Book ID: CBB001202125

Electric Dreamland: Amusement Parks, Movies, and American Modernity (2012)

unapi

Rabinovitz, Lauren (Author)


Columbia University Press


Publication Date: 2012
Physical Details: xii + 237 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

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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Reviewed By

Review Lindholm, Brian J. (2013) Review of "Electric Dreamland: Amusement Parks, Movies, and American Modernity". Journal of American Culture (p. 373). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001202125/

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Authors & Contributors
Laurence, Alison
Fredrik Meiton
Lysen, Flora
Vidal, Fernando
Williams, Joyce E.
Short, John Phillip
Concepts
Industrialization
Science and culture
Urbanization
Science and entertainment; science and spectacle
Electricity; magnetism
Science and society
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
18th century
Enlightenment
20th century
Places
Great Britain
United States
England
Montreal (Quebec, Canada)
Manchester (England)
Palestine
Institutions
Académie des Sciences, Paris
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