ultralaser

Listening to hits from the 1920s… and this shit’s depressing in a tongue-in-cheek “lol we’re all poor and we’re gonna die lolololol” sort of way

Welcome to the new economy.

I’m……………the 1930s,

Explain

it’s always so funny learning about the Great Depression in grade school cuz they don’t ever talk about how latinx and Hispanic people were lowkey deported to Mexico even if they weren’t Mexican and how the depression was literally twice as worse for black people who were the first fired and last hired. like educators always report these tragedies by how they impacted whites UNLESS you are in a class like AA studies or something.

This is the truth. The experiences of poc have been outright erased from history in US public education. The white experience is labeled as universal in order to cover up white crimes and to keep white kids ignorant so that we uphold white supremacy throughout our lives.

it’s always so funny learning about the Great Depression in grade school cuz they don’t ever talk about how latinx and Hispanic people were lowkey deported to Mexico even if they weren’t Mexican and how the depression was literally twice as worse for black people who were the first fired and last hired. like educators always report these tragedies by how they impacted whites UNLESS you are in a class like AA studies or something.

This is the truth. The experiences of poc have been outright erased from history in US public education. The white experience is labeled as universal in order to cover up white crimes and to keep white kids ignorant so that we uphold white supremacy throughout our lives.

Then they talk about how the new deal was great for all Americans but black people were left out of the policies

Trump is a problem. But he is not THE problem.

The right is better at organizing

The right is better at bringing grassroots movements into the fold

I hope the DNC is thinking long and hard about the party it needs to become because the right already knows where it’s going

Sometimes I feel like unhinging my jaw & screaming at the entrenched establishment “HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT WE ARE ALL BROKE?” Because 9 times out of 10, when a “millennial” does something weird, untraditional, or otherwise confusing to previous generations, the core reason is because we’re broke, thus the old ways are not accessible to us, so we’re using new stopgaps and alternatives. An “obsession” with phones/social media? It’s a cheap way to socially connect when many of us are pressed for time due to work or can’t afford to go out. A fixation on food? It’s the last comfort splurge we can feasibly afford, when vacations and the like are not an optipn. A resistance to large life milestone acquisitions? Can’t afford houses, cars, raising children. Weird craft/homebrew/DIY hobbies? Trying to save money, or spin some profit in whatever way can be managed. Widespread cynicism, anxiety and depression? We literally have to take up group fundraising collections for things like emergency expenses, rent and medical care. We’re broke and it’s slowly driving us bananas.

My parents can’t understand why I behave the way I do. My grandmother has never understood me better.

who decided popcorn was the official movie food

I actually have a serious answer for this. Popcorn was such a cheap but highly popular in demand food, and people loved it as a treat because it was fast, buttery, and salty.  While a lot of other businesses at the time were failing because of the Great Depression, the business for production and sale of popcorn thrived because it was so cheap and popular.  When WWII came around, other snacks and candies became harder and harder to obtain due to strict rations during wartime, which only encouraged the production and sale of popcorn to compensate.  Which… no one seemed to mind.  It was a tasty treat everyone loved, and it helped out agricultural businesses and so much more. In any case, popcorn became the official movie food because movie theatres, just like many other business venues during this particular era, weren’t really doing so well with as tight as things were.  And with the popcorn business booming and its huge surge in popularity, movie theatres took advantage of the opportunity and started selling this tasty treat as concession.  Not only did the sale of popcorn in movie theatres encourage people to come and buy movie tickets, but the concession sales for popcorn just by itself was enough to keep theatres in business. Basically, popcorn is the official movie food because the popcorn industry is what kept the movie industry afloat by keeping theatres and the demand for cinema alive.

how to food history

that’s true, when i say ‘our’ parents i really mean my parents, who grew up in the shadow of my grandparents depression frugality, but still managed to become hardline conservative republicans

white midcentury providence is poison is basically what i am saying

like my dad had to go renew his drivers licence for the first time in a decade and he literally had this wierd epiphany about how hard it would be for people without decades of correct living meticulously archived in a filing cabinet to prove their identity, when i mentioned that was the argument against voter id laws and he admitted he’d never really given it any thought

like he grew up so fucking insulated from everything bad in the world, even though i grew up hearing about both my parents growing up hearing about THE DEPRESSION as this cloud that still hangs over my grandparents, and my parents just have no fucking idea how good they had it growing up, and how badly their generation / romney’s generation / basically mitt romney personally fucked that all up in just a few decades

like the bush presidency was a microcosm of their entire generation played out in a short eight year timespan {and i am filing that away for grad school thesis ideas if/when bc //srsly dude//}

so i look at these photos and think about how terrible everything was when my grandparents were kids, and how terrible everything is now, and how great everything was for my parents, and how terrible everything was for //everyone else// the entire time, and i can’t tell if my parents prosperity was a wierd outlier that can’t be repeated let alone spread around, or if my grandparents were lying their whole lives about how badly the depression affected them personally, or if the depression was just way worse psychologically for everyone than most people let on and it really did fuck with everyone’s expectations in a way similar to the destruction of europe during wwii, with similar reconstruction initiatives aimed at providing a better life for their kids, who grew up to be angela merkel and david fucking cameron pushing austerity instead of solidarity

