Camelia EliasCamelia Eliassession 8session 8

American StudiesAmerican Studies

fusions

• fusion between commerce and culture • art for art’s sake vs art for trade’s sake• the artist as business man and consumer

Advertising Arts

• In his appreciation of the importance of design the artist is somewhat ahead of the consumer, while the average manufacturer is farther behind the consumer than the consumer is behind the artist. The viewpoint of each is rapidly changing, developing, fusing. More than that, the economic situation is stimulating a unanimity of emphasis, a merger of viewpoints (Norman Bell Geddes, 1933).

Business art

• [B]usiness art signals the assimilation of artistic modernism, with its abstract, experimental aesthetics and earnestly contemporary spirit (if not its metaphysical and moral vision) into the common tastes and temper of the twentieth century. (The Romance of Commerce and Culture, James Sloan Allen, 2002)

Machine Art

• By beauty of shapes I do not mean, as most people would suppose, the beauty of living figures or of pictures, but, to make my point clear, I mean straight lines and circles, and shapes, plane or solid, made from them by lathe, ruler and square. These are not, like other things, beautiful relatively, but always and absolutely. – Plato

Crusader Hotel Ladies (Item 117)

Architectural art - the skyscraper

• the epitome of modern age• link between tradition and modernity

– it was suggestive of the gothic cathedral but it also represented a clear break with that style

– it inspired both awe and fear

• “not a building but a city”• the Chrysler building

paradoxes of modernity

• excitement and alienation

• richness and poverty• the man and the

machine• the assembly line

– “the work moves and the man stands still” (“Everything must move” - Henry Ford)

• Modern Times 1936

Rise of Heroes • Babe Ruth (1895-1948)• epitomizes the

American Dream

Rise of Heroes

• Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974)

• the first man to fly across the Atlantic Ocean non-stop 1927

• believed in eugenics and was a Nazi sympathizer

Rise of Troubles

• increase in Organized crime

• the gangster is the new hero

Prohibition - The 18th Amendment

• A law called the Volstead Act introduced in the USA in January 1920.

• It banned the manufacture, sale and transport of alcohol.

• The federal government had the power to enforce this law.

• It theory the USA became ‘dry’. • It has since become known as the ‘noble

experiment’.

reasons for prohibition

1. it already existed in many states2. moral reasons3. campaigners like the Anti-Saloon League of

America4. the First World War

effects of prohibition

1. Speakeasies2. Moonshine3. Smuggling4. Organised crime

Speakeasies

• Secret saloon bars opened up in cellars and back rooms.

• They had names like the ‘Dizzy Club’ and drinkers had to give a password or knock at the door in code to be let in.

• Speakeasies sold ‘bootleg’ alcohol, smuggled into America from abroad.

• Before Prohibition there were 15,000 bars in New York. By 1926 there were 30,000 speakeasies!

Moonshine

• A spirit made secretly in home made stills.

• Several hundred people a year died from this during the 1920s.

• In 1929 it is estimated that 700 million gallons of beer were produced in American homes.

‘Bootleggers’

• Smugglers called ‘Bootleggers’ made thousands of dollars bringing in illegal alcohol to America.

• America has thousands of miles of frontiers so it proved easy.

• Famous smugglers like William McCoy made fortunes by bringing alcohol from the West Indies and Canada.

Organised Crime

• the enormous profits to be made attracted gangsters who started to take control of many cities.

• they bribed the police, judges and politicians.

• they controlled the speakeasies and the distilleries, and ruthlessly exterminated their rivals.

Al Capone (1899-1947)

• By 1927 he was earning some $60 million a year from bootlegging.

• His gang was like a private army.

• had 700 men under his control.• was responsible for over 500

murders.• On 14th February 1929,

Capone’s men dressed as police officers murdered 7 members of a rival gang. This became known as the ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre.’

• was imprisoned on charges of income tax evasion (1931)

• prohibition ended in 1933

• … so did morality• … so did hypocrisy• … for a while

the 30s on the screen

• gangster films• screwball comedies• musicals• newsreels• Charles Chaplin & The Marx BrothersDeconstruction of identity• Modern Times• Monkey Business Deconstruction of race and class• The Adventures of Captain Spalding in Africa

ideologies

• Marxists– faith in progress, science, and a richer life through the

humanitarian reform of industrialism• New Leftists

– socialists– emphasis on collectivity– critique of nationalism

• Southern Fugitive Agrarians– rejection of progress, science, and industrialism– emphasis on individualism– conservative-reactionary political, social and religious

platforms

modernism vs proletarian literature

Methods• fragmentation vs. realism, naturalism, reportage, and

documentaryForms of manifestation• the Jewish American novel:

– the mythical wandering Jew becomes an emblem of paradoxical states– the new Messiah, Marx

• African-American novel:– becomes “everybody’s protest novel” (James Baldwin), stories of

social and racial oppression• The Irish-American novel:

– combined social class manifestation with rampant CatholicismThemes

– social class struggle, raw aggression, physical and sexual prowess, streetwise values, embittered vitality

Roosevelt vs Hoover

• 32nd president between 1933-1945

• New Deal policy • liberal economic and

social programs• social security system• regulation of Wall Street• bad new for the

communists

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Herbert Hoover

• 31st president between 1929-1933

• Hoovervilles: temporary camps put up to house migrant workers

• in his time poverty and inequality were rampant

• his incompetence gave the communists a strong reason to create socialist platforms, and rely on unions

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)

• born in Chicago to wealthy and progressive parents

• Harvard educated• studied art, architecture and

literature• painted on an amateur basis• participated in WWI – drove

ambulances in France• went from being a communist to

becoming a conservative reactionary in the 50s

U.S.A.

• major epic • bits of films, newspaper stories, popular songs

are stitched together• complex style and experimental writing

clearly modernist • opposed the communist party’s prescriptions

for creative work

aims

• to trace the growth of a modern history from optimism and progressive hopes, through the crisis year of 1919, to the crass materialism of the 20s

• to reach from subjective consciousness to public event

Jean Paul Sartre on Dos Passos: he invents for us the “authorless novel” with “characterless characters”

techniques

• rapid cuttings (inspired by Eisenstein’s cinema)• juxtapositions• expressionism through the transit of mass people through

skyscrapers, and the subways

• through these technical forms, the book registers the move:– from simple to complex capitalism– from a production to a consumption economy– from innocence to modern experience

• avoids the methods of naïve realism or simple documentary

newsreels

• collages of headlines, songs, speeches, newspaper reports

• they show the evolution of events, but also offer an ironic comment on the failure of rhetoric to encounter reality

Camera-Eye

• stream-of consciousness perception essentially derived from Dos Passos’s own point of view

• gaps between rhetorical statement and actual meanings

• presents a vision of disconnection• impressionistic• emotional• subjective

character(s)

• are not individuals but representative types• tales about characters intersect, but for the

most part they run parallely, and collectively representing an ironic portrait of the American dream