Objectives… 1.Explain how movies & other vehicles of mass culture created a new national community. 2.Describe how the new media of communication reshaped American culture in the 1920s.

 “Roaring Twenties” captured the explosion of sound and images in the era.  Connects Americans to the new culture of consumption.  Celebrity emerges and redefines “normal” and the ideal of “the good life” for all of America.

A belief or value that is common to members of a particular culture. Social norms are often referred to as “the way we do things around here” and are the standards for appropriate social behaviors. The established norms within a society maybe reflected in dress, language and social habits culture.

 Nickelodeons  Industry moves to Hollywood  Big studios produce longer, more expensive feature films  Founded and controlled by European immigrants  The studio system based on the industrial principles  Combined production, distribution, and exhibition

 New themes  Musicals  Gangster films  Comedies  Wall Street Investment

 The cult of celebrity  Studio publicity, fan magazines, & gossip columns  Mansions, cars, parties, and escapades  “liberated” social themes celebrating youth, athleticism, and consumption  Influenced dress, hairstyle, speech, and romance

Threat to traditional sexual morality Attacked Hollywood’s permissiveness Censorship boards grow Hollywood counters

President of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America Midwestern Republican with Protestant respectability What did Will Hays say about movies and the consumer culture?

 Hays understood the relationship between Hollywood and the growth of consumerism.  “Hollywood is the stimulant to trade” Hollywood’s Effect

Radio Broadcasting

 November 1920 Presidential election returns  KDKA begins nightly broadcasts  Sale of cheap WWI radios  By 1923, 600 stations and 600,000 radios sold  Live music, college lectures, church services, and news and weather reports  Links rural America with the larger national community of consumption.

 Radio equipment manufacturers  Newspapers  Department stores  State universities  Cities  Ethnic societies  Labor unions  Churches

 By the end of the 20s, commercial, or toll, broadcasting emerges  GE  Westinghouse  RCA (Radio Corporation of America)  AT&T (American Telephone & Telegraph)  Advertisers pay, consumers listen  AT&T leases its lines to create radio networks  1926 NBC (National Broadcasting Co.)  1928 CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System)

 What was America listening to on the radio?  Variety shows hosted by vaudeville comedians  “Blackface” minstrel entertainment of The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show (1928)  American music ▪ C&W, blues, & jazz  Baseball & college football  1930 = 600 stations = 12 m homes (40%)

 Tabloid  NY Daily News  Convenient to read  Photos & illustrations  Terse, lively style emphasizing sex, scandal & sports

 Spread across US to Chicago, Denver, & LA  Audience of millions  Poorly educated  Working-class, city dwellers  1 st or 2 nd generation immigrants  Gossip column  Walter Winchell  Secret lives of famous people

 Chains  Hearst, Gannett, & Scripps-Howard  1930, Hearst controls 14%  1 in 4 Sunday papers is owned by Hearst  Standardization contributes to the growth of the national consumer community

 Reflects and encourages growing importance of consumerism  Follows the success of the CPI  Total ad volume jumps $1.4 billion in 1919 to $3 billion in 1929  Scientific approach using market research and language of psychology  Focus becomes the needs, desires and anxieties of consumer vs. quality of the product

 Advertising celebrated consumption as a positive good!  Therapeutic  Physical  Psychic  Emotional well-being  Other popular strategies  Appeals to nature, medical authority or personal freedom

 Convenient, permanently grooved disc recordings transformed the popular music business and became a major source of music in the home.  Dance crazes like the Charleston  1921 = 200 companies = 2 million records produced = annual sales over $100 million  Radio competes for listeners  Radio discovers regional and ethnic markets

 Americans begin to hear musical styles and performers who were previously isolated from the national limelight.  The combo of records and radio started an extraordinary cross-fertilization of American musical styles that continues today.

 Athletes join movie stars in defining the new culture of celebrity.  Rich, famous, glamorous, and sometimes rebellious  Sports enter a new corporate phase  Biggest was baseball  “Black Sox” scandal  Hero of baseball is Babe Ruth ▪ 1920 Boston Red Sox trade him to NY Yankees ▪ “The Sultan of Swat”

Bigger than life on and off the field Product endorsement 1927 = 60 HRs 1930 = $80, salary

 1922 Supreme Court rules in favor of owners in anti-trust lawsuit giving them absolute control over their players.  1890s’ “gentleman’s agreement” among owners excludes African Americans from the major leagues.

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 First to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean  NY to Paris in 33 ½ hours  A magnetic compass & air speed indicator to guide  100,000 greet him in Paris

 1932 solo flight across Atlantic  1937 disappears trying to fly around world

Considered the greatest amateur golfer of modern times.

 1924 – Ill v. Mich: First 5 carries/ 5 TDs  First sport figure with manager

 Olympic Swimmer & Water Polo Player  5 gold medals  1 bronze (Polo)

 Between he stars in 12 Tarzan films

 Enduring image of the flapper  Young, sexual, bobbed hair, heavy make-up, and short skirt  Loved dancing to jazz, smoking cigarettes, and drinking bootleg liquor

 The flapper was neither as new nor as popular as the image suggests  Existed in subcultures on the fringe of society ▪ Bohemian – person with artistic or literary interests who disregards conventional standards of behavior.  1920s activities become “norm” for growing middle-class, whites  College campuses spread the behaviors quickly

 WWI soldiers exposed to sex education  New psychological and social theories stress the positive, central role of sex in human experience, i.e., Sigmund Freud  Margaret Sanger educates women about birth control  Advertisers use sex appeal to sell products

 Middle-class women using contraception and describing intimate relations in positive terms.  Women born after 1900, twice as likely to have premarital sex as those born before  By 1920s, male and female “morals” were becoming more alike.