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Where do people get these ideas from? Ever asked yourself that question? I mean real, normal, living, breathing people. People who love their kids and pay their taxes and live in your neighbourhood. But they have some crazy ideas - well, I think they have crazy ideas, so that might have solved the problem for you right there. You still with me? OK, story time.
We lived in a trailer park once and had a couple next door who were a bit older than us and quite friendly. We traded plant cuttings and bragged about our kids and smiled and waved when we passed each other coming or going. One time we invited them over for a drink and some butter tarts, so it must have been Chistmas. Yes, season of good will toward men and everyone else. And in the course of the evening, we asked where they had grown up and what had brought them to this part of the world.
They told us they were from South Africa and they felt themselves fortunate to have escaped. The country had been turned over to that criminal and his gang of cutthroats. Yes, Mandela. He had been locked up for his crimes, but as soon as he got out, the country went to hell. Whites were murdered and their property stolen. It wasn't safe to be on the streets, even in the capital.
When we recovered a bit, we tried to counter their ideas, but it didn't work. How could we know, living over here? They knew the truth and their truth was impervious to any alternative. The evening broke up early. In the days following, we didn't bother to have longer conversations with them on South African history. We moved the next year.
It wasn't the first time I'd run into a brick wall of prejudice, but it was one so stark, so absolutely uncompromising that I couldn't shake the feeling that there were some very weird people out there. I thought again about the absolutist mindset when I listened to the afterwards of a guest speaker our high school had. The lady was a representative from Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group formed by the Australian doctor, Helen Caldicott. The occasion was a Nov. 11th assembly.
She (Caldicott) had seen what atomic bombs had done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and concluded that politicians and military brass needed to wake up to reality before the Cold War went hot and humans destroyed themselves. She was up against a stone wall of willful refusal to look at the truth and thankfully, she tore it down. She had to convince a lot of bureaucrats who didn't want to know, that the reality of a nuclear war would not be like some video game. Kids crouching under desks was not going to save any lives. There wouldn't be any hospitals or medical personnel or any stores of medicines when target cities were vapourized. Some didn't care. I had two in my class.
They listened to the lady's presentation and then asked me if they could speak with her. Well, certainly. These were a couple of fellows who were in the local cadet core and they must have been affected by the speaker's words. I joined them and introduced them and listened. They were polite - too polite.
"We need to correct some of your statements, M'am" should have been a signal. That was not the language of the normal highschoolers I taught. The corrections they offered were that atomic bombs would be democracy's best defence against the threat of communist aggression.
"No, M'am; the Russians are not humans like we are. They are different than humans and someone needs to tell that to our politicians or they'll come for us." They had more to offer, but the principal was there and suggested we head back to class.
The two left school shortly after to join the army. I was left wondering how I'd had these two polite young students in my English class for two months and had never realized they had such a concept of the world. And I didn't take class time to confront them on their beliefs either. Then I had a student teacher who gave me some insight into the matter.
I hung around for one of his early lessons because it was about advertising and he had come well prepared with magazines and a slide show. That was where I got a clear introduction to the term "subtext" and its power to influence attitude and values.
We all know the old adage that sex sells. If we see the ads for power convertible cars with the macho hunk (with the full head of hair) driving and the hot chick happy beside him, we just want to compare prices and service agreements. We don't even bother to ask about the full head of hair. But the hair and the hunk and the chick and the weather are all subtext and it goes even deeper.
From TV to magazine glossies and of course to our Facebook or any social medium scrolling, the ads have backgrounds to confirm our cultural biases. And they're targeted to our location in the digital realm, even or especially to our viewing history. Pause over a recipe or a cute kiddie&pet clip and you'll get streams of them coming at you for the next few days. But, let's get to an example of subtext in action. Here's one:
The cartoon is meant to be a criticism of socialism, particularly the aspect of socialism which the cartoonist believes is illustrated by grade inflation, described under the cartoon in the original post. There are some problems here.
The subtext is the most problematic. The principal figures are white, articulate individuals, a cute, curly-haired, button-nosed child and a mother with hand-on-shoulder commiseration gesture and closed-mouth smile.
The background shows a large, non-white, overweight individual whose stance of holding aloft his trophy cup shows pride of accomplishment which the white child has already denigrated. The other background figure is a white child, also if not overweight then somewhat portly and pigeon-toed, holding his trophy by his side with no particular pride of ownership, and his features are blank with no mouth or eyebrow lines to indicate any emotion.
The other background feature of note is the cloud which has a self-satisfied aspect to it, feminine it seems and moving towards the white mother and child in what may be intended as an approval of the speech balloon content. The caption within the cartoon frame declares "THIS is socialism" with the all-caps of the first word indicating an emphasis to show that the picture represents a concise definition of that social construct.
The final element of the picture is the ascription to a group called "God's Guiding Light" which sets the presentation in a religious context, saying that this is the product of a theocratic organization. It is intended to have the force of religious persuasion behind it.
The cartoon as it appeared in Facebook was positioned above a brief condemnation of the practice of grade inflation in all levels of education. On the home site for the God's Guiding Light network there were many comments also, but I quickly tired of reading the repeated diatribes against unions, handouts to illegal immigrants, Democrats and Moslems.
Now, if someone wants to write a criticism of grade inflation, that's fine. There are many valid points to be made in objection to the practice, after first giving a close definition of it. I don't like it either according to my close definition, and so my bias is confirmed, but anyone should be permitted to ask me to define the process as I understand it and to say why I dislike it. And I don't want union-bashers, among others, piggybacking on my opinions.
I paused once to study the subtext elements of an anti-Palestinian graphic and had to tolerate a flood of the stuff over the next few days. A bearded Bedouin, gun over shoulder and scimitar in one hand standing on the bloodied corpses of Israeli flag-draped women and babies held a baby up in his free hand as a shield while the speech balloon said "Help us! They're bombing children." To some viewers I'm sure it must have confirmed their biases. Mine certainly are every time I see a cartoon condeming Israeli atrocities. Whatcha gonna do at times like that?
Read.
And talk.
And listen.
And have more courage of your convictions and willingness to speak your truth than I did. I'm embarrassed to say that I'm still learning that even if my aging physical muscles lose their strength, the moral ones don't have to. And being embarrassed never did anyone much good.
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