Electric dreamland
Subtitle: amusement parks, movies, and American modernism
By: Lauren Rabinovitz
Series: Film and culture
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 237
ISBN-13: 9780231156608; 9780231156615; 9780231527217
Subjects: Motion pictures; Social life and customs; Amusement parks; History
Description: More than two thousand amusement parks dotted the American landscape in the early twentieth century, thrilling the general public with the latest in entertainment and motion picture technology. Amusement parks were the playgrounds of the working class, 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 before World War I, amusement parks tempered the shocks of racial, ethnic, and cultural conflict while shrinking the distinctions between gender and class. As she follows 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: artificial distractions; title: Urban wonderlands: the "cracked mirror" of turn-of-the-century amusement parks; title: Thrill ride cinema: Hale's tours and scenes of the world; title: The miniature and the giant: postcards and early cinema; title: Coney Island comedies: slapstick at the amusement park and the movies; title: Conclusion: the fusion of movies and amusement parks; title: Appendix: directory of amusement parks in the United States prior to 1915.