Jackson Lears reviews two books on Dorothea Lange, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits and Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression:
In contemporary American public life, the mere mention of poverty is
considered bad form. Consider some recent attempts to bring up the
subject. In 2003, the University of North Carolina assigned Nickel and Dimed,
Barbara Ehrenreich‘s account of her six months trying to squeeze by on
low-wage jobs, to its incoming freshmen for summer reading. University
administrators believed the book would be an uncontroversial choice;
instead it provoked howls of protest from conservative student groups
and right-wing talk-show hosts. In 2008, John Edwards‘ effort to build
a presidential campaign around a commitment to ending poverty proved a
nonstarter; many voters apparently thought that he was “just too
angry.” And even now, as job losses and foreclosures multiply, public
discussion of the crisis lacks urgency: The unemployed are encouraged
to blame themselves, and victims of housing fraud are made to look like
dupes who should have known better.
How times have changed since the 1930s. The Great Depression was thegolden age of poor folk in American culture. No one could deny theirubiquity. Documentary photographers discovered the beauty in the worldof the poor. So did poets: “It’s the anarchy of poverty delights me,”wrote William Carlos Williams in 1938, “the old yellow wooden house
indented among the new brick tenements.” Frank Capra and other
filmmakers sent up stuffed shirts while they celebrated the power of
the People. Any evening with Turner Classic Movies will reveal the
difference between then and now — in the 1930s the rich are pompous
fools while wisecracking working girls steal the show. What a contrast
with the flagrant money-worship of our own time.
