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Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1926)

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1920s: Further Fragmenting the Individual

Surrealism, Expressionism

Week 12 – Lecture 2

17 March 2008

1920-29 : Disorder or Order?• “The Crazy Years” [Les Années Folles]:

– a time of craziness anything goes” [The Roaring Twenties]

– OR . . .

• “A Call to Order”:– a time of trauma when people tried to re-order the world

• SEE THE 1920S AS BOTH – “CRAZY” AND ORDERED:

– Yes: a time of surrealism, gin (at least in Europe!), jazz, theCharleston

– No: a time when people felt a need to retreat to “essentials” and draw thick boundaries between what seemed too fluid/crazy

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National trauma defined:

“a collective encounter with chaos . . . A disruption of a collective system of meaning”

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1920 - 1921 - 1922 - 1927

Mondrian, Composition with Two Lines [1931]

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1921

Return to FORM: geometrical; eternal; RELIABLE

Le Corbusier, Villa at Poissy [1929-31]

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Bauhaus: hybridity of modern and pre-modern

• PRE-MODERN: made by artisans[think Marx: self-expression chef-d’oeuvre: product no longer alienated from maker

•MODERN: sleek geometrical simplicity

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III. Boundaries / Identities 1920-1930

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A. Gender: la femme moderne

“This Civilization has no sexes” –Pierre Drieu la Rochelle

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La Garçonne, 1922[“man-woman”]

Banned by Catholic Church, sale restricted throughout France

[sold a million copies before 1929!]

“Coiffures Garçonnes” [man-woman hairstyles] (1925)

Anthropological boundary markers:hair; skin; blood; saliva; food

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Madame doesn’t want a child

“Natalist movement” [natus = birth]: need to reproduce and replenish

population

The Art of Finding a Husband

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How can I tell my child?

Paula, you’ve reached the age when men …”“Drop it, Mother, I’m a lesbian [ich bin pervers].” Simplicissimus, 20 Sept 1924

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Biedermeyer furniture vs. Corbusier furniture [away with false ornamentation / masks]

Marlene Dietrich

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Carl Dreyer, The Passion of Joan of Arc [1927] ---

1) burned at the stake for cross-dressing as a man

2) claiming God told her to act out this “perversion” [i.e., “mixing”] “against nature”

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Conflicts: gender (male/female); generations (old/young); existential (self/authorities)

B. Race:Fears over “passing” and

racial “mixing”

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1921: Emergency Immigration Act

Immigration limited to 3% of that nation’s population living in USA reported in 1910 Federal Census.

1924: “National Origins” ActImmigration limited to 2% of that nation’s

residents in USA reported in 1890 census-- barred entry to those ineligible for citizenship —

effectively ending the immigration of all Asians into the UnitedStates and undermining the earlier "Gentlemen's Agreement" with Japan.

-- especially limits Eastern Europeans (esp. Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey)

1927: replaced by an overall cap of 150,000 immigrants annually

-- Quotas determined by “national origins” in 1920 census.

www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1398.html

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SIDE NOTE: The “racial purity” concern part of larger “race purity” concern.

1924: “Eugenical Sterilization Act” [Virginia]

1927: Buck v. Bell

-- US Supreme Court 8-1 decision: compulsory sterilization is constitutional

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough.“

-- Model for Nazi racial cleansing laws in 1933

James Weldon Johnson,The Autobiography

of an Ex-Colored Man

NB: Published in 1912; but not best-seller until 1926-27

Again note:Theory of RECEPTION

cf. Rite of Spring

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• “Passing for white”; walking with Caucasian girl friend

• Sees African-American man beat up in street

• Moral dilemma: if he intervenes he will betray his racial identity

• Feels self turn “black” as girlfriend stares

Published 1912

Popular 1926

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Nella Larsen, Passing [1929]

• Clare Kendry:– chooses to “pass for “white”– cuts self off from all past

relationships – -IDENTITY! MEMORY!

• Irene Redfield:– Chooses not to pass although

she could if she desired

• Dilemma: How much of past must one keep or hide to avoid self-destruction?

