Who could forget the glamorous, vivid display of joie de vivre that captivated the world in the Leonardo Di Caprio starer ‘The Great Gatsby’? Brimming with sheer exuberance and the sparkle of the best that life had to offer, the twenties was the period in which the old world, smothered by various norms and hierarchy blossomed into a world that was unknown, unfamiliar, and extremely exciting.
The horrors of the first world war was still fresh in the minds of the people- what they had seen, heard and experienced had filled them with a sense of value for the gift of life that they possessed. Followed by an economic boom, the people were determined to use their money completely; spend every bit of it, because you never know when it might be taken away from you- that was the now widely-held belief, which resulted in a glittery explosion of culture, arts, music and drama.
Life was changing everywhere. Women were earlier expected to stay at home (who’s heard of a Victorian businesswoman, eh?) tightly laced up in corsets and fainting if they (god forbid!) revealed their ankles to the men- but now the jazz age gave birth to the ‘flapper girl’- girls in dresses that daringly came to their knees, who took a keen, full-blooded interest in doing what they wanted to do (“A little party never killed nobody”) and not which was expected of them. They were young, healthy, and full of irrepressible, irresistible energy
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Corsets? What are corsets?[/caption]
It also was the time when the celebrated African American New Orleans Jazz came onto the world music scene. Who can forget Louis Armstrong’s deep, captivating voice singing ‘What a Wonderful World’? Louis Armstrong was welcomed by everyone, despite his skin color, and was so popular that he often dined in the best of hotels, a testament of the fact that slowly, slowly the racial divide was not so apparent as it seemed.
The jazz music was considered to be in vogue. Everything was jazzy- the lights, the parties, the dresses, the people. They danced to it, wildly, luxuriating in the pleasure of being free, free, free as the wind. The Charleston became the iconic dance of the period- a fast paced, upbeat, foot-tapping pastime. Everybody who was anybody danced the Charleston- in pairs, in groups, in bars and restaurants. It represented all that they had become- modern, fast, utterly blissful and wild.
In the end, the twenties were a period of transition- an idyll of our past, a dream of their future. But this golden era was shaken and tumbled out of its happiness into one of the most devastating and shocking events of our past- the great economic depression of 1929.
Source: https://www.icytales.com/the-roaring-twenties-art-fashion-and-all-that-jazz/
