Creation of the Grid

In 1807 the state legislature of New York decided to plan for future growth of the city and designed a “grid” for NYC. The grid “homogenizes” land in to interchangeable parcels of real estate- intended to facilitate the buying and selling of plots. 

Eerie Canal

in 1825 the Erie Canal opened, opening up the Great Lakes region up to the Atlantic Ocean. it ws a shallow artificial canal This effectively made NY into a principle player in commerce and a major urban center. The influx of population created a new urban culture

Anti-Theatrical Prejudice

Mass Medium

Nimrod Wildfire

in 1830 "The Lion of the West" has introduced the character Nimrod Wildfire was a fictionalized version of Crockett. He was portrayed as a powerful super hero: half man and half alligator. Before the Script of this play was finished rumors circulated that the story was based on Davy Crockett. Crockett was primarily recognizable by this character

New York Sun

The New York Sun was a cheap daily newspaper that vastly increased the ways in which and the amount of time that it took people to recieve news in 1833 Benjamin Day introduced the NY Sun. It became one of the most popular newspapers in NYC  sold in cash on the streets instead of only by subscription 

Penny Press

  Was part of one of three big things that acknowledged the emergence of city life, along with transportation, and nightlife 

 Began in 1833 in NYC with the “New York Sun”

                                           The newspaper now contained sensational stories to capture the reader’s attention

                                                Sex and violence were new to daily newspaper

Helen Jewett

Helen Jewett was a glamourized sex worker who was murdered in a brother in 1836. Detailed coverage of the trial and of the accused killer dominated the newspapers. The Helen Jewett ordeal cemented the role of the paper in public interest.

Metamora

opened in 1829

based on a War that white people betraying Indians for the land

                                           Made career of Edwin Forrest

                                           Became part of culture, widely quoted by men women and children who never seen the performance

Leatherstocking Tales

The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels written by James Cooper from 1827- 1841. The main character, Natty Bumppo (Leatherstocking), is a white frontier raised by Indians  The major themes in these stories implied that Native Americans were doomed to extinction and that White Americans were ultimately superior. but also culturally superior to their European counterparts for their collective historical experience of being (theoretically) part Indian. This theme was especially successful because it caught white Americans at a time when they were striving to identify a unified cultural independence from Europeans. 

George Foster

Author of New York by Gaslight (1850), George Foster uses gaslighiting (which made its first public appearance in the theater) as a literary motif to highlight New York’s darker alter ego in the shadows of the night. He writes mostly about the Bowery and personifies the city as a double life for regular people, a temptation, and perhaps even as a sin. He writes to entertain and he often focuses on sex, drugs, crime, drinking, and theater. He writes with a conversational tone to engage the reader with the characters. He understood that the questionable behavior of his characters was the most memorable. He depicts prostitutes both as victims of society’s and of men’s neglect and abuse, but also emphasizes the commercialization of sex. He focuses on the marginal experience—both on the edge of the city and the edge of morality

Sensational Journalism

Sensational Journalism (1830’s) marked a period during which the Penny Press (cheap daily newspapers) were on the rise. It is largely due to this sensationalism of both true and fictional gossip that the penny papers became so popular. The best known example of this was the Moon Hoax in 1835. Appearing in the Sun in 1835, this story detailed a moon crawling with unicorns, man bats and many unbelievable characters. 

Commercial Nightlife

New York By Gas-Light itself emerging from the world and the introduction to the world and the rise to commercial night life. What happens to the city when natural light extinguish and new york gas light comes about. 

Fallen Women

This is one of the reasons why Women get into the Sex Trade according to Foster. Men screw women over and leaves them scared so they have no choice because they are left scared. (seduction and abandonment)

Gas Lighting/Drummon Lights

lime lights invented in the 1830s the first use of it is 1836.  This is talked about in fosters essay. They are alternative to coal gas light. .  But the drum light came with a lens that were adjusted,  so you were able to throw the light any where and it was also able to control the flame to make it brighter and darker, which lead to the creation of spot lights.

