Viola Shafik
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789774160653
- eISBN:
- 9781936190096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774160653.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
Arab film making was only partly able to compete with “First World” cinema. It has remained greatly dependent on Western imports, technical know-how, evaluation, and partly even on Western financial ...
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Arab film making was only partly able to compete with “First World” cinema. It has remained greatly dependent on Western imports, technical know-how, evaluation, and partly even on Western financial support. The so-called Third-Worldist anti-colonial cinema did not succeed in resolving the contradiction between cultural promotion, political commitment, and rentability, and was soon eclipsed either by entirely mainstream-oriented cinema or by the rather anti-authoritarian, deconstructive, and stylistically innovative, yet regionally marginalized, cinéma d'auteur. Nonetheless, mainstream as well as individualist cinema was able to convey elements of native art and culture, and became actively involved in the creation of specific national or cultural identities. Although the medium became part of a mass-mediated culture and functioned as a means of mass entertainment, commercialism, the obligation to rentability, and competition with Western products did not result in a complete imitation of Western cinema, but initiated the reformation of the imported film language according to the needs of local audiences.Less
Arab film making was only partly able to compete with “First World” cinema. It has remained greatly dependent on Western imports, technical know-how, evaluation, and partly even on Western financial support. The so-called Third-Worldist anti-colonial cinema did not succeed in resolving the contradiction between cultural promotion, political commitment, and rentability, and was soon eclipsed either by entirely mainstream-oriented cinema or by the rather anti-authoritarian, deconstructive, and stylistically innovative, yet regionally marginalized, cinéma d'auteur. Nonetheless, mainstream as well as individualist cinema was able to convey elements of native art and culture, and became actively involved in the creation of specific national or cultural identities. Although the medium became part of a mass-mediated culture and functioned as a means of mass entertainment, commercialism, the obligation to rentability, and competition with Western products did not result in a complete imitation of Western cinema, but initiated the reformation of the imported film language according to the needs of local audiences.
Steven Connor
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184331
- eISBN:
- 9780191674204
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184331.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
It is important to try to recapture the seriousness with which Abbé Jean-Baptiste de la Chapelle and some others took the question of ventriloquism, and this chapter examines the importance of the ...
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It is important to try to recapture the seriousness with which Abbé Jean-Baptiste de la Chapelle and some others took the question of ventriloquism, and this chapter examines the importance of the topic within one of the earliest novels of the new American republic. It is also important to remember that this was the period in which ventriloquism was beginning to find its place within what would become a culture of mass entertainment. It was to be expected that the growing tendency for ventriloquism to take a narrative form would result in its appearance in more developed narratives. However, it was scarcely to be expected that a young American writer, determined to assist in the formation of a distinctively American form of novel in the early days of the new republic, would make ventriloquism the centrepiece of his work. However, this is precisely what Charles Brockden Brown did in Wieland, Or The Transformation: An American Tale.Less
It is important to try to recapture the seriousness with which Abbé Jean-Baptiste de la Chapelle and some others took the question of ventriloquism, and this chapter examines the importance of the topic within one of the earliest novels of the new American republic. It is also important to remember that this was the period in which ventriloquism was beginning to find its place within what would become a culture of mass entertainment. It was to be expected that the growing tendency for ventriloquism to take a narrative form would result in its appearance in more developed narratives. However, it was scarcely to be expected that a young American writer, determined to assist in the formation of a distinctively American form of novel in the early days of the new republic, would make ventriloquism the centrepiece of his work. However, this is precisely what Charles Brockden Brown did in Wieland, Or The Transformation: An American Tale.
W. Fitzhugh Brundage
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807834626
- eISBN:
- 9781469602967
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807878026_brundage.4
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter discusses the rise of blacks in American mass culture between 1890 and 1930, and how it coincided with the heyday of what historian David Nasaw has described as the era of “public ...
