Cheer Up, Emo Kid!

"But, Ms. McCauley!" The class whined.

"Too bad!" snarled Ms. McCauley.

So What?

• The postwar period was one of loss and uncertainty but also one of invention, creativity and new ideas.

Untitled Slide

• Postwar trends in physics, psychiatry, art, literature, communication, music, and transportation still affect our lives.

Albert Einstein

• German-born
• Genius who flunked out of school.
• THEORY OF RELATIVITY: idea about the interrelationship between time and space and between energy and matter.
• Wouldn't hug his wife.

Einstein Quotes

• "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
• "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Sigmund Freud

• Austrian physician
• Believed people were irrational because of the subconscious
• Extremely influencial
• Popular for his Elektra and Oedipus Complexes
• EW!

Freud Quotes

• "If you can't do it, give up!"
• "Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility and most people are frightened of responsibility."

T.S. Eliot

• American poet
• Felt the world had lost its spiritual values
• Wrote famous poems such as "The Wasteland"

The Wasteland

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

W.B. Yeats

• Irish poet
• "Things fall apart, the center can not hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned."
• -"The Second Coming"

Existentialism

• There is no universal meaning to life
• Each person gives his or her meaning to life through choice made and actions taken
• This becomes especially popular after WWII and the Holocaust

Jean Paul Satre

Friedrich Nietzche

• German philosopher
• Wrote "God is Dead"
• Believed Western society put too much stress on ideas such as reason, democracy, and progress
• These beliefs stifled emotions and instinct

More Nietzche

• Society needed to return to the ancient heroic values of pride, assertiveness, and strength
• Men can become supermen and control people
• Dictators love this stuff!

Cuddly Quotes

• "Man is the cruelest animal."
• "To predict the behavior of ordinary people, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence."
• "In Heaven, all the interesting people are missing."

Franz Kafka

• Ms. McCauley's existentialist boyfriend
• Czech-born author
• Wrote creepy novels like "The Trial" and "The Castle," which had people in bad situations they could not escape.

"If you don't get a goodnight kiss before bed...

My Life As A Bug

• Kafka is best known for his short story, "The Metamorphasis."
• It's about a man who wakes up one day and is a beetle
• It would be a funny story if his family didn't try to kill him
• Love is conditional

Quotable Kafka

• "In the fight between you and the world, back the world."
• "The meaning of life is that it ends."
• "It's often safer to be in chains than to be free."

Existentialism in Science Fiction

• "I used to think that it was a terrible thing that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'What if life WERE fair, and all of the terrible things that happen to us came because we really deserved them?' Now I take great comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe."

James Joyce

• Irish-born author
• Wrote in a stream of consciousness way, so his work can be difficult to understand at first
• I recommend you read Joyce in this order: "Dubliners" "Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man,"and "Ulysses"

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• American-born author
• Famous for "The Great Gatsby," and my favorite, "The Beautiful and the Damned"
• Most of his work was semi-autobiographical; he and his wife, Zora, lived a crazy life

Rebellion in the Arts

• Artists wanted to paint emotions and imagination rather than reality.
• Movements such as Cubism, Dadaism, and SURREALISM began after WWI
• Cubism= angular painting
• Dadaism = "hobbyhorse"-absurdist painting
• SURREALISM= "above reality"-linking the worlds of dreaming and reality

Klee

Kandinsky

Picasso

Dadaism

Don't confuse this with those art forms

New Music

• Igor Stravinsky used a harsh combination of sound when composing
• Arnold Schoenberg created a new scale based on mathematics
• JAZZ music showed the freedom of the times in America
• Was very shocking at first, but then became widely accepted
• Now old people LOVE IT!

Suffrage and Short Hair

• Women got the right to vote, and the right to cut their hair
• There was makeup, smoking, and even birth control
• Birth control courtesy of Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman

Automobiles

• At first, you could only buy black cars
• At first, only the rich had them, but by 1937 511,000 cars were produced a year
• Now people could travel and new businesses (camp sites, motels) cropped up
• Led to the development of suburbs

Airplanes

• At first used in war, but now used for mail and for cool stunts
• CHARLES LINDBERG traveled from NYC to Paris, but later on became a little sketchy
• Only the rich could afford to fly, but it was changing
• Have any of you heard of the mystery of Amelia Earhart?

Radio

• Invented by Marconi (yeah, Seashore!)
• Armies developed radios more fully
• KDKA was the first commercial radio station
• In Europe, radio stations were controlled by the government
• Which type of ruler controls the media?

Yay, movies!

• Movies were sometimes for intellectual pursuits, but mostly for entertainment (at least in America)
• Charlie Chaplin was the most famous screen actor of his time
• By the mid-1930s, 90 million Americans went to the movies EVERY week!

Why is all of this so important?

"Thank you, Ms. McCauley," the class chimed in.

"It's easy to be wonderful when you are talented,"

Wrap Up Questions

• What trend do you think was the most important during the era and why?
• What were trends that evolved out of positive aspects of postwar life? How about negative?
• Who do you think was the most important person mentioned in this section?
• What trends were directly related to WWI?
• What are some trends that still exist today?

The End