Bowery B’hoys/ G'Hals

They were icons of working-class high spirits and urban America’s feisty democratic culture. The Bowery b’hoy was based on the dress and behavior of actual New Yorkers (Bowery subculture with its own speech, dress, etc.) that also became famous as a character “type” whom was represented on stage and depicted in print.  they lampooned the dress and manners of the aristocracy. It was the first urban subculture to attain recognition and became known what was defined as the “characteristic American”, even though most were non-urbanites. In the 1840s and early 1850s, Barnum presented sensational exhibits and raucous entertainments that attracted a working-class, Bowery crowd to his American Museum, but was replaced by blackface minstrelsy

The Right to Hiss

Spurred from the rivalry between actors William Charles Macready and Edwin Forrest. While on a tour in Europe, Forrest is hissed at (similar to booing) playing Macbeth, one of Macready’s better known roles, while in London where Macready was well liked (1843?). Sometime later in 1846, during one of Macready’s performances, Forrest hisses in complete discuss which infuriates Macready, further intensifying the rivalry. Defending his right to hiss in the press, Forrest said that it was a corrective of the abuse of the stage and felt that his means were completely justifiable. 

Blackface

White blackface performers who used burnt cork and later greasepaint or shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerate their lips, wore woolly wigs, gloves, tailcoats, baggy clothes, banjos, harmonicas, etc. to complete the transformation to represent American blacks. Structure: (1) songs (2) olio, or mix of things (3) narrative skit played out by singing and dancing. Blackface was a HUGELY popular genre that reached its height in the 1840s and was widely celebrated as America’s first art form. Stereotypes embodied in the stock characters of blackface minstrels played a significant role in cementing and spreading racist images, attitudes and perceptions, which formed a foundation of racial inequality and animosity towards blacks.

Sunday Promenades

In the mid-19^th century, American culture began to become expressly theatrical and public.  Appearance became a big concern especially for newly emancipated African Americans in the North, who cared about creating an honorable reputation for themselves, and would thus participate in Sunday Promenades (often to the theater or other places for cultural diversions, like balls, formals, dances and orchestras).  At one point African Americans even appeared at Sunday Promenades (in certain areas) more frequently than Whites.  Although Whites would ridicule these affairs, the African Americans took themselves very seriously and wanted to display respectability, often with more success than Whites.  These Black promenade-goers would wear the finest materials and bright colors (even to the point of concern among Black leadership) – and came to be seen as notably well-dressed.

William Alexander Brown 

William Alexander Brown founded the African Grove Theater in 1821 when he realized how marginalized African Americans were becoming in the American societal and cultural life.  He created the Grove as a space where African Americans could go to the theater with dignity 

Ira Aldridge

was an actor and Member of William Alexander Brown’s African theater company. He played numerous roles (mostly Shakespearian) such as Othello, Romeo and Hamlet (which he played in “white face”). Later he moved to London to reach a more receptive audience.

Five Points

American Museum

The American museum was the most important building in mid 19th century Broadway. Barnum in 1841 transformed it into a center of public amusement and entertainment where he presented such exhibits as the Fejee mermaid (1842) and Tom Thumb. It was in the American Museum that temperance dramas emerged which allowed it to claim some respectability as a fit place for women and children to attend. the museum burned down in 1865 only to be erected again by Barnum at a different location which then burned down in 1868.

Jenny Lind

The Swedish opera singer arrived in New York in 1850 to perform in 93 concerts managed by Barnum in 1850. An extensive PR campaign by Barnum

her arrival in New York where she was cheered and serenaded despite the fact that very few Americans had ever heard her sing. She is the first example of a modern music superstar in American history

W.H. Smith, The Drunkard

-written by W.H. Smith in 1844

-example of Barnum's Museum Theater "moral drama"

-portrayed the consequences of drinking through wholesome entertainment

and moral education

-expanded theater audiences and redefined theater as a mixed gender activity

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• Draws heavily on two most important elements of theatre at that time (melodrama and blackface)

• Character conventions and dialogue

• becomes best selling novel in US, becomes best selling fiction novel

• Popular in Britain among which British had abolished slave trade and made them feel morally superior about reading about evil slaveries in US

• UTC artifacts-Biscuit Tin, dolls,etc.

