Author: bolney

Throughout the semester, we’ve talked a lot about how history repeats itself. 1968 was a year undoubtedly characterized by civil conflict and violence, with every piece of literature, plays, and movies we watched affirming that. The release of the Netflix movie The Trial of the Chicago Seven, just a couple of weeks ago, brought the feelings of pain and injustice of the Vietnam War back into the forefront of discussion in the media. The scenes in the movie made it very difficult to distinguish the summer of 68 from the summer of 2020.

This summer, we saw the mass mobilization of people in streets across the country and the world, protesting racial injustice and police brutality in support of the BLM movement. Violent stand-offs between law enforcement and citizens. A looming presidential election that caused a divide between Red and Blue supporters. And, amid the prospects of political and cultural change, an inescapable pandemic: tens of thousands of Americans dead. The summer of 2020 was an unprecedented and historic one. But it is undeniable how similar it seems to the summer of 1968, with the looming presidential election of Johnson and Nixon. Instead of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tragedy that cost American lives was not the Vietnam War. Racism was also central to the protests, with MLK Jr. just being assassinated.

The parallels between the two years, over fifty years apart, is remarkable. Patrick first drew the connection between the Vietnam War in 68 and the COVID pandemic in 2020 being similar during class, and at first, the two did not seem closely linked at all. However, upon seeing the Trial of the Chicago 7 movie, it makes more sense. The unjust deaths of American soldiers in the Vietnam War were the forefront of the protests, and with thousands of Americans dying due to the pandemic, I think is only time before people begin to protest how the American government has handled it. These are unjust deaths as well, as we see countries across the globe who have successfully been able to control the pandemic to minimize deaths.

This semester could not have been a better time to take this class.

In Huey Newton’s detailed accounts of how the police persistently attacked him, it is undeniable the racism ingrained into the system. A system that allows policemen to harass a man who has just been shot in his own hospital room as he tries to recover. A country, as seen in the Voices of the Chicago Eight, doesn’t give a defendant in court the ability to have a lawyer to defend him. A country, as seen in The Trial of Catonsville Nine, that chooses to fight a war in Vietnam against an ideology (communism) and uses napalm to attack citizens, instead of using those resources to eradicate racism and poverty domestically. I am fortunate enough to never have been a victim of systemic oppression, but MLK and Newton were not that lucky. Unlike Newton’s dad, who played along with the system, and worked as many jobs as he needed to pay his debts, Newton did everything against the system. He protested as early as elementary school where he refused to learn how to read. This is when I wonder, how MLK and Newton had hope for a better future. When life seems to be turned against African-Americans, they both fought for change. They believed in the promise of a better life.

This theme of hope is very big in tying together all the texts we’ve read in this course. At times where I do not think I would have been able to have hope myself, the characters in all texts, use hope as a vehicle to get through the tough times. In Mojo and MIckybo, we see the young boys use their imagination to hope for a different and better life. In Pentecost, we see Marian move to a house on the border of the Catholic-Protestant conflict, a house and location that would seem unpleasant to most, shows how far she is willing to go for a better life. Marian and Ruth are the embodiments of hope, as their characters learn to live with their grief throughout the play. These characters all seem to be holding onto a promise for change, which is getting through the tough times.

Throughout our class discussion of Mojo Mickybo, we deliberated the themes of childhood innocence (or in the case of Mojo and Mickybo, the lack thereof) and the power of childhood imagination. I do not agree with the notion that Mojo and Mickybo lost their innocence once Mickybo’s Da was killed, and his death finally brought to light the Catholic vs. Protestant conflict that the two friends were going against; the notion that only direct violence to one of their families was enough to make them understand the conflict around them and draw a wedge between the friendship. 

