Assignment task:
After learning about Minstrelsy, reading the article "Darkest America...," Learning about Melodrama , Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Harriet Beecher Stowe,, I'd like you to construct a two page response paper to all of this. I've presented you what could look like a strange mix to represent the era: white men performing in blackface makeup for entertainment's sake and it becoming wildly popular, stereotypes of African-Americans galore in minstrelsy and even in a play that set out to condemn and abolish slavery, and the style of melodrama that makes clear who is good and evil in almost, to us now, ridiculously exaggerated ways but with no ambiguity in the characters or the conflicts they're facing.
Given this, I'd like you construct a response paper to address who you think this America is during this time, why they have the tastes that they do, and how slavery (even though it may not have been in the north where the most expansive entertainments were happening) was affecting a national consciousness, eventually leading to a Civil War about its existence in the country. How are theatre and entertainment forms reflecting the nation? How do you feel about how Uncle Tom's Cabin may have instructed or pushed the nation on slavery, and yet despite its good intentions added to the stereotypes of African-Americans? And remember, the country is still really quite young and working to establish or discover its identity. And why such a strong embrace of melodrama, with its clear-cut good and bad with spectacle and heightened emotion? I really don't want you to spit back research to me to show me you heard it, I want you to tell me what you think and feel after the input of this Module, and use the information to illustrate your points as you need, to tell me the "why" of your thoughts and feelings about any of this.
Construct at least two pages, Modern Language Association style.