Compare and Contrast

For class last week (topic: Immigration and the roots of American culture), two cartoon versions of American history:

Contender number one: "Elbow Room" from the 1970s "Schoolhouse Rock" series of animated educational shorts, shown during Saturday morning cartoon time for, oh, all of my childhood.



Did you notice anything missing from this video? Like, um, Native Americans, perhaps? Hmmm....

Okay, moving on to contender number two: "A Brief History of the United States", from Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore's documentary / rant about the NRA and American gun violence...


A bit funnier, at least to us jaded liberal types with warped senses of humor, but it definitely belongs into the "White people are all uniformly horrible, except for me because I'm cool" genre of cultural criticism. Oh, and did you notice that Southern Accent = stupid? Hmmm, again...

Did you watch them both? Okay, to compare the two - one is a gross oversimplification of American history, full of subtle and not-so-subtle racial stereotypes; the other is, well, a gross oversimplification of American history, full of subtle and not-so-subtle racial stereotypes. What makes it doubly sad is one of these oversimplifications was taught to most of us as Historical Fact all through our grade school history careers.

Moving on, thank goodness for Maira Kalman. She is an amazing author and illustrator who wrote a twelve part series of picture essays on the web last year about patriotism, American history, and civic culture in general.

Her essay on immigration, which you should look at even if you didn't watch either of the two videos, provides an excellent palate cleanser from the after effects of both cartoons. Without dodging or whitewashing our often horrific history, the essay still shows some pretty great things about being an American. Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, yes, but also Coney Island, mango lassis, and Dancing Cheek to Cheek. Check it out.

(now if I can only get the sing-songy lyrics from "Elbow Room" out of my head...)