The Formation of Mass Culture Part I: “Incorporation”

1. The Formation of Mass Culture Part I: “Incorporation” Making of the Modern World Week 19

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. Early inventions: Newspapers – 17th century, widespread after c. 1750 Photography – from 1838, dry plates in 1870s, flash 1890s Phonograph - from 1876, widespread after c. 1895 Motion Picture –1890s, feature films after 1912 Major shifts in western society 19th and early 20th centuries: Industrialization, urbanization, immigration rise of middle class Consumer economies Leisure time Cultural hierarchies: high art and mass culture Origins of the Modern Mass Media

4. High Art, Popular, and Mass Culture • Culture as adjective, 1870- • Transformation of low European culture (Opera, Shakespeare, etc.) into “high” art for wealthy American elites • 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/workingclass culture vs. capitalist mass culture (1920-)

5. Is popular culture an alternative/form of resistance to hegemony or an acceleration of the dominant ideology? • Hobsbawm’s “optimism”: “The cultural revolution of the latest twentieth century can thus best be understood as the triumph of the individual over society, or rather, the breaking of the threads which in the past had woven human beings into social textures.” • Williams’ faith in the ordinariness of culture and a ‘painless’ Marxist cultural criticism: “Culture includes the organization of production, the structure of the family, the structure of institutions which express or govern social relationships, the characteristic forms through which members of the society communicate.” • Frankfurt School traditionally sees only cultural productions’ manipulation of audiences and complicity rather than agency and capacity for critique (unlike variants of classic Marx): however, globalization may prove Althusser right: one cannot escape ideology: “ideology has no history” • Traditional Marxist cultural criticism inadequate in handling questions of race and gender

6. Right: early Coca Cola ad ca 1886 1838-1900: First department stores revolutionize retail marketing 1872: Montgomery Ward Establishes Mail-Order Business 1893: Columbian Exposition 1894: Kellogg's Corn Flakes Launch the Dry Cereal Industry In US: post Civil War technology boom; birth of modern corporations Birth of Discourse: Advertising Mass Culture

7. Integration of folk cultures • German immigrants create Tin Pan Alley and New York music industry; promote Af-Am ragtime (1893) • Blackface mistrelsy and vaudeville (1880s): white cultural theft • Ramona novel: social protest becomes tourism • Amusement parks like Coney Island (1895) and World’s Fairs (Chi, 1893) spaces for working-class audiences • Mass-produced dime novels for working class • “women’s literature” dominates publishing industry • Baseball (1845); first Natl League 1876; Spaulding turns it corporate

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 Blackface and cultural appropriation

9. 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-

11. New Vaudeville Theatre, 1870

12. 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

13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Y0gtQ3biA

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

17. Feminization of American Culture • Were women merely passive consumers of American culture? • Women as consumers and drivers of publishing industry • Women’s fiction (anon., C. Sedgwick, H.B. Stowe) often depicts women working in cities: counterpoint to Horatio Alger • Relationship between women and missionaries—feminine control of religious instruction • Women authors of popular history with educational slant; early social and cultural histories • See Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (1988)

18. 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

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 on display at exposition– mass marketing of Western history also frequently toured Europe • Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis presented at Chi’s AHA meeting (new white national myth) • And as this was happening…US/European businessmen take over Hawaii– the open door justification for capitalism and the triumph of white civilization

20. 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

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

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

23. 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 • Critics divided; Seldes sees its potential as liveliest art • Attempts to censor westerns, early gangster films, and boxing matches

25. Mary Pickford: behind the camera Suffrage advocate, 1917

26. 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)

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