The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an animated film that was released by Walt Disney Pictures in 1996. It is a retelling of an 1831 novel by Victor Hugo, and the story follows the life of Quasimodo, a man crippled at birth and hidden away in the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris. The film features several glimpses of the concepts that we have articulated this semester. One of the more evident examples are the heavy tones of racial as well as cultural barriers within the film. The Romanians, often referred to as “gypsies” in the film, are a group of people outcast by the dominant culture of Notre Dame. The leading character Esmerelda acts as a lens through which these concepts are magnified for the audience. There is an interesting connection to be made between Esmerelda’s role in the story and some of the issues of social identity that authors such as Ortiz Cofer and Homi Bhabha taught us. Although Esmerelda is painted to be a part of Romanian community, her physical appearance is a critical point of interest in the story. It is this element of social identity that is meant to aid its audience–mostly mostly young American children–to relate to Esmerelda and feel included in her story. This element of beauty and inclusion is a common formula found in this era of films released by Disney. In a way, Esmerelda’s character expresses a level of the hybridity that Bhabha wrote about. Her role as a Romanian is combined with her role as a female lead and she is in essence transformed. It is through this pseudo “Third-Space” that the negative connotations of the Romanian people are slowly dissolved from the story, hidden behind the familiarity of Esmerelda’s character.
There are a few similarities between Quasimodo and Judge Frollo’s relationship and Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. Quasimodo refers to Frollo as master and is treated as an outsider by society. His presence is known, yet he remains hidden in his tower out of fear of the social pressures of society. In this way, Quasimodo is restricted to being an Other, or subaltern. The magnitude of these concepts are further exemplified in an a scene in which Frollo visits Quasimodo and asks him to recite his alphabet. When Quasimodo recites “Festival” instead of “Forgiveness” he is scolded. Scolded not for being incorrect, but for stepping outside of the limited parameters that Frollo has drawn for him. This scene solidifies not only that Quasimodo is not heard, but furthermore highlights the power-dynamic between the two characters. For just as Frollo is recognized by Quasimodo as the master, Frollo refuses to recognize Quasimodo. It is this relationship that results in Frollo being unable to see beyond his own scope. For as Hegel argued, the master cannot truly appreciate the recognition of the slave because he does not value the slave’s opinion. This is a film littered with systemic issues that parallel modern society. It encourages cultural acceptance and emphasizes the value of character over beauty.
Zachary: Hi, my name is Zachary Kanode, and I would like to talk a little bit about a concept that began to pick up around the early to mid 1900s, known as the ”American Dream”. This dream idolizes not only what the ideal American family should own, but what they should look like. I am sure that when I say the words “American Dream”, that you get some semblance of an image or scene in your head. Personally, I see an image of a middle-aged family featuring a man, a woman, and one or two kids. The family are all white, well and modestly dressed, and standing in front of their newly purchased home. The vividness of this image reminds me of what Adichie warned us about. The danger of a single story. This image for me largely resembles a story from around the 1940s and 50s, just after the G.I. Bill was issued. This bill allowed World War II Veterans significant discounts on mortgage payments. In combination with the legal practice of Redlining during the 1930s, this led to American suburban communities evolving over time to be largely segregated based on race. This has furthermore led to many minorities simply having less economic opportunities than others, and therefore less to pass onto the future generation. The American economy is one that greatly rewards those from the younger generation for the successes of their parents, and this economic inequality can be seen quite visibly in the workforce, as nearly every single top-ranking individual for large corporations are white men.
Over time, perception of what the American Dream really means has evolved, and the echo of this concept has been exemplified globally, leading to large-scale Westernization. This has brought about the mentality that anything American is in some way superior. In the wake of American Exceptionalism, the culture of second and third-world countries are forgotten or ignored, and treated as something “Other” than American. A good example of this mentality of American Exceptionalism is the common belief that the harder you work, the more you will be rewarded for your efforts. Although the virtues behind this belief are not misplaced, many larger corporations today can (and do!) use this mentality as a means to ensure that lower paid labor workers increase their work ethic while remaining at a stagnant income.
Branching slightly off the warped perception of economic mobility in America, I have personally found some evidence of corporations taking advantage of this increased work ethic. I work as a sort of “head cashier” at my local supermarket and the company’s initial reaction to COVID-19 was increased hourly pay and allowed overtime. This proved too good to be true and only lasted a couple of months. Instead, the company has provided all employees with complimentary meals from local restaurants about once a week. To me, this is a way in which the company aims to cut losses while still being able to claim that they are “supporting their hard-working employees during a hazardous time”. Needless to say, these complimentary meals in no way make up for the continued danger that me and my coworkers put ourselves and our loved ones in by risking contact with COVID-19. These ideas and concepts that help to form what the “American Dream” means today stuck out to me as a conversation about the impact that intersectionality has on nearly every facet of everyday life, such as the workplace.
