Presentation Transcript

1. Impact of the Great Depression on the Arts

   Autumn Pilgreen Baine Rodgers YasmeneOdeh
2. While the Great Depression was a time of tremendous poverty and suffering, it was also a period in which the arts flourished.
3. PHOTOGRAPHY
4. Photography Dorothea Lange Walker Evans Russell Lee Berenice Abbott Arthur Rothstein Ben Shahn John Vachon Marion Post Wolcott Russell Lee Jack Delano John Collier, Jr. Carl Mydans Gordon Parks
5. Photography hired by the government to document farmers and their living conditions and to capture the reality of the spirit of the American life helped to raise a feeling of sympathy encouraged other people to help when and where they could All of the photographers instructions were simply to snap photos of any and all things they saw Newspapers across the nation ran photographs from the FSA along with stories that talked about the causes of dust storms and plight of migrant farm workers. Influential magazines of the time like Life, Look, and Survey Graphic published the photographs. Galleries like the Photo League in New York mounted shows of FSA work.
6. “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange Florence Owens Thompson, age 32, a mother of seven children, in Nipomo, California, March 1936
7. MOVIES
8. Movies The kinds of movies that Hollywood produced during the depression underwent sharp changes as the public mood shifted. The gangster pictures and sexually suggestive comedies provoked outrage and threats of boycotts from many Protestant and Catholic religious groups. Threatened by a realistic threat of boycotts, the producers decided to enforce the production code and placed one of their employees, Joseph I. Breen, in charge. The code prohibited nudity, profanity, white slavery, miscegenation, "excessive and lustful kissing," and "scenes of passion" . It also forbade Hollywood from glorifying crime or adultery. To enforce the code, the Breen Office was empowered to grant or withhold a seal of approval, and without a seal, a movie could not be played in the major theater chains.
9. Movies - Hollywood Hollywood was hit hard by the Depression, but managed to recoup its profits through a variety of methods. One favorite way of attracting patrons was to offer sweepstakes and drawings at the theater for prize money. At an average price of $.27 a ticket, movies offered a relatively inexpensive way to vacation from reality. Always popular, this sort of diversion was especially sought-after during the Great Depression. 
10. RADIO
11. Radio Almost every American family had a radio in the 1930’s. The radio was often a community experience. People gathered together, especially in poor urban neighborhoods, to listen to sporting events or concerts. The radio occasionally carried socially and politically provocative programs, but the staple of broadcasting was escapism.  Escapism is the habitual diversion of the mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from reality or routine. Some examples of radio programs include: Comedies, such as Amos ‘n Andy – it was a humorous and demeaning picture of urban African Americans. Adventures, such as Superman, Dick Tracy, and The Lone Ranger; and other entertainment programs.
12. Radio Radio brought a new kind of comedy to a large audience. It was originally limited to vaudeville or ethic theaters. Jack Benny, George Burns, and Gracie Allen. Soap Operas were enormously popular in the 1930’s because the audience consisted of women who were stay at home mothers and were alone in the house during the day. Soap Operas also communicated issues of importance to women with hidden meanings, like the subordination of women to men.
13. Radio Radio spawned an enormous number of public performances. Comedians and actors started broadcasting live in front of audiences in theaters and studios. Band concerts performed in classical music and dance halls so jazz and swing bands began to achieve broad popularity.
14. Radio Important public events and catastrophes were covered over the radio, allowing more of the public to have an understanding of what was going on in the world. Even major college football games, Academy Awards, and World Series were broadcasted over the radio. When the German dirigible the Hindenburg crashed in flames in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937 after a transatlantic voyage, it produced an enormous national reaction.
15. LITERATURE
16. Literature Literary work of the 1930s focused on the rejection of the notion of progress and a desire to return to an earlier age of purity and simplicity. John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, glorified a simple, rural way of life. Jack Conroy’s The Disinherited, a 1933 chronicle of an average industrial worker’s life in the Depression Era, conveyed disillusionment and cynicism. William Faulkner also emerged as an important American writer, examining southern life in novels such as A Light in August, published in 1932, and Absalom! Absalom!, published in 1936.
17. Literature Disillusioned with capitalism, many intellectuals and writers – such as Langston Hughes, John Dos Passos, and Ernest Hemingway – formed allegiances, direct and indirect, to the Communist Party Along with other intellectuals, these writers joined the Popular Front a political group active in aiding the leftist forces in the Spanish Civil War against fascist powers. Hemingway’s 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, portrays the life of an American soldier fighting in the Spanish Civil War against a fascist dictatorship.
18. Literature For writers such as Edmund Wilson, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, Erskine Caldwell, Richard Wright, and James Agee, fiction seemed inadequate in describing the disastrous effects of the Great Depression on political institutions, the natural environment, and human lives. So they joined with photographers and turned to journalism, as if their eyewitness portraits of desolate factories and American slums, interviews with migrant workers and tenant farmers, and ever-present cameras could capture the “feel” and the essential truth of the Great Depression. Their yearning to record the pure, unadorned facts of daily existence, to listen to what Americans said about their plight, and to refrain from abstract theories or artistic embellishment was reflected in the titles of some of the books they wrote about their travels throughout the country: Wilson’s The American Jitters (1932) Anderson’s Puzzled America (1935) Nathan Asch’s The Road—In Search of America (1937) Caldwell’s You Have Seen Their Faces (1937) Wright’s Twelve Million Black Voices (1941).
19. The Great Depression by Adam Sears Deep sorrow filled the americans heart Everyone had to do their part People were trading and selling their things Raving about what life would bring Even the little ones felt the pain Souls did suffer in heat, cold, and rain Sad to say theat the days filled with grief In hopes that the Depression sooned would cease On Sunday was a day of rest, everyone would gather and thank God they were blessed Not in ways that we might think, but in everyday living that life did bring