tbh I’d say it was just way worse psychologically than folks let on— I mean, technologically speaking, same as now, there were these great strides being made w. invention/innovation that weren’t necessarily accessible to your avg. layperson (though we had more domestic factories at the time, which is sth; but there was just as much if not more anti-immigrant sentiment as a result of the increased competition for work), and there was this v. real post-WWI fatigue that some folks were chipper about bc they wanted so badly to move forward from it. and tbh that as much as generalized anti-Semitism/xenophobia I would wager drove a lot of folks’ inclination to not get involved in WWII, bc the last one had been really godawful for everyone involved (hence also the more positive reactions to doubling down on American-made buy-American rhetoric even before US involvem’t. in WWII, I would guess, bc we need to get our ducks in a row at home, so to speak— but don’t quote me on that).

and then, you know, the Prohibition seems ridiculous now, though it was v. much the same thing as the “War on Drugs” that you have to look at who’s targeted and even who’s actually affected (bc there was STILL liquor in the country, lbr), and that it’s hella classed and racialized; and that it’s gotta be a fucked up situation if even in romanticization of the era, the drug- and gun-runners are not only viewed as interesting and fun after the fact, but many were v. much pillars of social reform and keeping their neighborhoods SAFE and kids FED even decades later, bc they established infrastructure where the state could not/would not.

like I think it was just a period where people tucked their heads in, hunkered down, and if you were lucky, you tried to wait it out without getting involved with the wrong people or starving to death even while there’s all these huge medical breakthroughs and science and electricity are doing these wonderful things and there was a blip from like flickers to talkies to technicolor in one generation, even while the bread basket burned and kids were drafted into war on more than one front.

and that’s even if you don’t deviate from the social “norm” in any kind of way.

I mean, not to get nerdy about it, but this is where most of the really iconic superheroes come from, folks who grew up in these years and who were largely these fringe, ethnic, cultural minorities, bc they still had a sense of what the American fantasy landscape could look like, and were able to sell that to people alongside pulpy noir cinema, even though there was this large tonal split between them at times. that this is the kind of thing people went for, even while it only represented this narrow unattainable image on both fronts for most of America. like you can compare the sorts of comics that were coming out directly with the movies and Oscars photos at the time and food lines and stuff.

tbh it reminds me of how I saw a thing on PBS a while back, the writers for the Broadway play of Annie were talking about how until now, movie adaptations have been relentlessly chipper, where the musical is actually really cynical at times (there’s a song called “We’d Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover” that’s literally just poor folks in a shanty town/tent city being like “EVERYTHING SUCKS,” and “It’s a Hard Knock Life” is little kids being like “REAL TALK: WORD”), and that when Jay-Z sampled it for “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” he got it more right than anyone else has. and ofc he produced the modern-day vsn. of Annie that’s coming out this Christmas, that hopefully also acknowledges its new racial element in this class commentary (and how Annie straight up tells Warbucks iirc “yeah just giving ME nice stuff doesn’t fix systemic ills,” only… the 6yo vsn.)— which just feels v. apropos.

like in retrospect, knowing what came after the ’20s and ’30s, you can look back and see that light at the end of the tunnel, bc the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s etc. came afterwards, so it wasn’t the end of the world. but it WAS for a lot of people. and I think it’s the same thing now. but there’s def. a generation or two that have NO IDEA what that’s like, and the only tools they have, and they were raised to think of as baseline never-fail foolproof bootstrap things, do not work. you can’t use an electric drill when the power’s out, so to speak.

man i really wish someone would write a superman movie that's as one point to superman as a jewish superhero in the 30s as cap one was to cap as same, bc snyder and miller's take on superman is really condescending, it's the fight club misinterpretation and i don't have fucking time for it

which, this is also where fight club came from, gen x was raised by the boomers but came of age under romney and reagan, right on the cusp of the boomer method not working anymore, and the sons of midcentury middle class white dudes went all 'well if //i// can't be king then burn down the kingdom'

Oregon, August 1939. “Unemployed lumber worker goes with his wife to the bean harvest. Note Social Security number tattooed on arm.” by Dorthea Lange

Dorthea Lange took my photo is 1939. In doing so exposes me as the immortal creature I am. Damn you, Dorthea! 

(via Gary Chapple)

katie i am officially crossing you off my list of ‘tumblrers who are not marceline’

this photo came up this week in my humanities class online discussion about dorothea lange's photos, and it got me thinking about the perverse optimism in all those photos despite the ruinous conditions people were living in, and how even though most people today aren't living nearly as desperately as those fleeing the dust bowl, large-scale economic conditions are worryingly similar, and how the boomers (our parents) inherited both the post war economic miracle that bought us the space age and also their parents (our grandparents, the dust bowl generation) endless litany of stories of privation and poverty and learned frugality and fiscal mistrust

and then they cocked up the whole god damn thing anyways

and now we get endless thinkpieces about whether millenials are ever going to get around to getting careers and married and houses, like here is one that was published //yesterday// - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/what-will-it-take-for-millennials-to-become-homeowners/381730/

and it's exhausting to think about how weary we all are of all of this compared to the people living in the depression

anyways i don't really have a point except that //thanks dad//