Sam: Hi, My name is Samuel Faber. Zachary, I really liked that, those were some really interesting points that you made there. For my chunk of the time I’ll be talking about the inequality among races in the workforce. First off I think some notable statistics are that our ancestral composition is down to 0.1%, which is kind of showing how indifferent we are person-to-person. Off of that, by race whites make up the majority of the labor workforce around 78%. That’s according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. This shows that humans are genetically so similar that there’s no difference there’s no evidence back in the race, gender, or ethnic group being smarter than another. I think it’s absurd to me that this notion has been carried on for so long in our society. Makes me wonder how far our world would be an innovation if from the start we had the brilliant minds of every single race working together for our world. Instead, we left it to a select group of people, majority-white, making all the decisions and accumulating all the fame. I think looking around it is easy to see the everyday Injustice that happens in the workforce, in almost every profession, anywhere from unequal pay, unequal opportunity. Minorities sometimes I think have a bad stigma or stereotypes, for example, they are not hard workers, they get in trouble. And also the types of jobs they get, I think there’s a lot of inequality there. I think how people are hired- I mean there’s huge inequalities anywhere from like the names of applicants, to I guess how they present themselves during the hirings or whatever. A huge problem is that a lot of the people who hold authority are richer, typically men, who hold outdated ideas that were passed down to them. There’s an idea that the smartest people out there are rich white men which is simply just not true. I think that’s a huge problem in our society, I think people are finally seeing that but I do think it’s still a huge problem. I think people are finally seeing that.
So one thing I would like to go into is Martin Luther King’s letter from the jail. Zachary actually pointed out a phrase from Martin that read “groups are more immoral than individuals”. Again “groups are more immoral than individuals”. I mean that statement really got me thinking. I know Zachary talked about social norms but to me, I guess it just seems so easy to hop on the bandwagon against certain people easier than it is to go again against a group by yourself. I think if we educate individuals and start pulling away from these large groups, the systemic racism will have virtually no traction. If people can I guess develop their own ideas about race , equality, and gender, whatever it is, I just think that I would almost lessen the systemic racism if people are developing their own ideas other than ideas of a bigger group. so obviously these preconceived ideas are held by groups, not individual people a lot of times. The ideas are then passed down from generation to generation making these groups bigger and bigger. Another point I’d like to make is how this kind of concept can translate to a concept of “Othering”. I think these minorities at one point are just kind of put in these, I guess groups and are set aside. They’re being called poor workers, they’re lazy, they’re not smart or they’re not reliable and as a result they’re kind of thought of as the “Other” sometimes in our society. It’s just really unfortunate, given that minorities are some of the smartest people on earth, along with every single one of us but yeah that’s that’s what I got. Zach?
Zach: Thanks, Sam. Going off of that, I am Zach Soult and for my part of the topic I will be discussing a story from my Diary of Systemic Injustices that I would like to share and analyze about my mom and gender inequality in her workplace. My mom works for Great American insurance in downtown Cincinnati, and a while back they interviewed her and some other applicants for a management position that had opened up. Towards the end of the interviewing process, several weeks and stages of interviews later, my mom was told that she was by far the most qualified candidate for the job, but the company preferred to have a male at the position instead. When I was told this was going on it immediately made me think about what direction our world is going in and what changes have actually been made. This example of systemic injustice just shows one of the many issues that have been “solved” in the past with passing equality laws, but ultimately true equality is not reached and still has not been reached. Gender inequality is still prevalent in workplaces today around the world even though women have been fighting for equal rights for decades, but they still do not receive the treatment that they deserve. I think this situation also can relate back to an Author we read earlier in the semester which is Spivak. Spivak talks about the Subaltern in her article “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. She argues that the subaltern group, in this case would be women in the workplace, lose their voice as they are being oppressed and not receiving proper treatment. Spivak ultimately argues that everyone should be treated as equals because the effects of being oppressed as a society or community as a whole can have devastating consequences. In society, past and present, there has always been a kind of “unspoken standard” that White males run the workplaces and get the best salaries/jobs, but this needs to change. Our country has undergone so much change over its history, but we need to continue working as individuals to ensure equality is given for women in the workplace, but also that equality is given to everyone. How can we expect to continue to grow as a country if we cannot strive to solve these issues that are merely a matter of respecting other humans, and can be fixed that simply?