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This chapter discusses the rise of blacks in American mass culture between 1890 and 1930, and how it coincided with the heyday of what historian David Nasaw has described as the era of “public amusements.” A proliferation of commercialized mass entertainment, ranging from phonograph parlors and silent-film palaces to professional sports events and dancehalls, transformed American leisure. In huge numbers, Americans of all classes and backgrounds sought out these and other forms of commercial leisure. By exploiting the era's dizzying technological innovations, mass-culture entrepreneurs produced accessible and alluring forms of entertainment that accelerated the nation's emerging consumer economy. This new prominence of mass entertainment, and of blacks in it, accentuated contradictions in American attitudes about both race and culture.Less
This chapter discusses the rise of blacks in American mass culture between 1890 and 1930, and how it coincided with the heyday of what historian David Nasaw has described as the era of “public amusements.” A proliferation of commercialized mass entertainment, ranging from phonograph parlors and silent-film palaces to professional sports events and dancehalls, transformed American leisure. In huge numbers, Americans of all classes and backgrounds sought out these and other forms of commercial leisure. By exploiting the era's dizzying technological innovations, mass-culture entrepreneurs produced accessible and alluring forms of entertainment that accelerated the nation's emerging consumer economy. This new prominence of mass entertainment, and of blacks in it, accentuated contradictions in American attitudes about both race and culture.
David Monod
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501702389
- eISBN:
- 9781501703997
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501702389.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter claims that the entertainment revolution of the 1840s occurred because new types of shows were mounted in new types of playhouses for a new type of spectator. Melodrama and vaudeville ...
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This chapter claims that the entertainment revolution of the 1840s occurred because new types of shows were mounted in new types of playhouses for a new type of spectator. Melodrama and vaudeville became less fashionable and more clearly targeted to a certain kind of customer. Vaudeville, or variety, in particular, had been a saloon entertainment that spectators enjoyed while talking, walking about, eating, and drinking, and it suffered as temperance feeling pushed respectable people—especially genteel women—away from theatres where liquor was served. Paradoxically, the theatrical half-life variety thrived, becoming the first of the new popular entertainments to appeal to spectators (albeit male ones) in all regions and from all classes. In the 1870s and 1880s, it emerged from the saloon to become the engine of mass entertainment.Less
This chapter claims that the entertainment revolution of the 1840s occurred because new types of shows were mounted in new types of playhouses for a new type of spectator. Melodrama and vaudeville became less fashionable and more clearly targeted to a certain kind of customer. Vaudeville, or variety, in particular, had been a saloon entertainment that spectators enjoyed while talking, walking about, eating, and drinking, and it suffered as temperance feeling pushed respectable people—especially genteel women—away from theatres where liquor was served. Paradoxically, the theatrical half-life variety thrived, becoming the first of the new popular entertainments to appeal to spectators (albeit male ones) in all regions and from all classes. In the 1870s and 1880s, it emerged from the saloon to become the engine of mass entertainment.
Michael North
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195173567
- eISBN:
- 9780199787906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195173567.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter describes an abiding distinction in African American writing between sight, which seems divisive and prejudicial, and sound, which is identified with community solidarity and expression. ...
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This chapter describes an abiding distinction in African American writing between sight, which seems divisive and prejudicial, and sound, which is identified with community solidarity and expression. It argues that this distinction is harder to uphold in the case of later writers such as James Weldon Johnson, especially considering his participation in mass entertainment, where sound is just as distant and commodified as sight. It also shows the difficulty this poses for Johnson's program of redefining race in cultural terms.Less
This chapter describes an abiding distinction in African American writing between sight, which seems divisive and prejudicial, and sound, which is identified with community solidarity and expression. It argues that this distinction is harder to uphold in the case of later writers such as James Weldon Johnson, especially considering his participation in mass entertainment, where sound is just as distant and commodified as sight. It also shows the difficulty this poses for Johnson's program of redefining race in cultural terms.
Lawrence Kramer
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520228245
- eISBN:
- 9780520928329
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520228245.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter attempts to sketch out some of the cultural meanings of a virtuoso with a concentration on Franz Liszt, who defined the model that subsequent virtuosos have been expected either to ...
