THE “NEW ERA” &
THE LOST GENERATION
John Ermer
U.S. History Honors
Miami Beach Senior High
LACC.1112.RH.1.9, SS.912.A.5.1-10, SS.912.A.1-7,
SS.912.G.1-3, SS.912.G.4-3
NEW CULTURE
 Faster communication and travel together with rise of consumer
culture allow Americans to experience life in increasingly similar ways
 New values reflect prosperity and complexity of modernity
 Increasing diversity of American population, culture
CONSUMERISM
 Economic success allows Americans to buy for pleasure, not just need
• Refrigerators, washing machines, electric irons, vacuum cleaners
• Wrist watches, cigarettes, cosmetics, mass produced fashion/clothing
 Automobile changes life for urban and rural population
• City-dwellers escape congested cities for weekend getaways
• Businesses include paid vacations to restore vigor/energy of workers
• Isolation of rural life lessened by ease and decreased time of travel
• Young people develop social life away from family—youth culture
ADVERTISING
 Rise of advertising industry causes rise in consumerism
• Use techniques of wartime propaganda to improve advertising
• Identify products with particular lifestyles, investing glamour and prestige
• “Buy this product and your life will improve”
• Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows, paints Jesus as super-salesman
 New forms of communication aid advertising, expand consumerism
• Newspaper chains and wire services
• New magazines
• Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, and Time
MULTIMEDIA
 Movies increase in popularity and influence, “talkies” debut in 1927
• Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer is first talkie to create nation-wide excitement
 Fatty Arbuckle scandal produces calls to “clean up” Hollywood
• Motion Picture Association created, Will Hays becomes head of MPA
• Hays reviews films for appropriateness, pushes sanctimonious conformity
 Radio is newest form of communication, available at home
• 1920: Pittsburg’s KDKA becomes first commercial radio station
• 1927: National Broadcasting Company (NBC)
• Radio was more diverse than film, sometimes controversial, but self regulated
1920 S WOMANHOOD
 Women of the 20s are from multi-generational lines of educated women
 Professional opportunities remain limited to “feminine work”
• Most married women did not work outside the home
 Behaviorists redefine motherhood as a communal endeavor
• Mother’s now less likely to allow children to interfere in married life
• Companionate Marriages: women play larger role in husbands’ social lives
 Increase in birth control devises/methods, Margaret Sanger
FLAPPERS & POLITICS
 Rejection of Victorian ideals of womanly “respectability”
• Women smoke, drink, dance, wear seductive clothes/make-up, and “party”
 New models of womanly independence known as “flappers”
• Characterized by certain modes of dress, speech, behavior
 National Woman’s Party fights for Equal Rights Amendment
• Sheppard-Towner Act provides federal funds for prenatal and child health
• Terminated in 1929 over concerns of American Medical Association
EDUCATION & YOUTH
 Emphasis on expertise and training raises public school enrollment
• College enrollment increases threefold, include modern technical skills
• Idea of adolescence as distinct period of development as result of longer
periods of training and education and Freudian psychology
 College becomes place for adolescents to participate in organized clubs
and athletics as well as develop own social patterns and hobbies
• Primary association with peer groups rather than families
THE LOST GENERATION
 Many youths see WWI as a useless conflict, disenchanted
• Rejection of consumerism and U.S. itself
• Artists and intellectuals reject “business as usual” of 1920s
• Ernest Hemingway’s A Farwell to Arms
• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
 Lost Generation writers criticize many American values, including:
religion, democracy, material success, the medical profession, Republican
politics, the modern city, the small town
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
 African-American neighborhood of Harlem in NYC becomes
symbol of flourishing African-American cultural nationwide
 African-American music gains a white audience
 African-American writers show pride in their racial heritage
• Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen
“I am a Negro—and beautiful”~ Langston Hughes