Pop Culture During Ww2

Pop culture during World War II was greatly influenced for the better and for the worse. WWII caused much of America to conserve their resources and efforts for the war, instead of spending money, time and their resources on leisure time. While some leisure activities were hurting during wartime, certain activities actually benefitted from WWII. Certain leisure activities such as baseball, and comic books were used to help boost the mood, and morale during these hard times. Leisure activities during the war were used to keep America’s mind off of the hard times of war, and to forget what was really going on in the world. With the state of America during this time, some activities flourished, such as baseball, while others saw a decrease in business, such as the theatres.

Many parts of the country were asked to help with wartime rationing, “government-instituted rationing programs for products such as gasoline could strangle amusements such as circuses, music groups, and athletic teams that depended on travel” (Ashby 263). Many items were asked to rationed, such as gasoline, lights, paper, and building supplies, which could hurt the certain wartime leisure, or even stop them from happening altogether. Theatres were greatly affected by the rationing, they used thousands of lights for the stage, but they had to remove over half of them due to the need of lights for the war effort. Rationing greatly hurt certain types of entertainment, but not every type of leisure activity was