American Gothic Cornflakes - 1960's

Weirdo Video Exclusive Amazing to think that professional people got paid to cook up masterpieces such as Gothic American Cornflakes. But are times really different today, forty years later? The recipe is quite simple, really. Take one part cornflakes, one part current youth culture cliche, throw in a little General Mills dough, then marinade in Madison Avenue saccarine and ... VOILA! the old-fashioned, half-baked Saturday morning scrapple of which almost anybody can reminisce. In this case, the lyric "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land" has been conveniently re-written as "Eat country cornflakes!" The repetition is enough is enough to make any sadistic psychological interrogator proud. One wonders if this is the culmination of the visions of Grant Wood and Woody Guthrie. One wonders ...American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood from 1930. Wood's inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window and a 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 a woman whose identity remains ambiguous; she may either be his spinster daughter, as explained by the artist's sister, or the farmer's wife. The figures were modeled by the artist's dentist and sister. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron mimicking 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 one of the most parodied artworks within American popular culture.