families and another of the letters contained a small comment which spoke of Bob Hope as a generous man with Christmas spirit who annually “gives to the overseas forces his greatest gift,” performing for them. One of the ads featured a furniture company that sent two hundred desks to the “North Pole,” Alaska, in the spirit of giving like Santa in order to show their generosity within the atmosphere of Christmas. Another ad gave season’s greetings from Time magazine in forty different languages that were made into shape of a red Christmas tree to wish all of the magazine’s readers a “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year.” The front page showed a picture of the Wilsons and the Johnsons, two prominent political families of the 1960s, after they had finished lighting a Christmas tree together. The picture seemed to symbolize the camaraderie of the country at Christmas time, even in the difficult times of war.

            I was drawn, not surprisingly, to the large amount of articles on the war in Vietnam and our current involvement in it. In the midst of Christmas, some of the articles had a spin on them about how the troops were coping at Christmas time in the middle of warfare. One article about how the troops had been given new terms for calling off the war was called “Ho’s Christmas Slam.” Another article detailed the story of Captain Rod who, after appealing to the public and securing provisions for a local orphanage in Vietnam for Christmas, was killed during a relief of a government outpost. I was impressed by the conscious acknowledgement that the articles showed of the reality of the war in Vietnam and its consequences for the American people. The articles did not seem to candy-coat the situation at hand in the effort to save face during the holiday season. Rather, it impressed the facts of the war and showed what was really happening on the warfront and with the soldiers overseas. The fear of communism was prevalent in most of the Foreign affairs’ articles. Fear of the war and further military deaths were forthcoming on the thoughts of Americans. Most of the foreign affairs that were acknowledged in the articles had something to do with another country’s war on communism or their involvement with the Vietnamese that would directly impact American war efforts. Even the movies at the time seemed to be affected by this sentiment; the popular titles of movies in the magazine were The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and Thunderball, both of which had to do with informants during the cold war spying on communist groups.

            In addition, I found the distribution of color print throughout the magazine to be quite telling of the time in which the magazine was printed. The first picture in color print besides the front cover was a bright and shiny ad for Ford in which a sleek blue car is shown on a street, seemingly against the backdrop of a park with monuments. Against the contrast of black-and-white letters, the blue Ford car draws your eye in immediately. The appeal of the advertisement was distinct in the magazine and the desire for the car in the picture was evident even for me, almost fifty years later. The next picture in color was a green advertisement announcing “A Christmas Prayer.” The New York Life Insurance Company broadcasted its message of planning for a future of blessings with the green ink that stood out vividly against the printed black-and-white articles next to it.

 Besides the advertisements, only two other sets of articles had colored pictures associated with them. They were the articles connected to the Christian churches and the space race. Seeing that these two articles had the most compelling pictures with them, vibrantly designed to catch the eye of the reader, I thought that these topics must have been the most important to the magazine when they published the issue and that they probably had the most funding by their sponsors in running the pictures as well. The emphasis on the Christian churches seemed to me to show the pervasiveness of the main religion in news. The ornate colored pictures of Christian cathedrals and religious symbols gave the impression that Christianity was the only recognized religion in the magazine. It seems to me that although the main religion in America is still Christianity today, we have made more accommodations for other cultures in our media than is evident in this issue of Time. Also, the pictures of the satellites that were sent out into space and the emphasis placed on them, with full pages dedicated to their illustration, indicated how important the matter of getting to the moon was to Americans at the end of the Cold War period. It seems that Americans in 1965 were determined to push science as far as they could in order to learn about getting to the moon, which they would successfully accomplish by the end of the decade.

Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums: Disconnect in Expectations of Women

            When reading Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums, I was struck by the disparity between Elisa’s description in the story and her prescribed gender role. Steinbeck was clearly making a statement in this short story about how women were viewed towards the end of the Great Depression in the late 1930’s. Elisa’s character is portrayed as quite masculine which gave me a strange picture of her as I read the story. Although she is wearing a dress, her face is described as “lean and strong” as well as “eager and mature and handsome,” and her figure is “heavy” in her clothing with “leather gloves” that cover her hands in the garden. Steinbeck even tells us that she wears “a man’s black hat.” Elisa is continually described throughout the story with the adjectives “strong,” “hard,” and “powerful” which are all words that tend to be traditionally masculine in nature. However, there is a difference between the way Elisa is described and her actual power in the story. Any time there is a male presence, Elisa’s power suddenly becomes diminished. When her husband tells her that he “wish[es] [she’d] work out in the orchard” because of her skill with gardening, Elisa seems excited at his comment but subliminally we get the idea that this isn’t actually a plausible option for her. Again when the tinker is speaking to her, he tells her that his life “ain’t the right kind of life for a woman.” Although she is defensive as to whether or not she can handle it, there is still the idea implanted that the working lifestyle isn’t the traditional role a woman should be comfortable in. When Elisa realizes that she has been duped by the tinker at the end of the story, she is described “crying weakly—like an old woman.” Her hardiness is weakened by the imposed gender roles she must follow.