1920s: Rise of Ku Klux Klan -- Passing“This civilization has no races…”

Anxiety over anthropological boundary markers

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Kansas Klansman, ca. 1925

Knight of the Holy Roman Empire?

http://www.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/Klan.html

C. Race and Gender:

Josephine Baker

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Josephine Baker:Les Années Folles [The Crazy Years]

• “Is this a man? Is this a woman? Her lips are painted black, her skin is the color of a banana, her hair, already short, is stuck to her head as if made of caviar…”

– Review of opening night at the Theatre des Champs Elysées

“Un Vent de Folle”

[“A Breeze of Madness”](at the Folies Bergères, 1927)

Josephine Baker gives name to

Les Années Folles

[The Crazy Years]

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“The madness of the day”

Marlene Dietrich / Josephine Baker

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D. Class / Unstable wealth

1925Jay Gatz from North Dakota: passes for rich

New money after war

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Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1926) [My Struggle]

Anxiety over Jewish passing for Gentile

Equates Jews = “usurers”; “vermin”

“capital without land”

NB: medieval metaphors

NB: Hitler was Austrian, not German

Born in a border town (w/ Bavaria).

Struggled as a painter in Vienna –later says that Vienna is where he “acquired anti-Semitism”(Wittgenstein; Schoenberg; Freud)

1920s-1930shttp://www.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Passing.html

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II. Surrealism

Salvador Dali: The Persistence of Memory (1931)

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“memory”

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Written 1924;

Published 1925

Breton: worked as a medic in psychiatric ward;

examined “shell-shocked” [i.e., traumatized] soldiers [today: PTSD]

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Studies with Freud: recovers importance of the DREAM

[i.e., non-waking/non-”rational” state]

• Dreams: symbolic material; points to “repressed” wishes, desires– NB: so “occult” [hidden /

mysterious] needs an interpreter [psychoanalyst]

– Contrast Descartes! Smith! Rationalbeings live on surface

• measured logical conversation leads to truth

• free from all constraints, we’ll pursue self-interest

Interpretation of Dreams [1899][NB: Heart of Darkness [1899]]

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“That old bitch gone in the teeth: civilization.”-Ezra Pound

• The real losers of the Great War:– progress– Liberalism– “civilizing mission”

• “The virtues of the West [i.e., science, reason] have been turned against civilization itself.”– Paul Valéry

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“What all these men lack is dialectic.”(Engels)

• “I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak..”

– Breton, Surrealist Manifesto, 1924

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The 50th Anniversary of Hysteria, 1878-1928“Hysteria is not a pathological phenomenon and may, in every regard, be considered as the supreme means of expression.” --Breton, 1928

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Sur-realism – like the dream itself –

is not nonsensical!!!

Sur-realism – A RESPONSE TO TRAUMA

i.e., the collapse of Liberal culture –

and ideology of ‘rationality” / “rational choice”

“Reality” : more than meets the eye – perhaps the most important part!

“An Andalusian Dog” (1929)

= “sur – realist”

← “the real” – grotesque!

← moonlight: dreamlike / hallucinatory / fantastical

cf. Pierrot Lunaire!!!

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Shell-Shock Sur-realism

1929

II. Long-term cause of WWII:

Paris 1919 --- Treaty of Versailles

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• In general, Impressionism:

– Western Europe esp. France

– USA

• In general, Expressionism: Middle Europe

– [Vienna (Austro-Hungarian Empire),

– Berlin (Germany), – Oslo (Norway)]

• FAILURE OF VERSAILLES:

• Wilson [USA] and Britain want restraint; French insist on harsh terms for Germany– The original aggressor

--- Austria --- has been reduced to nothing!

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Article 231: Blames Germany completely / absolutely for the war [“blank check”]Billed $5 billion a year to GB and France!

Germany must borrow from USA [disastrous during Depression]

1923-24: Hyperinflation

• The new Republic of Germany --- the “Weimar Republic” --- replaces German Empire– cannot deal with war debts

• 1914: $1 = 4 DM • 1923: $1 = 4.2 trillion DM

– Savings lost through inflation

– Middle class ruined by inflation

• stabilizing force of democracy

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Weimar Republic: 1923-1924

Jazz-Age Paris / New York

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Jazz-Age Resentment

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Georg Grosz, Gray Day

Otto Dix, Skat Players (1920)

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Otto Dix, Three Wenches (1924)

Christian SchadTwo Girls1928

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George Grosz, Eclipse of the Sun

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Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

• Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939 [Psychoanalyst]• Arnold Schoenberg, 1874-1951 [Musician]• Egon Schiele, 1890-1918 [Painter]• Oskar Kokoschka, 1886-1980 [Painter]• Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951 [Philosopher]

Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Why the flourishing ground for artistic dissonance, expressionism,

psychoanalytic explorations of the hidden self beneath surface?

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Schoenberg, Berg

Atonalism

12-tone method

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919): German Expressionism

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F.W. Murnau: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror [1922]

Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1926)

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Weimar Republic:

Social crisis /

German Expressionism