Reflections on Twentieth-Century Culture

RAIDING THE ICEBOX

•

PETER WOLLEN

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis

CHAPTER TWO

MODERN TIMES: CINEMAI AMERICANISM/THE ROBOT

1. 'Yesterday, European Culture! Today, American Technology!'

If, in the early years of the century, Orientalisrn was crucial [0 (he emergence of modern arr (fashion, ballet, decorative au), the period of consolidarion Wa5 marked by Americanism. (cinema, architecture, applied an). Film-makers and theorists of culture looked to the work of Griffith and Chaplin. Architects sang the praises of the silo and rhe skyscraper. The cult of jazz swept across Europe. 1 Oskar Schlemmer observed that, at the Bauhaus: 'The artistic climate here cannot support anything that is nor the latest, the most modem, up-to-the-minute, Dadaism, circus, variety, jazz, hectic pace, movies, America, airplanes, the automobile . Those are the terms in whir b people here chiuk.·2

1:0 1.929 Pirandello wrote, 'Americanism is swamping us. 1 think [hat a new beacon of civilization has been lit over there.' He rhoughr thar in Berlin 'the ~rrucrure of the ciry itself offered no resistance', whereas in Paris, 'Americanism is as srridenr and jarring as the make-up on the face of an ageing /'?!flftJe dn lllOJJ.de·.:3 The further cast you looked in Europe, the more intense was ,·me' cult of Americanism (Germany, {he USSR) while in the West (Britain, fu~'rlli¢) tile cult was much weaker. Gramsci explained the discrepancy s~g~jnrdy.: the further ease you went in Europe, the more completely the JJid.itional-tl1!-liug class had been swept away.

r~ J'l;{e'SOvlet Union, Americanism had a pronounced utopian ring. The avan1i~garde stage company Feks (Factory of the Eccentric ACtor), issued a :cyp~a:l pro~lal!Dation; 'Yesterday, European culture. Today, American techn<'!.l~gy:. ,PtHd'uct-ioo and industry under the stat-spangled banner. Either 0.rherrq.ln:!t3J;jtit\ or arranging the funeral ceremonies.'? Under (he influence of ~;r~'Qed'c1<~'fayloI's worksrudy experiments, Gasrev set up the Insricuce for the $cif!9,!.£tic'Qti!m.i:zation or-Work and rhe Mechanizarien of Man. 5 Mayakovsky

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