As the Century Turns 3

In the early films, often referred to as “primitive cinema,” cinematic time was repeatable, like the Méliès moon shot. Time stopped and the scene was seen from another angle, like an instant replay in sports. With most modern cinema, time is seen as a flow, and past scenes are interwoven through editing with the film’s temporal present, as time continues to move forward. Up until about 1910, most films were primarily concerned with exhibition and the allure of the spectacle, however, in 1903, with The Great Train Robbery, Edwin Porter showed the dramatic impact of the narrative, and through editing (14 different shots were used), the possibilities of parallel montage were seen. The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906 was the first full-length film—running around 70 minutes, and in 1907, there was a marked shift towards producing fictional narratives as opposed to the earlier emphasis on scenic or topical movies. The first nickelodeon was opened in Pittsburgh in 1905. The early years of films foreshadowed the themes and styles of the century to come.

The Dream Factory Starts Production and a Star is Born

In 1907, Hollywood was founded as a filmmaking center, and by 1910, was established as "the center" of the US film industry. This was due to the appeal of the weather, space, scenery, and cheap land in Southern California. In that same year, over a million immigrants landed on U.S. shores. In New York, the Ziegfield Follies made their debut and the first cubist paintings were seen in Paris. In 1909, the first newsreel appeared, and in 1910, Edison simultaneously linked sound and moving pictures as he demonstrated his Kinetophone, however it would not be until the mid-1920s that the first "talkie" would appear.

The term “star” was coined in the early 1900s, but before 1909, the names of individual performers were not disclosed. Thus, stars did not become a phenomenon in movies until about 1910. Stars were elusive things, created by the public, their status depended upon continued box office success, and also a sense of identity between themselves and the audience. Stars became household names throughout the world by the 1920s and they were “often called screen gods and goddesses, a measure of the worship the were accorded… psychologists have diagnosed that stars reflect the needs dreams and fantasies of the filmgoing public” (Allen, 1979, p. 92-93) “a star must possess… capacity to stir the imagination of the audience, to make them feel that there is much more” to life. Stars were important since they projected a new morality, were role models who gave legitimacy to leisure, and made sensuality no longer a sin.

Famous Comings And Goings--Fads, Fancies, Art And The Sports Scene

In 1896, after a gap or interruption of about 1500 years, the Olympics once again re-emerged. The first modern Olympic Games was hosted by its ancestral home, Greece. America would host the second Olympics in 1900. The first Rosebowl game was played in 1902, the first World Series in 1903, and the first Indianapolis 500 raced onto the scene in 1911. Some of the first fads of the new century were ping-pong, Teddy bears, and the tango. The mass production of fashionable clothing began in the decade around the turn of the Twentieth Century.

America was becoming increasingly urbanized and newspapers began to carry “human interest” stories along with more lurid fare for those not solely interested in the news. There was a rise in advertising, because along with mass production, mass consumption had to stimulated, Advertising then shifted from being merely informational to educating desire, stressing the pleasures of consumption.

Picasso had his first exhibition and made a trip to Paris in 1900, as James Joyce had his first article published and decided to become an author. In New Orleans, Buddy Golden was credited with the first Jazz band, and HG Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, after writing The Time Machine in 1895. The symbolist movement in art and literature was in full swing, and for Yeats and Gauguin among others “imagination was seen as the truest interpreter of reality” (Berry, 2003).

The turn of the Twentieth Century also saw the deaths of some prominent people, such as Lewis Carroll, Nietzsche, and Queen Victoria. Other notables were born, most notably for us: Donald Winnicott, Object Relations school psychiatrist in 1896, Louis Armstrong in 1900, and synchronistically, Walt Disney, Milton Erickson, and Werner Heisenberg all born on the same day, December 5th in 1901. The authors of our other cultural pieces were born at this time too: Maurine Dallas Watkins. author of Chicago in 1896, and P.L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books in 1899.

Some Sad Shadows

While progress and stability seemed to reign supreme, they proved to be ephemeral, partially illusory, and cast long shadows. As we have seen, the seeds of chaos and uncertainty had been sown, and the unconscious had emerged into eminence. In 1899, participants in the world’s first peace conference dared to dream an end to all wars, outlawing among other things poison gas, and bombs dropped from balloons. Yet the century to come would prove to be the most deadly and bloody that the world had ever known, producing two world wars, where the very things that were previously outlawed wrought tremendous destruction. The world witnessed the awful effects of chemical weapons in World War I and blitz bombing and nuclear weapons being dropped from the skies in World War II, followed later in the century by the use of napalm in Vietnam, the gassing of the Kurds in Iraq, and mass genocides in Africa.

James Conrad wrote The Heart of Darkness in 1899, exposing the evil in men’s hearts and the dangers of imperialism, and Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in 1906 exposing the deplorable state of the Chicago meatpacking industry, as popular culture proved potent social commentary.

In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld Plessy v. Ferguson and the doctrine of separate but equal, and more than two African Americans were lynched each week between 1889 and 1903 (Batchelor, 2002, p. 25). On a more positive note, in 1901, Teddy Roosevelt dined with Booker T, Washington, author of Up from Slavery, and in 1909, as a result of the Niagara Movement, the NAACP was formed. Half a century later, the NAACP and Dr. Martin Luther King would lead America to reflect on its racial relations and would invite a transformation of society.

Now that we have our archetypal bearings and have seen what the turn of the Twentieth Century was like, let us look a little closer at this thing called “popular culture,” since this is the kaleidoscope that we will be looking through to see these cosmic archetypes at play.

End of section, continue to Modern Popular Culture