Caricature: exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics [of a subject] (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary).
Visual caricatures of immigrants and ethnics became a symbolic language of standardized images used by mass media and advertising to communicate a message in shorthand fashion to the public. Cartoonists of the period created exaggerated images of specific ethnic groups based on shared, popular stereotypes.
For example, Germans were depicted as beer-swilling and fat, Indians as tomahawk-swinging and drunk, Jews as gesticulating and with large noses, Chinese as pig-tailed and wily, African Americans as thieving and lazy, Irish as gorilla-faced, drunk, and brawling.
Ethnic stereotypes are fixed, oversimplified ideas about an entire group. A stereotype may contain a "kernel of truth," but this kernel becomes exaggerated and rigidly applied to the entire group. |
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