Cold War

I was at the Jack Kirby Museum this week and I came across a photo that will ignite our talk this weekend. We have talked about race and the issues that come with it. Time periods show us different sides of comics and today we will be talking about the time after World War II. We now enter the Cold War and how this event changed America and different race cards were played. Jack Kirby illustrated a cover, in which American's are planting a flag on the moon. The Cold War terrorized America, the fear of getting bombed any day drove people crazy. The threats created many fall out shelters that were never used. The spying that scared everyone later turned into great video game plots. The space race changed the World. It was clear that the two leading countries in the space race were the USSR and the USA. Comics were used as propaganda at this time. This cover let me to think that a lot of the things portrayed or said in comics are racist but no one points them out. They always show America coming in first place and this also brings us together.

The slang terms used in these comics referring to Russians as commies, showing the horrible and exaggerating the acts of the USSR are in a sense you know racist. However no one wants to think about it like that because the Cold War was a real issue. It was a real problem and in reality the USSR was the enemy. It was nothing to be played around with, the threats and the problems were real. People were hurt and devastated by it, they spend fortunes on fall out shelters and changed the way of thinking. In fact the problem died out and we eventually won the argument and with it amazing stories and movies were left behind for us to watch today. We glorify and give these acts a high place in movies and games that no one stops to think that the things said and done were racist. The fact that we kill commies in games and that commies suck, and should die etc. is honestly bad. Yet, no one really points it out, like they were just soldiers paying attention and following orders, yet we degrade them. This just shows that as a society sometimes we just want to be bias about what goes on in the media and want to see how we can an advantage on a certain situation. The Cold War Ended and somehow even though racist trends were left behind it was a good thing for business. Or is it the fact that all the racist scenes have a justification or is it because it does not attack to us. I mean if we are going to talk about racism lets talk about it through all  four corners. In my opinion these comics have a justification but what I want to get across is that some people want to overlook what is racist and just focus on what affects them. I don't think it should be like that especially if you want to argue that comics are racist. In my opinion they aren't and should we really trust everyone who says that does, just remember that there is actual racism most brush off and we should take a closer look on the issues we are about to fight for before we just follow the flow and raise up signs and protest. Let's get a bit educated.