• Several competing versions of play (Aiken vs. Conway)

• Continued to be wildly popular well into emancipation

• Later stage versions of it still had same kind of elements from earlier ones

• UTC becomes most popular topic for early silent film

Fugative Slave Law

passed by the United States Congress in 1850 which stated the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another or into a public territory. Nonslave states hated this law because they were being told what to do by people from different states. Stow was so moved from this that she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Christian Slave

(1855)

After receiving pressure and declining several times to write her own stage adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote this version of her noval as a one woman show and it was performed by a biracial woman who was the child of a slave named Mary Webb

Aiken vs. Conway Adaptation

in September of 1852, after the Howards success in The Drunkard, a play in Barnum's Museum Theater, the Howards were looking for a play in which they could show case their daughter Cordelia. They asked George Aiken, a dime novel writer at the time, to write a play to showcase Cordelia's talent. He ended up agreeing and wrote an adaption of Uncle Tom's Cabin  Aiken's Uncle Toms Cabin has a strong emphasis on morals and the christian religion. H.J Conway, commisioned by Barnum, began running his own adaption of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852.  In Conways version, beating a slave is acceptable because the slave is a trickster or steals. Conways version was embraced by proslavery advocates.

Edison short film

Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven

This was a Chinese version based on Uncle Tom’s cabin that was aimed at criticizing the  treatment of Chinese immigrants in the United States, comparing their treatment to the treatment of black slaves. It also represented a protest against a monarchy not of their own race, as they considered the dynasty that ruled them during that time to be outsiders and not of the same ethnicity as them.

Boston Tea Party

Represents not only an act of protest, but also an early instance of theatrical performance in America. The men who participated dressed and acted like Indians. 

Chari Vari

Organized public rowdy behavior as a form of protest. The boston tea party is an example of this. 

Vernacular Characters

1830's

·      Stock, recognizable, social characters based on ordinary "folk"

·      Yankee, frontiersman, Broadway dandy, Mose the Boury Boy

·      Mocks and denigrates social classes

David Crockett

from east tenessee, parlayed his local popularity/celebrity into and actual political career serving 3 terms in congress, opposed Andrew Jackson, and the whig party used crockett and presented him to appeal to the masses- hunting bears etc (the image we know of him). Ordinary man of extraordinary quality. Exalted frontier life. Depended on the growing publishing network on the east coast to get his message across

Died in 1836

Edwin Forrest

Edwin Forrest was an actor who was loud and incorporated big movements into his acting. His style of acting made him the first citizen to gain fame for acting. In 1829, Edwin Forrest starred in the play Metamora as an Indian protagonist. Later, Forrest becomes associated with the Bowery which became the “go to” place to see him perform.

Indian Removal

As a part of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, 125,000 Native Americans east of Mississippi were forced to leave by gunpoint. This march away from their homelands to the west was known as the “Trail of Tears.” 

Commercialization of Sex

§       Commercialization of sex is about larger world of sexual entertainment

ú    Not always just intercourse

§       Sexualization of commerce

§       Sex sometimes used to sell something else

§       Sexuality has a monetary value and money has no sexual value

Seduction and Abandonment

Tableux Vivants/ Model Artist Exhibitions

·      According to british law, you could have nudity on stage as long as nude actors didn’t speak or move

·      In American not completely nude but tended to use body suits with nipples and/or navels drawn on

·      Presented in a stable

o   Filthy

Susannah at her Bath

 The painting stems from a religious story found in the book of Daniel in which Susannah, a very virtuous woman, is bathing in her garden and is visited by two bad elders who threaten to accuse her of adultery unless she gives into their desires. Francesco Heyez in 1850 has Susannah in a much more "come hither" look and "we" are the elders

