"What the Great Depression Did to Culture"

[Dr Doran]

A short article from the current (Sept 21 cover date) issue of The New Yorker on screwball comedies of the 1930s particularly "Sullivan's Travels," the book "Dancing in the Dark" by Morris Dickstein (Norton), James Agee's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," politics' influence on art, Henry Roth's book "Call it Sleep," Richard Wright's "Native Son," and other things:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/09/21/090921crbo_books_crain

 

[Fletch]

Thanks for the link. Good enough piece, tho it sticks to familiar, socially-relevant themes. (Yes, they're important. No, they're not all there was to the 1930s.) One point strikes me as novel, tho:

This nonchalance [typified by My Man Godfrey -F.] is what artists had to pull off during the Depression. They had to keep company with misery without adopting it as their purpose. With charm and cunning, they had to come up with different ways of having fun.

And that is exactly what historians of the 30s do not care to, or cannot do. There is a dorky gray earnestness about them, if only because their narrative never strays too far from the big city or the dustbowls, or the mass-and-class rhetoric you had to at least tolerate to be socially conscious in those days.

 

[Dr Doran]

If you, and/or Lizzie, or anyone else, should care to write a list of the aspects or angles of the 1930s that have not, in your opinion, been adequately covered by the books and articles you have seen, then I would be happy to do the following things for you:

a.) I could try to find obscurer books or articles that my position in academia affords me the opportunity to find;

and if I could not do that, then

b.) I could talk to the historians of the 1930s that I personally or professionally know, and run your suggestions by them; we have no less a giant of 1930s historiography than Paula Fass here at Berkeley, and I have met her once.

Often -- VERY OFTEN -- I wish that instead of having gone for my PhD in a programme that is very specifically and exclusively directed at the Ancient Mediterranean, I had instead entered the regular old History graduate program; then I could have done my main field in Ancient but one of my two minor fields in, for example, America and Europe in the period 1890 - 1955. Alas, it is too late: I am already in the dissertation phase.

 

[Fletch]

I wish I had some ideas...but. I'm full up with my own program (MA, Rhetoric & Communications), and besides, I long ago got tired of picking up serious history books about the era and finding them so much the same (or baldly revisionist eg: Amity Shlaes). My interest really has turned to material and pop culture for that reason, but I suspect academia doesn't have the language or theory to make that relevant.

 

[Dr Doran]

Personally I hate postmodernism, but plenty of postmodern thinkers find pop culture relevant and have developed and elaborated a vocabulary of ideas and theories for pop culture.

As for material culture, the more recent schools of archaeology might have things to say about that, such as "post-processualism" which has too many links to postmodernism to attract me.

But if you are OK with postmodernism, it's probably a useful way to think about pop culture and material culture.

 

[Fletch]

There's also the question: Can you be postmodern about anything in a modern or premodern era? Or is that a fundamentally flawed POV?

(Nobody in the 30s thought of what might be coming next as "post-capitalism." It was going to be a mass phenomenon built on either a. hyper-rationalism or b. some flavor of totalitarianism.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

As it happens, I've just finished reading an interesting academic take on mainstream '30s culture -- "Everything Was Better In America: Print Culture in the Great Depression," by one David Welky. It reads like yet another doctoral dissertation adapted into book form, but at least it gives reasonable attention to the non-fringe/outsider elements of thirties culture, something sadly lacking in too much of what's been written about the era over the last forty years or so.

I don't especially care for Welky's apologetic tone about the mass culture of the time -- the idea that there's somehow something *wrong* with a culture that puts great emphasis on hard work and responsibility smacks too much of modern black-turtleneck slackerism to suit me, and I don't buy it -- but his factual research is quite thorough, and some of his analysis is quite interesting.

As far as postmodernism is concerned, it's not even gum on my shoe. I'm unapologetically pre-modern.

 

[Fletch]

Well, the industrial age work ethic was worth "interrogating" in the '30s, as well as today. The author might just not have been very good at doing that. (Academic writers who choose less popular topics often are not highly eloquent or skilled at argument. They tend to be the B students, rather than the A's, who are all off doing the sort of stuff that promises recognition.)

There was also of course a good bit of reactionary heel-digging in the era, especially on the part of the white-collar middleclass whose hopes were so high during the 20s. My own grandparents were of that cohort, and they became bitter people, let down by the system but unable or unwilling to question it.

 

[Dr Doran]

People use postmodern techniques and a postmodern lens and postmodern assumptions to study pre-industrial cultures all the time. So they also do it for later times. Michel Foucault himself (I hate him) wrote a History of Sexuality which started in the Greco-Roman period.

It's fading out now, I think. Fewer and fewer dissertations each year cite Foucault and a lot of people have stopped thinking of him as the most fascinating thinker of the twentieth century.

It was miserable, though, a few years ago, to be in academia and to hate Foucault and to have people say to you, with their eyes wide, "How could you not find him amazing?"

 

[Dr Doran]

not[/i] highly eloquent or skilled at argument. They tend to be the B students, rather than the A's, who are all off doing the sort of stuff that promises recognition.)

I am not sure if this accords with what I have seen.

 

[Fletch]

I hope you're seeing it more clearly than I, then. I just remember several books/papers on interesting topics by rather uninteresting writers, and assumed a pattern existed.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, the industrial age work ethic was worth "interrogating" in the '30s, as well as today. The author might just not have been very good at doing that.

