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No activism Stephen crane and jacob reese activism It sounds

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pretty active No no no Analysis that maggie never jacob

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rees duch i guess that makes it remember email Okay

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school this is what democracy looks like Yeah activism happens

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to be a subject very near and dear to my

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heart I've been to more protests than i can count

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so i'm actually uniquely suited for the subject of the

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day activism in the late eighteen hundreds And what about

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activism in the seventeen hundreds Or even earlier you might

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ask didn't exist If you try to speak out against

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authority you'd lose your head quite literally But now that

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democracy was on the upswing in the eighteen hundreds the

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masses suddenly had an opportunity to talk trash to the

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people in charge We call that activism will be looking

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at the works of two epic activist today stephen crane

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and his novel maggie a girl of the streets and

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jacob rees a legendary photographer of his era Both of

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these men fought the man on inspired social change using

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just words and photographs will kick things off with stephen

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crane's novel maggie a girl of the streets The novel

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is about a girl named maggie which i think you

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might have guessed she lives In a bad part of

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town in the bowery in new york city to be

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specific this is what the barry looked like back then

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Maggie comes from a family of irish immigrants which to

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readers of cranes day would emphasize her low social standing

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Quick aside you've got to remember the context in which

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the novel was written At the time irish immigrants who

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were newcomers to america were viewed as well not even

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human more like animals to most people different was bad

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No thank you They hated the new immigrants and their

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strain foreign culture their bazaar irish food incomprehensible slaying and

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even their religion catholicism's which was thrown a lot of

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shade by the majority protestant residents of america On top

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of that americans accused the irish of taking their jobs

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which sure doesn't sound familiar now Nope Anyways maggie's home

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life isn't great Her little brother jimmy is your average

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hooligan and there do well and her mom hits the

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bottle hard But maggie is different She has appear heart

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so you could understand why she swept off her feet

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when she meets pete who's not only a total stud

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but also might be our ticket out of the hood

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There is just one problem Mom and jimmy despise maggie's

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new babe So much so in fact that they boot

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maggie out of the apartment And as if family drama

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wasn't enough jimmy also chooses tell beat the crap out

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of pete Yeah he's That kind of brother peter is

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furious and dumps maggie which ultimately forces her toe live

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on the streets and become a sex worker From there

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the novel gets ambiguous All we know is that maggie

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ends up dead When jimi reveals this to his mom

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she promises that she'll finally forgive maggie though it may

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be a tad late for that mom For our purposes

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We're interested in maggie's depiction of poverty that's where crane

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flexes activist muscles so to speak One big way that

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crane does this is by establishing a creepy atmosphere in

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the slums You could also refer to this as tone

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the way crane wants us to feel about the whole

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sordid affair It's both gothic and realistic Like if edward

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scissorhands somehow ended up in a gritty cop drama Let's

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take a look at one extended bit from chapter two

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to start cranes Word choice Says it was all dark

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Gruesome sure doesn't sound like beverly hills Also check out

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the use of color Color is one of crane's trademarks

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Many of his books use the color red Like the

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aptly named red badge of courage The short story the

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bride comes to yellow sky employees No not yellow but

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green What a fake out Well the blue hotel revolves

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around you guessed it The color blue The guy loves

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colors more than john sena love pumping iron in maggie

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the color red pops up most crain uses it to

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describe how maggie's mom skin goes flush when she drinks

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to refer to the blood jimmy spills during his novel

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opening brawl and to describe the scarlet dress worn by

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a singer Drinking fighting and singing sure seems like red

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is associated with emotion and passion Right Let's go back

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and look at the passage from chapter two again The

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last sentence is a floozy There's some personification there Crane

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talks about a building as if it had bowels like

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a human We do not want to think about that

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too hard But check out the phrase the weight of

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humanity really lit nerds would call that synnex dickie crain

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uses one aspect of people their weight to refer to

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humanity at large which both gives a sense of just

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how many people are crammed in these tenements and also

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how these folks are at the bottom of the social

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food chain so to speak the fact that maggie lives

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in an irish neighborhood would have made it seem even

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sketchier to readers of cranes day who's stereotype irish people

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as violent drunks Of course crane doesn't bust those stereotypes

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here maggie's mom is always drunk and her brother is

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often violent that's two for two for everyone keeping track

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at home so don't think that crane was being particularly

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woke in his depiction of irish immigrants He's still employed

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stereotypes and he just used them to critique society's treatment

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of the less fortunate These ideas help establish the setting

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of the bowery a working class urban neighborhood with a

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dark brooding atmosphere and rampant crime In other words not

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a nice part of town wouldn't want to hold a

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wedding there This nastiness helps establish maggie as a character

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the beautiful pristine flower growing up in the middle of

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a garbage dump that doesn't Mean she's not struggling before

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we even know her name she's described as a small

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ragged girl but we're also told that she has none

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of the dirt of rum alley in her veins which

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is a weird way of saying that she's a good

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kid plus she pretty never basically she's one of the

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few kids around here that has a shot at getting

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out of the slums Her relationship with peter on the

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other hand is totally naive We could tell that he's

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no good from the moment we meet him and are

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proven right when he dumps maggie without a moments notice

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despite the fact that she has nowhere to live But

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the relationship is yet another reminder of how maggie is

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failed by her environment If maggie lived in a decent