Bowery

·      Only Street that doesn’t have a church

·      People classified by lifestyle

·      Represents part of working class values

o   Foster claims they represent real American identity

o   Girls wear multicolored calicos

·      Had its own slang

·      A theatre, a neighborhood, and a subculture

·      Plays about bowery life were presented at the bowery theatre in front of bowery people

Astor Place Riots

The Astor Place riot took place in 1849 at the Astor Place Theatre in New York City, and it was a severely brutal civil disturbance that left more than 150 people wounded or dead. It stemmed from a major dispute between actors Edwin Forrest (An American Actor) and William Charles Macready ( an acclaimed English actor). Macready and Forrest had once been friends but were not bitter enemies and their issue turned into an English vs. American class struggle. 

William Charles Macready

o   English actorà well brought up, was supposed to go in to law

o   Goes into acting to support his family, giving up law dreams

o   Wants to elevate theatre to an art form rather than just entertainment

o   Quiet, cerebral acting style

o   Leads him to have an upper class following

o   Was not very welcomed in America because he was british

o   Major rivalry with Edwin forrest 

Bowery vs Broadway

The Bowery was a playhouse in the bowery neighborhood of New York city.  Bowery was home to all forms of working class entertainment while in contrast, while Broadway appealed to richer audiences. Conflict developed between the two sides, and arguably the Astor Place Riot became a product of this discord.

Jim Crow

A vernacular character in blackface in the 1830's and 40's representing the typical simple, rural, rustic plantation slave in the south. Later on, Laws that restricted African Americans rights came to be known as Jim Crow laws

Zip Coon

A vernacular character in blackface in the 1830's and 40's.  Northern urban dandy, associated with New York City and Broadway. He inflated sense of importance, horny and pervy (not homo though)

Stephen Foster

·      produced many of the most famous songs of the era

o   Oh Susanna

o   Camptwon Races

·      Best known American songwriter of the century

1830's and 40's

·      Wrote all of these songs for minstrel shows, to be sung with black inflection and in blackface

What we think of as popular American songs are part of the blackface tradition

Bobilition

·      Genre of satirical posters and journalism

o   Dialect and malapropism

·      Ridiculed for acting and speaking properly and for acting and speaking incorrectly

·      Zip Coon-> aspires to be president despite the fact that he cant speak proper English

Slavery in New York

New York abolished slavery graduallyà no one born to a slave after a certain date will be a slave, or peole born after a certain date will become free after they reach a certain age

1827- slavery illegal in ny

Gradual Abolition

no one born to a slave after a certain date will be a slave, or peole born after a certain date will become free after they reach a certain age and slavery is ultimatlely made illegal 

African Grove Theatre

Was founded by William Alexander Brown in 1821

\ African Americans, especially the elite, could go with some dignity.

His actors were all African American and mostly performed typically European roles

The African Grove Theatre did very well ina short period of time and eventually became popular with white audiences

o      The white spectators allowed to attend performances were requited to sit in certain areas of the theatre

o      It was said that white audiences did not know how to properly conduct themselves at performances for ladies and gentlemen of colour

The theatre eventually closed down after two years; there are no records of the Grove after 1823

Launched the career of a number of African American actors. One of the theatre’s stars was Ida Aldridge.

Juba

Nickname for William Henry Lane (1825-52)

He was an acrobatic dancer and it is claimed that he was “the greatest dancer known” (Charles Dickens) and that he created tap.

