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


1
The Culture of Modernism in the
1920sandReactions to Modernism
2
Postwar Prosperity
  • Scientific and technical innovations caused the
    1920s 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.

Consumerism led to advances in advertising
techniques.
3
Postwar Prosperity
  • 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.

4
Postwar Prosperity
  • 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.

5
The Automobile and American Culture
  • 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.

6
Mass Culture The Movies
  • 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.

7
Mass Culture The Movies
  • 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.

8
Mass Culture The Movies
  • 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.

9
Mass Culture The Movies
  • Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow- two sex symbols
    and film icons of the Jazz Age.

10
Mass Culture Radio
  • 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
    ATT, 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.

11
Mass Culture Music and the Music Industry
  • 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.

12
Literature and Poetry in the Jazz Age The Harlem
Renaissance
  • 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."

13
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. Beside
s, They'll see how beautiful I am And be
ashamed,-- I, too, am America.
14
Literature and Poetry in the Jazz Age The Lost
Generation
  • 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 Hemmingways 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.

15
The New Woman and the New Morality
  • 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."

Actress Louise Brooks, an icon of flapper
glamour.
16
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
20s.
17
The New Woman and the New Morality
  • 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.

18
Prohibition, "A Noble Experiment"
  • 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.

Detroit police discover a clandestine still.
19
Nativism and Immigration Restrictions
  • 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.

Ellis Island, 1920
20
Nativism and Immigration Restrictions
  • The 1921 Immigration Act
  • limited new arrivals to 350,000 and
  • set caps for European countries- the 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.)

21
The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
  • 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.

22
The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
  • 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.

23
The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
  • 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.
  • In response to growing disillusionment and
    defection by its members, the KKK staged a march
    down Pennsylvania Avenue in August 1928.

24
Religious Fundamentalism
  • 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.

Former baseball player and famous revivalist
Billy Sunday delivered dynamic and impassioned
sermons nationwide.
25
Religious Fundamentalism
  • 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

Evangelist and faith healer Aimee Semple
McPherson used showmanship to engage her
congregations.
26
The Scopes Trial
  • 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 tailor-made 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.

Hunters Civic Biology- the text Scopes students
saw.
27
The Scopes Trial
  • 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.

28
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29
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