The Culture of Modernism in the 1920

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.
  

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