Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

HS: The Roaring Twenties

Cinema of Mediocrity -
The Representation of 1920s Mass Culture in King Vidor’s The Crowd

WS 2004/05

Peter Brüstle

Table of Content

Table of Content 2

1. Introduction 3

2. The Rise of Modern Mass Society 4

3. The New Middle Class and the Changing Face of the American Dream 7

4. Mainstream Trends in the American Cinema of the 1920s 10

5. The Crowd as a Mirror of Lower Middle Class Life 15

6. Conclusion 21

7. Bibliography 23

1. Introduction

What is it that cinema-goers anticipate when flocking weekday nights to the Cinemaxxes and Cinestars throughout the world? And what expected the audiences of the 1920s during the heyday of the silent film area, when 100 million people a week were drawn to the movie palaces in America? Bare amusement? Weekend enjoyment? Or rather artistically challenging avant-garde films with politically provocative messages?

What we mostly expect of the movies, is to satisfy a longing for something new and extraordinary. Still today and also at the beginning of the classic Hollywood era, movies have been attractive in that they have offered an alternative reality to that of actual ordinary life; be it through romance, action, exotic scenarios or mere entertainment. Especially in the 1920, with the establishment of Hollywood, movie-going became an enormously popular form of modern mass entertainment.

King Vidor′s The Crowd (1928), however, is a rare exception. Its main interest is not the unknown or exotic, it does not function as an alternative reality. In contrast to the mainstream Hollywood productions of the 1920s, the film concentrates on ′normality′ and plainness. Thus, what The Crowd offers is a stylized and satirized portrayal of the everyday lives of exactly the audiences who where watching the film. In doing so, the film does not charm or arouse passionate feelings. On the contrary, it functions as a mirror and leaves the spectators frustrated about the meaninglessness of modern life and their own ambitions for success and consumption.

With its depiction of everyday middle class life and its critique of modern mass culture, The Crowd also challenges reductionist perspectives of the ′roaring twenties′ as a permanent orgy, of wild flappers and frenzied Jazz parties, as is still prevalent in popular discourse today. The alternative view it offers, is that of a decade characterized by rising corporate power, the pressure to adjust and the powerlessness of the individual against an increasing standardization in the work and leisure sphere.

Thus, in this paper I will examine, how the The Crowd differs from the mainstream Hollywood productions of the time and in what way Vidor′s film can be interpreted as a critique of 1920s mass culture.

First, I will have a look at the general societal climate of the decade and show how the twenties marked the establishment of a mass consumer culture in the United States. Then I will examine, how this trend was intertwined with a changing perception of the American Dream towards a focus on leisure and consumption. Finally, I will give a short overview over the mainstream trends in the cinema of the 1920s, in order to contrast them with The Crowd′s leitmotif of mediocrity.

2. The Rise of Modern Mass Society

According to Dumenil, The Crowd with its grim social realism can be considered a realistic representation of urban middle class life in 1920s America. With its quasi-documentary character - some of the footage was secretly shot in the public - it reveals a lot about everyday conventions and distractions in the twenties to the 21st century viewer: from the disciplined work environment of an open-plan office, over blind dates coming closer in Coney Island′s ′Tunnel of Love′ to the picnics on the crowded beaches of Long Island and the modest housing conditions of lower middle class couples.

Such characteristics of a modernized society reflect the transformations that already took place with the beginning of the industrialization, but took on a very special note after World War I with the establishment of mass production industries.

The Crowd provides excellent testimony to the emergence of America as a consumer culture. It not only highlights the way in which people turned to leisure and consumption to find satisfaction in life, but also suggests one important causal factor: the degradation of work and the erosion of individual autonomy in a mass, corporate culture. The twenties are a critical period for these transformations, for the decade embodies much of what constitutes consumer culture. (Dumenil, 57)

However it is also important to keep in mind that The Crowd, as one extraordinary film of the silent era, can only convey a biased and one-sides view of its period. Written as a depiction of the urban dweller′s daily routine, it is also extremely stylized and concentrates mainly on its protagonist′s life-world. Its perspective is that of the upward-oriented city man, who is predominantly white and belongs to a new type of middle class, which began to establish with the rise of service-oriented white collar jobs.

Other aspects of 1920s city life are consequently left out by Vidor, such as the perspective of new arriving European immigrants or the Afro-American community. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the period, it is however necessary to look at the 1920s as a decade of contrasts. Ethnic and cultural diversity on the one hand were facing an increasingly nationalized society and standardized mass culture on the other.

In his 1970s examination of the Plastic Age, Robert Sklar describes the 1920s as an entirely new era that followed the catastrophe of World War I and was wiped out with the Great Depression. He refers mainly to the new generation of intellectuals like Dreiser, Mencken, Hemingway, Eliot or Dos Passos who challenged the genteel middle-class values prevailing during the war.

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