The-Roaring-Twenties

							  The Roaring Twenties
The Lost Generation, The Harlem
    Renaissance, and Hollywood
“The Lost Generation”
 Term used to refer to the generation that came
  of age during WWI, in particular, a group of
  American writers.
  WWI had seemingly destroyed the idea of “good things”
   coming from acting virtuously.
 Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude
  Stein
 Defines a sense of moral loss/aimlessness after
  WWI.
 Disillusioned with postwar American values,
  many of the writers left for Europe and
  elsewhere.
“The Lost Generation”
Term supposedly from Gertrude Stein’s
 experience with an auto-mechanic
  Youth went to war, missed transitionary period
   of 18-25 years old
  Application broadened to include all youth
Criticized American culture through
 creative fictional stories
  Themes of self-exile, indulgence, spiritual
   alienation
  Gave insight into American life during 1920s
 “The Lost Generation” in Paris

Paris – capital city of expatriate lost
 generation
1921 – Fitzgerald and Hemingway first arrive
Prone to excess, all returned home around
 the end of the decade.
Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
 Author and journalist who developed a unique
  style
  Clean, simple language
  Left out essential information with belief that omission
   can strengthen the plot of a novel
  Many attempted to recreate Hemingway’s style
 Served in Italy during WWI as ambulance driver.
 1922 – married and moved to Paris, joined
  expatriate community.
 1926 – First novel, “The Sun Also Rises”
Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
 Author of the “lost generation”
 Wrote “The Great Gatsby” (1925) about life in
  the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself.
 Made several excursions to Paris, friends with
  the expatriate community there.
 Works like “This Side of Paradise” and “The
  Great Gatsby” involve characters masking their
  depression and disillusion in the face of the
  contrived exuberance of the 1920s.
“The Great Gatsby”

Long Island and NYC in summer of 1922
Postwar boom led to widely enjoyed
 prosperity and, in turn, excess.
In it, Fitzgerald idolized this prosperity
 while simultaneously showing a discomfort
 in the materialism and lack of morality.
What can the “lost generation”
explain about the prosperity of
                   the 1920s?
Harlem Renaissance

Cultural movement spanning ’20s and ’30s
NYC became big center for expanding
 black middle class
Great Migration brought many to cities.
Grew out of changes in A.A. community
 after slavery.
Challenged racism & stereotypes through
 literature, art and music.
Harlem Renaissance

Redefined how USA (and world) viewed
 black population.
South to North migration – Rural  Urban
Progress of Harlem Renaissance laid
 foundations that led to Civil Rights in ’60s.
What did Alain Locke mean by
 his phrase the “New Negro?”
Langston Hughes

Writer of the Harlem
Renaissance
Led jazz poetry
Works portray lives
of working-class blacks
Pride in black identity
“black is beautiful”
           Langston Hughes

Traveled to Cuba and Mexico to escape
 racism in the United States.
Lived in Harlem for most of adult life after
 traveling to Mexico, Europe, Russia
Criticized middle class African-American
 leaders such as W.E.B. DuBois for being
 “too accommodating” to eurocentric values
Focused instead on lower socio-economic
 level.
   “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1920)
I've known rivers:
   I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
   flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

  I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
  I danced in the Nile when I was old
  I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
  I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
  I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
        went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
        bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
  I've known rivers:
  Ancient, dusky rivers.

  My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
"The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain“
(1926)

The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express
our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.
If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not,
it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.
The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people
are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure
doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow,
strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain
free within ourselves.
  Zora Neale Hurston
 Author, “Their Eyes
Were Watching God”
 Anthropologist, research
in Caribbean and American
South.
 Republican, disagreed
with other H.R. figures such
as Hughes.
 Jazz
Harlem Stride Style
  Created during the Renaissance
  Blurred lines between poor and social elite A.A.
  Piano with jazz = wealthy with “southern” music
Musical style of blacks became more
 attractive to whites
Thomas “Fats” Waller
Thomas “Fats” Waller

Jazz pianist and comedic entertainer
Started piano at age six.
Kidnapped and held at gunpoint to play
 piano for Al Capone’s birthday party.
Pioneer of Harlem Stride Style
Handful of Keys (1929)
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington

Composer and pianist.
Called his jazz music “American Music”
Played at the Cotton Club in Harlem
50 year musical career beginning in the
 Harlem Renaissance.
Composed over 1,000 musical pieces.
    Who went to Harlem clubs to
listen to jazz and what does this
    say about America during the
                         1920s?
Hollywood
The Film Industry
 Early industry around NYC
 “Nickelodeons” – cheap theaters showing all
  types of films.
 Shifted to Hollywood and studios expanded.
  Paramount
  MGM
  Universal
  Warner Brothers
 Studios combined means of production,
  distribution and exhibition
Sound!

In 1927, the silent era was over with The
 Jazz Singer and the birth of the “talkie”
Sound allowed new genres to become
 popular
Higher cost of “talkies” made studios more
 reliant on Wall Street and banks
Birth of Celebrity

Stars became well-known and loved by
 fans all over the country
Vague line between on-screen and off-
 screen lives of stars
Americans looked to films for fashion etc
How did the growth of cinema,
Hollywood, and celebrity affect
                  the nation?