The American Dream: A Trashy View

Tim Clarkson

Multimodal #1

Tim Clarkson

Multimodal #1

                The “American Dream” is hard to explain and everyone has a slightly different interpretation of what the “American Dream” is and what it constitutes.  According to Guimond, the “American Dream” can be described as “the conception of America as a kind of magic environment or society that has the power to transform peoples’ lives” (Guimond, J., p. 13).  This helps to illustrate how intoxicating an idea of the American Dream can be and how easily it can be romanticized.  However, Guimond also explains how this provides a façade to the real America; how many Americans often criticize the same society in which they hold such an idealistic view, “Americans also use the “Dream” to criticize inequality or to express fears that they may become “disposable people” who will be left to rot while their government spends billions of dollars on military budgets” (Guimond, J., p. 12-13).  Clearly, Guimond is trying to describe how contradictory this concept of the American Dream can be.  Americans seems to have a deeply embedded sense of what the American Dream is, however, we tend to only compare to the more realistic American Nightmare.

 Photography can often be the best means to capture this thought.  Going out into the world with an objective mind and then analyzing these images can be the most effective means for truly trying to dissect the complexities of this dilemma and doing so can help to “overcome or disprove some false, superficial, or stereotyped viewpoints about “ordinary” subjects” (Guimond, J., p.5). Analyzing one of my own photographs was enlightening in that I noticed how just a simple snapshot could tell me so much about a culture and society that surrounds me constantly.

                The photo I chose to analyze was a picture of an alley way in downtown Iowa City.  This photo is very reflective to me of how we have an idea of American being this shining beacon that is a leading example for the rest of the world.  Yet, we just toss our garbage out and forget about the consequences of where it may end up or how this impacts the rest of the world. This type of iconography or “symbols in photographs that come to represent something else” (Whaley, D.) is reflective of how America often does not think of the long-term ramifications of our international decisions.  We like to believe that we are a sparkling clean image and we are the example of moral absoluteness, however, we make many political and humanitarian decisions that contradict the ideals we like to espouse.  Also, a young woman can be seen at the very edge of the photo, seemingly scurrying down the alley to get by quickly.  This demonstrates that even when we are forced to acknowledge the dark and seedy aspects of our society, we tend to quickly turn another cheek and move along until we forget about it again completely. 

When taking this photo, I purposefully altered the gaze to reflect this hypocritical notion I believe is so prevalent.  A gaze is the “dominant viewpoint from which the creator of an image manipulates the look of that image” (Whaley, D.) and it helps to illustrates the points the creator is trying to make.  Utilizing these newfound methods in combination with the concepts of Guimond helped to gain a new understanding of what exactly I feel the American Dream is and how it can be interpreted to mean a variety of things.

               

Guimond, J. (n.d.). Guimond Dreams and Documents. Chapter 1. [PDF]. Iowa City: University of Iowa.

Whaley, D. (2017, September 7). American Studies Lecture. Lecture presented at Introduction to American Studies in Philips Hall, Iowa City.