austinjenkins's blog

     The memory of the Great Depression is ingrained in American consciousness of a period of great suffering when everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  Everything remembered of the 1930s in someway can never escape the mark of the depression.  Wars and other national tragedies are able to extrapolate patriotism and other optimistic elements but the dismal state of the country during this period can not be spun in any positive ways.  National unity declined and was largely a result of widespread national suffering. 
       For those who lived through it the Great Depression left an indelible mark, influences a generation’s outlook on the world.  The sad emptiness of the period influences many of America’s greatest artistic works.  The Grapes of Wrath has become one of the most celebrated American novels of all time.  Even lesser known novels like Waiting for Nothing were inspired by the loss of hope in this desperate era of American history.  

     In On the Fritz: Tom Kromer's “Imaging of the Machine” Hugh Crawford sites the reasons behind the style of Kromer’s writing in Waiting for Nothing.  He compares the technological advancement with the shift to a more efficient, stripped down writing style characteristic of authors like Hemingway.  The contrast between Kromer’s early article the novel he later wrote brings places the author in a distinctive social position.  Though he is rejected by larger society he adopts the writing style of the machine.       The narrator of Waiting for Nothing seems to be caught in between worlds.  He is a product of the clash of his two lives once being college student with possessions and then as bum after he loses everything.  He has no political motivation and his goal is only surviving the situation he has found himself in.  As an intellectual he is not like the other bums and brings a distinctive prospective, a result of his former life to the one he has found himself in.    

   John Steinbeck’s hometown of Salinas has served as the setting for several of his novels and has strongly influenced his works.  Since the late 1860s Salinas has been an important agricultural city in California located in the heart of the state’s farm country.  The Salinas Valley currently grows more lettuce then any other area in the U.S. and is known as “America’s Salad Bowl” reflecting the intense sense of identity in the area centered on agriculture.  Visiting the area, it is not hard to see why Steinbeck set the majority of his stories in the agriculture business.  He definitely wrote about what he knew.
   Though the commerce of the area has not changed since the time of Steinbeck, the culture of the area seems to have.  Today Salinas has one of the highest murder rates in the country, four times the national average.  Economic hardship plagues the area with the divide between rich and poor that Steinbeck illustrates in his writings still very much an issue. 
   

      The abrupt end of the Jazz Age with the stock market crash of 1929 saw the end of some of the most talented musicians of that era.  Among them was Bessie Smith one of the most innovative Jazz-Blues singers of all times.  Encountering great success during the 1920s, Smith became very successful in a time where it was very difficult for African American musicians to do so on such a wide scale.  The record industry failed after the stock market crash Smith’s career was in large part over.
    During the Depression she married a bootlegger and was rumored to be working as a hostess in a speakeasy.  Though in reality she was continuing to tour she had largely lost her audience.  She had made her name working vaudeville and they had largely gone out of style during the 30s.  In a business like music where it is difficult to stay popular even during times of economic stability her great success was all in the past.  After she died young in a car accident in 1937, it was not until years later that she was once again acknowledged for her great talent and achieved legendary status. Her story relfects the many musicians from the 1920s who were forgotten during the decade of the depression but have since reemerged in more recent eras. 

     In the Grapes of Wrath the strength of the Joad family’s survival can be in large part attributed to the strength they gain from experiencing their hardships together.  As they journey to California others become included in their familial unit.  The pastor Casey is a prime example of the way the Joad’s treat outsiders.  The main characters in the story are rarely alone always feeling that they belong somewhere even as they are uprooted from their home.
    This overarching theme of the book seems greatly at odds with other accounts of the time.  The many youth that set out hitch-hiking were in large part alone as they struggled to survive in entirely foreign environments.  Many times their families could not take care of them and encouraged them to go on the road. 
    Hearing of the stories of my great-grandmother about her experience during that time period it seems to reiterate the breakdown of the family structure.  She was sent to live with distant relatives in a faraway state because her family could not take care of her.  Though in many cases families probably became closer experiencing hardships together others, many others were forced to fend for themselves.

Kromer depiction of authority in the novel offers an interesting analysis into the legal system in this country not only in the 1930s but in all periods of American history and to the present day.  The policeman has no sympathy to the hungry narrator waiting outside the restaurant hoping someone will give him something to eat.  Indeed the police in the story carry out the orders of higher authority often using the brutal tactics to get what they want.  After the beggars are arrested and put before the court they have no idea what they are being charged with, unable to even communicate with the judge and lawyers.
    The legal system in this country has become a critical part of the American experience as reflected in popular culture and the arts.  Crime dramas have become a quintessentially American institution fascinating the rest of the world.  Part of the popular appeal of the fictionalized courtroom is the mysteriousness of the process.  Unless you are legally trained, attending school for many years, the system is a labyrinth of specific regulations.  Legal terminology might as well be a foreign language to those whose fate lies in its grasp. 
     In Waiting for Nothing with all the powers at be against the protagonist and his fellow vagabonds, the legal system is a critical part of the failings of the system to protect the individual.  Though the men’s “crimes” are seemingly victimless this does not prevent them from being charged.

     As filmmaking began to emerge as the dominant medium of storytelling in the early 20th century, the American narrative took on a very distinctive style.  Laying the foundation for feature films, the nickelodeons and other early short filmmaking devices, most often contained overtly violent and sexual activities.  Experimenting with the medium and borrowing from other theater eventually lead to more structural stories worthy of a higher art form, but not without some of the remnants of the more exploitive early days of cinema.  The two dominant American non-musical genres that rise to prominence in the 1930s and 40s are overwhelmingly the film-noir and the Western.  Each seems to encapsulate the American narrative in a sort of post-frontier kind of way. Each grapples with the idea of finding order in the chaotic lawlessness that inevitably arises in American society.  Good guys versus bad guys and right versus wrong were easily separated. 
     As American cinema styles began to rapidly change in the 60s and 70s this dominant narrative was becoming increasingly challenged.  Within the American consciousness there had always existed a fascination with the desperate taking the law into there own hands become a champion of the down and out.  Pretty Boy Floyd seems to encompass this ideal in the Grapes of Wrath based on real-life gangsters driven to crime by the hopelessness of the times.  James Dean and Marlon Brando became legends in the late 1950s for their rebellious roles forced to act out against the rigidity of the society at that time.  Perhaps most controversial and pioneering for films championing the dissenters was the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.  It is likely that the films setting in the 1930s, an era notorious in America’s memory of such extreme desperation, that allowed filmmakers to get away with the glorification of murder and crime with backing of a major studio (Warner Brothers).  Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha is very interesting first major film for a director that would go on to become a quintessential American filmmaker infamous for glorifying and sympathizing with the criminals and rebels.