Zoot Suit Yokum

Mr. Licon was kind enough to loan me a fabulous book, The Zoot Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annhiliation by Mauricio Mazon, a professor of history at USC. This book has a collection of essays exploring various aspects of the Zoot Suit culture and its place in American life at the time of the Zoot Suit riots. It also has a comic strip about "Zoot Suit Yokum." When Valdez had one character say, "Well, I ain't Zoot Suit Yokum," in Act I, Scene 6, where the boys meet their lawyer, George Shearer, the allusion to Zoot Suit Yokum went right over my head. I didn't realize that "Zoot Suit Yokum" was a real cartoon character in a popular newspaper comic strip written by Al Capp. So, when he says, "I ain't Zoot Suit Yokum," it's kind of like he's saying, "Well, I ain't Batman," or something like that. I have made copies of the comic strip available for you to read in class.

To quote some interesting sections of Mazon's essay, "The Zoot Suit Yokum Conspiracy," "One of the first to percive the interchangeability between fantasy and reality in the existence of the zoot suiters was the famed and controversial cartoonist Al Capp. It may be . . . . that Capp (more than any other individual or institution) was responsible for the American public to the perils of zoot-suiterism." The comic strip L'il Abner, in which the character Zoot Suit Yokum appeared was estimated to reach an audience of over 50 million every single day of the year. So, thanks to Capp, the Zoot Suit character was one that was well-known throughout the United States during World War II.

According to Mazon, the cartoon artist Capp was preoccupied with death, and had themes of homicide running throughout his cartoons. Mazon posits that perhaps these themes of death running throughout the L'il Abner strip may have subconsciously influenced public attitudes towaards the zoot-suiters, and provided a psychological back drop in which the Zoot Suit Riots could occur.

One more thing to consider as we think about the complex world of 1940s Los Angeles, and the atmosphere in which the Zoot Suit Riots occurred.

Congratulations to all of the interesting performances of Zoot Suit in class yesterday-- please don't forget to tell me on your blog sites your reflections upon your performance. What did you like the best about your groups performance? What did you feel needed greater attention, or could have been improved? How did memorizing, staging and performing one scene help you come to a greater appreciation of Valdez's play as a whole?