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This chapter attempts to sketch out some of the cultural meanings of a virtuoso with a concentration on Franz Liszt, who defined the model that subsequent virtuosos have been expected either to emulate or to reject. Technical wizardry and sexual magnetism set the Lisztian virtuoso sharply apart from the Orphean singer. A virtuoso's instrument carries no metaphysical privilege; it is a machine that must be manually operated and yet spiritualized. The virtuoso becomes a magnet for the multiple ambivalences that have haunted the concept of appearance itself in relation to the body, theatricality, deception, and rhetoric. The virtuoso concert can be understood historically as part of a long series of performance genres devised to attract a large public. Many of these genres originated in the social and cultural turmoil of Paris during the Restoration and July Monarchy. The virtuoso concert combines the contradictory functions of ceremony and carnival. It exacts disciplined attention from the audience along with awe at the performer's preternatural skill and frees the audience to take personal pleasure in the spectacle of the virtuoso's face and body, which is a medium of identification and desire.Less
This chapter attempts to sketch out some of the cultural meanings of a virtuoso with a concentration on Franz Liszt, who defined the model that subsequent virtuosos have been expected either to emulate or to reject. Technical wizardry and sexual magnetism set the Lisztian virtuoso sharply apart from the Orphean singer. A virtuoso's instrument carries no metaphysical privilege; it is a machine that must be manually operated and yet spiritualized. The virtuoso becomes a magnet for the multiple ambivalences that have haunted the concept of appearance itself in relation to the body, theatricality, deception, and rhetoric. The virtuoso concert can be understood historically as part of a long series of performance genres devised to attract a large public. Many of these genres originated in the social and cultural turmoil of Paris during the Restoration and July Monarchy. The virtuoso concert combines the contradictory functions of ceremony and carnival. It exacts disciplined attention from the audience along with awe at the performer's preternatural skill and frees the audience to take personal pleasure in the spectacle of the virtuoso's face and body, which is a medium of identification and desire.
Lucy Mazdon
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780719078163
- eISBN:
- 9781781705056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719078163.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter notes that television presents an interesting case of a relatively young medium whose function and forms had to be defined within a context of already developed debates over the ...
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This chapter notes that television presents an interesting case of a relatively young medium whose function and forms had to be defined within a context of already developed debates over the high/popular divide. It shows that the possible contradiction in television's aims to disseminate national values and ‘high’ culture and to entertain a mass audience was posed with particular acuity in France, where the democratisation of high culture had long been central to national identity and to what the State perceived as its duty. The chapter concludes that television exemplifies the twin threads of allegiance to French exceptionalism and market-driven alignment with Western norms which characterise French cultural life.Less
This chapter notes that television presents an interesting case of a relatively young medium whose function and forms had to be defined within a context of already developed debates over the high/popular divide. It shows that the possible contradiction in television's aims to disseminate national values and ‘high’ culture and to entertain a mass audience was posed with particular acuity in France, where the democratisation of high culture had long been central to national identity and to what the State perceived as its duty. The chapter concludes that television exemplifies the twin threads of allegiance to French exceptionalism and market-driven alignment with Western norms which characterise French cultural life.
Catherine Parsons Smith
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520251397
- eISBN:
- 9780520933835
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520251397.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter examines the “people's” orchestra, which tried to fill the rapidly growing gap between the elite and mass entertainment, studying the People's Orchestra of 1912–1913, the developments ...
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This chapter examines the “people's” orchestra, which tried to fill the rapidly growing gap between the elite and mass entertainment, studying the People's Orchestra of 1912–1913, the developments that led to it, and its eventual downfall. It also studies the question of whether the European symphonic tradition could be adapted to national or regional needs to form a concert practice that had wide public appeal and “American” characteristics.Less
This chapter examines the “people's” orchestra, which tried to fill the rapidly growing gap between the elite and mass entertainment, studying the People's Orchestra of 1912–1913, the developments that led to it, and its eventual downfall. It also studies the question of whether the European symphonic tradition could be adapted to national or regional needs to form a concert practice that had wide public appeal and “American” characteristics.
Charles Fowler
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195148336
- eISBN:
- 9780199849154
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195148336.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, Philosophy of Music
Today's audiences become bored more quickly. It seems to take more to attract their interest, captivate them, and sustain their attention. The balance between unity and variety has tipped in favor of ...
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Today's audiences become bored more quickly. It seems to take more to attract their interest, captivate them, and sustain their attention. The balance between unity and variety has tipped in favor of variety. Beauty as an ideal has been replaced by adventure. Perhaps something about communicative technique can be learned from films, television, and popular music that play to contemporary audiences in the tens of millions. This mass entertainment leaves nothing to chance in trying to reach potential clients. If nothing more, they have an attitude and a determination that might be applied beneficially. The world of America looking toward the new millennium is an increasingly barbaric place, with slaughter on the streets, drugs perverting lives in almost every family, and constant revelations of deceit and crime in high places. It seems to be growing cruder and more insensitive. The honesty and integrity of arts are fundamentally at odds with these conditions.Less
Today's audiences become bored more quickly. It seems to take more to attract their interest, captivate them, and sustain their attention. The balance between unity and variety has tipped in favor of variety. Beauty as an ideal has been replaced by adventure. Perhaps something about communicative technique can be learned from films, television, and popular music that play to contemporary audiences in the tens of millions. This mass entertainment leaves nothing to chance in trying to reach potential clients. If nothing more, they have an attitude and a determination that might be applied beneficially. The world of America looking toward the new millennium is an increasingly barbaric place, with slaughter on the streets, drugs perverting lives in almost every family, and constant revelations of deceit and crime in high places. It seems to be growing cruder and more insensitive. The honesty and integrity of arts are fundamentally at odds with these conditions.
