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The Jazz Age How Did Consumerism and Leisure Affect American Culture?

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The Jazz Age How Did Consumerism and Leisure Affect American Culture? 4/16/2020 The Roaring Twenties | Discovery Education Explore The Jazz Age How did consumerism and leisure affect American culture? The Roaring Twenties: GREASES Chart As you read pages 5–11, use the GREASES Chart to record information about key aspe American culture and society during the 1920s. Editable Activity Teacher's Guide New electronic goods, a strong economy, and mass communication gave r to a leisure culture during the 1920s. Leisure means “free time.” This leisu culture was partly the result of national pride after World War I. America felt that they had won the war in Europe. Now, many hoped to focus on th own needs and desires. Music The 1920s became known as the Jazz Age. This was because the mood of th times was upbeat and exciting, just like jazz music. Jazz is a style of music that African American musicians created in the late 1800s. These musician lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. They were influenced by music from the Caribbean, West Africa, Europe, and the rural South. Jazz musicians https://google.discoveryeducation.com/learn/techbook/units/9d68f612-0cc6-41f2-b9fb-03355e96baf9/concepts/5a726cac-3588-40dc-9a54-3f2957d2d8… 1/8 4/16/2020 The Roaring Twenties | Discovery Education responded to one another’s music as they played. They did not plan or practice. Each jazz performance was different from the rest. There were f rules to follow. Many African American musicians helped create the jazz sound. Trumpet Louis Armstrong, composer Duke Ellington, and singer Bessie Smith were some of the most famous jazz performers. White entertainers also loved ja In 1924, white composer George Gershwin wrote “Rhapsody in Blue.” This was a blend of classical music and jazz. Sports and Movies Professional sports and movies became a big part of the 1920s leisure culture. In 1922, the New York Yankees and New York Giants played in baseball’s World Series. Two hundred thousand people watched from the stands. In 1923, they again played in the baseball World Series. This time, 300,000 people came to watch. Radio also made sporting events a shared experience. For example, one popular event was a heavyweight boxing m in 1927. It was between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney. According to the Chicago Tribune newspaper, the radio audience was 15 million. Others ha estimated that 50 million people listened to the match worldwide. Movie attendance grew in the 1920s. By the mid-1920s, half of the nation went to the movies each week. That is about 50 million people. New filmmaking technology made it possible to make copies of a movie. As a result, the same film could play in theaters around the country on the sam day. This created a shared movie culture in America. https://google.discoveryeducation.com/learn/techbook/units/9d68f612-0cc6-41f2-b9fb-03355e96baf9/concepts/5a726cac-3588-40dc-9a54-3f2957d2d8… 2/8 4/16/2020 The Roaring Twenties | Discovery Education Movie stars became American idols of success and glamour. Douglas Fairbanks was everyone’s favorite hero. Mary Pickford was America’s swe innocent girl. Clara Bow reflected the excitement and daring of the Jazz Ag She earned the nickname “It Girl.” When people went to the movies, they might see live entertainment and a newsreel. This was a short movie that showed important national and world events. Like sports, movies became fun activity that brought Americans together. Fashion Fashion also interested consumers. The Nineteenth Amendment had just been passed. Women had won the right to vote. They were showing their independence. They were demanding equality. They also wanted to be modern. They cut their hair short like men. They gave up the tight corsets that gave them the “ideal” female figure. They wore loose-fitting blouses a short skirts. They also broke the rules of proper female behavior. Young women who adopted the new fashions and the new attitude were called flappers. Flapper fashion spread. Women across the country of all ages wanted to f free and modern. Ads in popular magazines helped spread flapper fashion and ideas. Ladies’ Home Journal and Harper’s Bazaar expanded their fash sections to cover flapper styles. Style experts gave the same advice to wom in New York City, Chicago, Illinois, and Nashville, Tennessee. This advice created national fashion trends. Each season, new styles or colors were crowned as the new “It” Fashion. Clothes went out of style quickly. As a re https://google.discoveryeducation.com/learn/techbook/units/9d68f612-0cc6-41f2-b9fb-03355e96baf9/concepts/5a726cac-3588-40dc-9a54-3f2957d2d8… 3/8 4/16/2020 The Roaring Twenties | Discovery Education people had to buy new clothes each year to keep up with trends. Nationall branded chain stores made the newest fashions available to small-town America. Visual Arts and Architecture Many