![]() Nighttime ME-OW serenades anger the residents, but they succumb after Felix gives the local rats free rein in the town. Ever feisty and never submissive, Felix leads a cats' strike when the town council bans cats as a nuisance. On Strike was released soon after the 1919 Actors Equity Association strike that shut down theater productions in major cities until producers agreed to recognize the union and most of its contractual demands. ![]() Appearing from 1907 to 1982, Mutt and Jeff was one of longest-running comic strips in the U.S., and by 1916 animated Mutt and Jeff shorts were favorite theater offerings. Rankled by the luxurious lifestyle of their animator, Mutt and Jeff demand lower hours and a percentage of his profits, and, when loudly refused, they announce their intention to strike and "animate ourselves." When their first production flops, they scuttle back to their animator, assuring him they'll work for nothing if taken back. What position on the strike is presented in each cartoon? What is implied when a highly charged public issue is addressed in entertainment media, including popular cartoon characters? In both we are led to sympathize with the cartoon stars. While presented as entertainment first and foremost, these shorts present opposing scenarios of the strike as a worker's negotiating tool-one that fails in On Strike and succeeds in Felix Revolts. ![]() In this chapter, Lewis captured the us-vs.-them mentality that led many "to disown any friend who did not hate the enemy." (5 pp.) During the suspicious and divisive period of the Red Scare, those who defended labor unions risked ostracism as unpatriotic "radicals." This is what happens to George Babbitt, the midwestern middle-class businessman in Sinclair Lewis's classic novel Babbitt, when a labor strike turns his city "into two belligerent camps." Struggling to identify his own political stance, Babbitt finds himself caught between his newly adopted liberal views and his business colleagues' unequivocal condemnation of the strikers.
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