Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 21

Documentary Journalism of the
1930*s: Pursuing the Social Fact
American intellectuals and artists of the 1930s experimented
with a variety of literary techniques and genres in an effort to
understand the social and economic chaos of the decade. In the spirit
of the writers of the Progressive generation, the intellectual
community of the Thirties held faith in the power of words to elicit
social change. According to Richard Pells (1973), the 1920s were dark
years for American intellectuals, with many people ignoring the
Progressive call for a new ideology, political order, and value system
that would correspond to the social and economic changes in society
(pp. 151-152). This characterization has been challenged by Roderick
Nash (1990), who cited the need to revise the image of 1920s'
intellectuals as nihilistic, narcissistic, and anti-American. Nash
maintained that a central element in this stereotyped view is that
intellectuals of the period turned disgustedly against their nation
and its past, seeking to escape the cultural malaise. Nash added that
many intellectuals in the Twenties did not discard their ideals, nor
were they bitter and disillusioned (pp. 67-68). Either way, t he stock
market crash of 1929 provided American intellectuals with the
national emergency they realized it would take to capture the
attention of citizens who appeared content with the status quo. With
the belief that art could have a significant impact on social change.
Depression-era artists experimented with proletarian novels, plays,
poetry, and film (Pells, 1973, pp. 202-219, 252-263, 268-291). As Pells
observed, "To bury oneself in one's art at a time of massive social
disintegration seemed a selfish luxury which neither the writer nor
the country could any longer afford" (p. 154).
The artistic experimentation often led to disillusionment,
however, with the writers of the Thirties finding their fictional
genres inadequate in expressing the emotional and economic
devastation of the Depression. The writers lost confidence in
themselves when their art failed to make order out of chaos (p. 195).
A number of artists turned to documentary journalism as a creative
vehicle for understanding the turmoil of the Thirties. For many of