Exhibit: Artistic Expression in the Great Depression
My exhibit, Artistic Expression in the Great Depression, explored the ways that the struggles of the Great Depression were reflected in creative works at the time, such as plays, music, novels, film, murals, and dance. Using the digital tools we’ve worked with in class helped me to discuss both the purposes and the impact of these works.
When discussing Clare Leighton’s art work, using image annotation helped to talk about the particular portions of the work in their own contexts. It also saved the trouble of explaining and describing where each component of the work could be found. Using Soundcite to provide an immersive experience into Mary Sullivan’s song, “Sunny California”1 helped to put one into the same perspective of someone hearing it at the time, someone who would hear their own story in the song and find comfort in solidarity. I prefer StoryMap over the other tools that we’ve used, as it helps you visualize different types of information at once. Using StoryMap helped me to show the location, description, and medium of several different kinds of creative works. Despite being of very different natures, StoryMap allowed the information for each topic to be shared in the same context, as a moment in history. These tools helped me to really make my point in explaining how the creative works of the 1930’s helped the nation heal.
Of course, I only found myself to be proving what we’d been learning all along this semester. We even read early on in the class, “The arts can be a lifeline as well as a pleasant diversion, a source of optimism and energy as well as peerless insight, especially when so many people are stymied or perplexed by the unexpected changes in their world. As our troubles worsen, as stress morphs into anxiety and depression, we may desperately need the mixture of the real and the fantastic, the sober and the silly, that only the arts can bring us.”2 Now, if not for this class, I wouldn’t understand the concept lying underneath that determination. We were quickly directed towards the concept of escapism; and to understand how a nation suffering hardship across the board needed revitalization and found it in a mix of avoidance and activism. While Federal One Projects sought to begin mending society by creating cultural stimulation,3 seemingly a distraction from the task at hand, they didn’t just provide a diversion from the present circumstance, contrary to initial belief. “The most durable cliche about the arts in the 1930s is that despite the surge of social consciousness among writers, photographers and painters (some of it supported by federal dollars), the arts offered Depression audiences little more than fluffy escapism, which was just what they needed. But that’s not the whole story.”4
What we’ve learned throughout this class and what I’ve tried to show through my exhibit is that by looking closer at those arts projects that were condemned as a silly waste of federal funding, those involved were inspired to use the works for a bigger purpose; to seek out works that put issues under a floodlight. The nation was not only given back a sense of optimism through the “distraction,” but was motivated by the call to action that lie in so many of the arts projects being examined and produced at the time. It raises the thought of how often we may come into this possible paradox today, in getting caught up in entertainment news rather than considering pressing issues. Or can we justify that today by arguing that perhaps the news that entertains us sometimes points us back in the right direction, to the matters at hand?
Aside from what we’ve learned in this class in historical perspective, I’ve personally found a wealth of knowledge in understanding my relationship with the technological world. While I’ve considered how to navigate digital space carefully and safely, and take precautions in my usage, I hadn’t considered my duty to the digital world. Learning how to be responsible about engaging with suspicious information5 and possible bots6 has opened my mind to a different perception of the Internet. Everyone likes to wonder what the future will look like for technology, but I was slow to realize that all of us will really be the keepers of Internet safety, that we are all responsible for the future of the digital world.
- “Sunny California,” Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Workers Collection, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000215/
- Dickstein, M. (2009, April 1). How song, dance and movies bailed us out of the Depression. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/la-oe-dickstein1-2009apr01-story.html
- Bindas, K. (1996, June 1). All This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA’s Federal Music Project and American Society
- Dickstein, M. (2009, April 1). How song, dance and movies bailed us out of the Depression. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/la-oe-dickstein1-2009apr01-story.html
- Appelbaum, Y. (2012, May 15). How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/how-the-professor-who-fooled-wikipedia-got-caught-by-reddit/257134/
- Shaffer, K. (2017, June 5). Spot a Bot. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/data-for-democracy/spot-a-bot-identifying-automation-and-disinformation-on-social-media-2966ad93a203
