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While many people find this philosophy to be fundamentally flawed, there are still people who subscribe to this system being the most beneficial for the American economy. To me it brings up many ideas surrounding the “American Dream” and leads me to question not only if it is still achievable, but if it ever was achievable for all upon its conception. The flawed past of the American social structure continues to leave significant portions of the population out when claiming that anyone can “pick themselves up by their bootstraps.”
This week I want to take a second to consider the viability of the American Dream. There is a certain amount of mental gymnastics that you have to play in order to find a neoliberal system free and fair to all within it. My goal is to visually explore the distortion of viewpoint you have to have in order to find this to be the ideal ideology.
I then started thinking about the assumptions you have to believe to be true in order to find neoliberalism to be something of value. There are certain characteristics you have to assume about the corporate elite in order to justify a system that gives handouts to the top of the financial food chain. This led me to consider the way in which opposing sides of the political spectrum view the corporate elite, and I think that this is where we need to look when exploring the distortion of viewpoint regarding the ethics of neoliberalism.
I then decided to look at depictions of the corporate elite through political cartoons. My first idea was to start around the era of Reagan and search up political cartoons that comment on trickle down economics. The dichotomy of viewpoint here illustrates the differentiating ideals about the working of corporate America. At this point I realized it was hard to find Pro-Reaganomics cartoons, which makes a good amount of sense considering political cartoons are most frequently an act of protest against the actions of the system. So at least in this first chunk of cartoons, they are all opposing Reaganomics. My next step from here is probably go to the library and get some help to see if they have anything opposing these in their archives.
I went to the New York Public Library and checked in at the historical research desk. After explaining how I couldn’t find Pro-Reagan political cartoons, she directed me to email the history department so they could look and see if they could find anything. She told me she wasn’t all that confident that I would find anything researching on my own and requesting documents/having them pull things for me seemed like a lot of work for a subsection of my research. That being said, I’m going to shift my focus here a little. I think that Neoliberalism as a topic was a good jumping off point to find that political cartoons and caricatures were a good example of distortion based on viewpoint or appearance. The rest of this section will be an exploration of political cartoons and caricature drawings.
Here are a few more anti-neoliberalist political cartoons that I gathered in my initial research. These were the ones that stood out to me as highlighting the pitfalls of neoliberalism in a comprehensive manner.
Straying away from the topic of politics, political cartoons led me to thinking about caricatures. Caricatures emerged as an art form during the Renaissance, blending elements of satire and artistic exaggeration to highlight distinctive features of individuals or subjects. Early examples can be traced to 16th-century Italy, where artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Annibale Carracci used exaggerated sketches to emphasize physical traits or personality quirks, often for humor or social commentary. Over time, caricatures became a popular medium for political satire and cultural critique, evolving into a versatile art form that continues to entertain and provoke thought by distilling complex ideas into striking visual representations.
I remembered I had this book and want to use this as further research regarding satire as a form of distortion. While I don’t plan on making anything for this particular topic, I am happy to have discoved this route as well as some resources and hope to continue thinking about this as I moved forward into thesis.
This cartoon shows how there is a lack of consideration for those of lower economic standing from the people up top. The rich like to feel as though their struggles are comparable to those who genuinely are struggling to get by.
Pictures I took at the New York Public Library when I went on my research excursion.
This seems particularly relevant to current times as we watch the one percent obtain more and more of the country’s wealth.
This highlights how the actions of rich people don’t align with the theory trickle down economics was based off of.
This highlights how the greed of people in power stops the flow of money down to the people in the lowest forms.