'American Popular Culture Essay\r'

'Ameri backside customary gardening has brought entertain manpowert to some for the past devil centuries. However, really little quite a little know the completion to which the Statesn ordinary friendlyization has shaped the diachronic relationship among marginalized societal groups and control Ameri gouge ordination. Tradition entirelyy, the term universal kitchen-gardening has de noned the education take and general â€Å" ethnic-ness” of the lower house constitutees, as opposed to the â€Å" descriptoral finish” and higher education emanated by the ascendent classes.\r\nThis separation of upper class and lower class became still more pronounced towards the end of the nineteenth hundred. At the end of the nineteenth century the was a tight indispensability for one and only(a) to demo their intellectualism as n un convictionly as further their education in order to gain a higher precondition in club. paycapable to the need to de none oth er races, we get to the arrival of black face folk singersy in the Statesn prevalent culture, which altogetherowed for inferior etiolated races much(prenominal) as the Jewish of Irish to gain laudation from the dominate flannel culture.\r\nHowever, black face singsy withal forced African the Statesns further into segregation from American rules of order. During the period of Modernity from 1870 to 1930, there was a strong fascination with the Wild West and Manifest Destiny. During this succession there was the formation of the boy Scouts, which was the true custodytal picture of what Americans thought it was standardized to be domestic American. Due to irrational fears and anxieties, American fashionable culture took encourage in â€Å" playing Indian” because it allowed them to express these worries in American mainstream media.\r\nFrom the end of World war I, spargon- sentence activity major cultural and accessible changes brought by surge media inno vations, the meaning of popular culture began to overlap with those of cumulus culture, media culture, and culture for mass consumption. Because of World War II, numerous wo manpower were arrange to work in order to lease the jobs of the work force at war allowing them to gain a sense of independence. However, other nonethelessts in history such(prenominal) as Vaudeville, and the handstation of the New Woman in addition allowed wo manpower to gain a sense of military unit during the nineteenth century with pioneers such as Sarah Bernhardt.\r\nAmerican popular culture was the sexual activity revolutions biggest supporter as s hygienic up as its biggest critic. through with(predicate)out American history, popular culture has been an entry way for marginal kindly groups into the policy-making, economic, and social mainstream of American society. With Irish and Jewish priapics finally macrocosm accepted by dominate white society through the performance of black face mi nstrelsy as well as women existence able to assure their own being through expression in Vaudeville.\r\nHowever, while these minorities are able to further their social power structure through performance, African Americans and inbred Americans were oft exploited as a way of reservation pro equalise. epoch American popular culture has its commanding social constructions, I believe the negative effect that American popular culture has had on the historic relationship amongst marginal social groups and American society has caused too much damage to repair. Through acts such as the minstrelsy manifests, the cow promissory note lay out as well as films and plays of the time, minorities are lay outed in a subordinate usance to the Anglo-Saxon male.\r\nThese acts inside popular culture spilled over onto American society and allowed for the injustice and racism of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The minstrel doom, or minstrelsy, was an American popular culture enter tainment consisting of comedy skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performed by white people in blackface. Blackface was when a etiolate American would paint their face with black theme and exaggerate their lips and being to impersonate an African American male. Minstrel shows caricatured black people as poor, lazy, dim-witted, buffoonish, raffish and violent.\r\nThe minstrel show began with brief parodies and comic entr’actes in the early 1830s and emerged as a full-fledged form of mass entertainment in the next decade. In 1848, blackface minstrel shows were the national imposture of the time, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience. Minstrel songs and sketches have some(prenominal) run-of-the-mill characters; the slave and the dandy in sensitive clothes quickly began the crowd favorites. These were further divide into sub-archetypes such as the mammy, her counter air division the old darky, the seditious mulatto wench, and the black soldier.\r\nMinstrel performers claimed that their songs and dances were authentically â€Å"black”, although the consummation of the black influence remains debatable. The photos of African Americans as these â€Å"token” characters, allowed for the ignorance of sporty America to be authorize through the representation of minorities through stereotypes. African Americans were seen as bumbling fools who couldn’t take care of themselves and require a albumin master to explain the humanes to their simple minds.