English IO

The lasting role of chauvinism in perpetuating violence and discrimination.

Format

Introduce global issue (1)

My global issue is the lasting role of chauvinism in perpetuating violence and
discrimination

Define term (1)

Chauvinism refers to an unusually strong belief in the superiority or dominance of
one’s own group of people, who are seen as strong and virtuous while other groups
are considered weak and inferior.

Introduce texts (1)

My literary text is TGG by FSF and my language text is MB by Alan Parker

Expound on focus (3)

- This commentary will focus on how endogenous notions of superiority
coupled with real world power imbalances create vicious cycles of violence
that harm both the oppressors and the marginalised communities
- We will also show how chauvinism is the binding glue between the archetypal
forms of discrimination like sexism, racism or classism.

Introduce Gatsby(2)
 I’d like to start off with my literary text, The Great Gatsby, a tragedy set in
Fitzgerald’s contemporary Jazz Age
 Throwing shade on the cultural decadence in the upper echelons of post-War
American society, it exposes the chauvinism of its constituents, especially
that of Tom Buchanan, a man with a stunning blindness to his own “acute
limited excellence”

Give context (1)

 Our extract is a dinner table conversation, in which the Yale football star
rants on how the superior western civilisation faces extinction at the hands of
the “coloured” before departing to share a late night phone call with his
mistress.

Allusion to Goddard (3)

 Tom mentions a book “The Rise of the Coloured Empires” by “this man
Goddard” that forewarns the submerging of the white race.
  `This is an allusion to the Rising Tide of Colour by Theodore Stoddard.
 Stoddard was America’s most prominent public racist who outlined the threat
posed by coloured nation states in a scientific manner by focusing on
demographics.

Semantic field (2)

 Phrases like “Civilisations going to pieces”, “white race will be submerged”,
“dominant race” , “we’ve got to beat them down” “we’ve produced all the
things that go to make civilisation ””we’re Nordics” create a complementary
semantic field
 Convey the notion of an embattled western civilisation bloodily maintaining
its dominance, just like Tom’s class wishes to maintain dominance in society

Diction + Psyche (2)

The diction used here is almost verbatim racist lexicon and Spenglerian in its
bombastic pessimism
It conveys the psyche of a privileged yet paranoid chauvinism that is desperately in
search of victims to put down just to satiate an internal need for violence

Intersections (3)
1. Throughout the book, we see racism go hand in hand with classism and
sexism. In the final confrontation with Gatsby,
Tom starts off by
1. refusing to let “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” make love to his wife and
decrying the loss of family institutions before finally ending with a warning
about the coming rise of miscegenation
2. He also claims that Daisy “sometimes gets foolish ideas in her head and
doesn’t know what she is doing”, the idea that his wife would finally have
enough of his infidelity never occurring to him

Violent Impact(4)
1. While Tom’s delusions may seem to be but mere conceit, they lead to
tragedy.
2. In the penultimate chapter, he directs a revenge hungry Mr. Wilson to Gatsby,
completing the Holocaust
3. “What if I did just tell him, that fellow had it coming to him?”
4. When Nick meets him for the last time, he tries to elicit some self-pity by
mourning Myrtle. But Nick deduces that “what he had done was to him,
entirely justifiable”.

Daisy Sarcasm(3)
1. Another device is the use of sarcasm on Daisy’s behalf
2. She reproaches Tom by saying that he’s reading “profound books with big
words in them” and joins in to his calls to “keep the coloureds” down.

3. Chauvinism is often simply brushed aside as a silly hyperbole and not

confronted – until it finds expression.

Examples for Tom violence (1+4+3+2)

There are examples throughout the text that show violence allowed to occur due to
a toleration of chauvinism
 1. The way Daisy and Jordan euphemistically refer to Tom breaking the butler’s
nose – “until it began to affect his nose” - shows that while Tom’s action may
be reprehensible, he still cannot be openly confronted for it
2. Chapter 2, we are introduced to Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s paramour whom he
beats savagely in a house party after she takes his wife’s name, claiming that
she has no right to do so. Tom struts about the city with Mrs. Wilson, he
purchases a flat for the conduction of their affair yet to him she is but a low
class trinket. She must be grateful for the escape from the desolate lower
class existence he provides and when she strays past her limits, he must
literally knock her back into senses.
3. What is even more telling, is the reaction of Wilson’s friends and family. They
only console her and dress up her wound, not considering themselves worthy
of correcting the New Havener’s behaviour. The fact is that he was “born
different. It’s in his blood’.
4. When his rash driving breaks the arm of the chambermaid he had been in
communion with during his honeymoon, the author feels no need to tell us
what consequences he faced.

