Tim Flynn
AP US 2
Post War Pop-Culture
The ascension of more accessible and widespread forms of media greatly contributed to the creation of a national popular culture within the 1920’s. World War One forever changed the way information was to be handled and delivered; the importance of media became heightened during this time and after the war’s end, the mediums by which Americans received their information acclimated themselves to a post-war environment that valued entertainment and fads. Then, as it does now, media held a tremendous influence upon the happenings and trends of popular culture. America, primarily through syndicated presses, radio broadcasting and cinema, shaped in the 1920’s, a national popular culture that would continually change and reinvent itself from then and into today.
Although fewer daily newspapers existed in the 1920’s due to standardization and syndication, the remaining ones took on larger circulations and therefore larger roles. National press associations, through both newspapers and magazines devoted themselves to reporting the interests of the new generation that had arisen after WWI. In response to the revolution regarding sexual thought in the public light, tremendous amounts of sex and confessional magazines began to frequent newsstands. Both types of magazines were wildly successful; one such magazine, True-Story, exhibited growth from 300,000 readers in 1919 to almost two million by 1926. This further fueled the nation’s acceptance of sex in popular culture as well as it’s desire for it. Mainly however, the proprietors of newspapers and magazines in the 1920’s realized that “…mention of the leading event of the day, whatever it might be, was the key to public interest.” (158, Allen) The Cross-Word Puzzle craze of 1924 and 1925 owes its being to such reasoning as its advertising campaign was based on the very idea that cross-word puzzles would be the next big fad. Magazines were also significant in establishing new pop-culture beliefs, such as the idea that religion was debatable or at least questionable instead of being simply accepted. The disillusionment that followed WWI as well as the immense gains made in the scientific community propagated the idea in questioning the merit of religion and the existence in God. The works of “Lost Generation” writers like that of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald reflected the public sentiment of cynicism that existed within post war America; their work fostered the creation of Existential ideology in mainstream American culture. Moreover, syndicated presses were key in spreading a new surging public interest in athletics. Sports sections became prevalent in almost every newspaper and an athletics craze engulfed post war America through providing an escape from the horror of WWI. “More Americans could identify Knute Rockne as the Notre Dame coach than could tell who was the presiding officer of the United States Senate.” (Allen, 173) The creation and growth of a national popular culture in the 1920’s, owes due credit towards the influential acts of syndicated presses and national press organizations from that time.
