My Country Right or Wrong (1968)

by Cliff Joseph

Obstinate Patriotism

Cultural & Intellectual History

Lesson 9

Today we will learn something about idea as pattern, so as to identify when and if double entendre is operative. Double entendremay be regarded as being operative when a word or expression has two meanings, one often indelicate.

 

For purpose of assessment, consider the following impression about the United States as pattern:

If American culture is a political event, if it is the pattern or structure of the temporal unfolding of complex interaction between many people, then America constrains all human beings, that relate to the United States, whether they live there or not, whether they are "American" in the usual sense or not (Herve Varenne, Symbolizing America, 23-24).

"My Country Right or Wrong" shows a group of people, politically defined as black and white, on a desolate field with skulls strewn about and American flags flying upside down. These people are blindfolded, and the American flag is the blinder.


 

Question 1:

The symbol for American justice is a woman with a blindfold, holding scales (balance) in each hand. Among the blind people in Cliff Joseph's painting, can you identify any symbols that suggest balance?

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Question 2:

 

 

 

 

a) Consider that the blindfolds around the eyes of the people in the Cliff Joseph painting are replete with pattern--a United States flag that encompasses three colors, stripes, and stars.

Thus we can say that this particular symbol implies double entendre?

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b) The woman who serves as the U.S. symbol for justice has on a blindfold that is without pattern.

Thus we can say that the "pure" blindness that covers her eyes suggests double entendre?

 

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Assignment:

Read chapter one in Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois. This essay makes use of double entendre in its examination of how DuBois reflects on "two unreconciled strivings of one ideal"--to be considered Negro and American--as the problem of the color line, the problem of the twentieth century.

 

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