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The Jazz Age. Section 4 A New Mass Culture. Art and Literature. New ideas emerge about what it is to be modern. M.I. The automobile was only the beginning of changes in everyday life. Radio, movies, sports and the arts and literature also contributed to the change into modern society.
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The Jazz Age Section 4 A New Mass Culture
Art and Literature • New ideas emerge about what it is to be modern
M.I. • The automobile was only the beginning of changes in everyday life. Radio, movies, sports and the arts and literature also contributed to the change into modern society.
Americans Enjoy More Leisure Time • In the country – worked from dawn to dusk. Sometimes played games, read or sang. • Baseball • Did not have time or money for leisure • In the city – 55 hours /week 1910 • 45 hours/week in 1930 – • 5 days a week with salaries and wages going up
Americans Flock to the Movies • 5 Studios in Hollywood established monopolies that controlled the production, distribution and exhibition of movies • MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, RKO, 20th Century Fox • 3 Little studios Universal, United Artists, Columbia • Silent pictures – had been ideal – immigrants- themes reach all geographic areas • No sound yet in movies – a piano player played along with the picture
Mary Pickford Rudolph Valentino Douglas Fairbanks
Clara Bow Charlie Chaplin Gloria Swanson
Charlie Chaplin- most popular silent film star • The Little Tramp – hobo, dreamer, optimist • Rudolph Valentino – romantic lead- the sheik • 1st “talkie” – The Jazz Singer- 1927
The Radio and Phonograph Break Barriers • Phonograph – record player – helped to standardize culture • Radio invented by Marconi in 1890’s- mostly military • One of the first broadcasts – KDKA in Pittsburgh • Played music, educational lectures, religious sermons, the weather, sporting events and news. • Played popular music such as “Yes, We Have No Bananas” • The Eveready Hour – various types of entertainment • Amos n Andy
Mass Media • Radio, movies, newspapers and magazines • Broke down provincialism and helped to unify the nation.
An Age of Heroes • More leisure time and spending money • The 1920s become the Golden Age of Sports
Baseball home run king. Bambino Sultan of Swat Babe Ruth
College Football Red Grange- The Galloping Ghost
Why so popular? • Sportswriters • Post WWI the US needed heroes. Many people were disillusioned with the world.
Charles Lindbergh • Airlines industry in its infancy • Airplanes not popular yet • Pilots – romantic daredevils who risk death • May 1927 - Lindbergh flew from Long Island, NY to Paris, France. • Solo and non-stop • Spirit of St. Louis
Women Assume New Roles • Before 1920s women were expected to center their life around their home and family.
Women in the 1920’s • “Bobbed” hair • Flesh colored silk stockings • Youthful appearance • Flappers – smoked, drank and dressed in revealing clothes • Others worked, salesclerks, secretaries or telephone operators • Assumed to have the same political and social rights as a man
Modernism in Art and Literature • Before 1920 people wrote about progress and faith in human potential. Progressives • Sigmund Freud – psychologist – much of human behavior driven by unconscious desires- not logic or rational thought • To live in society, people learn to control these feelings. Too much suppression leads to physical illness
Modern Challenges Tradition • Artists, writers and intellectuals flock to Greenwich Village in NYC and also the South Side of Chicago • Bohemian – artistic and unconventional
Modern American Art John Marin
Poets and Writers • Carl Sandburg – Chicago poet
MASSES AMONG the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and red crag and was amazed;On the beach where the long push under the endless tide maneuvers, I stood silent;Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant over the horizon's grass, I was full of thoughts.Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers, mothers lifting their children--these all I touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them.And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the darkness of night--and all broken, humble ruins of nations.
Edna St. Vincent Millay • Ashes of Life Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike; Eat I must, and sleep I will,--and would that night were here!But ah!--to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike! Would that it were day again!--with twilight near! Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do; This or that or what you will is all the same to me;But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,-- There's little use in anything as far as I can see. Love has gone and left me,--and the neighbors knock and borrow, And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,--And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow There's this little street and this little house.
Gertrude Stein By Picasso!
Ezra Pound AN IMMORALITY Sing we for love and idleness, Naught else is worth the having. Though I have been in many a land, There is naught else in living. And I would rather have my sweet, Though rose-leaves die of grieving, Than do high deeds in Hungary To pass all men's believing. Ezra Pound
