Transcript The Culture of Modernism in the 1920’s and Reactions to

The Culture of
Modernism in the 1920’s
and
Reactions to Modernism
Postwar Prosperity
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Consumerism led to advances in
advertising techniques.
Scientific and technical innovations
caused the 1920’s known as the
"Second Industrial Revolution."
Electricity became widespread
Industrial production became more
efficient
Mass produced goods became available
at attainable prices.
Communication innovations
contributed to the homogenization of
ideas that led to national popular
culture
Americans began using credit, which
further fueled consumerism.
Postwar Prosperity
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The cycle that created the business boom in the 1920's:
 standardized mass production led to
 more efficient machines, which led to
 higher production and wages, which led to
 increased demand for consumer goods,
 which perpetuated more standardized mass production.
Postwar Prosperity
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Industries began to employ automated machinery and "scientific management" to
increase efficiency.
The reorganization of work to maximize production resulted in more spare time and
disposable income for average workers.
Scientific management practices also led to a decline in the importance of skill and
craftsmanship in favor of discipline and subordination.
The Automobile and American
Culture
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The explosive growth of the
automobile industry revolutionized
American life.
Henry Ford's innovative production
techniques made cars affordable for
average Americans and set new
standards for industry.
By the end of the decade, there were
enough cars on the road for every one
in five persons.
Related industries sprang up including
service facilities, filling stations, and
motels.
Mass Culture: The Movies
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With mass communication came the
parallel ascendancy of consumer
culture and the cult of celebrity.
A new culture of youth and celebrity
emerged with the popularity of the
movies.
Films celebrated themes like
consumerism, romance, exotic locales,
and new fashions.
Young people emulated the glamorous
Hollywood elite just as they do today,
raising much concern among parents.
Mass Culture: The Movies
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Although it was not the first film to incorporate an element of sound, the 1927 Warner
Brothers film The Jazz Singer is widely credited with heralding in the age of "talkies"
and the end of the silent film era.
The star Al Jolson appears in blackface in the film.
Mass Culture: The Movies
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Mary Pickford, known as "America's
Sweetheart" in the 1910's and 1920's
appears in an advertisement for beauty
cream.
Pickford embodied the movie icon as a
marketing tool in the new era of mass
culture and consumption.
Mass Culture: The Movies
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Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow- two sex symbols and film icons of the Jazz Age.
Mass Culture: Radio
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After war-time restrictions on civilian
radio use were lifted, amateurs began
experimenting with broadcasting.
After years of limited broadcasts by
amateurs and experimental stations,
large corporations such as AT&T,
Westinghouse and GE began to
recognize the profit potential in radio.
As the popularity of radio expanded,
advertisers began sponsoring radio
shows to appeal to consumers.
By the end of the decade, 40% of
homes had radio receivers.
Mass Culture: Music and the Music
Industry
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Although the phonograph first became
available at the turn of the century, the
device became more popular as sturdy
disc recordings replaced delicate wax
cylinders during World War I.
As America developed mass culture
through film, advertising, and radio,
previously isolated musical styles
blended to produce lively and often
rebellious radio hits.
Record companies profited as
Americans snapped up dance records
and new, exciting types of music.
Literature and Poetry in the Jazz
Age: The Harlem Renaissance
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In the wake of the black exodus from
the South, known as the Great
Migration, the Harlem section of New
York City became home to a number
of African American intellectuals,
artists, and writers.
The seminal magazine feature "Harlem:
Mecca for the New Negro" in Survey
Graphic summarized the cultural
phenomena this way:
"If The Survey reads the signs
aright, such a dramatic flowering
of a new racespirit is taking place
close at home among American
Negroes, and the stage of that new
episode is Harlem."
Literature and Poetry in the Jazz
Age: The Harlem Renaissance
“Epilogue” by Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll sit at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed,-I, too, am America.
Literature and Poetry in the Jazz
Age: The Lost Generation
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F. Scott Fitzgerald often wrote critically
about the illusions of wealth and fame,
while at the same time partaking in the
excesses of celebrity and striving for
immortality in literature. Fitzgerald
succumbed to alcoholism and his wife
to mental illness after years behind the
facade of glamour and celebrity.
