Disney in the Classroom
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The 1920's was a time of radical change for Americans. The economy boomed which increased the income of most families, and made it easier to get credit (buying on credit was a concept created in the 1920's.) Electrical power was becoming common in homes, and even low income families used credit to buy electrical appliances. Since most states mandated an eight hour day, and since women were spending less time on housework, people had more leisure time. They used this leisure time to drive (in a car bought on credit) to the movies, to a baseball games, or to a vaudeville show; activities now within the budget of virtually everyone. They also stayed home and listened to the new technological wonder, the radio. It can be said that the 1920's was the decade in which the United States became a modern society.
Oswald mutates into Mickey
I use the evolution of Disney's animation as an illustration of the radical changes that took place in the 1920's. I reference several sources to illuminate this evolution, including video from The Hand Behind the Mouse, Disney's Beginnings, and The History of the Animated Drawing.I get cartoon images from "The Encyclopedia of Disney Short Cartoons". (A fabulous website which provided the cartoon images below.) The development of Disney animation allows me to explain four aspects of 1920's society: how much the decade changed life for the general population, how the increase in leisure time lead to changes in the entertainment industry, how the federal government's decision to reduce regulations on business lead to major problems, and how much technology changed the average American's life.
Disney' Simple Beginnings
Animation has existed long before what we now call cartoons. For centuries there have been devices that tricked the human eye into perceiving movement. Animation began its career in film in the same way, as a gimmick. Anonymous characters would perform sight gags to give audiences a quick laugh. There were some attempts to give cartoon characters personality, (Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur" gained some fame as a part of McCay's vaudeville act.) but even when a character became more well known he or she still just a foil for gags. What all this means is that the animated cartoons shown in the early 1920's were little different than those shown in 1900.
The lack of development in cartoons mirrored the lives of most Americans. There had been great technology advances in the fifty years preceding 1920. However, in 1920, most Americans still did not own a phone, did not have electrical power in their homes, and probably still used a horse for transportation. Technological advances had made the United States the world's most powerful economy, but these advances had not yet touched the majority of the people in the United States.
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