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What We Will Cover Today • Automobile America Between the World – The Auto & social life, the suburb & rural America – Wars Social Inventions resulting from the auto • The Impact of New Media Class 4 – Tabloid Newspapers – William A. Reader Movies – Radio E-mail: [email protected] 1 2 Autos and Social Life Autos and Housing • Made Sunday pleasure drives an alternative to • Modified housing design to conform to the church attendance needs of the car • Replaced courtship in the family parlor or – Lawns and shrubbery yielded to the driveway and front porch with dating in an automobile the garage or car port • Made driving vacations popular • Led to vastly increased attendance at national parks and historic sites 3 4 Autos and Prohibition Creating the Auto Suburbs • By making possible the transport of liquor by • Autos created the modern auto-dependent truck and car, the auto undermined any suburbs possibility of effective enforcement of – Prior to the auto, the city consisted of a commercial Prohibition hub surrounded by residences within walking distance – followed by development of businesses and If shipments of illicit liquor had to be done by residences radiating out from the central hub like either railroad or horse-drawn wagon, the spokes from a wheel, with the railroad and the horse- logistics involved in moving liquor from car and then the trolley lines providing the spokes rumrunning speedboats, the Canadian border, or • The creation of the auto-dependent suburbs illicit stills and breweries would have been much began in the 1920s, but really took off after more difficult World War II 5 6 Creating the Auto Suburbs - 2 Creating the Auto Suburbs - 3 • The auto’s ability to move laterally or • The auto transformed the central business perpendicularly to fixed trolley track opened district (CBD) from a shopping district to a up land for settlement that was previously too skyscraper district of government and remote corporate headquarters – This meant that vacant land between the – transportation corridors could be platted and sold The skyrocketing rents, downtown traffic snarls, for home and business sites and inadequate parking forced small retail • The auto released potential home buyers and businesses out and they relocated elsewhere, renters from the necessity of living close to a usually to outlying areas of the city or to the new suburbs bus or trolley line 7 8 Creating the Auto Suburbs - 4 Creating the Auto Suburbs - 5 • What set the modern suburb off from what • In the city before the car, life often took place on the sidewalk, the front porch or front steps, and existed previously was the adjacent street – Dependency on the auto not only for commuting – With the auto, urban residents now began to see the to work but also for shopping streets primarily as arteries for motor vehicles • – Relatively low density and larger average lot size Instead of congregating at a trolley or bus stop to commute to work, people now began to due to cheaper land prices commute individually in their cars • With the modern suburb and the auto – Instead of meeting neighbors at nearby stores that one walked to, people did their shopping at stores eventually came the centerless city and they drove to commuting from suburb to suburb 9 10 The Auto and Rural America Autos and Social Inventions - 1 • Auto reoriented rural space by: • By its very existence, the automobile led to – Centralizing institutions and activity the following innovations - 1 • Instead of shopping at the crossroads or village general – Installment purchases store, farmers now drove to nearby towns – Auto insurance • School buses permitted consolidation of rural schools, – bringing about the demise of the one-room Used car markets schoolhouse – Camping & picnicking – Increased the amount of rural travel • Auto campgrounds • Instead of traveling to town once or twice a year, • Private campgrounds farmers now traveled every week to a nearby town 11 12 Autos and Social Inventions - 2 Autos and Social Inventions - 3 • By its very existence, the automobile led to • By its very existence, the automobile led to the following innovations – 2 the following innovations – 3 – Gasoline stations • Drive-in movies – Drive-in restaurants • Shopping centers • Fast-food franchise restaurants • Malls – Motels and Motor Hotels • Parking lots – Gasoline credit cards • Traffic courts – Traffic police & State highway patrols • Automobile tags – Parking meters • Driver’s Licenses 13 14 Tabloid Newspaper • A tabloid is a newspaper (generally smaller in Tabloid Newspapers & size and spread than a regular newspaper) that contains lots of photos (both news and Magazines feature), and focuses on local-interest stories and entertainment. It tends to emphasize (and sensationalize) crime stories; scandals involving the personal lives of celebrities, sports stars, and politicians; and other so- called “junk food news.” 15 16 Tabloid Newspapers Photography - Newspapers • Combined the following: • Newspaper Photography and Photojournalism – The “yellow journalism” that William Randolph – In the early-1890s, it became commercially feasible to Hearst pioneered prior to the Spanish-American incorporate photographs in large newspaper editions. War This was because of Halftone printing. – The tabloid or portrait (as opposed to the – Halftone printing uses dots that vary in either size or traditional landscape) newspaper format spacing to create the optical illusion of a smooth tone – Large-scale use of photographs – both from wire photograph photos and from their own staff news • Thus the halftone print of a black & white photograph that photographers we see as containing a range of continuous tone shades of – Simple prose that let the picture tell the story grey will consist of black and white dots that are so small that we perceive them as a continuous tone 17 18 What Photography Gave to the Tabloid Newspapers Newspapers • The photograph depicts and organizes objects in space • First U.S. tabloids were: • Verbal information in the form of a Narrative or Story – the New York Daily News – launched on June 26, places and organizes people and objects in time 1919 • Describing space –whether it be a landscape, a street • Founded by Joseph Medill Patterson, a co-owner of the scene, or a person’s features – takes a considerable Chicago Tribune amount of words, but only one picture • Strongly influenced by Viscount Northcliffe’s London • Thus photographs enabled a reporter to make the tabloid Daily Mirror story shorter – to tell the story with fewer words by • By June 1920, circulation was over 100,000. By 1925, making the picture(s) take the place of words over a million – It enabled the newspaper to make itself appealing to less – Soon followed by the New York Daily Mirror educated people whose reading skills were poor (1920) and the New York Evening Graphic (1920) 19 20 Notes About Tabloid Newspapers What the Tabloids Did - 1 • Tabloids were popular not only because of • Focused on news as entertainment their content but because they could be read – Turned popular focus on crime, natural disasters, while standing up on a bus or subway scandals, celebrities, and sports – Generally ignored foreign affairs, economics, national • Tabloids got people used to reading the news politics (except for Prohibition) and the Federal with a dose of pictures Government (except for scandals) • Popularized the idea that photos could be used – This paved the way for both • as publicity stills for sustained narratives or The picture essay (a group of photos on a single event serials of an ongoing story or subject) – E.g. the Snyder-Grey Murder Case • The picture magazines – Life and Look 21 22 What the Tabloids Did - 2 What the Tabloids Did - 3 • Popularized the gossip column • Pushed non-tabloid newspapers into more of – The New York Graphic launched the career of the same type of news coverage as the Walter Winchell tabloids focused on • Popularized the notion of using celebrities to – Thus tabloids helped give national play to the cover and write about new events and trials same entertaining events, celebrities, and scandals covered by the tabloids – The Graphic hired prominent historian Will Durant, impresario David Belasco, the Reverend • Distorted public perceptions on the John Roach Stratton, and historian W. E. prevalence of crime, suicide, and corruption Woodward to cover the Snyder-Gray trial 23 24 What the Tabloids Did – 4 What the Tabloids Did – 5 • Helped popularize such newspaper features as • Launched the Age of Ballyhoo or Hype – Definition: A clamorous and vigorous attempt to win crossword puzzles, comic strips, horoscopes, customers or advance any cause; blatant advertising contests, and other features or publicity. – E.g. the death and posthumous stardom of Rudolph • Helped popularize such spectator sports as Valentino baseball and college football by their • Made celebrities out of a whole host of extensive sports coverage personalities, ranging from Charles Lindbergh to John T. Scopes to Al Capone – Initiated the era in which as Andy Warhol noted, everyone would have 15 minutes of fame 25 26 Tabloid Magazines Tabloid Magazines - 2 • Concepts originated by the tabloid • The application of the above concepts led to newspapers soon migrated to magazines the following types of magazines: – Focus on entertainment, scandal, and the – Led to picture magazines, such as Life and Look personal lives of celebrities – Led to confession magazines, such as True – Plenty of pictures Confessions & True Story – Simple prose directed to readerships with a low – Led to fan magazines, such as Photoplay and educational level Modern Screen 27 28 Motion Pictures • Motion pictures are based on the illusion of continuous motion. This results from: Movies in the 1920s & 1930s – The persistence of vision – The Phi phenomena • Because of persistence of vision, we do not see the dark interface areas of a projection print as it moves through the projector 29 30 Emergence of Hollywood - 1 Emergence of Hollywood - 2 • Prior to WWI, France and Italy regularly • Large demand for films required that film surpassed the U.S.

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