Even aside from academia, there isn’t much serious art about it either. Depression hobos are just taken as this whimsical character Ala O Brother Where Art Thou etc. Even media at the time leaned that way.
I don’t know if this is historically what happened, but it seems like Jack Kerouac contributed a lot to the whimsical way we see hobos. Maybe Harry Partch, too.
I guess I’ve reas autobiographies of people living through the time. Malcolm X’s childhood as a black kid in a rural place still rang the same even if it was technically after by less than a decade, it wasn’t ended overnight and certainly not if you were black. I think a big thing as well is that a lot of people who would have been of the age and in the places materially to write about the horrors of the depression, they either got killed in ww2 or those horrors kinda took over.
You need to go look again. There’s vast amounts of art from the Great Depression and New Deal period. Maybe write to some large libraries and ask the librarians for help. I’m fairly certain that just the Civilian Conservation Corps hired artists to go out with other workers and paint and take photographs of the wilder parts of America. There were a bunch of programs to financially support culture and the arts in that period, too.
There were also huge ‘community hall’ infrastructure projects, most of which were pulled down in privatization and redevelopment schemes in the 70’s and 80’s.
Fun fact, those ‘community centers’ that 80’s movies are always trying to protect are mostly 1930’s CCC projects, left to rot by age and defunding.
Believe me I want to go back in time and kill Reagan as much as anyone else but we’re having trouble sourcing elemental Oganesson for the time machine.
Well, it was more than just Reagan that caused it. Much like Trump was a symptom, not a cause, so was Reagan. Capitalists were consolidating control against labor and prohibiting the government from being able to directly compete against firms when they are monopolizing labor was a huge incentive for them to neuter those policies. It was an inevitability that only a general labor strike could have prevented, but the agreements made in the New Deal prevented that from happening.
Some people idolize FDR, but his assuaging and incorporation of the unions into the capitalist system was likely the biggest blow to their potential political capacity and long term viability for true social change. He was a screwd, smart bastard.
Nah, Reagan was secretly Balam, Duke of Hell, in command of forty legions of demons. When we get the time machine up and running I’m going to pop back to 1959, blast him with some buckshot made from melted down altar bowls, and that should fix everything.
Even aside from academia, there isn’t much serious art about it either. Depression hobos are just taken as this whimsical character Ala O Brother Where Art Thou etc. Even media at the time leaned that way.
I don’t know if this is historically what happened, but it seems like Jack Kerouac contributed a lot to the whimsical way we see hobos. Maybe Harry Partch, too.
Okay, you gave me my next Historical Special Interest. I
I guess I’ve reas autobiographies of people living through the time. Malcolm X’s childhood as a black kid in a rural place still rang the same even if it was technically after by less than a decade, it wasn’t ended overnight and certainly not if you were black. I think a big thing as well is that a lot of people who would have been of the age and in the places materially to write about the horrors of the depression, they either got killed in ww2 or those horrors kinda took over.
You need to go look again. There’s vast amounts of art from the Great Depression and New Deal period. Maybe write to some large libraries and ask the librarians for help. I’m fairly certain that just the Civilian Conservation Corps hired artists to go out with other workers and paint and take photographs of the wilder parts of America. There were a bunch of programs to financially support culture and the arts in that period, too.
There were also huge ‘community hall’ infrastructure projects, most of which were pulled down in privatization and redevelopment schemes in the 70’s and 80’s.
Fun fact, those ‘community centers’ that 80’s movies are always trying to protect are mostly 1930’s CCC projects, left to rot by age and defunding.
Word. The US did have some real social welfare and social infrastructure before the Reaganites took power and started austerity.
In a sane society, they would have been pulled down and reconstructed, but we have to have our malls and gated communities.
Believe me I want to go back in time and kill Reagan as much as anyone else but we’re having trouble sourcing elemental Oganesson for the time machine.
Well, it was more than just Reagan that caused it. Much like Trump was a symptom, not a cause, so was Reagan. Capitalists were consolidating control against labor and prohibiting the government from being able to directly compete against firms when they are monopolizing labor was a huge incentive for them to neuter those policies. It was an inevitability that only a general labor strike could have prevented, but the agreements made in the New Deal prevented that from happening.
Some people idolize FDR, but his assuaging and incorporation of the unions into the capitalist system was likely the biggest blow to their potential political capacity and long term viability for true social change. He was a screwd, smart bastard.
Nah, Reagan was secretly Balam, Duke of Hell, in command of forty legions of demons. When we get the time machine up and running I’m going to pop back to 1959, blast him with some buckshot made from melted down altar bowls, and that should fix everything.
Uh… kill kill kill blood shoot stab
I, for one, appreciate your commitment to upping our violent language percentage on the internet.