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Sample TOK Exhibition One Object

The song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday used vivid imagery and metaphor like 'strange fruit' to protest racism and promote civil rights in America. While subtext can sometimes cause confusion, this song showed subtext can help communicate complex ideas and emotions more powerfully than literal words alone.

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yuliaposition
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259 views1 page

Sample TOK Exhibition One Object

The song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday used vivid imagery and metaphor like 'strange fruit' to protest racism and promote civil rights in America. While subtext can sometimes cause confusion, this song showed subtext can help communicate complex ideas and emotions more powerfully than literal words alone.

Uploaded by

yuliaposition
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

TOK Exhibition Prompt 10: What challenges are raised by the dissemination

and/or communication of knowledge?

Object

The song Strange Fruit was sung by Billie Holiday in 1939. It is often seen to use vivid
imagery to protest against the treatment of black people in America and to have a subtext
about promoting civil rights. This can be seen to be heavily insinuated throughout the song,
especially with the use of “strange fruit” as a gruesome metaphor for the lynching of black
people.

This song makes us think about whether there are things that only some people see or
understand because of their culture, personal experiences, etc. I do think that subtext and
connotation are sometimes interpreted very differently by different groups and the group that
a person belongs to impacts on the meaning and on what is being communicated. For
example, Strange Fruit was sung by Billie Holiday, a black artist. The fact that this subtext
was being expressed by a black artist means that the singer was themselves part of a group
of people had been marginalised for so long, which makes the song lyrics even more
powerful and emotional.

The use of metaphor, connotation and subtext in this song helps the song communicate
complex emotions and themes about racism and civil rights. In this way, this song is a helpful
addition to this exhibition because it provides a good contrast to the dictionary. The
dictionary highlighted that subtext and connotation can sometimes cause confusion because
they add a layer of interpretation to the literal meaning of language. But this song shows that
sometimes subtext and connotation can actually help communicate complex ideas and
emotions rather than always being a challenge to the communication of knowledge. Thinking
about this song, I have realised that connotations and subtext don’t always have to be
challenging or misleading. If the person is trying to evoke a powerful meaning or emotion,
often words that have many layered meanings deliver a more powerful impact.

Word count: 314

Works cited
Lynskey, D. 2011. ‘Strange Fruit: the first great protest song’, The Guardian, accessed online
at [Link]

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