It's not so much that as it is the whole hand-wringing, condescending "how naive these people must be to believe such things" mindset that goes along with the interrogation. It's that kind of attitude that put me off ever considering any kind of formal career in cultural studies, that implicit attitude of "we're so much more *enlightened* than those poor bogtrotters as we stroke our beards and sip our chardonnay." Feh. I'd rather work for a living.

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

It's not so much that as it is the whole hand-wringing, condescending "how naive these people must be to believe such things" mindset that goes along with the interrogation. It's that kind of attitude that put me off ever considering any kind of formal career in cultural studies, that implicit attitude of "we're so much more *enlightened* than those poor bogtrotters as we stroke our beards and sip our chardonnay." Feh. I'd rather work for a living.

Don't you mean "stroke our ironic beards and sip our chardonnay."?

The study of culture fascinates me, but the presumptive superiority of many scholars can be offputting, to say the least.

 

[Fletch]

This is why cultural studies have to come out of the ivory ghetto. I don't think Stuart Hall ever intended them to reside there when he was studying the people of Birmingham.

Positing one's own times as somehow innately superior is done all too often - sometimes unwittingly - but it's poor CS and lousy history.

I think identity politics is actually a bigger threat to free inquiry in the discipline. To really catch people's eyes, everything has to be filtered thru the lens of pre-approved grievance groups. There's not a lot of room for the individual except as a member of their group, and there's no recognition that all of us, somewhere along the line, have a grievance against society. (And no, that doesn't imply we all should just STFU & GBTW.)

Identity theory is basically class theory in colorful "native' garb. It didn't cover the human condition in 1930 and it doesn't now.

 

[Harp]

It's fading out now, I think. Fewer and fewer dissertations each year cite Foucault and a lot of people have stopped thinking of him as the most fascinating thinker of the twentieth century.

It was miserable, though, a few years ago, to be in academia and to hate Foucault and to have people say to you, with their eyes wide, "How could you not find him amazing?"

Foucault's star always seemed more dim than brilliant.

 

[SGT Rocket]

Personally I hate postmodernism, but plenty of postmodern thinkers find pop culture relevant and have developed and elaborated a vocabulary of ideas and theories for pop culture.

As for material culture, the more recent schools of archaeology might have things to say about that, such as "post-processualism" which has too many links to postmodernism to attract me.

But if you are OK with postmodernism, it's probably a useful way to think about pop culture and material culture.

I have a favor to ask as I read this thread. Could someone describe exactly what "post-modernism" means?

I think it may have lots of meanings to different people.

I'm guessing modernism itself is basically art from the 1940's on? Perhaps, lots of ideas that deal with the industrial revolution?

So post-modernism to me would be art that depicts the previous "modern art" (by art I mean actual art and ideas or paradigms) as something less than good.

Also, on "pop-culture," I assume it means popular culture of the time period. What if someone isn't part of the "pop" culture? How would that play into post-modernism. I think America is full of sub-groups, similar to a giant high-school (stoners, preppies, punks, head-bangers, rednecks, etc...) that all make up the greater culture as a whole.

Translate that to America and you have Orthodox Jews, the Religious Right, Amish, Rockabilly set, "hippies," Hollyweird jet set etc.... It seems like there are so many sub-groups in America it would be hard to pinpoint a pop-culture. Plus, I find that today, as opposed to the 1970's people seem to want to be part of a sub-group or sub-culture-- as an identity or something. Also, I think I see people who move between identities at times. Some people who may go through a punk phase and then move into a preppy phase when they get older. Sort of hard to explain.

I would love to hear what everyone's thoughts are on this.

 

[Fletch]

Postmodernism in two words: "Anything Goes."

In a few more words: "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."

In a whole bunch more words: go here.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Also, on "pop-culture," I assume it means popular culture of the time period. What if someone isn't part of the "pop" culture? How would that play into post-modernism. I think America is full of sub-groups, similar to a giant high-school (stoners, preppies, punks, head-bangers, rednecks, etc...) that all make up the greater culture as a whole.

I think you can throw all of those under the "pop culture" umbrella, really -- it's basically defined as any kind of culture produced for mass consumption, as opposed to "high" culture, even if it's supposedly the product of a "marginalized" subgroup. "Popular Culture Studies" tries to examine how they meld into some ill-defined cultural mass that can basically be interpreted in whatever way a PhD candidate wants to interpret it. Or, if you want to be cynical, it's a discipline that lets college kids get class credit for reading comic books and watching "Star Trek," as long as they pretend not to enjoy it.

 

[Dr Doran]

In a few more words: "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."

That's pretty good. I'd emphasize the ideologies part over the conventions part. "Anything goes" is too vague unless you are talking about postmodern art production.

But we aren't really talking about art production here. We are talking about the postmodern way of looking at cultural phenomena and the past. Yes, there is postmodern art, but that's less relevant to the study of the 1930s than is the postmodern lens of examining culture.

 

[Dr Doran]

This is why cultural studies have to come out of the ivory ghetto. I don't think Stuart Hall ever intended them to reside there when he was studying the people of Birmingham.

Positing one's own times as somehow innately superior is done all too often - sometimes unwittingly - but it's poor CS and lousy history.

I think identity politics is actually a bigger threat to free inquiry in the discipline. To really catch people's eyes, everything has to be filtered thru the lens of pre-approved grievance groups. There's not a lot of room for the individual except as a member of their group, and there's no recognition that all of us, somewhere along the line, have a grievance against society. (And no, that doesn't imply we all should just STFU & GBTW.)

Identity theory is basically class theory in colorful "native' garb. It didn't cover the human condition in 1930 and it doesn't now.

I agree with you 100% on this post, Fletch. The grievance group thing is still really bad in academia now.