Author Archives: Jacob Foose

Population Effects of The Great Depression in Oklahoma

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The entire point of the Grapes of Wrath was about the Joads venturing to California in search of work. The movie mentioned that the same things were happening to other families and the Joads were originally living in Oklahoma, so I wanted to look at how many other people had the same ideas. What happened to the population of Oklahoma during the Great Depression? What happened to the population of California.

This Business Insider article has some cool maps about the relative growth and decline of populations of these states by county. Some counties in Oklahoma lost over 25% of their population in the 1930s. In comparison, some places in California had on over 75% increase in their population. Los Angeles county gained over 100,000 people, which is the largest population gain for anywhere in the 1930s. Imagine having your home county get over a hundred thousand new residents, all competing for work. It’s not impossible to see why the locals became irate at this.

If you look at the map above this, the effects of the Great Depression’s population move can still be seen. The East Coast is obviously crowded because that’s where people first settles, and then as you go to the middle of the country (especially to where the Joad family would have lived), the population begins to drop off. It gets red again at the West Coast. This is consistent with what was talked about above. About 80 years ago, everyone moved from the middle of the country to the western side, and they’ve been living there ever since.

Also, one last point that isn’t really important, but I feel like it should be brought up. The movie made it seem like everyone in the Joad’s area was getting forced to move to California. It also mentioned that they’re from Salisaw. Well, I started searching around, and Salisaw is in Sequoyah county, one of the few counties in Oklahoma that actually grew in population during the Great Depression. So, either a lot of people moved back to Oklahoma after there weren’t many jobs in California or Steinbeck picked a county that wasn’t representative of Oklahoma as a whole.

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and its Impact On Headlines

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So, for this week, I wanted to do a thing about Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and use some grouping of articles to say that it still is an accurate criticism of American politics. To a sense, I still believe it to be true, especially considering how much the media is owned by a small few, and the people who do control it tend to be politically motivated. But, when looking for those sort of articles, I couldn’t find any by a reputable source, and those that were halfway reputable were such angry editorials that I knew I couldn’t use them in any way without drawing some sort of angry response.

But, you know what I did find out about this movie’s impact? Oh my god do people love using it as headlines. If you google something along the lines of “_____ Goes To Washington” or “Real Life Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” you’ll be inundated with articles who use the title of this movie, rather uncreatively, to say that whoever they’re supporting in their article is some political outsider who is trying to clean up Washington because “It’s a mess!” No joke, I found this article titled “Mr. Trump Goes To Washington.” Like Richard Nixon and Watergate, I think Capra’s legacy will be best remembered and lived through lazy news outlets.

But this goes a lot with what Professor Jordan was saying about populism and how it’s still everywhere. I thought he was making an unfair point about everyday appeal by politicians, but in all seriousness, this is crazy. Everyone wants their politician to be the new guy who will pull a Mr. Smith and make some miraculous change to Washington. All of these articles (many of them seem to be just blog posts except for that weird Trump one) are supporting some politician and saying that they will fix the country. I find it kind of weird. I would love to see some sort of analysis about this sort of headline and see if it confirms my suspicions.

How Important Was Charlie Chaplin?

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Professor Jordan talked a lot about how Charlie Chaplin was and still is one of the most recognizable figures in history with his character of The Tramp. I wanted to look into it. Because I was never one for “silent” films, I didn’t really get the whole Chaplin thing. I mean, I know people have talked about him and said that he was important, but from what I saw, he was just another actor from back in the day.

A lot of what I saw showed that Chaplin was one of the biggest figures responsible for the transition of movies from what was essentially just a play on film to the medium we know them as today. As in, before (like we saw with A Trip To The Moon), the camera was in a single position and actors did their whole scenes in one take in front of it. Sure, the lack of voices meant that there had to be more expression, but that didn’t keep the actors from still acting in plays. Chaplin, even in a time when voices could be added to movies, made it much more expressive. The cameras focused on his expressions and his nonverbal communication. This was a huge impact for films, and still is today.

In fact, many actors still cite Chaplin as their inspiration for a lot of their performances. Gene Wilder (Willy Wonka from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) got the inspiration for his “very funny things said in a very serious tone” style of acting form watching Charlie Chaplin. Even great actors like Charlie Depp try to emulate the great Chaplin in their films, and often have a hard time. Depp even had to do one of Chaplin’s famous dances (the one with the dinner rolls) in one of his movies, and said he struggled with just the level of talent that Chaplin had.

After death, Chaplin is still known as one of the great American actors. Many have written on his impact, Winston Churchill included. It’s ironic, considering that he was born in London.

Information gotten from these two articles

The Sheer Impact of Birth of a Nation

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So after hearing about D.W. Griffith and Birth of a Nation, I kind of wanted to see just how big of a movie this actually was. I know that it made a ridiculous amount of money, but that could be attributed to a couple of things, mainly it being the first film of its length and its propaganda content. It seems like it was directly built to appeal to the South, which makes sense, as D.W. Griffith’s father fought for the Confederacy, but it wasn’t just appealing to the South.

When the film first premiered, it wasn’t in Kentucky or Alabama or any Southern town. It premiered in Los Angeles. Afterwards, people were on their feet, cheering about the movie. I would like to think that this is just because it was the first feature-length film and critics just enjoyed seeing something of its magnitude pulled off. Apparently, one critic stated that, “The worst thing about The Birth of a Nation is how good it is.”

But, unfortunately, a lot of the film’s success did come from the fact that it was a very racist piece of propaganda. Woodrow Wilson, a president who, for all the good he did for this country, was shockingly racist, called the film “history written in lightning.” It was the first movie ever screened at the White House, and after viewing it, Wilson apparently was amazed at how true and accurate the film was.

Now, the film is a divisive piece of art. The message behind it, although horrible, is portrayed in a very innovative and impressive way. It really is the foundation for a lot of modern film. I suppose that the people who don’t show it have their point, but I think it should be seen as a mile marker for how far we’ve come as a people. This sort of film could probably never even be made today, let alone be successful. I’m thankful for that.

Most information here comes from this NPR article on the 100th anniversary of the film.