Chapter 6 - Ethical Culture Fieldston School

“Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected”
These social, economic and technological developments also had a
decisive impact on American values. Until around the time Sinatra was born, the
United States was predominately a culture of production: its social values (e.g. the
Puritan work ethic), material conditions (an abundance of raw materials) and
economic realities (like relatively high labor costs, which fostered technological
innovation as well as the immigration of intellectual capital from abroad), helped
create a society in which making things was paramount. Starting in the 1920s –
the first decade where more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas – the
U.S. became a culture of consumption: as many government and business leaders
recognized, the future success of capitalism depended on nation’s ability to
absorb incredible productive capacity via buying, spending, using up. Indeed, it
was precisely the difficulty in absorbing this capacity that was widely blamed for
the advent of the Great Depression.
This new culture of consumption had important psychological
ramifications that reached deep into the roots of mass consciousness. In the
words of cultural historian Warren Susman, a society that once placed emphasis
on character now prized personality. “Character” has a moral connotation; it
suggests the essential nature of an individual in a way that transcends surface
appearances. But “personality” suggests the allure of precisely such surface
appearances, whether via the acquisition of cosmetics or a newly styled
automobile (Alfred Sloan’s General Motors Corporation was finally able to beat
Henry Ford at his assembly‐line game by subtly changing his models every
year).
Here again, the example of Crosby is instructive. While he no doubt had
to work hard to establish himself, a large part of Crosby’s appeal was that he
made it all seem so easy. He was one of the first modern celebrities – a man
American History for Cynical Beginners
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