Alex McAuley (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474407847
- eISBN:
- 9781474430982
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474407847.003.0012
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter takes a closer look at Spartacus' engagement with Roman spectacle as a fighter and entertainer. Beyond the series' intense focus on sexuality and the problems of slavery, this chapter ...
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This chapter takes a closer look at Spartacus' engagement with Roman spectacle as a fighter and entertainer. Beyond the series' intense focus on sexuality and the problems of slavery, this chapter argues that the creators also emphasize the multimodal representation of the Roman culture of performance and spectacle in the arena. The new Spartacus series, the chapter claims, offers a complex image of Roman spectacle in terms of spatial materialities, spectacular aesthetics, and social realism: the amphitheater is conveyed as a microcosm of Roman society and the central point of reference for Roman “popular” culture in the sense of mass entertainment.Less
This chapter takes a closer look at Spartacus' engagement with Roman spectacle as a fighter and entertainer. Beyond the series' intense focus on sexuality and the problems of slavery, this chapter argues that the creators also emphasize the multimodal representation of the Roman culture of performance and spectacle in the arena. The new Spartacus series, the chapter claims, offers a complex image of Roman spectacle in terms of spatial materialities, spectacular aesthetics, and social realism: the amphitheater is conveyed as a microcosm of Roman society and the central point of reference for Roman “popular” culture in the sense of mass entertainment.
Sadiah Qureshi
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226700960
- eISBN:
- 9780226700984
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226700984.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This introductory chapter discusses the factors contributing to the widespread popularity of exhibitions of living foreign peoples in nineteenth century. Originally presented on a small scale as ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the factors contributing to the widespread popularity of exhibitions of living foreign peoples in nineteenth century. Originally presented on a small scale as servants and shopkeepers, by the 1880s performers were displaced by the hundreds from their homelands and lived on site in ostensibly authentic “native villages.” Within this context, living foreign peoples were transformed into professional “savages” and became tied to new forms of cheap mass entertainment.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the factors contributing to the widespread popularity of exhibitions of living foreign peoples in nineteenth century. Originally presented on a small scale as servants and shopkeepers, by the 1880s performers were displaced by the hundreds from their homelands and lived on site in ostensibly authentic “native villages.” Within this context, living foreign peoples were transformed into professional “savages” and became tied to new forms of cheap mass entertainment.
Robert Davis
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520238039
- eISBN:
- 9780520937802
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520238039.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
“The tourist Venice is Venice,” Mary McCarthy once observed—a sentiment very much in line with what is experienced by most of the fourteen million tourists who visit the city each year, but at the ...
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“The tourist Venice is Venice,” Mary McCarthy once observed—a sentiment very much in line with what is experienced by most of the fourteen million tourists who visit the city each year, but at the same time a painful reality for the 65,000 Venetians who actually live there. Venice is viewed from a new perspective in this book, which offers a heady, one-city tour of tourism itself. Conducting readers from the beginnings of Venetian tourism in the late Middle Ages to its emergence as a form of mass entertainment in our time, the chapters explore what happens when today's “industrial tourism” collides with an ancient and ever-more-fragile culture. Giving equal consideration to those who tour Venice and those who live there, this book affords rare insight into just what it is that the touring and the toured see, experience, and elicit from each other.Less
“The tourist Venice is Venice,” Mary McCarthy once observed—a sentiment very much in line with what is experienced by most of the fourteen million tourists who visit the city each year, but at the same time a painful reality for the 65,000 Venetians who actually live there. Venice is viewed from a new perspective in this book, which offers a heady, one-city tour of tourism itself. Conducting readers from the beginnings of Venetian tourism in the late Middle Ages to its emergence as a form of mass entertainment in our time, the chapters explore what happens when today's “industrial tourism” collides with an ancient and ever-more-fragile culture. Giving equal consideration to those who tour Venice and those who live there, this book affords rare insight into just what it is that the touring and the toured see, experience, and elicit from each other.