Emerged from the African American dance sub-culture visible in the 5 Points district, the first famous American slum

Joice Heth

Enslaved African American

Barnum advertised her as 161 years old and nurse of George Washington, took her on tour starting his career in entertainment

When she died he arranged to have a physician examining her in front of a newspaper editor, it was determined that she was only 80 years old Big Hoax

Humbug

is popular dillusion like a hoax or a fraud, like the joice heth hoax. Barnum liked humbug because he thought of it as hype.

a.   the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture

b.   American Idol or People Magazine

c.   better understand the code of visual communications

a. the use of language and images to create meaning about the world around us. we use words to understand, define and describe the world as we see it

b. English language

c. allow us to understand, express, and interpret meaning

a. defines representation as a process of mirroring or imitating the real. representation of realism

b. breakfast- eggs & bacon.  There are certain things that hold their value. In our culture, when we see a picture of eggs and bacon on a plate, we assume that it represents breakfast.

c. this theory doesn’t quite capture reality, it could mean something beyond that reality, convey something more, a symbol beyond what is depicted

a. It holds that it is the speaker, the author, who imposes his or her unique meaning on the world through language. Words or images mean what the author intends them to mean

b. denotative (explicit meaning) connotative (all that the image means to the person personally and socially) 

c. we can never know the intention of the author, hence it is viewers who make the meaning of the image

 (Olson)

a. theory that asserts that much of what has been taken as fact is socially constructed through conjunctures of ideological forces, language, economic relationships, and so forth.

b. look at an image/poster and describe...talk about how the meaning changed over time

c. in order to decode image we need to think about how the culture thinks about the image, realities are constructed through cultural ideologies

 SAUSSURE

a. structuralism is a set of theories that emphasized the laws, codes, rules, formulas, and conventions that structure human behavior and systems of meaning. no matter how much the details change from story to story the structure stays the same. Limited number of bianaries

b. James Bond movies: Bond/ villain, good/evil

c.  The task of structuralism is to make explicit rules and conventions which govern the production of meaning (acts of parole)

 BARTHES

a. examine what structuralists did not account for such as desire, play, amiguity of meanings

b. Madonna takes icons and use them in ways that give them different meanings (rosary, wedding veil, etc.), gender

(Sauserre)

a.  Langue: system of rules and conventions, pre-exists user.  Rules of the game Parole: use of language in context--expression/performance

b. Langue--Rules of Chess, the moves and Parole--ways a game of chess is played (many different possibilities). using any language, how there is a correct way (grammar/use) of that language

c. differentiate between language and how it is used. They enable us to study these two things as separate identities, and helped Barthes form theories and methods regarding the deconstruction and analysis of visual texts.

(Levi Strauss)

a. a chain of interrelated meaning/concepts that appear at the 2nd level of signification. A common sense understanding of the world, and it portrays a cultures way of thinking about conceptualizing or understanding something-- especially something that naturalizes the way of thinking. Closely related to ideology.

b. X

c. help the society to legitimize ideology--how ideology is portrayed within a society  

* Polysemy (Encoding-Decoding Model)

a. audience rejects the dominant meaning and replaces with their own.

b. any example, just describe in correct context

c demonstrates how the receiver/audience is not always at the disposal of the sender/those in power.  the audience is capable of being an active agent in creating their own meaning.

a. interpreted from dominant reading, when an audience member agrees with some of the text but not all

b. Oscars- epitome of fame, not really about what good film is about

c. demonstrates how the receiver/audience is not at the full disposal of the sender/those in power.  the audience is capable of being an active agent in creating meaning.

a. the intended or preferred meaning, take at face value  

b. any example, just describe in correct context

c. demonstrates the ability of a text to control or manipulate people’s perception.  taking a preferred reading serves the interest of those in power.  

a. A system of meanings, a systematic organization or structure of signs. Codes are made up of signs.

b. Code of Ethics is made up of socially constructed signs which determines what are “ethical” practices or not.

c. Codes are socially constructed, which means they only make sense in the culture that follows them. The meaning of codes depends on signs and the sign’s meanings depend on culture. 

 (Althusser)

a. the process by which ideological systems call out to or “hail” social subjects and tell them their place in the system.

b. Ad that says “YOU”

c. In popular culture, interpellation refers to the ways that cultural products address their consumers and recruit them into a particular ideological position. 

