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1920s were greatly shaped by the introduction of mass media and the Jazz Age New and improved methods of film, print, and broadcasting created the birth of mass media, communication with large audiences. Film and radio broadcasting became more popular during the era. Between 1910 to 1930 the number of movie theaters rose from 5,000 to 22,500. Moviemaking became the fourth largest business in the country by 1929. Hollywood became moviemaking capital of America. Early movies were silent, The Jazz Singer becomes the first successful sound film, a “talkie”. Newspaper print and circulation roughly doubled between 1914 and 1927. Profits, not quality, drove newspaper publishers. Tabloids, papers with large headlines, few words and many pictures, became popular. William Randolph Hearst said he wanted 90% entertainment, 10% information. Magazines also rose in popularity Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, and Time In 1920, engineer Frank Conrad set up a radio transmitter in his garage and began sending recorded music and baseball scores over the radio. Response was so positive it became the first commercial radio station, Pittsburgh KDKA. By 1922, there were more than 500 stations on the air. “(Jazz was) an expression of the times, of the breathless, energetic, super active times in which we are living.” - Leopold Stokowski “Jazz objectifies America… a group of people can come together and create art, improvised art, and can negotiate their agendas with each other.” - Wynton Marsalis Jazz music grew out of African American music of the South, a mixture of ragtime and blues. Jazz becomes a nationwide craze. Young people loved dancing to jazz music, causing some opposition to the new sound. The 1920s is sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age Harlem, NY becomes a popular Jazz area, with roughly 500 jazz clubs. Many upscale clubs were attended primarily by wealthy whites, but the jazz was played almost exclusively by African Americans. Most popular of jazz dance forms was “the Charleston”, a wild, reckless dance full of kicks and twists and pivots. Most important and influential figure in Jazz history. Grew up in New Orleans, where he learned to sing and play trumpet. His skill, improvisation, showmanship, and new “scat” singing made him a huge hit. Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington performed in NYC. “Duke” was a pianist, band leader, an arranger, and a composer. Wrote over a thousand pieces in his career. Jazz spirit ran through all the arts of the 1920s. People spoke of “jazz poetry” or “jazz painting”. More than a genre of music, “jazz” became an identity and characteristic. Harlem, NYC served not just as a center for jazz music, but also gave birth to an African American literary, artistic, and cultural awakening. This movement was called the Harlem Renaissance. Renaissance is French for rebirth. Most famous of these African American writers was poet Langston Hughes. A Dream Deferred What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? Georgia O’Keeffe painted naturalistic scenes like flowers, landscapes, and oceans. Sinclair Lewis attacked American society through his writings. “Savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.” –Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (1920) Right: Hemingway Many writers found postwar America materialistic, and unintellectual. These writers and artists left the U.S. for Europe, many in Paris, France, where they produced many of their classics. Coined a “Lost Generation” of writers, the group included E.E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.