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neighborhood with a decent family should be keeping it lit

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all day every day but her mom's a drunk and

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her brother's a bully which means that neither are interested

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in teaching maggie about life love and all that other

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tricky but super important stuff On top of that they

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can take care of the practical matters either like keeping

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a roof over her head And her out of trouble

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And here we've reached the ooey gooey core of the

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novels view of poverty the center of its gypsy roll

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pop if you will crane like many thinkers of his

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day believed that individuals are shaped by their environments whether

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those environments are beneficial detrimental or anything in between which

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is kind of obvious with the hindsight of the future

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But was a brand new idea at the time maggie

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was failed by her environment her family her neighborhood her

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peers and ultimately suffered a really a bummer of a

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fate as a result and the fact that her death

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was so anonymous that it occurred off screen emphasize how

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women like maggie are overlooked My society at large holy

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smokes is this stuff getting me fired up I've got

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a protest something a sap If you prefer your activism

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less literary and more visual however you're gonna lose your

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mind over jacob reese Jacob riis was born in denmark

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but immigrated to america in eighteen seventy with nothing more

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than the change in his pocket which is to say

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not much So resettled in new york city eventually scoring

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a job as a police Reporter for the new york

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herald tribune in particular rees was known for his photography

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which was actually a rare skill in the days before

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snapchat and selfies He spent most of his time meeting

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the rial rough neighborhoods of new york city especially ones

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with large immigrant populations which at the time were primarily

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irish and italian His approach here is actually pretty similar

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to the one taken by crane is now like he

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doesn't employ stereotypes of immigrants and working class people After

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all his work was meant to shock the audience that

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was the reality tv of its day But rees used

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these stereotypes to a positive end to show america the

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suffering sitting right under its nose This was referred to

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as muck racking sensational journalism that exposes corruption and abuse

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by the powers that be as you might imagine a

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lot people despised res for his work They thought he

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was just causing trouble What reason did have friends He

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was buddies with theodore roosevelt while the future president was

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still the police commissioner of n y c and yes

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that is your fun fact of the day Protest always

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befriend future presidents It just might come in handy someday

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In eighteen ninety three's released how the other half lives

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a book that became a smash hit and he's also

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considered an early example of published photo journalism The book

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combines reasons photos with britain commentary on the awful reality

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of urban poverty tenement buildings sweatshops unpleasantness galore On the

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positive side the book had a really political impact on

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society encouraging new york city officials to reform housing policies

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and roosevelt who was still police commissioner to shut down

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particularly shady businesses So rees is a great example of

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an activist through his actions He literally cause social change

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when's the last time an instagram celebrity did that But

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are we going to talk this much about a photographer

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without actually looking at his photographs Of course not This

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is a video that's like talking about twilight but not

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actually mentioning vampires The first photo we're going to examine

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today is called five cents a spot one of reasons

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most famous photos based on the title We can assume

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that each of these folks were paying five cents apiece

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for their beds which even at that low price seems

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hardly worth it that this would be many americans first

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look inside of a tenement apartment and reason ensured that

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it would be an image that they would never forget

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then its roost is another classic photo from race published

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back in eighteen eighty eight unlike five cents a spot

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which makes us feel sympathetic towards the poor bro's in

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the tenement apartments this one definitely makes us feel a

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little bit scared Those two g's up front look like

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they're about to beat these up and the rest of

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them looked like they'd happily lend a helping hand The

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framing of this photograph contributes to this feeling of unease

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to framing is the way that a photo or piece

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of art draws in your focus Notice how the alley

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stretches back into the distance behind the troublemakers making us

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feel like we're being drawn into the alley towards whatever

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creepiness lies at its center Okay okay we've got to

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move on or else i'm gonna have a heart attack

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The last photo will look at is called street arabs

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and sleeping quarters Street arabs is reasons term for young

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unemployed children which is super racist of course by calling

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homeless kids arabs rees is implying that all our people

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are unemployed slackers But hey we are talking about the

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eighteen hundreds Casual racism was super hip back then Of

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course this photograph is a total heartstring tugger Nothing gives

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us the fields like sad children But now more than

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anything this photo shows us how reads took his photos

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The kids do look posed and it does look like

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daytime Not exactly when most people sleep How we've been

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lied to nap Not really More than likely res help

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the kids get into position for the photograph as he

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did with much of his work after all Did you

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think that res just stumbled across a gang of young

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thugs holding court in a scary alley Not likely This

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revelation doesn't invalidate Reese is work He was still documenting

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riel struggles that were ignored by the rest of the

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world And that deserves props That being said understanding how

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res captured these photos helps us better understand them as

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well as his unique role as an activist and thus

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concludes our trip into the world of eighteen hundreds Activism

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What did we learn Well we learned that maggie girl

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of the streets exposed the suffering of irish immigrants even

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if it did perpetuate a few unpleasant stereotypes of them

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to the same could be said about jacob rees and

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his photography although he certainly upheld the prejudice of his

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era reese also did worlds of goodbye documenting the lives

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of the oppressed even inciting riel social change We in

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the protest ng business call that next level activism Now

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i have to get going Big protest coming up a

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lot of powerful people trying to stop it And listen

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If you ever find pieces of me and a shredder

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just know that i went out sticking it to the 00:12:42.147 --> [endTime] man

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