\r\nAfrican Americans were seen as people who essential someone to represent them; they needed someone with power to gain control of an â€Å"untamed” culture. A legitimate version of a black identity can be created through things like the minstrel show and other forms of popular culture, and that rendering has led to bodily practices like racial segregation and social divergence and educational deprivation. Americans use to bel ieve that race could be distinguished biologically and that antithetical ethnicities had unalike desoxyribonucleic acid coding than others. American popular culture is how roughly(prenominal) people learn about other identities and allowed them to understand the practices of another culture.\r\nAs Professor Avila stated in lecture â€Å"the minstrel show is one of the sites in history where this could be give. The nineteenth century was a time where people saw racial rest and were terrified by it. The existence of slavery and its suspicious future promoted a mixed range of responses by Americans and they were acted in a variety of ways” (Avila manducate January 15th 2013). The minstrel shows are a correct example of how White Americans acted out their own prejudice to enact their own culture in 19th and twentieth century America.\r\nThe Minstrel performers were a good deal men of Jewish or Irish descent, which were two groups of people who were discriminated against correct though they were White. Often, Jewish and Irish men took comfort in dressing up in Blackface for the minstrel shows because it allowed them to relate to the audience as well as the character they are portraying. These performers used minstrelsy as a platform to gain social hierarchy in American popular culture by bringing comic relief to a on the job(p) class audience.\r\nAlso, they frequently were able to finally express themselves once they put the Blackface make-up on because it served as a mask which hid their actual identity from the audience. These minorities were able to use their performances to gain acceptance from the dominant White American society. However, this upward social mobility came at a wide price for African Americans during the 19th century. The depiction of African Americans as fools or grime savages in the minstrel show furthered the variety and stereotypes upheld by Anglo-Americans. Minstrels were not shifty in their theft of black cultural exp ressions and practices.\r\nThe performers represent these expressions quite brazenly, acknowledging and emphasizing the speeches and songs they created. At the corresponding time, black face minstrels were the jump self-conscious white entertainers in the world. While they told themselves they were only playing the role of an African American in American society, they often found their life struggles were very similar to those of the characters they portrayed. This joint inconsistency by dominant White America, allowed for African Americans and the White Americans portraying them in minstrel shows to link up a formerly segregated gap in American society.\r\nBlackface minstrelsy was the first distinctly American delegacy form, and deeply rooted in American popular culture. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was at the core of the rise of an American music industry, and for several decades it provided the lens through which white America saw black America. On the one hand, it had stron g racist aspects and furthered favouritism of minorities in America; on the other, it afforded white Americans a singular and wide awareness of what some whites of the time, considered significant aspects of black-American culture to be.\r\nAlthough the minstrel shows were extremely popular, being â€Å"consistently packed with families from all walks of life and every ethnic group”, they were in like manner extremely controversial. Racial integrationists decried them as falsely demonstrate happy slaves while at the same time making fun of them; segregationists thought such shows were â€Å" discourteous” of social norms, portrayed runaway slaves with sympathy and would overturn the southerners’ â€Å"peculiar institution”.\r\nWith Irish, German, Polish, Italian, Russian-Jews, and Native stock within the audience, the minstrel show provided a relational beat by which those in audiences could unite in whiteness. And although the minstrel show sometime s did highlight interethnic diversities, they all could piece of ground in this particular joke †the laziness and madness of black people. African Americans were not the only nonage group to suffer social, political and economic discrimination during the late 19th century and early twentieth century.\r\nNative Americans who are the rightful owners of our beautiful discharge have confront harsh and cruel discrimination from dominant White American society. Throughout early American history, there was a strong hale for Manifest Destiny, or the wide held belief that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent. This ideology was upheld by most Americans because they believed that God had told them it was their destiny to settle on this charge. Due to the fact that they believed it was their destiny, the settlers took little to no lenity on the people who already inhabited the land they were seizing.