CH.+25+-+AMERICAN+CULTURE+DURING+THE+DEPRESSION


 * AMERICAN CULTURE DURING THE DEPRESSION: **

-Social values didn't change much as a result of the depression. -People responded to the Depression by commiting to familiar ideas and goals. -Two sociologists published a study of Muncie, Indiana titled «//Middletown//.» This study analyzed the effects of the depression on this town and concluded that the culture had not changed. -Many people began to look to government for assistance; many blamed corporate moguls, international bankers, «economic royalists,» and others for their distress. -Some people expressed anger and struck out at the economic system but many people blamed themselves. -Many people were so ashamed y their lack of jobs that they refused to leave their homes. -Dale Carnegie wrote a self-help manual titled «//How to Win Friends and Influence People//» which was one of the most popular books of the decade. -Carnegie's message was that the best way for people to get ahead was to fit in and make others feel important. -Harry Emerson Fosdick, a Protestant theologian, preached virtues of positive thinking and individual initiative and attracted large audiences with his radio addresses. -Others believed that the economic problems of their time were the fault of society, not of individuals.
 * DEPRESSION VALUES: **

**ARTISTS AND INTELLECTUALS IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION:** -A group of documentary photographers employed by the federal Farm Security Administration, conveyed the dimensions of the poverty during the depression. -traveled through the South recording the nature of agricultural life. -Men such as Roy Stryker, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothestein, and Ben Shahn and women such as Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lange produced memorable studies of farm families and their surroundings. -Erskine Caldwell's book, [|Tobacco Road], was an expose of poverty in the rural South. -Richard Wright's book, Native Son, revealed the plight of residents of the urban ghetto. -John Steinbeck wrote books about the trials of workers and migrants in California. -John Dos passo wrote a trilogy, U.S.A., which attacked modern [|capitalism]. -The cultural products of the 1930s that attracted the most attention were those that distracted people from the troubles of the depression.

-In the 1930s almost all American families had a radio. -Even those who could not afford a radio would hook up their radios to their car batteries to listen to it. -Within families, the radio often drew parents and children together in the evening to listen to favorite programs. -A popular radio comedy was Amos 'n Andy. -Popular radio adventures were Superman, Dick Tracy and The Lone Ranger. -Radio soap operas were very popular amongst women who were home alone during the day. -Soap operas were complicated stories of romance, intrigue, and betrayal, sometimes with subtle social or political messages, especially in relation to issues of importance to women such as the subordination of women to men. -Radio provided Americans with their first direct access to important public events, and radio news and sports divisions grew rapidly to meet the demand. -Some of the most dramatic moments of the 1930s were a result of radio coverage of celebrated events: the World Series, major college football games, the Academy Awards, politicl conventions, presidential inaugurations. -When the German dirigible the Hindenburg crashed in flames in Lakechurst, New Jersey, in1937 after a transatlantic voyage, it produced an enormous national reaction largely because of the live radio account by a broadcaster overcome with emotion who cried out, as he watched the terrible crash, "Oh the humanity! Oh the humanity!" -The actor/director Orson Welles created another memorable event in 1938 when he broadcasted "The War of the Worlds," which created panic among millions of people who believed for a while that the events it described were real.
 * RADIO**



-Families struggling to pay the rent or buy food could easily decide to forgo an evening at the movies. -In the first years of the Depression, movie attendance did drop significantly but by the 1930s most Americans had resumed their movie-going habits-inpart because movies were a less expensive entertainment option than many other possibilities, and in part because the movies themselves were becoming more appealing. -A few films, such as King Vidor's //Our Daily Bread// and John Ford's adaptation of //The Grapes of Wrath// explored political themes. -The director Frank Capra provided a nuted social message in several of his comedies- //Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington// and //Meet John Doe//- which all celebrated the virtues of the small town and the decency of the common people in contrast to the selfish, corrupt values of the city and the urban rich. -Gangster movies such as //Little Caesar// and //The Public Enemy// portrayed a dark, gritty, violent world with which few Americans were familiar, but their desperate stories were popular nevertheless with those engaged in their own difficult struggles. -The 1930s saw the beginning of Walt Disney's long reign as the champion of animation and children's entertainment. -Other enormously popular films of the 1930s were adaptations of popular novels; //The Wizard of Oz// and //Gone With the Wind,// which takes place during the Civil War. -Hollywood did little to challenge the conventions of popular culture on issues of gender and race.
 * MOVIES IN THE NEW ERA**

-The social and political strains of the Great Depression found voice much more successfully in print than they did on the airwaves or the screen. -Much literature and journalism in the 1930s dealt directly or indirectly with the tremendous disillusionment, and the increasing radicalism, of the time. -Two of the best-selling novels of th decade were romantic sagas set in earlier eras: Margaret Mitchell's //Gone With The Wind// and Hervey Allen's //Anthony Adverse//. -Leading magazines focused more on fashions, stunts, scenery and the arts than on the social conditions of the nature.
 * POPULAR LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM

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