1. From a political angle, the culture wars are dispiriting because actual policy debates get sidetracked, but from a cultural angle they are equally dispiriting because actual culture gets reduced to crassly partisan terms. Consider again Seuss & ethnic caricature.
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2. By reducing the Seuss issue to the nonsensical category of cancel culture, an opportunity was lost to bring up something important, the pervasive impact of blackface & ethnic caricature on popular culture. Only a few informed scholars like
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3. It's not widely understood that blackface & ethnic caricature weren't just popular in early 20th century, they were the very visual language through which America saw itself as a hybrid society.
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4. Blackface & ethnic caricature introduced a gestural expressiveness that changed American comedy. It's main legacy is cartooning. Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny etc are heirs. These 1930 comic strips highlight how much Mickey owed to Al Jolson & minstrelrypic.twitter.com/6gPgGWU1lf
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5. This very early Mickey Mouse cartoon from 1930 was written by Walt Disney himself and drawn by Mickey's co-creator Ub Iwerks. It really makes clear the visual debt Mickey Mouse has to minstrel imagery. Not how Mickey is nearly a mirror image of the ooga-booga native.pic.twitter.com/xX7cUnBzPF
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