Category File
1920s Culture
2 documented theories filed under this subject.
- The Monkey Gland ImmortalityVoronoff performed his first monkey-gland transplant on 12 June 1920 and kept a private ape farm on the Riviera to supply the operations. The grafts were sealed in scar tissue within weeks and never functioned — which is not what the conspiracy version says went wrong.
- The Jazz Music DecadenceThe Jazz Music Decadence theory was a racist and civilizational panic that cast syncopated rhythm as a deliberate corrosive force capable of dissolving Western discipline, logic, morality, and social order. In some of its most explicit forms, critics described jazz as an invasive beat from the “Dark Continent,” framing African and African American musical forms not as artistic innovation but as hostile rhythm weaponry aimed at the nervous system and the moral faculties. The theory emerged in the early 1920s during the rapid spread of jazz and the broader cultural struggle over flappers, dance halls, race, youth, and modernity. Because jazz did visibly alter dance, leisure, and musical taste, it became a natural target for those who wanted to describe cultural change as intentional degeneration.