The Roaring Twenties: American Culture Comes of Age Part I

I know it's Greek week, but I got an "exemplary" on one of my essays on my latest history test, so I decided to publish it on my blog. The 1920s was the flowering of American culture and technology, but behind the facade of the pen and the silver screen was gang wars and xenophobia. Part I will deal with the hedonism and liberation of the 1920s; Part II will deal with the anxiety and intolerance. Comment on my blog if you remember the 1920s.


I believe that the 1920s was a complex decade in American history and displayed attitudes of both hedonism and liberation, anxiety and intolerance. Hedonism was achieved through movies, the radio, and sports, but the automobile was the bridge between hedonism and liberation.

The moving picture was invented in the 1890s by Thomas Edison but gained popularity in the early 1900s where one could see them at the nickelodeons. By the 1920s, leading film actors received $100,000 salaries and were more well-known than politicians and other public figures. In 1927, The Jazz Singer was the first film to use sound. Movies allowed ordinary citizens to escape from their ordinary lives and provided a new medium for artists, but the decadent lifestyles of the actors and film directors added to the hedonism of this time.

The radio (Marconi) was another important invention of the 1890s that impacted American life in the 1920s. With the economic boom, most households bought radios, which broadcast music, sports, comedy, and news around the clock. American families would gather around the radio dial at night for entertainment.

Sports was another product of leisure society. The 1920s were the Golden Age of baseball with the 1927 Murderer's Row New York Yankees team featuring stars like Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. Because living standards were higher, fans could afford to attend games lives, and stadiums were built like Fenway Park and the Polo Grounds. Professional and college football became popular with the NFL's founding in 1920 and college stars like Red Grange, Knute Rockne, and Ernie Nevers. Movies, radio, and sports were products of the 1920s' popularity, but these things didn't necessarily lead to hedonism. Americans became narcissistic, caring more about their diversions rather than helping forlorn countries like Germany, which had 50% unemployment. They also went into debt by buying boats, cars, and refrigerators on credit. These purchases stimulated the US economy, but they were only artificial gains.

The automobile was another product of American prosperity, and sometimes led to hedonism. The German Karl Benz invented the car in 1889, but it was seen as an unneeded luxury by most Americans. However, in 1910, Henry Ford of Detroit used his assembly line to increase production speed, and the number of cars in the US ballooned to ten million. By 1922, his Model T was $260, and the average middle class worker could buy one. The car literally set Americans free. Suburbs expanded and with a higher standard of living, vacations were a viable option. Cars also liberated Americans sexually for "flappers" and other counter-cultural groups. But many Americans bought cars on credit and spent money they didn't have. This hedonism was one of the causes of the Great Depression.

Other forms of liberation in the 1920s included feminism, the Harlem Renaissance, and new forms of literature. The first step of feminism was the 19th Amendment of 1920 finally giving all US female citizens the right to vote. Feminism was furthered with the Woman's Liberation Party. This party fought for equal rights between men and women in society and in the workforce. They also campaigned for birth control and even early forms of abortion.

The liberation of the 1920s extended to the arts and music. Despite the racism of the Jim Crow laws, black music and art continued to thrive in Harlem, New York. In this city, jazz music was invented, derived from black spiritual and ethnic music. It was a wholly American style of music with lots of syncopation, improvisation, and brass ensembles using trumpets and saxophones. Jazz influenced later US music genres such as rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and hip hop. Writing also flourished in Harlem with poets like Langston Hughes and novelists like Zora Neale Hudson.

The prosperity and growth of the leisure class allowed US novelists to experiment with different styles. Theodore Dreiser and F. Scott Fitzgerald ironically showed the weaknesses of big business and the American Dream in their novels An American Tragedy and The Great Gatsby during the Roaring Twenties. William Faulkner turned from traditional sequential writing to use "out of order" plots and streams of consciousness in his Southern Gothic novels and short-stories. Earnest Hemingway's journalistic style cast light on the human condition and his experiences in World War I in novels like For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea. Despite the increase in living standards, the 1920s also had a dark side of anxiety and intolerance...