Another sparkling urban cultural history from Nasaw (History/The
College of Staten Island; Children of the City, 1985, etc.),
chronicling the great entertainment arenas - movie palaces,
amusement parks, World Fairs, ballparks, etc. - of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, which, he says, helped to heat and stir
the American melting pot. In the early 1800's, Nasaw contends,
urbanites "were segregated from one another at work and at home, by
income, ethnicity, gender, and social class." But with the
population explosion fostered by immigration, the increase in
available income and leisure time, as well as technological
innovations - especially the harnessing of electricity -
entrepreneurs began creating venues for the middle- and
working-classes, beginning with vaudeville theaters. But excluded,
or at least segregated, from vaudeville performances - except as
self-parodic performers (playing the "imbecile," the "dandy," the
"lazy fool," or, later, "the razor-wielding coon") - were
African-Americans. This exception to the democratic mingling of
socially diverse urban audiences served a specific purpose, argues
Nasaw in a recurrent theme: to "mute" the social distinctions
between "decent" audience members by elevating them above
"indecent" blacks. For most Americans, though, it was an age of
Wonders: an 11-acre re-creation of Jerusalem at the 1904 St. Louis
World's Fair; Coney Island's Luna Park, with its 250,000 light
bulbs; Lowe's "transcendently glorious" Midland movie palace in
Kansas City, Missouri (the movies' grip on public entertainment
forms the somewhat familiar core of the latter half of Nasaw's
study). It was only after WW II that the great wave of public
amusements waned - a casualty, the author points out, not only of
TV but also of suburbanization and the growing fear of urban
violence. Elegant, well-researched Americana, highlighting both the
sweet excitement of a golden age and the bitter racism that helped
it thrive. (Kirkus Reviews)
David Nasaw has written a sparkling social history of
twentieth-century show business and of the new American public that
assembled in the city's pleasure palaces, parks, theaters,
nickelodeons, world's fair midways, and dance halls.
The new amusement centers welcomed women, men, and children,
native-born and immigrant, rich, poor and middling. Only African
Americans were excluded or segregated in the audience, though they
were overrepresented in parodic form on stage. This stigmatization
of the African American, Nasaw argues, was the glue that cemented
an otherwise disparate audience, muting social distinctions among
"whites," and creating a common national culture.
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