1920s and 1930s subcultures
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In the 1920s, American Jazz music and motor cars were at the centre of a European subculture which began to break the rules of social etiquette and the class system (See also Swing Kids). In America, the same flaming youth subculture was "running wild" but with the added complication of alcohol prohibition. Canada had prohibition in some areas, but for the most part, thirsty Americans coming over the border found an oasis. As a result, smuggling escalated as crime gangs became organised. In the southern United States, Mexico and Cuba were popular with drinkers. Thus, a drinking subculture grew in size and a crime subculture grew along with it. Other drugs were used as alternatives to alcohol. When prohibition ended, the subculture of drink, drugs and jazz did not disappear, and neither did the gangsters.
The German nudist movement gained prominence in the 1920s, but was suppressed during the Nazi Gleichschaltung after Adolf Hitler came to power. Social nudism in the form of private clubs and campgrounds first appeared in the United States in the 1930s. In Canada, it first appeared in British Columbia about 1939 and in Ontario nine years later.
In the art world, the spiritual home of most subcultures, the surrealist movement was attempting to shock the world with their games and bizarre behaviour. The surrealists were at one and the same time a serious art movement and a parody of other artforms and political movements. Surrealism had been developed by Andre Breton and others from the Dada movement. Based in several European countries, surrealism was destined for trouble when the Nazis came to power. Subcultures and "degenerate art" were almost completely stamped out and replaced by the Hitler Youth.
In North America, the depression caused widespread unemployment and poverty, and a consequent malaise among adolescents that found its expression in urban youth gangs --the so-called dead end kids . The dead end kid phenomenon was fictionalized on the stage and screen where it became a popular image with which people could identify. Films featuring The Dead End Kids, The East Side Kids, Little Tough Guys etc. were popular from the 1930s to the 1950s (see also: Bowery Boys). The genre also found its expression in the kid gang comic book stories of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, including The Boy Commandos and Newsboy Legion features.
The Dust bowl disaster forced large numbers of rural Americans from Oklahoma and elsewhere to move their entire families to survive. They were labeled as "Okies" and treated poorly by the authorities in other states. Their refugee status was recorded in folk songs (many of them by Woody Guthrie); John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, and a film adaptation starring Henry Fonda also reflected upon this theme.
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