artists in the 1920s commented on the changes going on American l For example, Mexican artists visited the United States and painted large murals on the walls of buildings. José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siquieros, and Diego Rivera were known in Mexico as Los Tres Grandes, o “the big three.” Rivera’s work focused on the problems workers faced in American factories. His 1932 mural at the Detroit Institute of Art shows workers on an auto assembly line. The spirit of progress also shaped architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright developed what he called “prairie style” for homes. They had rectangular shapes and sharp horizontal lines. This style resembled the flatness of the American plains. Every part of his buildings had a functional purpose. Oth architects followed Wright’s idea that the materials and the design of a building must have a purpose. Nothing should be added just for decoratio Skyscrapers were built out of concrete and glass. They did not include carving, decoration, or color. These buildings were meant to show the progress and focus of American society. VIDEO SEGMENT https://google.discoveryeducation.com/learn/techbook/units/9d68f612-0cc6-41f2-b9fb-03355e96baf9/concepts/5a726cac-3588-40dc-9a54-3f2957d2d8… 4/8 4/16/2020 The Roaring Twenties | Discovery Education Explore The Lost Generation How did literature respond to the cultural changes of the 1920s? Many Americans were shocked by the horrors of World War I. They thought that something must be very wrong with traditional values if those values caused World War I. Nothing could excuse the death and destruction that young men and women experienced during the war. American writers traveled to Europe in search of inspiration. They hoped to create something new in a land where the old world had been destroyed. These Americans were expatriates, or people who choose to live in a foreign country. American writer Gertrude Stein spent most of her life in France. She described these wandering Americans as the Lost Generation. These writers included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Stein herself. They were “lost” because they felt strongly that something was wrong but did not know what to do about it. They wrote stories and poetry that criticized consumer society. The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, spent many years traveling in Europe. They mostly traveled throughout France. In his book Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald wrote about how his generation was damaged emotionally by World War I. According to Fitzgerald, https://google.discoveryeducation.com/learn/techbook/units/9d68f612-0cc6-41f2-b9fb-03355e96baf9/concepts/5a726cac-3588-40dc-9a54-3f2957d2d8… 1/4 4/16/2020 The Roaring Twenties | Discovery Education they were dedicated “to the fear of poverty and the worship of success.” This description reflects the commercialism in the United States. Fitzgerald’s most famous novel is The Great Gatsby. The main characters are obsessed with money and how to spend it. They go to lavish parties and are always looking for entertainment. Their relationships are based on lies. Fitzgerald was speaking out about his problem with people who care more about social position and money than personal relationships. Ernest Hemingway was another famous novelist who spent many years living in Europe. The characters in his books The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms are members of the Lost Generation. William Faulkner’s story “The Bear” tells the story of a boy coming to terms with the adult world by learning to hunt. The story celebrates pride, humility, and courage. Faulkner feared that these qualities were being lost as Americans left the country for the city. He thought that people needed to be connected to nature. Industrialization took that away. Sinclair Lewis wrote about small-town life in his novel Babbitt. He showed how consumerism and conformity in American values created boredom and destroyed happiness. During the 1920s, many American writers and thinkers studied the effects of a changing American society on those men and women who grew up during World War I. Their works reveal the problems of the Jazz Age. https://google.discoveryeducation.com/learn/techbook/units/9d68f612-0cc6-41f2-b9fb-03355e96baf9/concepts/5a726cac-3588-40dc-9a54-3f2957d2d8… 2/4 4/16/2020 The Roaring Twenties | Discovery Education Explore Crossing the Atlantic Ocean Who were the heroes of the 1920s? One of the greatest heroes of the 1920s was not a professional sports figure or a writer. It was a shy pilot named Charles Lindbergh. He was born in Detroit, Michigan. Born in 1902, Lindbergh took up flying in the early 1920s for the U.S. Postal Service. In 1927, a $25,000 prize was offered to the first pilot to fly without stopping from New York City to Paris, France. Lindbergh accepted the challenge. On May 20, he took off in a small, single-engine plane called the Spirit of St. Louis. He flew 33.5 hours.
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