I think Mojo and Mickybo were forced to grow up without innocence – they were never innocent to begin with, which is why imagination was such a large part of their friendship and childhood. Growing up in Ireland during a time of serious civil unrest, it was impossible for Mojo and Mickybo to grow up shielded from what was going on around them. Starting from where the boys lived and the lifestyle the two boys lived, it is immediately clear that the Catholics were the poor societal class, and Protestants, the wealthy class. Even the way the adults in the play interact with them shows how unconducive life was for a child at the time. 

Fantasy lets the friendship between a Catholic boy and a Protestant boy deal with the harsh reality that they live in a world of violence and abstract hate. Undeniably, their friendship is shocking and seems to be ‘illegal’ during the time. Like we talked about, their friendship is comparable to the friendship formed in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Unheard of during their times. I think the boys were astutely aware of their questionable friendship, but used their imagination to mask the societal pressures trying to pull them apart. So yes, while the death of Mickybo’s dad did inevitably drive their friendship apart, I do not believe that moment made them lose their innocence and lead to their divide. I think that the death of Mickybo’s dad made them lose their imagination and that is what ultimately led to the end of the friendship, because they could no longer deny the conflict going on around them. 

Imagination is a powerful tool, and once reality sets in, there is no going back.

When we talked about the similarities of civil movements between 1968 and 2020, it became clear that history repeats itself. The ability for the story of The Informer, both the novel and film, to be uprooted with a and set  to a totally different country and context in Uptight, and still use a similar plot and underlying themes, and have it still be very applicable, stood out to me even more. History definitely repeats itself. Watching Uptight, it was shocking for me to understand how a story about two former Irish Republican Army members, and their story about ideology, betrayal, and poverty be so applicable to two black revolutionaries in Cleveland, Ohio almost 30 years later. If you watched Uptight without knowing about its creation, you would not even be able to tell that it was an updated version of the Informer. You would think it was original story based on the protests after the assassination of MLK. The Afro-American and Irish situations were not the same, however, there were shocking similarities. Every country is connected, making it inevitable for history to repeat itself. 

The hopelessness of Afro-Americans felt in Uptight, I believe, is still felt today. MLK was the leader of The Civil Rights movement in 1969, at least as how history and media portrays it. I believe there is hopelessness in the current BLM movement, because there is no ‘face’ of the movement. The protests nation wide, beginning with the death of George Floyd has seen very little success in instilling any kind of long-lasting policy change. We see police violence against blacks and deaths of protesters everyday, and it is heartbreaking to say that it surprises no one. While social media has been instrumental in informing the world about the BLM movement and the injustices felt by Afro-Americans currently, social media cannot be the leader of the BLM movement. There have been many influential people to speak up about the importance of ending racial injustice in America, but there seems to be no change. It saddens me that in the current political climate, leaders of the country are more interested in being re-elected than addressing and correcting the racial injustices plaguing Afro-Americans. 

If no policy changes occur to aid the BLM, history will keep repeating itself.

The use of posters to voice one’s opinion on a certain event has always been very fascinating to me. Instead of writing an article, a lot can be conveyed through a simple image and a few words printed onto a poster. I studied a lot, in my junior year of high school, how to analyze a political poster to understand the full story behind and meaning of a political poster. It is an art. After inspecting the posters regarding the Irish civil rights era from Geoff Brown, it is easy to understand what was going on politically when the posters were made, and the voices of civilians upon those matters. 

This poster, created after Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech of April 20, 1968, shows the anger people felt after that racist speech. This poster also touches on racism, targeting people for their skin color and race. After some research on this infamous ‘Rivers of Blood speech’, Powell essentially argued that Britain should not allow immigration to Britain from the country’s former colonies and to send home immigrants that have already moved to Britain, on the claims that there would be a violent clash between white and black communities. I think this poster is still very relevant today. With Donald Trump closing borders to countries he believes are dangerous, and the wall between the US and Mexico, anti-immigration is still prevalent. Almost four years after Trump pledged to divide Mexico and the US with a wall, it has not been completed for the reasons why this poster was created: immigrants are not the issue, racism is. With the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, there is still a fight to end racism, making yet another connection between 1968 and 2020.