Sam: That was good, Zach.
Zachary: That was good. You know, I really liked how you brought up Spivak and how women in the workplace, even though they can speak, they are unheard (as Spivak talked about). I also found a similar connection with what Sam talked about. He talked about how minorities were pretty much ignored or pushed under even to the extent that their name on a resume would effect their hiring process. I think that connection is really interesting and is something that needs to be addressed in society.
Sam: Yeah, that was something that just blew my mind, like how something that little impact someone’s life that greatly. One question I had, Zach, was when your mom was going through that, were the people that were hiring her outspoken about this, why she wasn’t being hired?
Zach: I mean, they kind of pulled her aside after the last interview with the final three guys, and said that “hey, you are our most qualified, but we would rather have a man for the position”.
Sam: Yeah, it’s just kind of crazy. Well, if there’s nothing else you guys would like to add, we’ll stop here.
This coming week we are reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, a novel published in 2007. The entire novel features the narration of only a single evening, in which the main character, Changez, meets an American stranger at a café in Lahore, Pakistan. Throughout the evening, Changez tells the American of his own experiences in the United States and how these experiences shaped him. Hamid’s novel does an excellent job of highlighting a variety of socio-economic relationships prevalent in today’s society.
One of these relationships that I would like to delve a little deeper into is Westernization. Westernization can be defined as the social phenomenon that occurs when the cultural and social pressures from the dominant culture form a pseudo-Western society. OxfordReference.com states that “for some governments and élites in developing countries, westernization has been seen as synonymous with modernization and development and therefore as a desirable goal” (OxfordReference.com). Elements of this mentality can be picked out of Hamid’s novel as well, as Changez articulates his recognition of the “American Dream”. Below is a video that examines how this concept is viewed in modern American society.
The concept of this dream is so engrained into American society today that its influence seeps its way into all facets of our everyday life. A good example of this is the common belief that the harder you work, the more you will be rewarded for your efforts. Although the virtues behind this belief are not misplaced, many large corporations today can use this mentality as a means to ensure that lower paid labor workers increase their work ethic while remaining at a stagnant income.
Besides the American Dream’s influence to the warped perception of economic mobility, it furthermore encourages the idea that America is in some way superior to other countries or nations. This aggressive side-effect of Westernization is clearly observed in Changez’ own story, in which he recounts that it took him a great length of time to recognize that his work in the United States was actively working against the ideals of what he viewed as his people in Pakistan. It is through the lens of these larger, more broadly expanding concepts such as Westernization that meta-fictional novels like The Reluctant Fundamentalist may be more easily dissected and critically analyzed for any potential commentaries on socio-economic relationships therein.
One systemic injustice that I have become increasingly aware of in recent years is one of race and how heavily it is driven by implicit biases. Implicit bias is a concept that delves beneath the surface level of our casual, everyday experiences and resides primarily within the connotative components behind those experiences. Below is a video that does an excellent job of summarizing what implicit bias is and how it holds significant power through association and representation over time.
A couple of years ago, I remember helping my parents decide on where to move. There were many places that they immediately shrugged aside and said that they were in “a bad part of the neighborhood”. I specifically recall once being asked to open the surrounding neighborhood on Google Earth, as if the visualization would help determine this level of “badness”. At the time, my parents’ judgement gave me implications of drug-related incidents in the area.
Once I started attending college, I learned about the process of redlining—a legal determination of “mortgage risk” based heavily on connections to minorities within a surrounding area—that occurred in the United States throughout the early to mid-1900s. More specifically, redlining brought with it the implication that neighborhoods dominated by social minorities are in some way “bad”. Sections of residential plots were graded on a map-scale according to their mortgage risk. Interpretation of what this means can vary from low perspective property values, to poor, to unsafe for your children. The implications of these factors compounded with the inherent racism of the time period. Below is a 1936 map of Philadelphia with the so-called hazardous residential communities outlined in red, as the term “Redlining” was born.
A 1936 legal document containing sections of Philadelphia rated by their mortgage risk levels.
Although the legality of redlining has long since been dismissed, the communities that it helped to shape still exist today. By essentially locking minorities into less profitable living situations, redlining furthermore robbed those individuals of a myriad of socioeconomically beneficial opportunities that were given to other communities. This is just one facet of the increasingly complex issue of systemic racism that exists today. The practice of ethnography and critical thinking that authors like Adichie and Ortiz Cofer emphasize in their works have made me realize that back then, my parents were falling victim to some of the implicit biases connected to these communities. Through the knowledge and understanding of how these biases are formed, we may begin to weaken the hold that they have on both pre-existing and future communities.
