American Gothic - Grant Wood.

American Gothic :

American Gothic is a very famous pop culture painting by Grant Wood.

This painting shows a farmer next to his daughter. The woman wears a colonial apron imitating the American traditional style of the XIXe century. Those two persons represent the traditional rôle of the men and the women, with the pitchfork, simbol of the hard manual job, and the flowers next to the woman represent the domestic life.
This painting is one of the most famous one of the American art of the XXe century, and there is a lot of parodies today.

(New) American Gothic :

One of them is this one. We can see, instead of the original characters, a stereotypical Mexican couple, with the man who’s holding a pitchfork, like in the original painting. Another difference is the fact that he is leaned into the woman with his arm around her. The confused look on the woman’s face shows that she is really embarrassed. It’s probably because she’s realizing that what the man is saying is true « You can’t live without me ». The man wears an apron where is writing « Low-Wage Immigrant Farm Workers ».

We can say that this cartoon is representing the need and dependency that the Americans have for those low-wage workers from Mexico, because those people do jobs that many Americans don’t, especially for the very low wages which are giving the workers. Today the US economy depend a lot on those workers, because all the companies depend on those workers who can do unsatisfying jobs that Americans don’t, and who accept low salaries. In addition, the woman wears also an apron « Consumers » which shows us the other point of this cartoon, because indeed, the Mexicans are also important consumers who help a lot the US economy .

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