Katy Price
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226680736
- eISBN:
- 9780226680750
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226680750.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the popular reception of Albert Einstein's relativity theory in Great Britain. This volume analyzes excerpts from ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the popular reception of Albert Einstein's relativity theory in Great Britain. This volume analyzes excerpts from newspapers, magazines, and books that display a deliberate misapplication of the new cosmology to familiar experience. It also explores how relativity took on a slightly different set of connotations in the context of mass entertainment and shows how producers of satire, news, poetry, and popular fiction brought their own special skills to bear on tensions between the abstract, general, or universal and the local, personal, or partisan.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the popular reception of Albert Einstein's relativity theory in Great Britain. This volume analyzes excerpts from newspapers, magazines, and books that display a deliberate misapplication of the new cosmology to familiar experience. It also explores how relativity took on a slightly different set of connotations in the context of mass entertainment and shows how producers of satire, news, poetry, and popular fiction brought their own special skills to bear on tensions between the abstract, general, or universal and the local, personal, or partisan.
Samuel Llano
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199392469
- eISBN:
- 9780199392490
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199392469.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, History, Western
This chapter describes how, in the lead-up to the First World War, flamenquismo became a mass phenomenon in Spain, as it pervaded most forms of public entertainment, from género chico to ...
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This chapter describes how, in the lead-up to the First World War, flamenquismo became a mass phenomenon in Spain, as it pervaded most forms of public entertainment, from género chico to bullfighting. Critics in the orbit of regeneracionismo, whose call for the use of education and the arts to “regenerate” Spanish society was reinvigorated in the wake of the 1898 desastre, saw flamenquismo as a new “plague” that threatened to jeopardize their endeavors. Among them, Eugenio Noel became the most outspoken and vitriolic critic of flamenco and bullfighting. His publications and public talks sparked the outrage of stakeholders in the bullfighting and flamenco businesses, who attempted to murder him on various occasions. Noel’s writings represent a desperate attempt to “civilize” Spanish society by raising awareness about corruption and politics, but they contain serious instances of bigotry against Gypsies and flamenco that did not help to overcome stigmatizing prejudice.Less
This chapter describes how, in the lead-up to the First World War, flamenquismo became a mass phenomenon in Spain, as it pervaded most forms of public entertainment, from género chico to bullfighting. Critics in the orbit of regeneracionismo, whose call for the use of education and the arts to “regenerate” Spanish society was reinvigorated in the wake of the 1898 desastre, saw flamenquismo as a new “plague” that threatened to jeopardize their endeavors. Among them, Eugenio Noel became the most outspoken and vitriolic critic of flamenco and bullfighting. His publications and public talks sparked the outrage of stakeholders in the bullfighting and flamenco businesses, who attempted to murder him on various occasions. Noel’s writings represent a desperate attempt to “civilize” Spanish society by raising awareness about corruption and politics, but they contain serious instances of bigotry against Gypsies and flamenco that did not help to overcome stigmatizing prejudice.
Lila Caimari
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520289437
- eISBN:
- 9780520964105
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520289437.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter describes a period in which the most important national media outlets in Argentina began to alter the established language they used to describe crime, a moment when journalists, ...
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This chapter describes a period in which the most important national media outlets in Argentina began to alter the established language they used to describe crime, a moment when journalists, photographers, and illustrators began to deploy a wider set of resources to represent homicides, robberies, and kidnappings in the Buenos Aires press. The themes and methods of crime stories evolved and incorporated a new protagonist, the pistolero. Reporting popularized this figure to such a degree that it became difficult to separate the social phenomenon of “pistolerismo” from the advancements in the very graphic media that brought him to life: the expansion of their ability to reproduce images, the indulgent heterogeneity of their sources, and their commercial logic. The key to understanding the rise of the pistolero's visibility resides in the affinity between the new languages of mass entertainment and certain criminal practices.Less
This chapter describes a period in which the most important national media outlets in Argentina began to alter the established language they used to describe crime, a moment when journalists, photographers, and illustrators began to deploy a wider set of resources to represent homicides, robberies, and kidnappings in the Buenos Aires press. The themes and methods of crime stories evolved and incorporated a new protagonist, the pistolero. Reporting popularized this figure to such a degree that it became difficult to separate the social phenomenon of “pistolerismo” from the advancements in the very graphic media that brought him to life: the expansion of their ability to reproduce images, the indulgent heterogeneity of their sources, and their commercial logic. The key to understanding the rise of the pistolero's visibility resides in the affinity between the new languages of mass entertainment and certain criminal practices.
