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Culture Incorporated

Culture Incorporated. Making of the Modern World Week 19: Smyth. Culture Industries?. Formation of national culture post 1865 Tension between middleclass and working-class cultures (folk to mass) Racial appropriation and exclusion Interlocking roles of advertising, publishing, theatre

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Culture Incorporated

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  1. Culture Incorporated Making of the Modern World Week 19: Smyth

  2. Culture Industries? • Formation of national culture post 1865 • Tension between middleclass and working-class cultures (folk to mass) • Racial appropriation and exclusion • Interlocking roles of advertising, publishing, theatre • Reliance on female artists and consumers; performance of gender • Motion pictures and working-class entertainment • Resistance to cultural hegemony?

  3. High Art, Popular, and Mass Culture • Culture as adjective, 1870- • Culture becomes ‘incorporated’ when small group dictates standards • Educating and spiritually uplifting aspects of culture; search for “great” literature, art • Key historical events and figures repackaged as bedrock of national culture: potential ambivalence of text and audience • Appropriation and exclusion of aberrant cultures: canonicity • Potential of popular/working-class culture vs. capitalist mass culture (1920-)

  4. Is popular culture an alternative/form of resistance to hegemony? • Hobsbawm • Williams • Frankfurt School • Althusser • Gramsci • Seldes

  5. early Coca Cola ad, 1886 Birth of Discourse: Advertising Mass Culture

  6. Columbia Exposition • “White City” designed by Daniel Burnham • 27.5 million people attend– Emphasis on US surpassing rest of world– compare to Crystal Palace, 1851

  7. Integration of folk cultures: Ragtime Scott Joplin (1868-1917) • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAtL7n_-rc

  8. Right: “Coon” song by black song writer Ernest Hogan c 1890 Early 19thC minstrel shows focus on plantation life but prettify slavery Conservative discourses make fun of women’s suffrage and professionals From 1890s focus is on “olios,” which would feature many popular songs Written by both black and white songwriters White theft of black culture Integration of folk cultures: Blackface and cultural appropriation

  9. Destabilizing Gender: The Cushman Sisters in Romeo and Juliet (1846) and May Irwin and her black baby, ca. 1890 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp_v_dP8s-8 (Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, 1899)

  10. Integration of theatrical cultures: vaudeville

  11. Left: Florenz Ziegfeld Conspicuous consumption of feminine body Ziegfeld Follies Low parades as high (variety show with expensive packaging) Women (w/ exception of Fannie Brice) do not speak Theatre: ‘High Art’ and Mass Culture

  12. Sold 300,000 copies in first year Racial melodrama Political and social controversy Adapted as popular theatre in vaudeville, on show boats, and on Broadway Commodification of history and race The Best-Seller

  13. Ramona…Cultural Theft and Tourism • Followed Jackson’s history of mistreatment of California Indians • Sold over 15,000 copies before her death in 1885 • Over 300 printings; second most widely read novel of the 19th century • Never out of print • Opening of Southern Pacific Railway shortly after publication • Towns and missions claim to be authentic Ramona locations • Branding of Ramona products begins in 19th C • Ramona pageant in Hemet, est. 1923-

  14. Publishing Revolutions: Dime Novels (1860s-1890s): fantasies of anti-establishment discourse

  15. McClure’s nationwide readership Specialized in “muckraking” journalism and efforts to promote progressive reform Exposes of poverty, abuses of big business 1880s half-tone process enables many photographs to appear in edition of newspaper or magazine 1887 flash photography Popular Journals and Social Criticism

  16. Women and the Marketing of Domestic Culture • Women working: in 1890s 600,000 saleswomen worked in cities; by 1900 8.6 million women worked outside homes • Feminization of American culture– see also Andreas Huyssen

  17. The incorporation of baseball • Cincinnati first pro team 1869– 400 smaller teams from 1860s • American Assn more working-class– river cities, lower prices for tickets, alcohol allowed at games– • National League 1876/Am League 1901 (formerly Western League): bidding war • Emphasis moves from players to clubs– restriction of movement and growth of contracts

  18. Moses Walker • Oberlin and U Michigan • 1884 Major League Debut • 1887 International League votes to ban black players • 1889 American Assn and National League ban black men from playing (unofficial) • 1891 out of professional baseball

  19. The Columbia Exposition • Created/funded by private corporation • Daniel Burnham chooses white, neo-classical plan for all buildings and decor • Focus on American achievements in technology and culture (focus on corporate creations) • ‘Ideal city’ built on reclaimed wilderness and swamp land • Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show • Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis presented at Chi’s AHA meeting (new white national myth) • US/European businessmen take over Hawaii– the open door justification for capitalism and the triumph of white civilization

  20. The National Culture: 1883-1916 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU6a7S1YHLQ

  21. And the Greatest Shot in the World is…

  22. Art or Business? Motion Pictures • Working-class origins • Gradual consolidation of small nickelodeon businesses into studios • Gradual trend toward stars and adaptations of best-selling literary properties • Connection between popular literature, journalism, advertising, different appeals to male/female spectatorship • By 1915 and Birth of a Nation, self-consciousness about cinema as art and historical text (but Mutual decision, 1915) • Attempts to censor Westerns, early gangster films, and boxing matches by middle-class reformers

  23. Edison Kinetoscope Although experiments with mps date to 1870s, the first peepshow viewer was exhibited by Thomas Edison in Brooklyn in 1893 Projectors enter market in 1895 Spanish-American War first war ‘filmed’ (re-enactments mostly)

  24. Mary Pickford, suffrage advocate Women in Hollywood

  25. Reclaiming Blackness • Jack Johnson, first African American heavyweight champion of the world 1908-1915 • Knocks out former British heavyweight Bob Fitzsimmons in 2 rounds, 1907 • Fight of the century, 4 July 1910: defeat of white James Jeffries • Film of fight sparks race riots in 25 states; Theodore Roosevelt demands ban on interstate distribution fight films (upheld till 1940)

  26. National Cultures and the ‘Great White Hope’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-7SVbLjBw

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