The Roaring 20s:
A decade of old and new
•The 1920s was an era of prosperity.
•Mass production, lower prices, and availability of credit
created a consumer culture in the United States.
•Consumerism was tied to American identity in the 1920s.
•This culture of consumerism was tied to the advent of new
forms of media.
•As the Roaring 20s got underway the new media
perpetuated the advent of new cultural values in that
decade.
National forms of Media
The creation of a new American culture was helped along by spreading
it through mass media –
Magazines
Movies
Radio
Magazines
•Widely distributed magazines also helped form and disseminate
American culture.
•In 1922 ten magazines claimed a circulation of at least 2.5 million,
including the Saturday Evening Post, Time, the New Yorker, and
Reader’s Digest which are all still read today –all started during the
1920s.
Movies
•The movie industry probably did more than any other form of media
to disseminate common values and attitudes.
•earliest movies were silent films that could be understood by
immigrants who did not speak English.
•By 1910 the movie making industry was concentrated in southern
California where there was an abundance of land, varied scenery, and
warm weather.
•By the end of WWI, the US was producing 90 percent of the world’s
films.
•Movies became even more influential when sound
was added to the images on the screen.
•By the end of the 1920s the nation had almost 23
thousand move theatres, including elaborate picture
palaces built by the studios in major cities.
•Movie attendance rose from 60 million in 1927 to 90
million in 1930. It became the most popular form of
urban-based mass media