            As I noticed the gender roles in the story, I was amazed by the difference between what was expected of women in the Great Depression and the gender roles that they were still forced to comply to. I think that Steinbeck was hitting on a touchy subject of the time. Women were expected to support families with so many men out of work in their households; often times, women were the main breadwinner of the family during the depression. Although it was such a necessity for women to work, it was also looked down upon as low-class for women to be working outside the home. Steinbeck shows this when he shows Elisa as a strong, masculine-type woman but continues the discrimination that she is unable to work outside of the home successfully in his story. Steinbeck’s portrayal made me think of how ridiculous American society’s view of women was in the 1930’s. There was such an impossible tear between the different expectations of women that would have been unmanageable for anyone to balance during the depression. Steinbeck’s criticism of American society in this way really hit home for me as I imagined the social constructions that would have terrorized poor American families that relied on women to help them survive through the Great Depression.

Cultural Diversity: Second Meeting

            Meeting up with Ibrahim for the second time was quite a bit different from the first time. For starters, we were both more comfortable with each other so the conversation flowed easier but we also spoke of very different things. Our original plan was to meet up at Yo again, but upon my arrival (10 minutes early I might add), I saw Ibrahim waiting outside of Yo on the bench and he asked if I would mind going somewhere else. I agreed and as we were walking to Barnes and Noble for some coffee, I asked him why he had changed his mind. He then informed me that he was certain that Yo brought him bad luck because the last time we had met there, he had accidently left his wallet. When he returned to see if he could find it, someone had turned it in… minus the few hundred dollars he had in it and some things his father had given him before he left for America. He couldn’t believe that someone would have taken it so fast and I felt horrible for him, it was an awful awakening for him to have to go through unfortunately.

            After the initial unhappy story, we sat down and I told Ibrahim about how my week had gone so far. He was extremely interested to hear about the service learning project I was doing with 5^th graders at a low-income elementary school in Fort Worth. Not thinking about my word choice, I told him the students were “impoverished” and, of course, he had no idea what I was talking about until I told him that meant that they were poor. He asked me a lot of questions about them because I told him that most of them came from bilingual backgrounds where they spoke English only at school and Spanish at home. I told him that most of the students were completely fluent in both languages and he seemed amazed by them. 

            Ibrahim then asked me for feedback on his English and I told him that I thought he spoke very well. He kept asking me what he could improve on and so I told him that I thought the best thing he could do was speak up because the only times I couldn’t understand him were when he was slurring words together because it was too quiet. He then explained to me that he was working on it but it was hard for him because in Saudi Arabia, everyone speaks a bit quieter than here. We then got to talking about cultural differences between his home country and the United States. He said one thing that was really different was how friendly all of the everyday people you meet were here. He was particularly interested with talking to cashiers because he was incredibly surprised that they actually chose to have a conversation with him while he was paying and it gave him a chance to practice his English. In Saudi Arabia, he told me, it was normal for you to hand over your money and leave immediately without saying a word to the other person. One of the other cultural norms that I really stood out to me was one about the friendship between men. Ibrahim told me that his friend pointed two guys holding hands out to him here in Fort Worth and explained that those two men were gay. Ibrahim said that he was shocked to find that people assume that just from looking at them. In Saudi Arabia, it is normal for full grown men to hold hands while walking together as a sign of friendship while here it is completely different. 

            Ibrahim and I talked about many cultural things in our second meeting and it was very interesting to see two completely different views on how a social situation is read depending on the cultural context. Overall, we had a very thought-provoking conversation and I am enjoying learning about how it is to see the world in a different light. Ibrahim brought an extremely different point of view to our conversation which characterized many things that I would consider normal American behavior to be very strange.