{"id":4968,"date":"2015-03-19T20:51:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T00:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/?p=4968"},"modified":"2016-02-01T14:14:29","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T19:14:29","slug":"circus-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/2015\/03\/19\/circus-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Circus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Soviet film, Circus,\u00a0<\/i>made in 1936, was about an American Circus artist who was performing in the Soviet Union. \u00a0She had left the United States in favor of the Soviet Union because of the racial intolerance towards her\u00a0and her black son. \u00a0\u00a0The aim of the film, Circus,\u00a0<\/em>was to demonize the\u00a0west, particularly the United States and Nazi Germany, for their\u00a0inequality and racism.<\/p>\n

One of the most vivid scenes came at the end of film when a man looking like Hitler stopped the Circus and attempted to demonize the American circus artist for\u00a0giving birth to a black child. \u00a0He stated that it was “a racial crime! She should be banished from civilized society!” ((Film: Circus))\u00a0<\/em>This part demonized Nazi Germany because it showed how Hitler and Nazi Germany did not tolerate variations from what they wanted in a pure ‘Arian’ race. \u00a0The line struck me in that it sounded a lot like Hitlers views toward the Jews. \u00a0During the 1930s, Hitler and the Nazis goals were to banish the Jews from Germany. \u00a0By the end of World War II, they were exterminating them. \u00a0At the same time Nazi Germany was being demonized, the United States and its capitalist system was also demonized for its racism and inequality. \u00a0During the first half of the 20th century, racism in the United States had been wide spread. \u00a0Black people in particular, were demonized for being different. \u00a0As a result, they were segregated for being different. \u00a0In the Soviet Union, these differences and intolerances were not supposed to exist. \u00a0During the last scene of the film, the black child was taken away from the man looking like Hitler by the crowd. \u00a0The crowd\u00a0then took in this\u00a0child as someone who was no different than them. \u00a0They celebrated the fact that he was someone who could become a great Soviet worker. \u00a0They did not care whether he was white or black. \u00a0The child, according to the Soviet Union, could experience all the benefits of working in a classless society.<\/p>\n

On a different note, what do you think the idea of a circus represents in the Soviet Union? \u00a0Does it try\u00a0to emphasis the importance of a Soviet worker being fit for work? \u00a0Or does the circus represent something vastly different?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Soviet film, Circus,\u00a0made in 1936, was about an American Circus artist who was performing in the Soviet Union. \u00a0She had left the United States in favor of the Soviet Union because of the racial intolerance towards her\u00a0and her black … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110561],"tags":[85674,85525,22721,1872],"class_list":["post-4968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hist254-archive","tag-adolf-hitler","tag-circus-film","tag-soviet-union","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}