The Formation of Mass Culture Part I:

1
The Formation of Mass Culture Part I
Incorporation

• Making of the Modern World
• Week 19

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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
Origins of the Modern Mass Media

• 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

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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-)

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Is popular culture an alternative/form of
resistance to hegemony or an acceleration of the
dominant ideology?

• Hobsbawms 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

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Birth of Discourse Advertising Mass Culture

• 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

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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
  Worlds Fairs (Chi, 1893) spaces for
  working-class audiences
• Mass-produced dime novels for working class
• womens literature dominates publishing
  industry
• Baseball (1845) first Natl League 1876
  Spaulding turns it corporate

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Blackface and cultural appropriation

• 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 womens
  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

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RamonaCultural Theft and Tourism

• Followed Jacksons 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-

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Destabilizing Gender The Cushman Sisters in
Romeo and Juliet (1846) and May Irwin and her
black baby, ca. 1890
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vMp_v_dP8s-8 (Sarah
Bernhardt as Hamlet, 1899)
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New Vaudeville Theatre, 1870
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Theatre High Art and Mass Culture

• 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

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http//www.youtube.com/watch?v81Y0gtQ3biA
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Publishing Revolutions Dime Novels
(1860s-1890s) fantasies of anti-establishment
discourse
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Popular Journals and Social Criticism

• McClures 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

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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

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Feminization of American Culture

• Were women merely passive consumers of American
  culture?
• Women as consumers and drivers of publishing
  industry
• Womens fiction (anon., C. Sedgwick, H.B. Stowe)
  often depicts women working in cities
  counterpoint to Horatio Alger
• Relationship between women and missionariesfemini
  ne 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)

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The Best-Seller

• 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

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American to National League

• 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

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Spaulding

• 1874 sporting goods store opens
• Instrumental in formation of National League
• 1877 glove always used for his pitching
• Recruits for Chicago
• Around the world tour 1888-89
• Mills commission to establish Americanness of
  baseball
• 1911 authored first history of baseball

22
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

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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 Bills Wild West Show on display at
  exposition mass marketing of Western history
  also frequently toured Europe
• Frederick Jackson Turners Frontier Thesis
  presented at Chis AHA meeting (new white
  national myth)
• And as this was happeningUS/European businessmen
  take over Hawaii the open door justification for
  capitalism and the triumph of white civilization

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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

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The National Culture 1883-1916
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vrU6a7S1YHLQ
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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

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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)
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Mary Pickford behind the camera

• Suffrage advocate, 1917

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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)

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National Cultures and the Great White Hope
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v9t-7SVbLjBw