Ernest Hemmingway’s dense,
understated writing style became a
model for generations of writers. He
wrote for "the lost generation," of
young men who came of age in the
trenches of World War I and were
unable to settle back into the norms of
traditional society.
The New Woman and the New
Morality
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Actress Louise Brooks, an icon of flapper
glamour.
The image of the flapper and the "new
woman," who bobbed her hair, wore
make-up, danced to jazz music, and
smoked cigarettes is synonymous with
the 1920's.
The emerging advertising industry and
mass media promoted more sexualized
images of women, thus, giving license
for young women to shed some of the
old sexual mores that were perceived as
"Victorian."
The New Woman and the New
Morality
Changes in the feminine ideal: The well-bred Gibson girl of the turn of the
century and the decidedly more dangerous flapper of the Roaring 20’s.
The New Woman and the New
Morality
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In 1920, the 19th Amendment gave
women the right to vote.
The notable birth control activist
Margaret Sanger campaigned across the
country to educate women about
family planning, remove the social
stigma attached to contraceptives, and
make safe birth control accessible to
every class of women.
Sanger began her campaign for birth
control after spending years as a nurse
in poor communities.
Prohibition, "A Noble Experiment"
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Detroit police discover a clandestine still.
Along with the social changes of the
interwar era came reactions to those
trends.
Prohibition went into effect in January
1920 as a result of decades of
campaigning by temperance groups,
rural Protestants, and some
progressives who felt that alcohol
represented a scourge on family life
and a catalyst to crime.
Although the 18th Amendment and the
Volstead Act outlawed the sale,
transport, and consumption of
intoxicating beverages, many otherwise
law-abiding Americans defied the
regulations.
The black market for alcohol was a
boon for organized crime.
Nativism and Immigration
Restrictions
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Ellis Island, 1920
As cities underwent explosive growth,
rural populations and traditionalists
sometimes felt threatened by foreign
cultures and modernism.
As Catholic and Jewish immigrants
from southern and eastern Europe
began to outnumber those from
northern and western Europe, nativist
sentiments inflamed by the war
coalesced into a "100% American"
movement fueled by pseudo-scientific
theories of race.
Nativism and Immigration
Restrictions
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The 1921 Immigration Act:
 limited new arrivals to 350,000
and
 set caps for European countriesthe maximum number of
immigrants from a given country
could not exceed 3 percent of the
number of its natives already in the
United States as counted by the
1910 census.
The 1924, the Johnson-Reed
Immigration Act:
further restricted immigration by
cutting the maximum total of
immigrants to 164,000 and
changed the caps to 2 percent
from a given country, as counted
by the 1890 census (when even
fewer natives from these countries
resided in the U.S.)
The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
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One of the most disturbing
manifestations of nativist sentiment in
the United States in the 1920's was the
brief resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.
Originated after the Civil War as an
instrument of white terror against the
newly freed slaves, the Klan's influence
and membership faded by the 1870's.
In the 1920's, the new Klan added
advocacy of "100% Americanism" to
its agenda, which engendered hatred of
Jews, Catholics, foreign born citizens,
and communists in addition to African
Americans.
The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
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The Klan's purported "law and order
platform" made it appealing to those
who rejected modernism and saw the
organization as a champion of
patriotism, female purity, temperance
and Christian morality.
In many circumstances, the Klan
represented itself as an opportunity for
people to socialize feel connected by
ritualized gatherings.
In some states like Texas and Indiana,
Klan members were influential in
politics and law enforcement.
The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
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The membership of the KKK rapidly
declined from around 3 million in 1925
to several hundred thousand in the late
1920's, due in part to the implication of
its leaders in various scandals.
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In response to growing disillusionment
and defection by its members, the
KKK staged a march down
Pennsylvania Avenue in August 1928.
Religious Fundamentalism
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Former baseball player and famous revivalist Billy
Sunday delivered dynamic and impassioned
sermons nationwide.
