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.
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