Amusing the Millions
Prompt: “One of the important themes in the class has been “assimilation; ie. The desires and efforts by social reformers to ‘americanize’ various peoples: freed slaves, Indians, immigrants, and so on. ;assimilation; could be problematic, however, because it involved forcing on groups’ various values and viewpoints on other, even if it was done with the best of intentions. Consider ‘assimilation’ in the context of Coney Island amusement parks. According to Kasson’s Amusing the Million, who embraced the “mass culture” embodied by the parks, and why? Who rejected it, and why?”
3-4 pages (700-800 words)
Accepted it: The Young Americans & Immigrants trying to americanize their lives.
It was more thrilling than other options at the time in Manhattan, saving all the money they could.
Coney Island provided a means to participate in mainstream American culture on an equal footing (40).
This new mass culture incorporated immigrants and working-class groups into their forms and values.
Coney Island was entering a world apart from ordinary life, prevailing social stuctures and positions. It also provided and area in which vistitors were temporarily freed from normative demands.
Rejected: Genteel reformers, missed the concept they set forth with Central Park and ‘The White City’.
Coney Island amusement parks began in 1895, before the first World War. This was during the country’s shift to an “Urban-Industrial Society”. -This was because of the changing economic and social conditions -The purest expression lied in the ‘realm of commercial amusements; (4), to create ‘symbols of the new cultural order’…’kniting a heterogeneous audience into a cohesive whole’. Before the new cultural:
“Victorian more than enland, with a strikingly coherent set of values that were kept by the self-conscious elite of critics, ministers, educators, and reformers, drawn principally from the protestant middle class of the urban Northeast.
The Genteel Reformers
3-4 pages (700-800 words)
Accepted it: The Young Americans & Immigrants trying to americanize their lives.
It was more thrilling than other options at the time in Manhattan, saving all the money they could.
Coney Island provided a means to participate in mainstream American culture on an equal footing (40).
This new mass culture incorporated immigrants and working-class groups into their forms and values.
Coney Island was entering a world apart from ordinary life, prevailing social stuctures and positions. It also provided and area in which vistitors were temporarily freed from normative demands.
Rejected: Genteel reformers, missed the concept they set forth with Central Park and ‘The White City’.
Coney Island amusement parks began in 1895, before the first World War. This was during the country’s shift to an “Urban-Industrial Society”. -This was because of the changing economic and social conditions -The purest expression lied in the ‘realm of commercial amusements; (4), to create ‘symbols of the new cultural order’…’kniting a heterogeneous audience into a cohesive whole’. Before the new cultural:
“Victorian more than enland, with a strikingly coherent set of values that were kept by the self-conscious elite of critics, ministers, educators, and reformers, drawn principally from the protestant middle class of the urban Northeast.
The Genteel Reformers