With Amusement for All

With Amusement for All PDF Author: LeRoy Ashby
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813123976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 713

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Book Description
With Amusement for All contextualizes what Americans have done for fun since 1830, showing the reciprocal nature of the relationships among social, political, economic, and cultural forces and the ways in which the entertainment world has reflected, changed, or reinforced the values of American society.

With Amusement for All

With Amusement for All PDF Author: LeRoy Ashby
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813123976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 713

Get Book

Book Description
With Amusement for All contextualizes what Americans have done for fun since 1830, showing the reciprocal nature of the relationships among social, political, economic, and cultural forces and the ways in which the entertainment world has reflected, changed, or reinforced the values of American society.

With Amusement for All

With Amusement for All PDF Author: LeRoy Ashby
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813171326
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 686

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Book Description
With Amusement for All is a sweeping interpretative history of American popular culture. Providing deep insights into various individuals, events, and movements, LeRoy Ashby explores the development and influence of popular culture -- from minstrel shows to hip-hop, from the penny press to pulp magazines, from the NBA to NASCAR, and much in between. By placing the evolution of popular amusement in historical context, Ashby illuminates the complex ways in which popular culture both reflects and transforms American society. He demonstrates a recurring pattern in democratic culture by showing how groups and individuals on the cultural and social periphery have profoundly altered the nature of mainstream entertainment. The mainstream has repeatedly co-opted and sanitized marginal trends in a process that continues to shift the limits of acceptability. Ashby describes how social control and notions of public morality often vie with the bold, erotic, and sensational as entrepreneurs finesse the vagaries of the market and shape public appetites. Ashby argues that popular culture is indeed a democratic art, as it entertains the masses, provides opportunities for powerless and disadvantaged individuals to succeed, and responds to changing public hopes, fears, and desires. However, it has also served to reinforce prejudices, leading to discrimination and violence. Accordingly, the study of popular culture reveals the often dubious contours of the American dream. With Amusement for All never loses sight of pop culture's primary goal: the buying and selling of fun. Ironically, although popular culture has drawn an enormous variety of amusements from grassroots origins, the biggest winners are most often sprawling corporations with little connection to a movement's original innovators.

Amusement Parks of New York

Amusement Parks of New York PDF Author: Jim Futrell
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 9780811732628
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This comprehensive guide profiles 16 major amusement parks in the Empire State and offers information on smaller parks as well. Offers complete information on rides and attractions, a history of each park, and best times to go. Features vintage photographs and postcards scenes.

Where the Girls Are

Where the Girls Are PDF Author: Susan J. Douglas
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0812925300
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Media critic Douglas deconstructs the ambiguous messages sent to American women via TV programs, popular music, advertising, and nightly news reporting over the last 40 years, and fathoms their influence on her own life and the lives of her contemporaries. Photos.

Nightclub City

Nightclub City PDF Author: Burton W. Peretti
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203364
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In the Roaring Twenties, New York City nightclubs and speakeasies became hot spots where traditions were flouted and modernity was forged. With powerful patrons in Tammany Hall and a growing customer base, nightclubs flourished in spite of the efforts of civic-minded reformers and federal Prohibition enforcement. This encounter between clubs and government-generated scandals, reform crusades, and regulations helped to redefine the image and reality of urban life in the United States. Ultimately, it took the Great Depression to cool Manhattan's Jazz Age nightclubs, forcing them to adapt and relocate, but not before they left their mark on the future of American leisure. Nightclub City explores the cultural significance of New York City's nightlife between the wars, from Texas Guinan's notorious 300 Club to Billy Rose's nostalgic Diamond Horseshoe. Whether in Harlem, Midtown, or Greenwich Village, raucous nightclub activity tested early twentieth-century social boundaries. Anglo-Saxon novelty seekers, Eastern European impresarios, and African American performers crossed ethnic lines while provocative comediennes and scantily clad chorus dancers challenged and reshaped notions of femininity. These havens of liberated sexuality, as well as prostitution and illicit liquor consumption, allowed their denizens to explore their fantasies and fears of change. The reactions of cultural critics, federal investigators, and reformers such as Fiorello La Guardia exemplify the tension between leisure and order. Peretti's research delves into the symbiotic relationships among urban politicians, social reformers, and the business of vice. Illustrated with archival photographs of the clubs and the characters who frequented them, Nightclub City is a dark and dazzling study of New York's bygone nightlife.

The American Amusement Park

The American Amusement Park PDF Author: Dale Samuelson
Publisher: Motorbooks International
ISBN: 0760309817
Category : Amusement parks
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
A photographic retrospective covers more than 100 years of images from the history of the American amusement park.

An Introduction to Popular Culture in the US

An Introduction to Popular Culture in the US PDF Author: Jenn Brandt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501320580
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The first introductory textbook to situate popular culture studies in the United States as an academic discipline with its own history and approach to examining American culture, its rituals, beliefs, and the objects that shape its existence.

Cheap Amusements

Cheap Amusements PDF Author: Kathy Peiss
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439905533
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The dilemmas of work and leisure for women at the turn-of-the-century.

Going Out

Going Out PDF Author: David Nasaw
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674417593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
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.

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight PDF Author: Eric Avila
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520248112
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
"In Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Eric Avila offers a unique argument about the restructuring of urban space in the two decades following World War II and the role played by new suburban spaces in dramatically transforming the political culture of the United States. Avila's work helps us see how and why the postwar suburb produced the political culture of 'balanced budget conservatism' that is now the dominant force in politics, how the eclipse of the New Deal since the 1970s represents not only a change of views but also an alteration of spaces."—George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness