The Not So Roaring Twenties

Description: Drama did not create big waves in American culture during the 1920s, but it is worth noting that people received it well and eagerly watched a variety of shows. Some popular shows that portray the culture of the time include Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923) and Street Scene (1929), Robert Sherwood’s The Road to Rome (1927), and Eugene O’Neill’s The Great God Brown (1926). All four shows represent the decade honestly and transparently; The Adding Machine pondered the possibility of machines eventually replacing humans, Street Scene highlighted the lives of the poor, The Road to Rome expressed the popular antiwar sentiment among veterans of WWI, and The Great God Brown uniquely explored artistic expression (Boardman 85-86).

While stage theatre obviously had its place in the lives of Americans, film was the up-and-coming attraction. Even though nickel theatres started appearing in the early 1900s, cinemas as we could compare them with today’s idea of a movie theatre actually started appearing around 1919 with the opening of New York’s Capitol Theatre, though films at this time were still silent. Theatre patronage grew by over 200 percent between 1922 and 1929. Moviegoers fell in love with their favorite stars, including Clara Bow, the “It” girl. Americans lived vicariously through the actors on the silver screen. In 1928 the first film with sound and dialogue throughout debuted, and a new era of entertainment was born (Boardman 96-98).

Clara Bow as the 'It Girl' (Bredell)


Radios, as much as we take them for granted today, are actually younger than movies. Prior to 1920, the world had not considered using wireless broadcasting for entertainment and pleasure; in 1921 Americans spent les than ten million dollars on radios, but by 1929 that figure rose to an average of $842,500,000. So what were Americans listening to? Besides tuning into Presidential election results, sporting events, and radio dramas, Americans tuned into, and fell in love with, jazz (Boardman 88-89, 98-100).

Americans loved movies and radio, but possibly more than anything, the vivacious youth in the Twenties loved jazz. Appropriately enough, The Jazz Singer was the first motion picture to include sound, showing the American dedication to the music movement. People loved jazz, possibly because its spirited and lively blend of music and voice represented the era so well. Some believe that the word “jazz” may be derived from a French word meaning “to chatter,” and people had a lot to talk about when it came to the Roaring Twenties. As far as music was concerned, jazz was especially unique because it broke barriers; despite widespread segregation, white musicians learned from African-American jazz masters like Louis Armstrong and King Joe Oliver, and the two groups created a unique blend of music. Soon, the loud, vibrant sounds of trumpets, pianos, and soulful voices flooded the airwaves. Just as they did with film, Americans dreamt themselves into the “[lives] of color and excitement” (Stevenson 93) that they believed their favorite musicians lived. What is more, if they did not get their fill of jazz through cinema or nightclubs, people could have their dreams painted for them in the novels of possibly the most influential writer about the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The creativity of the 1920s heralded great literary figures whose works, like nearly everything else of the decade, reflected the sentiments of the time. Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos and William Faulkner tended to write critically about their dissatisfaction with war. Despite the unpleasant subjects, the actual works themselves were brilliant; the author of Babbitts and Bohemians commented that some works of the time “demonstrated the flawed American civilization’s spewing out in profusion in the midst of trash much vital artistic material…” (Stevenson 168). This could be especially true of Fitzgerald who, as has already been pointed out, played a very important role in the shaping of how people view the 1920s today. Boardman comments that Fitzgerald “put into wide usage [the term The Jazz Age] – if he did not create it” (77).

So who was F. Scott Fitzgerald exactly? Where did he come from? How did he live? What did he write? And how did all the history we just learned about influence his writing? It is time to take a little bit of a closer look at Fitzgerald as a person and then see exactly how his life and the events of the 1920s inspired him to craft Tender Is the Night and write about the themes therein. Since you have already read the novel, and now learned about the history, let's take a quick look at F. Scott Fitzgerald and see how the history, his life, and the novel all fit together! Click on Connect It on the left to really start thinking...

Psychology
Description: While Americans became more creative, they did not neglect intellectual progress. Although some interest in psychology had a presence pre-1920s, the decade brought about an unparalleled enthusiasm for understanding oneself. John Burnham, former professor of the history of American science at Ohio State University, describes it a “new psychology…[related] to the cult of the self in which Jazz Age Americans were caught up” (352). This new psychology aimed to justify “self-indulgent behavior” (353), in turn making previously reprehensible behaviors acceptable, and even normal. Boardman points out that The Twenties brought about an extreme shift in “manners and morals” (60). Socially taboo activities like getting divorced, smoking cigarettes, and working on Sundays were no longer looked at with great disgust as they had been before.

One specific progenitor of this change was Sigmund Freud. He revolutionized the science of psychology by introducing Americans to the application of psychoanalysis. Note that Freud’s theory took a very scientific look at explaining the causes of people’s wants, desires, actions, and impulses. He was a major proponent of self-awareness (Burnham 354). Freud also pioneered the practice of examining dreams through psychoanalysis after postulating that dreams hold “latent content” that may release a patient from neurosis (Tansley 259-260). While Freud encouraged great change in the field, not everyone wholly agreed with him. As a result of some professional disagreements, several colleagues branched out and offered the mental health community alternate theories.

Carl Jung, a former colleague of Freud, also made a significant impact in the psycho-medical science community, but he met another facet of American needs. While Freud focused a great deal on defining how and why people constructed personal desires, Jung examined the less scientific side of psychology. He challenged fellow psychiatrists to consider the effects of the “collective unconscious” which primarily concerns itself with people’s sense of intuition (Fordham and Fordham). In a basic sense, Jung satisfied the average American’s desire to relate religion and spiritual instinct with psychology.

Finally Alfred Adler, another contemporary of Freud and Jung, brought yet another perspective to the field of psychology. Unlike Freud, who “imposed a formality upon his patients” (Alfred Adler) acting merely as a distant listener, Adler encouraged his patients to face their demons in a more welcoming environment. Adler brought a level of compassion to the profession that Freud and Jung did not focus on as closely; he believed this amicable environment would make it “easier for the patient to accept facts about himself which might be unpleasant or difficult” (Alfred Adler).

Art / Drama / Film / Music / Literature
Description: As psychology became “one of the characteristic fads of the age and at the same time both symptom and cause of critical social change” (Burnham 352), the arts erupted in the Roaring Twenties, introducing scores of artifacts to serve as evidence of that change. Americans used all fields of art to express their dissatisfaction for the past and project their expectations of the future. Many artists even blended current psychological theory with art to create more than just an engaging novel or an attractive painting. Americans started using art to make a statement (Boardman 84).

Although the movement did not begin in America, Surrealism (which started in Paris) played an important role in the development of artistic expression in the United States. André Breton, the art form’s founder, was a psychiatrist by trade and inspired by Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation. Surrealism, and other popular art forms of the time, followed the new American ethos which “was to be defined by style rather than ethics” (Stevenson 79). Still, though many artists embraced the abstract, some artists, like Georgia O’Keeffe, simply reflected the world as they saw it exist around them (Boardman 90).