  (from the fiske reading) (Gramsci)

a. that dominant ideologies are often offered as common sense and that dominant ideologies are in tension with other forces and hence constantly in flux.  The term indicates how ideological meaning is an object of struggle rather than an oppressive force that fully dominates subjects from above.

b. Protesting, hegemony allows for groups to stand up to the dominant culture

c. 

a. The practice of taking terms and meanings and appropriating them to create new meanings.

b. the word “queer”; the term “queer” had been used as a derogatory term for homosexuals, but has been re-appropriated to be both a positive term for identity and as a theoretical term indicating a position through which the norm is questioned (like something weird).  

c. audience able to negotiate and resist hegemonic meaning, interaction rather than media forced on us-- represent shift of media consumer to active media producer.

a. The practice of working with whatever materials are at hand, “making do” with what one has.  It has the potential to create resistant meanings out of commodities.  

b. punk rock using safety pins

c. it reflects the power struggle between the subgroup and dominant group. the subgroup has a role in changing the meaning of everyday commodities in media culture

a. Appropriation is when a viewer takes something that they are looking at and strategically gives it another meaning. The act of borrowing, stealing, or taking over other’s work, images, words, meanings to one’s own ends.

Re-appropriation- Kills meanings that it originally had in its sub-culture

b. X

c. X

a. institutionalization of the gaze

term used to describe the relationship of looking in which the subject is caught up in the dynamics of desire through being looked at.

b. a woman in an advertisement half naked- she is being looked at by men and women and has no power to make them stop

c. affects experience

(Foucault)

a. acts of looking caught up in dynamics of desire.

b. example: the gaze can be motivated by a desire for control over its object. *keep in mind complex power relations that are a part of the acts of looking and being looked at.

c. relationship of subjects within a network of power--and the mechanism of vision as a means of negotiating and conveying power within that network 

(Edward Said)

a. Western cultures conceive of Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures as other and attribute to these cultures qualities such as exoticism and barbarism.  Orientalism sees a binary opposition between the West (the Occident) and the East (the Orient) in which either negative or romanticized qualities are attributed to the latter.  

b. arab = terrorist

c. Eastern cultures are shown as inferior compared to Western culture.

 (Foucault)

a. we behave as if we are under a scrutinizing, panoptic gaze and that we internalize the rules and norms of the society as we imagine ourselves to be always potentially under a watchful eye that expects us to perform this way.

b. obeying the car pool lane rule.

c. when people feel that they are constantly being watched, they will self regulate and obey the laws. 

 (Foucault)

a. Forcing the body to “emit signs” - to signify its relation to social norms

 b. Black Swan, constantly under surveillance, under gaze of audience to create perfect performance and disciplines her body in order to give the perfect performance that the gaze wants (director of the ballet)

c. x

 (Andrejevic article)

a. Where many (masses) watch the few (shows, those in commercials; the few watch the many.

b. big brother show

c. 

  (Benjamin’s)

a. unique existence, originality, it has a connection to the artist (indexical), its historical, it physically bears the traces of history and you have to seek the painting out, it is unique in time and space.

B Mountain- original, has history of being one thing in time and space

c. magic quality of original art pieces have. reminds us we still place value on realness and authenticity/ more meaningful than something that can be reproduce 

a. The uniqueness of the “presence in time and space” that gives an image a particular kind of aura, giving it a feeling of authenticity.  

b. The Mona Lisa- we have all seen a copy of the artwork, but we might have a different experience when we see the real thing up close

c. the pilgrimage to see an authentic work of art is part of the experience. now, you can see it on a computer screen, but it is not the same as seeing it in real life at a museum

a. Copyright is a bundle of rights to distribute, control, create your original works (art/photos/creations).

• ·      derivative: obviously derives its art straight from the original author   (in court, original artist wins)
• ·      transformative: contributes something unique and individual, original - in court, the original artist does not win because 1st amendment rights triumph if sufficiently prove “transformative” element (courts don’t judge artistic merit, just judge if it’s obvious they copied the original work)

b. X

c. people are no longer able to take credit for works that do not belong to them.