“What a hard week! Let’s go to the mall this week-end, eat at the food court and get some goodies!”. This is what you can hear nowadays when the economics atmosphere is down. On the other hand, we heard measures like the one of President Obama who “preserved a $50-million increase in arts funding” back in 2009 when the country was sinking in the crisis. We can wonder, where should we stand regarding those two calls?
Let’s take a look back in the 1930s. When the Great Depression sunk the economy and peoples moral. Roosevelt and the New Deal lightened the path for most people in difficulties.
The projects created in Music, for example, through the Folk movement, in writing and much more in the Art field thanks to newly created agencies like the FWP (Federal Writer’ Project) or the FTP (Federal Theatre Project).
What art would bring to the nation is not “escapism, as we sometimes imagine, but speed, energy and movement at a time of economic stagnation and social malaise.” 1
Is it still true today? Is Morris Dickstein right about his comparison between the 1930s and the 2008 recession? Maybe not. We have heard in the news about some people bringing about the idea that we need another “New Deal”. The real question is, do people need a New Deal package to feel better?
If you recall the idea in the 1930s that there was a contrast between a “feudal system” trying to survive against the emerging Long Civil Rights era 2. Nowadays, developed countries have already won this fight. Many rights that people fought for were adopted, from the right to vote for women, same rights for all citizens, opening borders for immigration, rights for immigrants, and more recently gay marriage.
There are two main ideas that appeared through the last decades. Firstly, since the creation and progress of the new technologies of information and communication, Art has never been as developed and present than ever. Art is now accessible and democratized. People can express themselves on social networks too.
Secondly, people nowadays find comfort in the consumer society. Buying consumer goods, watching the television and its ads, spending the money in junk food are the new ways of “feeling good”.
Everybody has in mind one of the most famous advertisement by the McDonald’s Company “I’m Lovin It” where the concept is that you can buy inexpensive (junk) food to make you feel good any time you need quickly and easily.
Among the most famous singers in the world, some of them managed to gather many people together and make them feel happy, special and important.
The first that comes in mind is Michael Jackson or the “King of Pop”. He managed to make people feel better. The day he left us, the world mourned his death. He was a symbol to the eyes of millions of people in the United States, but also internationally. He was regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest entertainers.
Whitney Houston, another African-American artist, singer and actress, marked her time in R&B, pop, soul and gospel.
Nevertheless, music became a huge industry. For example, there is a website dedicated to Michael Jackson with an online store selling goodies and tickets for new events even after his death.
While people want to feel better in times of recession like in 2008, they are being sold a fake comfort through the society of capitalism who itself brought the economy down. It is paradoxical.
Maybe people do not need another New Deal, but they should remember what it was to fight for rights, what is the essence of Art and how to appreciate simple things of life, like the Folk groups on the railroads bringing instants of joy to the people.
- In other words, Art was not only a way to create jobs and help the economy, but it also helped people move forward in their life and bring hope to society.
- Ritterhouse, J. (2017). INTRODUCTION: The Same Journey, Writ Small, That the United States Was On. In Discovering the South: One Man’s Travels through a Changing America in the 1930s (pp. 1-19). CHAPEL HILL: University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.mutex.gmu.edu/stable/10.5149/9781469630953_ritterhouse.4
