Mural on West 44th Street

     On West 44th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues, this mural dominates all attention. It shows a balancing act between clashing cultures, religious values, and the influence of the media. In terms of clashing cultures, the mural represents two different languages: English and Spanish. Certain phrases run throughout graphic displays of women, flowers, cars, and other figures. These displays represent the popular culture of America with bright colors and harsh lines, symbolic of the explosive power behind trends. Popular culture tends, with its bright and loud nature, to undercut the traditional dogmatic relation of religious texts and practices. The women, for instance, are dressed in form-fitting, revealing clothing and have the media-idealized body shape, which displays immodesty and the move from chastity. This depiction portrays some level of women's liberation, but shows that the liberation from the confines of religion has some strings attached. The one woman floating and holding on to an umbrella to guide her through the air is unaware that her umbrella is on fire. The other woman is looking toward "TRUTH" but is held in place by the words "MY SIN" which hang above her, showing that sins committed due to a certain lifestyle will keep people from discovering the truth about life.
     These popular culture themes are also intertwined with some American ideals that helped to shape the country. The phrases that run through the mural such as "Journey to Other Lands" and "Call to Adventure" seem to point to the origins of America as a destination for Europeans to establish new lives under new terms in the new world. These simple phrases are at the core of American values and represent the frontier that America provided.
     The culture clash then becomes more apparent when we notice phrases like "New York Invasion," "El Amor," and "El Espejo del Alma." The "New York Invasion" phrase can point to the fear that has spanned across generations at the thought of a foreign culture displacing itself from its home country and coming to America through resources like Ellis Island. This fear was present when the Irish came, the Italians, the Japanese, and even today with the Mexicans and the refugees from the Middle East. This shows the tension between the desire to adhere to American values of acceptance and freedom, while also maintaining the balance of cultures with which citizens have grown comfortable. Other cultures bring different religions, different customs and practices, different food and traditions, and different languages which threaten the status quo. The language and religion invasions are apparent when the mural integrates the two with phrases like "El Amor" and "El Espejo del Alma," which translate to "love" and "the mirror to the soul" respectively. These two concepts are innately religious, because as Reinhold Niebuhr, a mid-20th century philosopher, explains, love is pure religious idealism; and as Joshua Liebman, a mid-20th century author for the harmonial tradition, explains, it is important to have a grasp on one's self and to fortify one's soul through psychoanalysis, thereby acknowledging that our souls are mirror to God (Niebuhr 263) (Liebman 167).
     This mural therefore shows the intricacies and complexities of what it means to be an American. It shows the subtle presence but enormous influence of religion on daily life. Using just paint on a brick wall, the artists were able to identify so many core American values such as education, religion, human rights, cultural diversity, landscape, and popular culture, all while rooting the themes in the values which gave America its identity.