Culture Bridge 20150111

Every culture has its own unique symbols. When we talk about Chinese culture, the first that comes into our mind must be the Great Wall. When we think of Africa, we must think of the River Nile, and so does America. When we hear the word “America”, we may come to hamburgers, “the big melting pot”, Apple or many things that we are familiar with. But, the most famous five symbols of America, I bet, may not be so familiar with most people. Today, we are going to dig deep about American culture. The five symbols of America, they are, the statue of liberty, the Barbie dolls, the American Gothic, the Buffalo Nickel, and Uncle Sam. Now let‘s just introduce them to you one by one. First ：The Statue of Liberty In the mid-1870s, French artist Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was working on an enormous project called Liberty Enlightening the World, a monument celebrating US independence and the France-America alliance. At the same time, he was in love with a woman whom he had met in Canada. His mother could not approve of her son’s affection for a woman she had never met, but Bartholdi went ahead and married his love in 1876. That same year Bartholdi had assembled the statue’s right arm and torch, and displayed them in Philadelphia. It is said that he had used his wife’s arm as the model, but felt her face was too beautiful for the statue. He needed someone whose face represented suffering yet strength, someone more severe than beautiful. Finally, he chose his mother.The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on an island in Upper New York Bay in 1886. It had his mother’s face and his wife’s body, but Bartholdi called it "my daughter, Liberty". The statue of liberty is the most famous landmark in New York city, now let’s share more about the statue in case you’re wondering what the statue is made of. It has a frame work inside that is made of iron, the outer skin is made of copper. The copper skin is only 2.4 millimeter thick. The supporting frame work inside is what holds the whole thing together. And every year about 2 million people came to visit it, making it a famous tourist attraction in New York city. Second ：The Barbie Dolls Before all the different types of Barbie dolls for sale now, there was just a single Barbie. Actually, her name was Barbara. Barbara Handler was the daughter of Elliot and Ruth Handler, co-founders of the Mattel Toy Company. Ruth came up with the idea for Barbie after watching her daughter play with paper dolls. The three-dimensional model for Barbie was a German doll—a joke gift for adults described as having the appearance of "a woman who sold sex". Mattel refashioned the doll into a decent, all-American—although with an exaggerated breast size—version and named it after Barbara, who was then a teenager. Since her introduction in 1959, Barbie has become the universally recognized Queen of the Dolls. Mattel says the average American girl owns ten Barbie dolls, and two are sold somewhere in the world every second. Now more than sixty years old, Barbara—who declines interviews but is said to have loved the doll—may be the most famous unknown figure on the planet. Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken, was introduced in 1961 and named after Barbara’s brother. The real Ken, who died in 1994, was disgusted by the doll that made his family famous. "I don’t want my children to play with it," he said in 1993. Mattel estimates that there are well over 100,000 avid Barbie collectors. Ninety percent are women, at an average age of 40, purchasing more than twenty Barbie dolls each year. Forty-five percent of them spend upwards of $1000 a year. Vintage Barbie dolls from the early years are the most valuable at auction, and while the original Barbie was sold for $3.00 in 1959, a mint boxed Barbie from 1959 sold for $3552.50 on eBay in October 2004. On September 26, 2006, a Barbie doll set a world record at auction of £9,000 sterling (US $17,000) at Christie's in London. The doll was a Barbie in Midnight Red from 1965 and was part of a private collection of 4,000 Barbie dolls being sold by two Dutch women, Ietje Raebel and her daughter Marina. In recent years, Mattel has sold a wide range of Barbie dolls aimed specifically at collectors, including porcelain versions, vintage reproductions, and depictions of Barbie as a range of characters from film and television series such as The Munsters and Star Trek. There are also collector's edition dolls depicting Barbie dolls with a range of different ethnic identities. In 2004, Mattel introduced the Color Tier system for its collector's edition Barbie dolls including pink, silver, gold and platinum, depending on how many of the dolls are produced. Third：The American Gothic American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood's inspiration came from what is now known as the American Gothic House, and his decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter. The figures were modeled by the artist's sister and their dentist. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 19th-century Americana, and the couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man's pitchfork symbolizing hard labor, and the flowers over the woman's right shoulder suggesting domesticity.It is one of the most familiar images in 20th-century American art, and has been widely parodied in American popular culture. In August 1930, Grant Wood, an American painter with European training, was driven around Eldon, Iowa by a young painter from Eldon, John Sharp, looking for inspiration. Wood noticed the Dibble House, a small white house built in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style. Sharp's brother suggested in 1973 that it was on this drive that Wood first sketched the house on the back of an envelope.