Electric dreamland : amusement parks, movies, and American modernity

Rabinovitz, Lauren 1950- (Author).

Summary: 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.

Record details

ISBN: 9780231156608 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 023115660X (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780231156615 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0231156618 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780231527217 (ebook)
ISBN: 0231527217 (ebook)
Physical Description: print
regular print
xiii, 237 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Publisher: New York : Columbia University Press, 2012.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Includes filmography.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-228) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction: artificial distractions -- Urban wonderlands: the "cracked mirror" of turn-of-the-century amusement parks -- Thrill ride cinema: Hale's tours and scenes of the world -- The miniature and the giant: postcards and early cinema -- Coney Island comedies: slapstick at the amusement park and the movies -- Conclusion: the fusion of movies and amusement parks -- Appendix: directory of amusement parks in the United States prior to 1915.