The Rise Of American Popular Culture And Commercialization Trend (1900-1929)

As one of the fast-growing countries in the 20th century, American popular culture basically rose in the early 20th century and was much intertwined with the accomplishment of its industrialization and the development of its urbanization, and it also represented a great influence of commercialization during the period.This paper focused on the limitation from the early 20th century to the end of 1920s. By means of presenting the basic characteristics and the expressions of American popular culture, it demonstrated the reason for the rise of American popular culture, and explained the importance of material life and spiritual life in the development of human society and each other's involvement, in order to reveal the indivisible relationship between American popular culture and modern industrialization and commercialization. The understanding of the issue would be a benefit for unfolding the current cultural criticism and construction in our country so as to prompt the development of cultural industry with Chinese features.Preface introduced the present situation of domestic and overseas related popular culture and which were further briefly categorized and summarized. It also introduced the research methods and writing objectives of the article.The main body was composed of four sections:The first section introduced various definitions of the popular culture, proposed the concept adopted in the reading, and elaborated the characteristics of popular culture. The second section illustrated the main expressions of American popular culture. The development of the early 20th American popular culture was tightly connected with film, pop music and sports.The third section analyzed the reason for the rise of American popular culture. The abundance of material products, the increase of leisure time and the change of urban social life in the early 20th century led more and more people start to pursue the spending on cultural merchandise beyond material merchandise, which thus made the popular culture possible.The fourth section analyzed the relation between commercialization and culture based on the trend of American social economic infrastructure variety, which emphasized commercialization's great contribution in the formation of popular culture. The development of the early 20th century economics and the accumulation of social wealth highly improved the living standards of the American society. New recreation ways, especially the appearance and popularity of automobile culture, enabled America into the public consumption society times. Popular culture was turned into merchandise, by the capital investment of cultural and industrial, and the purpose of its profit aimed to be the elementary energy for the production of popular culture.Conclusion summed up the whole article.