Spiritual Dynamics February 23 2014
The 1920′s, the Roaring Twenties, ushered in the technologies of radio entertainment and movies with sound tracks. Before that, ‘the movies’ had been silent moving picture dramas with subtitles. Now, with the addition of sound, they became ‘the talkies.’
The new media of radio, as well as the newsreels that played before each movie, began providing people with new sources of information and entertainment. Henry Ford’s mass production of motor cars was creating a demand for the dirt roads of the day to be hard-covered with tarmac. Progressive towns began boasting that, as well as a hard-covered main street, they also had a traffic light!
Television was still twenty years into the future, but the telephone was becoming a fashion statement, especially when its use was demonstrated by glamorous starlets in the movies. With the separate earpiece held up to one ear, they would loudly and clearly intone the magic words, “Hello, calling long distance!” in order to be connected with their intended party through a relay of human telephone operators. In the movies, if not in real life, they always succeeded in getting through on the first attempt.
Meanwhile, the young adults of the day, such as the fashionable flappers, showed their newfound freedom from tradition by dancing to the Jazz music that reflected their sense of lightness and fun.