대공황기 미국인의 정체성과 문화 형성 - 인민전선문화와 뉴딜연합을 중심으로

The Formation of the New Deal Coalition and the Emergence of the Popular Front Culture : American Identity and Culture during the Great Deptession

&nbsp;&nbsp;The Great Depression had exposed the hollowness of the conventional "American Dream" of individualism and material success. As the suffering of the ordinary Americans became extremely serious, people searched for the way to get out of their ordeals, individual and in common. The suffering yielded into the new cultural and political experiments. Toward the mid-1930s, a new political force was fanned into the New Deal coalition, the cultural expression of which became the Popular Front Culture. The organized labor, the left intellectuals, and the progressive political forces that participated in the New Deal coalition envisioned a society that would distribute its wealth more equitably and accorded more dignity to its ordinary people.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;In working toward this vision, they developed an alternative culture around unions, political parties, and various institutions including government cutural agencies. They pushed the New Deal administration and the FDR toward left, anticipating the social democratazation of America; they reclaimed the nation for the "people," and rehabilitated the radical heritage of their own history; they rediscovered the democratic element in the folk culture; and they adopted the rhetoric of America and American style for justifying their own goals. The era of the Great Depression was a propitious moment for the realization of an alternative culture, for the construction of a broadly based political coalition dedicated to communal goals, and for the redefinition of the American identity. However, the downturn of the New Deal reform, the Roosevelt Depression of 1938, and the formation of the anti-New Deal coalition combined with the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 all caused the decline of the Popular Front culture and the enervation of the New Deal coalition, While the heritage of the Popular Front Culture and the New Deal coalition still remained in America, the possibility of an alternative culture and the radical Americanism has diminished by the time the country entered World War Ⅱ.