Jazz Age Research Articles

Can't Buy Me Love: Commodification and Redemption in F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Popular Girl”

Abstract F. Scott Fitzgerald's popular magazine fiction story “The Popular Girl” mirrors in its commodification of characterization, language, relationships, and plot points the same commodification in the author's career, personal life, and national societal experiences in the jazz age. However, the story's emphasis on social and cultural capital—and that of the author and his country—cannot be fully understood through discussion centered strictly on commodification/consumerism or social class alone. Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the interplay of economic and cultural capital can be applied to explain the actions of the main character, Yanci, and by extension Fitzgerald's and 1920s America.

Thoroughly Modern Middles

Young Millie Dilmount arrives in New York City during the jazz age, shingles her hair and looks for a job with a rich, handsome boss she can marry. The musical-film Thoroughly Modern Millie (dir. George Roy Hill, Universal, 1967) may have been a spoof of the 1920s but various twists and turns in its plot nonetheless reveal its middlebrow scaffolding. Social aspiration is written into the plot, as is the ambiguity of its signifiers: although Millie (Julie Andrews) falls for the penniless Jimmy Smith (James Fox), she sets her sights on the seemingly more appropriate Trevor Graydon (John Gavin) only to discover that, of course, Jimmy was a millionaire all along. This is a narrative as much about cultural and social as financial capital. Through its ‘second-order parody’ of racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes, Angelo Pao argues, Thoroughly Modern Millie – along with other American musicals – ‘has played a significant role in the formation of a national persona’. The middlebrow, though, is not necessarily about identity politics, storylines or style; it is also closely bound with modes of dissemination and their relative costs and, because of that, with questions of class. Indeed, the Broadway musical was (and continues to be) a mainly middle-class affair, from its makers to its consumers, who David Savran points out have long needed ‘a good deal of disposable income’, given that ticket prices have always outstripped cinema, spoken theatre – and, on occasion, opera.

Contributors

Contributors

Sharon McConnell-Sidorick. Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia’s Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal.

S<scp>haron</scp> M<scp>c</scp>C<scp>onnell</scp>-S<scp>idorick</scp>. <i>Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia’s Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal</i>.

Salomé in the Jazz Age: Faulkner, The Marionettes, and Sanctuary

Salomé in the Jazz Age: Faulkner, The Marionettes, and Sanctuary

Traversing the Class Boundary: Gone Girl (2014) as Failed Remake

Traversing the Class BoundaryGone Girl (2014) as Failed Remake Anthony Ballas David Fincher's 2014 film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's wildly popular 2012 novel Gone Girl is clearly (though not always explicitly) an inverted adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925). Rather than following the movement from the Middle West to the sophistication and prestige of the New York City scene of the Jazz Age, however, Gone Girl begins in New York under the aura of commercial prosperity, only to settle in the isolated middle-class landscape of suburban Missouri. The film follows the lives of Amy (Rosamund Pike), a young, affluent New Yorker, and her husband, Nick (Ben Affleck), a midwestern 'everyman' who teaches writing at a community college. On the morning of the couple's five-year anniversary, Amy disappears and Nick is implicated in her murder, which causes a media frenzy reminiscent of the 2002 Laci Peterson case. The plot develops under the gaze of a hawkish media—including a clever caricature of Nancy Grace named Ellen Abbott (Missi Pyle)—though it becomes clear that Nick has been framed by Amy. Hence, the bulk of the film focuses on Nick attempting to exonerate himself in front of news cameras, the police, Amy's family, as well as his twin sister, Margo (Carrie Coon). Although the twist that Nick has not participated in his wife's disappearance is revealed early on, he is far from inculpable; in her diary (later found by police), Amy accuses Nick of domestic abuse, and he has cheated on her with one of his young students Andie (Emily Ratajkowski). Amy, it turns out, has faked her disappearance and taken to the road disguised as a working-class woman. She ritualistically strips herself of the signifiers of her affluence and replaces them with working-class ones (a bandana, sweat-pants, Coca-Cola, and Little Debbie), all while carefully and painstakingly carrying out her meticulously planned revenge plot against Nick. When Nick gains the upper hand in the media, Amy seeks assistance from her former lover Desi (Neil Patrick Harris) whom she will later falsely frame as her [End Page 215] kidnapper. Amy eventually makes a 'heroic' return to Nick's arms in front of news cameras after staging her escape and murdering Desi. Nick is nonplussed, but must keep up appearances in front of the vulture tabloid media perched outside of their home. The film occasionally offers visual and dialogic hints at the ideological differences between New York and Missouri—Nick describing himself as a "Corvette, salt-of-the-earth, Missouri guy" and Amy identifying herself as a New Yorker for whom "the world ends at the Hudson"—however, the film fails to capture the potential impact of this truly radical geographical juxtaposition. Cultural differences such as the ideological, economic, and social antagonisms between these loci are shown in several superficial and short-lived montages early on in the film, depicting both the desolate midwestern scenery and the glitz, glamour, and magical aura of New York. The viewer is introduced to the latter via a rather banal scene in which Amy and Nick fall in love under wafts of powdered sugar that rise into the air from workers in the background unloading parcels from a truck in an alleyway; the sugar is momentarily suspended in the night sky as the couple share an embrace—one example of the numerous clichés that mar the film. This simulated romantic atmosphere indicates, at best, Fincher's willingness to broach issues of class difference in the most cursory way imaginable. The specific context for the couple's New York romance may very well have been a byproduct of the laborers' efforts, but any intrigue born of this encounter between two well-to-do young lovers and the workers stops short when the narrative shifts to a mundane conjugal fantasy in which the two leads are depicted taking one another on treasure hunts and keeping their love life interesting, often via adventurous sexual liaisons in odd places (a bookstore, for instance). The sexual fantasy elides the social context in which the fantasy itself is upheld. Fitzgerald employs a strikingly similar visual metaphor of...

