Time Frame – 1930 – 1965
Politics/Economics – Rise of Fascism, Communism, Socialism. The rapid decline of colonialism.
The Great Depression did what Prohibition couldn’t – sober up America. Interestingly, it also made entertainment more powerful. With the wide availability of radio and film, people were willing to spend a few of their hard-earned pennies on escapist entertainment. And yet the realities of the world were never far away. The 1930’s gave birth to modern jazz (with its darker tonalities always bubbling underneath even the happiest tunes), screwball comedies (where normal can become surreal in a second) and superheroes (because a normal guy is no match for the brave new world). Counterpoised to that is the underlying presumption, especially in the United States, that any problem can be overcome so long as we put our collective minds and muscle to it. Not just engineering challenges, but social ills, natural disasters, environmental concerns, finally even reaching the moon – all are bendable to the will of science and technology.
The two greatest effects of WWII were the catapulting of the US as the bonafide world power, and the decline of the European countries, even the victors. Strict colonialism could no longer survive, and most colonies of the old European Empires quickly gained independent nation status.
The United States largely won the Second World War on the strength of its industrial power. It was able to produce the tanks, planes, bullets, guns, and ships to outfit itself and its allies, as well as provide the petroleum to power them. American society took two lessons from this. First, that if industrial bureaucracy could crush fascism, it could be used to handle any task. Companies large and small copied military protocols and organization. In short order hospitals, schools, department stores, public housing, suburban residential developments – all became industrialized. Large works better than small.
What quietly disappears in this process is the idea of absolute values. Moral authority no longer comes from tradition, religion, or inherited social roles, but from outcomes. If a system produces results—efficiency, stability, victory—then it is assumed to be correct. Bureaucracy replaces belief. Expertise replaces wisdom. Procedure replaces ritual. This is the beginning of relativism: not the claim that nothing is true, but the assumption that truth is situational and subordinate to function.
The second lesson was that the war was won by the average Joe, not by the snooty aristocrats. America turned away from looking to France and England for its art and culture. So begins the era of the common man, and with it the dominance of American culture worldwide. Even as early as the 1920’s, but certainly by the end of the 30’s, upper class entertainments are viewed with ever more suspicion. Opera, ballets, symphonic music, poetry; these have little place in the new culture of the common man. Film is the main art form, the only one that reflects popular sentiment and is actually seen by most of the population. There is less production of what had fed aristocratic desires, supplanted by a flood of lower luxuries fulfilling the American Dream.
Warning: big digression coming up: Here is where I start to part company with the many books on theatre history and period style. Too many of them take their cues from art criticism and art history. These tend not to follow popular art, but rather at this point delve into modernism and post modernism. But when trying to follow period style, it helps not a bit to focus on the “art for art’s sake” schools, which unfortunately is most of what is considered “serious visual art” of the twentieth century. Those artists, geniuses to be sure, are interesting to only a small subset of the population at large. In effect, they become an aristocracy of art, looking down on the majority of people for whom cubism and deconstruction and ambiguity of theme have no meaning. It is not to the fringe that one must look when trying to find a period style.
Fashion/Manners –
Instead of proscribed manners, it becomes more important to act directly in a personal way to whatever is happening in the moment. A man was expected to stand straight and have a firm handshake in the business world, but was expected to relax and “loosen-up” when at home or with friends. The body begins to slouch into a comfortable chair, and the legs can cross in any way that is comfortable for the sitter. Formal introductions are completely gone, and most people feel completely at ease in simply introducing themselves to a stranger in any situation. Manners are no longer signals of shared values, but tools deployed as situations require and may be set aside when they are not.
Civilian Conflict –
Continuing unchanged from the prior period, most men are unarmed. At most, a hidden gun or knife might be worn, as most countries pass laws prohibiting the wearing of weapons.
Warfare –
Armies replace bolt-action rifles for the infantry with semiautomatics, and then finally fully automatic rifles. Aviation and tanks redefine the infantry/cavalry dynamic. The foot soldier can become both the heavy and light infantry, but now tanks can barrel past trenches, filling the role of heavy cavalry. Helicopters and airplanes become the light cavalry. Because the expense of war rises exponentially with each technological improvement in weapons, smaller armies or poorer ones use irregular fighting strategies, now called “guerrilla” warfare. The concept is ancient, and resorted to when facing a force superior in numbers and weaponry. In short, it involves attacking when the enemy is in retreat, disappearing when the enemy wants to attack, and disrupting the enemy when it is not prepared for engagement. The change is that warfare becomes less a contest of bodies than a problem of logistics, systems, and acceptable loss.