Ruth, the artist, deals with many contemporary issues in his cartoons, specifically dealing with equality. In fact, this picture was found on a gay rights and equality web page. Ruth does many artistic things to demonstrate the equality that he wants achieved. First, if you look at the characters you can notice that their proportions compared to the steps are almost comical. The steps tower over the two men, seeming to suggest that each stage leading towards equality is a tough one, which eventually will be overcome to get to equality. Additionally, the lighting in this seen is significant because the top of the stairs is extremely bright, while the light only trickles down the staircase to the dark, bleak bottom. Light in this image seems to symbolize hope. Therefore, hope is small for equality for gays now, but will eventually be greater the more “stairs” we climb over as a nation. It is also very interesting to look into the body language of this image. When zoomed in, it becomes apparent that the two men at the bottom have their mouths open, and heads up, almost at shock of the climb ahead of them. Ruth wants to show that although daunting, the climb has been achieved before. Additionally, it is not a coincident that the men are standing on the step labeled “ridiculous”. This word to me, means that something is absurd to the point that it cant be thought of. In Ruth’s mind, that is currently what society deems of gay marriage.
In fact, Ruth holds many of the same opinions that Robert Hayden had about blacks. Hayden artistically stated in one of his poems, “When it is finally ours, this freedom…when it is truly instinct…this beautiful needful thing” (Frederick Douglass poem). ‘Instinct’ is an important word in this poem. To me, this word means something that comes natural, without hesitation. We have sadly not reached a point in our society when equality is instinct, specifically with gays. Blacks, women, and disabilitated people all were at this point in the ‘staircase’ at some point in history. In fact, racial equality faced the opposition of the President post Civil War. After the civil rights for black people was suggested by Congress, Johnson said, “Yet it is now proposed by a single legislative enactment to confer the rights of citizens upon all persons of African descent…while persons of foreign birth…must undergo a probation of 5 years”. The word ‘confer’, or to grant, shows that Johnson believed blacks were inferior and needed him to bestow the gift of equality. As insulting as that is, Johnson still didn’t approve of the rights for black people, using this argument that foreign people didn’t have all those rights. This posed a large obstacle to obtaining the equality that was deserved during that time.
Despite this being a great piece of art, it is not perfect. I would disagree with Ruth, on the fact that I believe there is still some inequality amongst women, blacks, and people with disabilities. In the blog post Wednesday’s Field Trip Hannah Deporter (Depôrtiè) commented with something insightful to our current integration in Chicago, based off of a map, shown below.
She said, “This strongly supports the stereotypes of ‘white’ people living north of Chicago and ‘black’ people living south of Chicago.” A stereotype is something that is a widely held image for people. It is interesting that Hannah used this word, because it shows this perception that one of our largest cities in America is still not segregated completely. Additionally, workers rights, which includes the rights of women and people with disabilities, is nowhere near being fair. An NPR podcast gave an account of one factory, saying, “Twenty five people went up to the owner and asked for their wages, and they got threatened with guns”. The rights of those people to receive wages for their labor is being stolen away from them, which seems extremelly far from equality.
Although this image may spread a very good message, it also has its flaws. This cartoon may not be as black and white as it suggests (pun not intended). Comments are encouraged below.
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