Conclusion(2)

1) To quote again from Chapter 11: “They smashed things up and retreated back
into their money and their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept
them together and let other people clean up the mess the made.
2) This lines, while seemingly about Daisy and Tom’s turbulent relationship,
serves as an insight into the chauvinist’s soul. The chauvinist knows his place
and he wants you to know yours too; if you try to come up to his level, he will
push you down, just to make himself feel all the more taller.

6 + 31 + 32 + 4

Introduction (2)
1. My language extract is the film a clef Mississippi Burning by Alan Parker
2. It uses a dramatized retelling of a real life FBI investigation as a lens from
which to contextualise the causes, both institutional and personal, of Southern
Racism.

Extract (2)
1. Our extract is a conversation between FBI Agents Anderson and Ward during
a break in their investigation,
 2. Seeing the brazen racial violence and institutional apathy makes Ward
question where racial hatred comes from, leading Anderson to recall an
anecdote that shows the deep roots of white supremacist beliefs.

Shot features (4)

1. Due to the emotional and conversational nature of the scene,
- the camera provides close up shots
- with the absence of a noticeable score
- a dim-lighting to complement the grim mood.
2. As they talk, the background shows pictures of policemen violently
suppressing Black protests and Ward holds the picture of the lynching.
3. Such pictures are representation of how chauvinism in the hearts of the
population goes hand in hand with an oppressive government to spread the
hatred.
4. This also serves as a foreshadowing to scenes in the future where civil rights
protests devolve into an orgy of violence and Klansmen attempt the lynching
of Aaron’s father,

Monologue (1+2+2)
1. Anderson’s monologue reveals the extent of the Southern chauvinist mindset.
2. The Whites must be above the Blacks at all costs and any attempt by the
latter to attain social mobility will be met with righteous indignation to restore
the natural order of things.
3. Upon hearing that his Black neighbour has bought a mule and plans on
renting more farmland, his father feels deeply threatened.
4. His murder of the mule is rich in historical symbolism. One of the initial signs
of the failure of post-civil war reconstruction was the failure to grant each
freedman 40 acres and a mule, a failure that was the final death blow for any
hopes of an integrated south.
5. The murder forever poisons the waters in the community and Monroe flees
northward in what is an allusion to the Great Migration.

Obligation of violence (5)

1. When confronted with his crimes, the father is ashamed but just like Tom, his
sense of superiority comes first.
2. He fails to realise that what is the true cause of his rage and insecurity is not
the black man, but his poverty.
3. He must be superior to someone and instead of working harder and smarter
like Monroe, he can only put him down back where he “belongs”.
4. This leads to commit a crime because it must be done,
5. Like Pell abusing his wife, the Klansmen torturing Hollis and miscreants trying
to burn whole families alive, violence becomes an obligation, a birth right.

Failures of white southerners (4)

1) Throughout the movie, White Southerners fail to confront the real issues that
hurt their communities.
2) Plagued by civil unrest, they instead partake in Klan rallies that accuse the
North of trying to destroy their unique model of racial harmony.
3) Even when the press takes interviews of the residents during the search
operations, they do not show any remorse.
4) Some admit that Blacks have been oppressed yet say that all the disorder will
cease if they accept their degraded status.

Hackman delivers an exquisite monologue(4)

 1. hiding a deep shame underneath masque of cold acceptance
2. Lent ethos by a pitch-perfect southern drawl and an apt diction(daddy,
expletives,) he serves as our window into the mind of a racist.
3. He peers off into the distance as he speaks, with a vacant expression as he
castigates the Sins of the Father.
4. To Ward, it is a disgusting act of malice while for Anderson, it has simply
“become a story about my daddy”, creating an macabre sense of
desensitisation.

Institutional (6)
1. A perfect complement to this endogenous chauvinism is the racist attitude of
Mississippi’s judicial institutions.
2. When men are put on trial for destroying Black houses and churches, the
judge gives them a light suspended sentence, saying that the violence only
occurred because of unwarranted provocation on behalf of external elements.
3. The white man can do no wrong unless he is driven by the “government” or
sheer necessity while the Black man can have his house burned down,
churches razed, children beat up and dignity effaced.
4. This acceptance of malice, this blindness to basic norms of human equality
only invites further violence,
5. Multiple churches are burnt, old men are beat up, children thrown into shit,
community leaders lynched, FBI agents threatened with the burning cross.
6. Southerners see the law as an arbitrary mechanism to maintain their power
while the FBI sees it as a guiding principle – Ward threatens to kill Anderson
if he unlawfully takes revenge on Pell for his assault and takes his time to
accept intimidatory actions

Conclusion (4)
1. All in all, these 2 extracts perfectly complement each other.
2. They show how violence comes from within, through grand self-centred
notions that groups in society wilfully adopt or do nothing to stop. C
3. chauvinism is one of the basest human emotions and despite the
rationalisation of social life in the past few decades, it still holds a strong pull.
4. Yet there will be many in society who will beat on, boats against this current
and borne back ceaselessly into the past.