Randall Stephens
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198798071
- eISBN:
- 9780191839344
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198798071.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Pentecostalism is now the second largest subgrouping of global Christianity. It’s charted tremendous growth, even in deeply post-Christian countries like Sweden. This chapter compares British and ...
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Pentecostalism is now the second largest subgrouping of global Christianity. It’s charted tremendous growth, even in deeply post-Christian countries like Sweden. This chapter compares British and American pentecostalism and looks at how disciples related to or rejected pop culture. Believers had an interesting, hot and cold, relationship with mass entertainment, music, and mass media. They were eager to borrow much for evangelistic purposes, and quick to shun all that they thought to be sinful. British pentecostalism never grew at the pace and never achieved the astounding success of their co-religionists across the Atlantic. Some of this had directly to do with access to mass culture and a willingness or ability to adjust the faith to pop culture. This chapter ends by detailing and analysing the major differences and similarities of the faith as it developed in both regions.Less
Pentecostalism is now the second largest subgrouping of global Christianity. It’s charted tremendous growth, even in deeply post-Christian countries like Sweden. This chapter compares British and American pentecostalism and looks at how disciples related to or rejected pop culture. Believers had an interesting, hot and cold, relationship with mass entertainment, music, and mass media. They were eager to borrow much for evangelistic purposes, and quick to shun all that they thought to be sinful. British pentecostalism never grew at the pace and never achieved the astounding success of their co-religionists across the Atlantic. Some of this had directly to do with access to mass culture and a willingness or ability to adjust the faith to pop culture. This chapter ends by detailing and analysing the major differences and similarities of the faith as it developed in both regions.
Amy K. DeFalco Lippert
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190268978
- eISBN:
- 9780190877026
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190268978.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century, Cultural History
Pictures wielded considerable power in nineteenth-century society, shaping the way that Americans portrayed and related to one another, and presented themselves. This is not only a history through ...
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Pictures wielded considerable power in nineteenth-century society, shaping the way that Americans portrayed and related to one another, and presented themselves. This is not only a history through pictures, but a history of pictures: it departs from most historians’ approaches to images as self-explanatory illustrations, and instead examines those images as largely overlooked primary source evidence. Consuming Identities charts the growth of a commodified image industry in one of the most diverse and dynamic cities in the United States, from the gold rush to the turn of the twentieth century. The following chapters focus on the circulation of human representations throughout the city of San Francisco and around the world, as well as the cultural dimensions of the relationship between people, portraits, and the marketplace. In so doing, this work traces a critical moment in the shaping of individual modern identities.Less
Pictures wielded considerable power in nineteenth-century society, shaping the way that Americans portrayed and related to one another, and presented themselves. This is not only a history through pictures, but a history of pictures: it departs from most historians’ approaches to images as self-explanatory illustrations, and instead examines those images as largely overlooked primary source evidence. Consuming Identities charts the growth of a commodified image industry in one of the most diverse and dynamic cities in the United States, from the gold rush to the turn of the twentieth century. The following chapters focus on the circulation of human representations throughout the city of San Francisco and around the world, as well as the cultural dimensions of the relationship between people, portraits, and the marketplace. In so doing, this work traces a critical moment in the shaping of individual modern identities.
Rohan McWilliam
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- October 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198823414
- eISBN:
- 9780191862120
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198823414.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
How did the West End of London become the world’s leading pleasure district? What is the source of its magnetic appeal? How did the centre of London become Theatreland? London’s West End is the first ...
