Mass Media and the Jazz Age - Kentucky Department of Education

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Transcript Mass Media and the Jazz Age - Kentucky Department of Education

Mass Media
and the Jazz
Age
http://www.bri.ucla.edu/nha/ishn/hollywoodland-small.jpg
Angela Brown
Chapter 11
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The Mass Media

1920’s everyone knew about
Hollywood (built by prohibitionists –
hoped it would remain dry and free of
bad behavior)

Films, nationwide news gathering,
and the new industry of radio
broadcasting produced a truly
national culture

Print and broadcast methods of
communicating information to large
numbers of people = mass media
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Movies

Beginning in 1890’s,
motion pictures had been
a widely popular mass
medium

Movie making had
become the fourth largest
business in the country

Before 1927, movies were
silent

1927 – first film with
sound introduced The
Jazz Singer starred
Vaudeville star Al Jolson

Audiences loved “talkies”
3
Newspapers

Use of newsprint doubled between
1914-1927.

Many med-sized city papers were 50
pages daily – Sunday editions were
enormous

Thousands went out of business in
U.S. – merged into chains

William Randolph Hearst – San
Francisco Examiner and the New
York Journal gained control of
newspapers in more than 20 cities

Newspapers create a common
culture
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Radio

Pittsburgh KDKA –
nations first radio
station (Frank Conrad
of Westinghouse
Company experimented
in 1920)

1922 - 500 stations on
air

National Broadcasting
Company (NBC) linked
many stations together

Radio became a medium
for the masses
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The Jazz Age


Jazz – features
improvisation, a
process by which
musicians make up
music as they are
playing it rather
than relying
completely on
printed score.
Off-beat rhythm
called syncopation
Jazz
Arrives

Mix of African
American,
ragtime and
blues

1929 2/3 of
radio stations
played Jazz

sum up
character of
decade = Jazz
Age
6
The Jazz
Clubs

http://www.jubileejumpers.de/images/cotton-club.gif

Hottest place
to listen to
Jazz –
Harlem NYC
(Cotton Club,
Connie’s Inn,
Saratoga
Club)
Duke
Ellington –
best
remembered
Jazz
Musicians
Duke
Ellington

1923 band in
NY – job at
Hollywood
Club

played until
death n 1974

greatest genius
as band leader

Ellington’s
music lives on
today –
“Bojangles”,
“Mood”
7
Paintings

Edward Hopper,
Rockwell Kent
showed the nation’s
rougher side

Georgia O’Keefe
painted natural
objects (flowers,
animal bones,
landscapes) died in
1986 – 100 years
old
Other Artists

George Gershwin,
“Rhapsody in
Blue”
8
Literature

Sinclair Lewis – attacked American
society (Main Street, Arrowsmith,
Elmer Gantry)

Refused Pulitzer Prize 1926

Accepted Nobel Prize in Literature in
1930 – first award to go to an
American

Eugene O’Neill – poetic tragedies out
of material of everyday American life

Proved to public that the American
stage could achieve a greatness
rivaling that of Europe
9
The Lost Generation

Lost Generation – group of writers who
believed that they were lost in a greedy,
materialistic world that lacked moral
values

Flocked to Grenwiche Village in
Manhattan NY – remained a cultural
center for bohemians – rebels against
conventional lifestyles

Others became expatriates , or people who
live outside their homeland (Europe)

Most prominent writers of Lost
Generation were John Dos Passos,
Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, E.E.
Cummings, Earnest Hemingway, and F.
Scott Fitzgerald
10
The Lost Generation
Hemingway on the left, Harold Loeb,
Lady Duff Twysden; Hadley,
Don Stewart and Pat Guthrie.

The Sun Also Rises 1926;
This Side of Paradise 1920;
The Great Gatsby 1925 – F.
Scott Fitzgerald – part of
the Lost Generation and
flapper world

After Hemingway made the
term “Lost Generation”
famous, it was taken up by
the flappers
11
The Harlem
Renaissance

For African Americans, the cultural
center of U.S. was NY city’s Harlem –
200,000 by 1930

Home of Harlem Renaissance –
literacy awakening as well as
national center for Jazz

James Weldon Johnson – leading
writer – Executive Secretary of
NAACP- 1927 wrote God’s Trombone –
collection of sermons
12

Alain Locke’s 1925 book – The New
Negro celebrated the blossoming of
African American culture

Leading writers : Zora Neale
Hurston, Dorothy West, Claude
McKay, Countee Cullen

Most studied writers, Langston
Hughes – poet, short story writer,
journalist, playwright through
1960’s (See poem page 619)
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13
Dreams
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