23.2: The New Mass Culture

A. Movie-Made America 1.Mass communication media reshaped American culture in the 1920s. 2.Movie ticket sales soared. 3.Publicists whetted American appetites by creating an elegant image for movie stars. 4.Attacked by conservative groups for sexual permissiveness, Hollywood studios came up with a plan of self-censorship by hiring Will Hayes as a morals czar.

Thomas Hart Benton’s 1930 painting City Activities with Dance Hall depicts the excitement and pleasures associated with commercialized leisure in the Prohibition era, reflecting urban America’s dominance in defining the nation’s popular culture. SOURCE:Thomas Hart Benton,City Activities with Dance Hall from America Today,1930. Distemper and egg tempera on gessoed linen with oil glaze 92 x134 1/2 inches.Collection, AXA Financial,Inc.,through its subsidiary, The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S.©AXA Financial,Inc.

B. Radio Broadcasting 1.Radio developed into the nation’s first comprehensive mass entertainment medium. 2.Large companies formed national networks that aired a variety of programs to homes across the country. 3.Building on blackface minstrelsy, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” was the first national radio hit show. 4.Radio also helped to commercialize previously isolated forms of music and build a mass following for sports.

C. New Forms of Journalism 1.The 1920s saw the growth of newspaper tabloids that emphasized crime, sex scandals, gossip columns, and sports. 2.Their popularity forced advertisers to appeal directly to working class and immigrant readers. 3.As in other businesses, journalism saw the trend towards consolidation. 4.The Hearst chain controlled 14 percent of the nation’s circulation.

D. Advertising Modernity 1.Advertising became a thriving industry that promoted consumerism. 2.Advertising agencies employed market research and psychology to stress consumer needs, desires, and anxieties rather than the qualities of the product. 3.They celebrated consumption as a positive good.

G. A New Morality? 1.For some people the 1920s saw a new morality symbolized by the flapper who danced to jazz, smoked cigarettes, drank bootleg liquor, and was sexually active. 2.Writers had encouraged a greater degree of openness about sexuality. 3.Advertisers and movie stars used sex to promote a mass culture. 4.Surveys of sexual behavior showed that an increased number of women had sexual relations prior to marriage. 5.The new morality was reflected in American popular culture.

This 1925 Judge cartoon, “Sheik with Sheba,” drawn by John Held Jr., offered one view of contemporary culture. The flashy new automobile, the hip flask with illegal liquor, the cigarettes, and the stylish “new woman” were all part of the “Roaring Twenties” image. SOURCE:The Granger Collection (4E746.21).

This 1920 magazine advertisement touts the wonders of a new model vacuum cleaner. Much of the advertising boom in the post World War I years centered on the increasing number of consumer durable goods, such as household appliances, newly available to typical American families. SOURCE:The Granger Collection,New York (4E791.13).

E. The Phonograph and the Recording Industry Fueled in part by dance crazes, the recording industry transformed American mass and regional popular culture.

F. Sports and Celebrity 1.Spectator sports reached unprecedented popularity as athletes took on a celebrity status. 2.Babe Ruth’s home run hitting and appetite for publicity helped restore baseball’s tarnished image as it recovered from the 1919 Black Sox scandal. 3.Attendance soared, prompting newspapers and radio stations to broaden their coverage. 4.Although African Americans were excluded from major league baseball, the Negro National League (organized in 1920) provided new opportunities.

The Pittsburgh Crawfords, one of the most popular and successful baseball teams in the Negro National League, organized in Excluded from major league baseball by a “whites only” policy, black ballplayers played to enthusiastic crowds of African Americans from the 1920s through the 1940s. The “Negro leagues” declined after major league baseball finally integrated in SOURCE:1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords, champions Negro National League. National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown,N.Y.