The Brokenness of Caesar's Things

Caesar's Things is a semi-autobiographical novel combining modernist literary experimentation with narrative structures derived from the Bible. This unfinished work is seldom analyzed by literary scholars, in part because Fitzgerald's Christian conversion in the 1930s coincided with a mental breakdown, which made her faith and writing both suspect. Criticized as “incoherent,” the novel nonetheless becomes legible when Fitzgerald's religion is disentangled from madness and its contributions examined. The novel confesses the spiritual impoverishment of the Jazz Age protagonist, then seeks her redemption, healing the divide between the self and her soul, between the material world and the kingdom of God.

Last Kiss The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby: An Edition of the Manuscript

Last Kiss The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby: An Edition of the Manuscript

Editors' Note

Editors' Note

Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture

Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture

Defying transparency: Ghostwriting from the Jazz Age to social media

Ghostwriting became a popular practice in sports journalism during the 1920s, as championed by sports press agent Christy Walsh. The practice has re-emerged in the 21st century, in social media and particularly as demonstrated by the new website The Players’ Tribune. Its popularity encourages ethical discussion about ghostwriting’s conflation of journalism and public relations, and the ethical debate it incites. Particular attention centers on the core journalism value of transparency, as it relates to both professions. The article posits that the blurring of professional boundaries between public relations and journalism can have detrimental effects to the credibility of both fields. The authors call for greater transparency in the use of ghostwriting, particularly when used in a sports journalism setting.

Double Bass Techniques of the Early Jazz Era

ABSTRACTWhile it is no secret that many early jazz recordings featured the tuba as the low-end instrument of choice, something seems to be missing from the standard pedagogy in regards to jazz double bass. The double bass had been treated, it seems, with a great deal of speculation as to its true role in early jazz performance practice. In light of this, there is a pressing need for hard research into the performance practices of the early jazz bassists. This article will outline the various ways in which the most notable jazz bassists of the era employed those techniques, with particular attention to the works of Wellman Braud, Steve Brown, and Bill Johnson, as well as to highlight several examples from after the early jazz period which directly reflect the influence of traditional New Orleans style performance practices.

Catherine Tackley, Rhythm &amp; Reaction: The Age of Jazz in Britain

Catherine Tackley, <i>Rhythm &amp; Reaction: The Age of Jazz in Britain</i>

Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia’s Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal by Sharon McConnell-Sidorick

Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia’s Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal by Sharon McConnell-Sidorick

Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia's Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal

Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia's Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal

Синкопы джазового века в реквиеме Первой мировой: Ричард Олдингтон и Отто Дикс

Синкопы джазового века в реквиеме Первой мировой: Ричард Олдингтон и Отто Дикс

What’s in a Name? Racial Transparency and the Jazz-Age in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”

Although critics have long speculated about the connotations of the nickname “Jig” in Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” none have considered the story in light of the word’s use as a racial slur for an African American. Exploring the history of the word and Hemingway’s familiarity with this particular usage contextualizes the story amidst the oft-overlooked history of African American expatriates in Jazz Age Europe. This reading deepens prior interpretations of the relationship between “the American and the girl with him,” while exploring new meanings that emerge when the girl’s racial identity is reconsidered.

Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald and I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories

Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald and I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories

North by North

[Extract] Seven centuries of cartographic convention has placed north at the top of maps, and by logical extension at the top of the world. This convention has been closely aligned with another, known as the Mercator projection. Devised by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1659, this system of map-making has been uncritically handed down through the centuries to the present time and continues to be the cartographic standard in many parts of the world. Mercator’s projection not only points northward but exaggerates northern landmasses at the expense of the south. For example, it magnifies Greenland to be approximately the same size as Africa, which is actually fourteen times larger. The Greenland example is one of many northern amplifications and conceits that belittle the south. The specific contrast with Africa was presented with deadpan humour and devastating effect in a 2012 episode of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. Cartographers for Social Equity lobby President Bartlet’s White House to withdraw all Mercator maps from US schools and replace them with Gall-Peters maps. The Gall-Peters projection represents with greater fidelity and accuracy the relative proportions of the world’s landmasses. The Cartographers for Social Equity fail in their representation but, coincidental or not, five years after the screening of The West Wing episode Gall-Peters maps began to be phased in at schools in two American states. North and south are cardinal directions and polar opposites that refer to exact locations at either end of the globe. Within ice-bound regions, the North Pole defines the Arctic, an old term derived from Latin and Greek to mean north. By contrast, its antithesis—the Antarctic—is a negative term that means opposite to north. It is defined by the South Pole. This linguistic preference suggests that north is the one while south is the other.

Looking Hip on the Square: Jazz, Cover Art, and the Rise of Creativity

In the early 1950s, American jazz entered a phase of artistic blossoming that was accompanied by widespread popularity and unprecedented cultural influence. By the late 1960s, however, this “second jazz age” had come to an end. This article draws on two approaches within cultural sociology to explain the historically specific cultural force of jazz: it follows American sociologist Howard S. Becker’s method of reconstructing “art worlds,” i.e., the networks of cooperation that include the institutional structures of marketing and distribution. In the jazz art world, the article suggests, sound becomes intermedially embedded in visual culture and textual repertoires. The essay also follows German sociologist Andreas Reckwitz, whose history of creativity allows for interpreting the impact of the jazz art world as a chapter in the rise of a creativity dispositif. In particular, this essay focuses on the photographic and illustrative work artists like William Claxton and Andy Warhol created for the newly emerging format of the record cover. The visual art of jazz helps account for jazz’s ability to transport artistic hipness from the enclave of modernist art into the everyday.