Electric Dreamland

Amusement Parks, Movies, and American Modernity

Häftad, Engelska, 2012

Av Lauren Rabinovitz

359 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar

Fri frakt för medlemmar vid köp för minst 249 kr.

Finns i fler format (1)

Inbunden

1 149 kr

Skickas inom 11-20 vardagar

Amusement parks were the playgrounds of the working class in the early twentieth century, combining numerous, mechanically-based spectacles into one unique, modern cultural phenomenon. Lauren Rabinovitz describes the urban modernity engendered by these parks and their media, encouraging ordinary individuals to sense, interpret, and embody a burgeoning national identity. As industrialization, urbanization, and immigration upended society, amusement parks tempered the shocks of racial, ethnic, and cultural conflict while shrinking the distinctions between gender and class. Following the rise of American parks from 1896 to 1918, Rabinovitz seizes on a simultaneous increase in cinema and spectacle audiences and connects both to the success of leisure activities in stabilizing society. Critics of the time often condemned parks and movies for inciting moral decline, yet in fact they fostered women's independence, racial uplift, and assimilation. The rhythmic, mechanical movements of spectacle also conditioned audiences to process multiple stimuli.Featuring illustrations from private collections and accounts from unaccessed archives, Electric Dreamland joins film and historical analyses in a rare portrait of mass entertainment and the modern eye.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2012-07-24
Mått152 x 229 x 12 mm
Vikt368 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieFilm and Culture Series
Antal sidor256
FörlagColumbia University Press
ISBN9780231156615

Tillhör följande kategorier

Electric Dreamland innovatively analyzes the early twentieth-century's twin technological entertainments: amusement parks and motion pictures. It demonstrates how crucial railroads and electricity were to both and how their inextricable development erased conventional notions of urban and rural difference. Amusement parks and motion pictures, Lauren Rabonovitz argues, served as unique venues of mass culture for people to adapt to modernity by experiencing its pleasures and dangers first hand and to share in the emergence of a new American national identity. -- Richard Abel, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Electric Dreamland is a work of meticulous scholarship and original argument that deepens our knowledge and provokes new insights. Scholars of American popular culture are in Rabinovitz's debt. -- John F. Kasson, author of Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century Electric Dreamland is part of a growing body of work that builds an inter-medial reading of cinema's relationship to other early-twentieth-century phenomena. It draws on a wealth of archival materials, ephemera, and experiential data to demonstrate the remarkable inter-dependence of amusement parks and early motion pictures. Never again will the two entertainments be seen in isolation. -- Shelley Stamp, author of Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon ...accessible, but no less rigorous in its scholarship. -- Patrick Friel AfterImage An excellent pick for any collection strong in entertainment and social analysis.Midwest Book Review Midwest Book Review thought-provoking, theoretically savvy, and sometimes even amusing study...highly recommended. Choice