Culture and Mass Amusements at the Turn of the Century
Post card from Coney Island
All of our authors this week tackle the changing cultural landscape of turn-of-the-century America, which witnesses the emergence of a mass culture that often superseded older cultural forms. In particular, each author is concerned with whether or not these changes in the way culture was produced and consumed were democratic in nature. Larry Levine in Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, sees a transformation from the heterogeneous audiences of American theater in the 19th century to the tightly controlled highbrow entertainments of the elites, saying, “Art was becoming a one-way process: the artist communicating and the audience receiving” (195). No longer did audiences participate in the performances of material such as Shakespeare or operas, but instead, as dictated by elite tastes, sat in silent reverence to watch inflexible performances of these now-dubbed classics. For Levine, the elites responded to the disorder of urbanization and massive immigration by placing strict controls on cultural forms.
But culture and art did not transform into a one-way process of creation and reception as Levine claims. It’s true that cultural categories are contingent upon their historical context, and Levine does a convincing jobs of tracing the movement of cultural forms from one category to another. But culture did not completely lose its democratic nature, and other authors trace the dialectic between cultural forms and cultural receivers by studying the new forms of mass amusement that emerged at the turn-of-the-century. Most interesting is the tension between Progressive reformers’ impulse to educate the immigrant and working classes and these same group’s wholesale embrace of new cultural forms. In his study of Coney Island, Amusing the Island: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century, John Kasson begins by examining the City Beautiful Movement and the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. Planners intended Central Park and the White City to pastoralize and instill awe in their visitors, but the Midway Plaisance, harbinger of Coney Island, overflowed with visitors.
Luna Park, one of Coney Island’s most popular amusement parks. The park’s electric illumination could be seen from miles away.
Indeed, these new amusements, like Coney Island, brought heterogeneous groups of Americans together at the same time that Levine observes a cultural bifurcation. Mass amusements may have controlled and guided visitors through the walls of their amusement parks and the mores of social behavior, but Americans, especially the working class, voted with their pockets and their feet as to which cultural forms they enjoyed most. Further, Coney Island and other new public spaces of amusement allowed Americans to mix with each other and create new heterosocial spaces. The argument can validly be made that vendors programmed leisure time just as readily as employers programmed work time, but at least the illusion of choice existed for those seeking pleasure in Coney Island and other public amusements.
Kathy Piess captures the dichotomy between freedom of choice and oppression in her book Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York. As wage earners, working class (immigrant) women found themselves with the capital to participate in the new culture of mass amusements and mass production. Women used their newfound economic freedom (or semi-freedom, depending on whether or not part of their wages went to their families) to purchase fashionable clothing or take part in new social amusements, like dance halls and movies. This allowed them a new freedom in leisure time, a relative social autonomy that they had not experienced when cultural and economic norms dictated they work and socialize in the private sphere. The so-called freedom came with a price, however, as the ability to participate in these new social forms did not prove to be as affordable as at first appeared. Often women starved themselves to save enough money to enjoy leisure time and, even more predominantly, a system of treating arose where men paid women’s way in exchange for sexual favors. This system created a delicate balancing act for women, who had to reciprocate to men without tarnishing their honor.
Patrons pose for a picture at a turn of the century dance hall.
Even as old cultural forms bifurcated into low and high, new cultural forms emerged to fill the vacuum, creating new standards of behavior, freedom of choice, and instances of oppression. Every mechanized reproduction meant that cultural forms lost their aura as cultural products moved further from the original. Like Theodor Adorno, elites tried to preserve the aura of cultural artifacts they deemed genuine and classic by isolating them from the rowdy masses and dictating to those who participated how they should imbibe things like Shakespeare, opera, and art pieces. But as observed by Benjamin, mass culture allowed a new class consciousness to arise. It may not have been revolutionary, but the working class and immigrants, especially young people like young women, emerged as demographic markets to be both catered to and taken advantage of. Culture remained a highly contested place one of newfound choice and carefully calculated limitation.
