Friday, October 3, 2008

Entertainment in Tough Times


Anyone who follows the news, lives in a mortgaged home, or buys gas for his or her car knows we are in bumpy financial times. Bailout, TARP, Financial Rescue or not, we have a long road of tight financial times ahead.
So, this got me wondering, what kind of entertainment was popular during that toughest of economic times in recent history, the Great Depression? Now, I'm no historian, but I did some digging and was struck by a few interesting facts. First, two types of story telling seemed to flourish, the writing that took you deep into the heart of the problem, Tobacco Road, The Grapes of Wrath, for example, and the stories that took you away from it all to another place and time, like Gone with the Wind.
In my opinion, the hardest of stuggles forged some of the best creativity the world has ever seen. Aside from those mentioned above, the Depression brought us Dr. Seuss’s first book, Robert Frost’s poetry gained in popularity and won three of his Pulitzer Prizes, and in movies, the Depression delivered the fantastic Wizard of Oz as well as the wonderful animation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Games invented during the Great Depression included Monopoly and Scrabble. Early on, we sent in the clowns with the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Mae West, and WC Fields. As the era drew to a close, we moved to the highly stylized big screen musicals, Hollywood’s escapist answer to the beginnings of censorship restrictions.

In our tough times today, we see the strong advent of video games. A clear form of escapism. What else do you see that may be a creative reaction to tough economic times, either then or now? Escapist or not? Your thoughts?

6 comments:

Sue Ann Jaffarian said...

Excellent post, Susan, and very thought provoking. Looking just at our field of writing, you'll see the paranormal subgenre gaining in the fiction market across all major genres, along with thrillers. Could these be a form of escapism? And I wonder if the continued fascination with reality shows where people vie for huge amounts of money is also a by-product of our crunch times. Maybe they are the dance marathons of our time.

Mark Combes said...

Well, I hope stories about guys that move to the Caribbean and start a dive shop and run into all kinds of trouble will become popular....

I wonder if reading in general will see an uptick. It's pretty cheap entertainment and it certainly takes you out of your world for a little while.

G.M. Malliet said...

Watch for some great escapist movies to come out on TV. Not sure we can all afford the movie popcorn anymore.

Susan Goodwill said...

It's interesting that we have the vampire craze in books and TV, and Sue Ann's point about the reality shows, well taken. They are a weird phenomenon, some say the popularity is a byproduct of the writers' strikes, but I like Sue Ann's dance marathon theory. It's just kind of an interesting picture to me.
Bookclubs have gained in popularity. I bet we see them grow.

October 03, 2008 12:30 PM

Joe Moore said...

Good post, Susan. Certainly, anything that will take us away from reality will always be popular, especially in rough times. The good news is, books, especially paperbacks are still affordable. I would guess there will be a downturn in hardcover sales but new and used mass market and trade paperbacks should stay solid. I would also guess that readers will not be as adventurous in trying unknown writers but will stick closer to their tried-and-true favorites.

Anonymous said...

In film, you see a lot of fantasy movies coming out, which I suppose is a reaction to the bad economic times who've been here for many for the past few years, really. Great post.