Movies, Model Ts, and Morality: The Impact of Technology on Standards of Behavior in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

N THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY THE UNITED STATES WITNESSED BOTH moral and technological innovation. The divorce rate went from 8.8 per hundred in 1910 to 16.5 in 1928. The number of patents granted went from 208,000 in the decade ending 1890 to 421,000 in the decade ending 1930. Lipstick brightened the faces of young ladies; Edison lights illuminated homes and offices. Secretaries began typing; women began publicly smoking and drinking. Iceboxes kept food cool; jazz became a ‘‘hot’’ new dance craze. Although technology cannot force people to behave a certain way, it was not strictly coincidental that changes in perceptions of acceptable behavior accompanied the increasing use of technology. By examining the metaphysics engendered by living in a technologically oriented society and the specific outlooks fostered by two of its most pervasive technologies—the car and the motion picture—one can explore its influence on behavioral standards. Living in a technologically oriented society encourages a general outlook that is objective, temporal, separated, and youth-oriented; the automobile in particular encourages an upwardly leveled society, a ‘‘personal’’ world and a ‘‘suddenly happening’’ environment, and the motion picture specifically fosters group objectivity, sequence as rational and self-exposure over self-examination. Several prominent social scientists and scholars in the early twentieth century recognized that technology affected social behavior, even though they did not always clearly explain how. In 1929, influential political commentator, journalist, and philosopher Walter Lippmann 1