Culture During Depression

My latest in the American News:

Our troubled economic times invite comparison to the Great Depression. In addition to the obvious economic factors, the Depression era also left a cultural legacy that we might look to see replicated in our day.

The Depression years produced many memorable songs written by some of our nation's greatest songwriters. Irving Berlin used Herbert Hoover's laughable statement that “prosperity is just around the corner” as the basis of a song that stated, “Just around the corner/There's a rainbow in the sky/So let's have another cup of coffee/Let's have another piece of pie.”

Nowadays we can appreciate songs that discuss bank failure. The Gershwin brothers, Ira and George, showed they could even turn that subject into Hit Parade gold. In “Who Cares” they wrote “Who cares/If the sky/Seems to fall/In the sea/Who cares what banks fail in Yonkers/As long as you've got a kiss that conquers.”

Perhaps the most famous song from the Depression is Yip Harburg's and Jay Gorney's “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” A lament of the unemployed, the song's lyrics say, “Once I built a railroad/I made it run/Made it race against time/Once I built a railroad/ now it's done/Brother, can you spare a dime?”

One fact that makes the Great Depression worse than today is that financial collapse corresponded with the Dust Bowl years. The farm economy was caught between the Scylla of drought and the Charybdis of bank failure. That's probably what Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter Cindy Walker had in mind when she wrote “Dusty Skies,” a song that concludes with the lines, “These ain't no tears in my eyes/Just sand from these dusty skies.”

Hollywood movies responded to the Depression. Some of that response was in the form of escapist films such as the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals or Gene Autry Western serials. Other films made comment about the times. In “My Man Godfrey,” William Powell's title character shows that no man is too poor to be a gentleman or too rich to be a churl. Frank Capra's “You Can't Take It With You” extols the value of family and friends against the claims of money.

John Steinbeck's novel “Grapes of Wrath” was popular both in print and on the big screen in its depiction of ruined Dust Bowl farmers trying to make it in California. Steinbeck might be the American novelist most influenced by the Depression. The hard-boiled detective story also gained popularity during the Depression. The popularity of such novels as Dashiell Hammett's “Maltese Falcon” and Raymond Chandler's “The Big Sleep” might be attributed to the jaundiced view of justice some had in that era.

Perhaps one silver lining of our economic downturn might be the creation of popular culture that is truly popular. Another difference between our times and the Depression is that we have created a culture of niches. In that sense, there is no popular culture as there aren't many songs, movies or books that have the same broad appeal as the entertainment of the 1930s. Perhaps the artists of our day can respond to economic distress by telling stories in which we all can share, sometimes helping us understand our situation and sometimes helping us escape it.