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How did the West End of London become the world’s leading pleasure district? What is the source of its magnetic appeal? How did the centre of London become Theatreland? London’s West End is the first ever history of the area which has enthralled millions. From the Strand up to Oxford Street, the West End came to stand for sensation and vulgarity but also the promotion of high culture. The reader will explore the growth of theatres, opera houses, galleries, restaurants, department stores, casinos, exhibition centres, night clubs, street life, and the sex industry. The West End produced shows and fashions whose impact rippled outwards around the globe. During the nineteenth century, a neighbourhood that serviced the needs of the aristocracy was opened up to a wider public whilst retaining the imprint of luxury and prestige. The book tells the story of the great artists, actors, and entrepreneurs who made the West End: figures such as Gilbert and Sullivan, the playwright Dion Boucicault, the music hall artiste Jenny Hill, and the American retail genius Harry Gordon Selfridge who wanted to create the best shop in the world. We encounter the origins of the modern star system and celebrity culture. The book moves from the creation of Regent Street to the glory days of the Edwardian period when the West End was the heart of empire and the entertainment industry..Less
How did the West End of London become the world’s leading pleasure district? What is the source of its magnetic appeal? How did the centre of London become Theatreland? London’s West End is the first ever history of the area which has enthralled millions. From the Strand up to Oxford Street, the West End came to stand for sensation and vulgarity but also the promotion of high culture. The reader will explore the growth of theatres, opera houses, galleries, restaurants, department stores, casinos, exhibition centres, night clubs, street life, and the sex industry. The West End produced shows and fashions whose impact rippled outwards around the globe. During the nineteenth century, a neighbourhood that serviced the needs of the aristocracy was opened up to a wider public whilst retaining the imprint of luxury and prestige. The book tells the story of the great artists, actors, and entrepreneurs who made the West End: figures such as Gilbert and Sullivan, the playwright Dion Boucicault, the music hall artiste Jenny Hill, and the American retail genius Harry Gordon Selfridge who wanted to create the best shop in the world. We encounter the origins of the modern star system and celebrity culture. The book moves from the creation of Regent Street to the glory days of the Edwardian period when the West End was the heart of empire and the entertainment industry..
Amy DeFalco Lippert
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190268978
- eISBN:
- 9780190877026
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190268978.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century, Cultural History
Along with the rapid expansion of the market economy and industrial production methods, innovations including photography, lithography, and steam printing created a pictorial revolution in the ...
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Along with the rapid expansion of the market economy and industrial production methods, innovations including photography, lithography, and steam printing created a pictorial revolution in the nineteenth century. Consuming Identities: Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco explores the significance of that revolution in one of its vanguard cities: San Francisco, the revolving door of the gold rush and the hub of Pacific migration and trade. The proliferation of visual prints, ephemera, spectacles, and technologies transformed public values and perceptions, and its legacy was as significant as the print revolution that preceded it. In their correspondence, diaries, portraits, and reminiscences, thousands of migrants to the city by the Bay demonstrated that visual media constituted a central means by which to navigate the bewildering host of changes taking hold around them in the second half of the nineteenth century. Images themselves were inextricably associated with these world-changing forces; they were commodities, but they also possessed special cultural qualities that gave them new meaning and significance. Visual media transcended traditional boundaries of language and culture that had divided groups within the same urban space. From the 1848 conquest of California and the gold discovery to the disastrous earthquake and fire of 1906, San Francisco anticipated broader national transformations in the commodification, implementation, and popularity of images. For the city’s inhabitants and visitors, an array of imagery came to mediate, intersect with, and even constitute social interaction in a world where virtual reality was becoming normative.Less
Along with the rapid expansion of the market economy and industrial production methods, innovations including photography, lithography, and steam printing created a pictorial revolution in the nineteenth century. Consuming Identities: Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco explores the significance of that revolution in one of its vanguard cities: San Francisco, the revolving door of the gold rush and the hub of Pacific migration and trade. The proliferation of visual prints, ephemera, spectacles, and technologies transformed public values and perceptions, and its legacy was as significant as the print revolution that preceded it. In their correspondence, diaries, portraits, and reminiscences, thousands of migrants to the city by the Bay demonstrated that visual media constituted a central means by which to navigate the bewildering host of changes taking hold around them in the second half of the nineteenth century. Images themselves were inextricably associated with these world-changing forces; they were commodities, but they also possessed special cultural qualities that gave them new meaning and significance. Visual media transcended traditional boundaries of language and culture that had divided groups within the same urban space. From the 1848 conquest of California and the gold discovery to the disastrous earthquake and fire of 1906, San Francisco anticipated broader national transformations in the commodification, implementation, and popularity of images. For the city’s inhabitants and visitors, an array of imagery came to mediate, intersect with, and even constitute social interaction in a world where virtual reality was becoming normative.