Modernism and Mainstream

1
Modernism and Mainstream

• Culture and Its Discontents, 1919-1929

2
Modernism and Normalcy

• Modernismreflected both a loss of confidence in
  and loss of certainty about Western Civilization
• WWI and Relativity gave experiential and
  empirical basis for doubt
• Mainstream America desires to preserve its
  privileges and dominant perceptions

3
Forces of Reaction

• Nativism
• The 2d KKK
• Fundamentalism
• Prohibition

4
Nativism

• 1921 and 1924 Immigration Actpreserve Northern
  European dominance
• Madison Grant, Passing of the Great Race (1916)
• Sacco and VanzettiImmigrants are a source of
  violence and bad politics

5
2d Klan

• 100 Americanism
• Controlled governorships in Indiana, Illinois,
  and Colorado
• Perhaps as many as 8 million members nationwide
• Madge Oberholtzer and D. C. Stephenson

6
1926 KKK Parade in D. C.
7
Fundamentalism

• Inerrant scripture, virgin birth, vicarious
  atonement, bodily resurrection, second coming
• Fear of modernism corrupting biblical faith came
  to focus on Evolution
• 1925 Scopes Trial

8
Darrow and Bryan at Dayton
9
Prohibition

• 18th Amendmentfunction of anti-liquor crusade
  plus anti-Germanism of WWI
• Mass evasion
• Organized crime Scarface Al Capone

10
Al Capone
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Elements of the Modern Temper

• Jazz
• New MoralityFreudian psychology in the popular
  understanding
• Flappers and the New Woman
• Companionate Marriage

12
Louis Armstrong
13
Miss Yonkers, 1924
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Margaret Sanger and Reproductive Freedom

• Published The Woman Rebel in violation of the
  Comstock Laws in 1914
• Opened family planning clinic in Brooklyn in 1916
• Founded American Birth Control League in 1921,
  which became Planned Parenthood in 1942
• Later advocated Eugenics

15
Margaret Sanger (1883-1966)
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Womens Rights

• Suffrage Movement achieves 19th Amendment in 1919
• NWSA becomes League of Women voters
• Alice Paul advocates ERA but it died in 1978
• Women continue to enter the work force (10
  million by 1930)

17
Alice Paul (1885-1977)
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African Americans

• Black Migration to Northern cities continues
• Harlem Renaissance
• UNIA and Marcus Garvey
• NAACP and formation of Legal Defense Fund
• Oscar DePriest elected to Congress from Chicago

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Claude McKay If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted
and penned in an inglorious spot,While round us
bark the mad and hungry dogs,Making their mock
at our accursed lot.If we must die, O let us
nobly die,So that our precious blood may not be
shedIn vain then even the monsters we
defyShall be constrained to honor us though
dead!O kinsmen we must meet the common
foe!Though far outnumbered let us show us
brave,And for their thousand blows deal one
deathblow!What though before us lies the open
grave?Like men we'll face the murderous,
cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but
fighting back!
20
Modernists Assumptions

• Einsteins theory of relativity (visual proof in
  1919 eclipse)
• Heisenbergs Principle of Uncertainty
• If reality depends upon where your stand and view
  or how fast youre moving, what is real and what
  is true?

21
Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg
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Three who made Modernism

• Darwinman is an animal
• Freudwho is a product of irrational and
  unconscious desires
• Einsteinwhose perceptions are relative to
  position and speed

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Literature and Art Respond

• T. S. Eliot and James Joyce revolt against form
  and conventionafter all form and convention are
  constructed and theyre not physically real
• Picassocubism asks whats the true perspective
  and presents them all at once while reducing
  things to essential shapes

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Belles Lettres

• Ernest Hemingway
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• William Faulkner