The 1920s show the emergence of America as a consumer culture. It highlights the way in which people turned to leisure and consumption to find satisfaction in life. This turn towards leisure activity is what Walt Disney was able to capitalize on at the time. There was a disappearance of the autonomy of the individual worker around this time. The white collar job was an endless sea of everyone doing the same thing as their neighbor. This can be seen in the 1928 film The Crowd. The protagonist in this film works in an office as one of many and wishes to get out and become autonomous. You can see from the photo below how rows and rows of desks are occupied by individuals doing the same thing continuously. They all have the same look and demeanor; one person indistinguishable from the next. This is the type of world and occupation that people were trying to escape from with consumerism and entertainment. Movie theaters were popping up around the country and many were large and ornate like the Strand shown in the photo.
Image from The Crowd
This is a new idea and at the same time calls back to older ideas where a worker was valued for what they could contribute. The individual accountant was replaced by rows of bookkeepers who did not need to have the knowledge or qualifications to do the work. The assembly line was devised around this time. Hugh Grant Adams, an Australian visiting America noted that “the miracle of mass production, was appalled at the dehumanization of what he called the chain gang.” (Dumenil 39) This mass production also transferred into the office workers’ life and the monotony that comes along with it. This assembly line created greater productivity and more goods which brought about larger, national companies. More productivity and more available goods meant that there is also the converse which is more leisure time. This assembly line type of work also transferred into the office workers life and the monotony along with it. It was late in the 1920s that the term “rat race” was coined.
This event explains a lot about the lifestyle that represented the way life was portrayed in the 20s. People were not happy with their careers, but there was enough money being paid to the workers to enjoy their time and forget about what they had to endure five days a week. This additional time and money for entertainment was coupled with the drive to escape everyday life. Walt Disney and his brother Roy, as shown in the photo below, knew how to deliver this to the public. They produced shows like “Alice’s Wild West Show” which combined cartoons with live action. The photo below shows how the two were seen side by side in a short comedy allowing people to take a moment to laugh and leave reality. The entire series was called The Alice Comedies, combining live action with animation. This series, as a part of Disney’s work at the time, shows not only the progression of technology and entertainment, but also the appeal of said entertainment to the public as it grew in popularity.
Walt (right) and his brother Roy in front of their first Hollywood Studio
Image from ‘Alice’s Wild West Show’ from the the Comedies played by Virgina Davis
Bibliography
Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper. Hill and Wang, 30 June 1995.
Jordyn Baham is a senior at Ramapo College studying Photography with a minor in Museum and Exhibition Studies. She takes the Discovering Digital History class in Spring 2025.