Nostalgia for the past in reaction
changing social mores characterized the
growing influence of religious
fundamentalism in the Jazz Age.
Conservative Christians struggled to
maintain their beliefs and the beliefs of
their children in the face of the culture
of consumerism, changing gender
roles, the teaching of evolution, and the
influence of mass media.
Fundamentalism centers on belief in
the literal truth of the Bible and claims
adherents in all denominations of
Christianity.
Religious Fundamentalism
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Evangelist and faith healer Aimee
Semple McPherson used
showmanship to engage her
congregations.
The tension between liberal and
fundamentalist Christians, often within
the same congregation, was
symptomatic of the larger struggle
between modernists and those who
longed to "get back to basics" in
interwar America.
The division between these groups
would become a national
preoccupation with the drama of the
Scopes Trial in 1925
The Scopes Trial
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Hunter’s Civic Biology- the text Scopes’
students saw.
The Scopes Trial provides the most
dramatic illustration of the cultural
tension of the Jazz Age, pitteing
secularists and modernists against
traditionalists and fundamentalists in a
carnival atmosphere that was tailormade for the tabloids and new mass
media.
The 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" in
Dayton, Tennessee was not a
spontaneous occurrence.
In response to legislation outlawing
the teaching of evolution, the ACLU
offered to finance the defense of any
teacher willing to challenge the law. 25
year old biology teacher John Scopes
agreed to participate after some urging
by local townspeople.
The Scopes Trial
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The trial was not about whether or
not Scopes was guilty, nor was it
about the $100 penalty he faced.
Scopes’ agnostic lawyer Clarence
Darrow wanted to appeal the case
the to the Supreme Court and have
the law declared unconstitutional.
Populist and former presidential
candidate William Jennings Bryan
was motivated by a need to defend
Christianity and the integrity of the
fundamentalist cause.
Although, as expected, Bryan won
the legal case, Darrow triumphed
in the court of public opinion.
Multimedia Citations
Slide 2: http://www.authentichistory.com/images/1920s/1920s_gen/1920s_postcard_02.html
Slide 3: http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture15.html
Slide 4: http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture15.html
Slide 5: http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/showroom/1908/boy.jpg
Slide 6: http://www.alyon.org/generale/theatre/cinema/affiches_cinema/t/the_pr-the_ta/the_son_of_the_sheik(1).jpg
Slide 7: http://history.acusd.edu/gen/Filmnotes/jazzsingernotes.html,
Slide 8: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pickford/gallery/g_04.html
Slide 9: http://daily.greencine.com/archives/rudolph-valentino.jpg, http://www.clarabow.net/picturepage/gallery/7/01.JPG
Slide 10: http://www.zeltser.com/radio-history/radio-broadcast-large.jpg
Slide 11:, http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/african/2000/1926_01b.jpg,
Slide 12: http://www.riverwalk.org/images/hughes.jpg
Slide 13: http://www.newsday.com/media/photo/2005-02/16449932.JPG, http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/hemingway/indexparis.htm
Slide 14: http://www.moviemaidens.com/profile.asp?i=1016&e=1&ct=1&r=1&f=Louise&l=Brooks
Slide 15: http://employees.oneonta.edu/angellkg/4-27.jpg, http://www.silentladies.com/Dietrich/Dietrich03.jpg
Slide 16: http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/rbcmisc/awh/awh0004/0004001u.gif
Slide 17: http://bbsnews.net/bbsn_photos/topics/Timeless_Events/detroit_police_prohibition_one.jpg
Slide 18: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4062605
Slide 19: http://www.historycentral.com/postwar/immig.jpg
Slide 20: http://www.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/Klan.html
Slide 21: http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture16.html
Slide 22: http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture16.html
Slide 23: http://www.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/Klan.html
Slide 24: tp://www.sermonindex.net/modules/myalbum/photos/158.jpg,
Slide 25: http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/scandals/aimee_older.jpeg
Slide 26: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/SCOP192.GIF
Slide 27: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes.htm
Slide 28: http://www.historyteacher.net/AHAP/AHAPTopicSheets.htm,
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