THE “NEW ERA” & THE LOST

GENERATIONJohn Ermer

U.S. History Honors

Miami Beach Senior High

LACC.1112.RH.1.9, SS.912.A.5.1-10, SS.912.A.1-7,

SS.912.G.1-3, SS.912.G.4-3

NEW CULTUREFaster communication and travel together with rise of consumer culture allow Americans to experience life in increasingly similar ways

New values reflect prosperity and complexity of modernity

Increasing diversity of American population, culture

CONSUMERISMEconomic success allows Americans to buy for pleasure, not just need

• Refrigerators, washing machines, electric irons, vacuum cleaners• Wrist watches, cigarettes, cosmetics, mass produced fashion/clothing

Automobile changes life for urban and rural population• City-dwellers escape congested cities for weekend getaways

• Businesses include paid vacations to restore vigor/energy of workers• Isolation of rural life lessened by ease and decreased time of travel• Young people develop social life away from family—youth culture

ADVERTISINGRise of advertising industry causes rise in consumerism

• Use techniques of wartime propaganda to improve advertising• Identify products with particular lifestyles, investing glamour and

prestige• “Buy this product and your life will improve”

• Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows, paints Jesus as super-salesman

New forms of communication aid advertising, expand consumerism• Newspaper chains and wire services• New magazines

• Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, and Time

MULTIMEDIAMovies increase in popularity and influence, “talkies” debut in 1927

• Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer is first talkie to create nation-wide excitement

Fatty Arbuckle scandal produces calls to “clean up” Hollywood• Motion Picture Association created, Will Hays becomes head of MPA

• Hays reviews films for appropriateness, pushes sanctimonious conformity

Radio is newest form of communication, available at home• 1920: Pittsburg’s KDKA becomes first commercial radio station• 1927: National Broadcasting Company (NBC)• Radio was more diverse than film, sometimes controversial, but self

regulated

1920S WOMANHOODWomen of the 20s are from multi-generational lines of educated women

Professional opportunities remain limited to “feminine work”• Most married women did not work outside the home

Behaviorists redefine motherhood as a communal endeavor• Mother’s now less likely to allow children to interfere in married life• Companionate Marriages: women play larger role in husbands’

social lives

Increase in birth control devises/methods, Margaret Sanger

FLAPPERS & POLITICS

Rejection of Victorian ideals of womanly “respectability”• Women smoke, drink, dance, wear seductive clothes/make-up,

and “party”

New models of womanly independence known as “flappers”• Characterized by certain modes of dress, speech, behavior

National Woman’s Party fights for Equal Rights Amendment• Sheppard-Towner Act provides federal funds for prenatal and

child health• Terminated in 1929 over concerns of American Medical Association

EDUCATION & YOUTHEmphasis on expertise and training raises public school enrollment

• College enrollment increases threefold, include modern technical skills

• Idea of adolescence as distinct period of development as result of longer periods of training and education and Freudian psychology

College becomes place for adolescents to participate in organized clubs and athletics as well as develop own social patterns and hobbies

• Primary association with peer groups rather than families

THE LOST GENERATION

Many youths see WWI as a useless conflict, disenchanted• Rejection of consumerism and U.S. itself• Artists and intellectuals reject “business as usual” of 1920s

• Ernest Hemingway’s A Farwell to Arms • F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Lost Generation writers criticize many American values, including: religion, democracy, material success, the medical profession, Republican politics, the modern city, the small town

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

African-American neighborhood of Harlem in NYC becomes symbol of flourishing African-American cultural nationwide

African-American music gains a white audience

African-American writers show pride in their racial heritage

• Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen

“I am a Negro—and beautiful”~ Langston Hughes