\r\nThe concept of Western expansion seemed to be on t he forefront of every Americans mind during the late 19th century, allowing for innovative fears and anxieties to form about Native Americans. With leisure time becoming a strong part of American culture, there became a strong buy food to produce shows to entertain the masses after a hard day’s work. Showmen such as William F. Cody began to produce shows like the buffalo Bill show, which have relations betwixt cowsons and Indians. For 23 years, the show featured a skit called â€Å"attack on setter’s cabin” as the grand finale show.\r\nThis skit would set forth by showing a frontier lieu which was set on fire by savages, individually time the encircling group of Indians came close to the cabin, cow Bill would ride out on his dollar bill to the rescue and save the day. The common theme of the Buffalo Bill show was to reinforce the undaunted fig of the Cowboy who expanded the land from sea to glistering sea, saving the lives of White Americans and killi ng the enemies who pick upped their destiny. While William F. Cody would sometimes depict a Native American in some of the skits, he was often the heroic cowboy every organic structure was waiting to see.\r\nHowever, working as a Native American in the production of the Buffalo Bill show had its upside. William F. Cody did not adhere to regime demands as often fought to resist them to gain rights for his employees. angiotensin-converting enzyme example of his resistance is allowing his Native American actors to limit their long hair instead of assimilating to dominate society like the government demanded. Also, the Native Americans in the Buffalo Bill show were offered a queer opportunity that many minorities didn’t have during the 19th century in America. Cody offered the Native Americans the chance to expire the country and make an income that was sizable.\r\nTaking part in these reenactments of American history alike allowed for Native Americans to hold onto a slive r of their culture in a society who is try to diminish their practices. However, the overall finale of the Buffalo Bill show was not to assure the public about the cultural and social practices of Native Americans, but instead a remedy for the fantasies and fears that fill up American society during the late 19th century As stated by professor Avila â€Å"the anatomy of the Indian has this degree of symbolic flexibility to be able to contain the projected fantasies and anxieties of Native Americans” (Avila, Lecture, January twenty-ninth 2013).\r\nThe onslaught of Modernity challenged the concept of identity for everyone in America. The anxieties of the upper class about a minority revolt were enhanced by the acceleration of innovative-fangledity (Lawrence, American Culture). Modernity brought a deep sense of transformation from an old world order to a new society. â€Å"However, this allowed for the objectification of people and products alike, with things becoming a bstract commodities, like people becoming cogs in a machine, rather than being an independent human” (Nasaw, Going Out).\r\n shortly during the late 19th century there was a strive for authenticity, or a culturally-constructed category created in opposition to a sensed state of inauthenticity; a way to imagine and idealize the real, the traditional, and the organic in opposition to the perceived inauthenticity of modern commercial life. Inauthenticity was get to plague the youth of America and there was a strong push toward needing to be authentic.\r\nOne of the urban responses about the corruption of youth was the invention of boy scouts, which wanted to introduce frontier experiences to youth, with an emphasis on scouting, camping, exercise, and a wholesome relationship with temper. The concept of the Boy Scouts takes the idea of â€Å"playing Indian” to its fullest extent. The actual material body of the Indian was important to the Boy Scouts understanding of nat ure and the things that inhabit it. The Boy Scouts idealized the epitome of a Native American because it represented the human aloof from modern life, who is retaining virtues from nature by living in it.\r\nWhite Americans use â€Å"playing Indian” as a way of projecting their fears and anxieties about the unexplored onto the lives of Native Americans. Although it is not a strong dismantle of the Buffalo Bill show, William F. Cody was known for his performances as he heroic cowboy, but he sometimes depict the â€Å"Indian” in some of his skits. The audience at the shows seemed to like when the White actor would dress up as Native Americans, because they felt like they could unify better with that actor and his struggles.\r\nThe idea of â€Å"playing Indian” in American popular culture can be seen both negatively and positively. Unfortunately, â€Å"playing Indian” led to the development of new stereotypes and anxieties, as well as reinforced old st ereotypes about Native Americans. This caused a lot of tension and fear betwixt the White settlers and the Native inhabitants of the land. On the other hand, â€Å"playing Indian” allowed for a previously intolerant society to gain a better understanding of the cultures and societies somewhat them.\r\nThrough experimenting with â€Å"playing Indian” American popular culture has both hampered the historical relationship amongst marginalized social group and American dominate society as well as strengthened the impound between two previously segregated groups. The American concepts of Manifest Destiny and Western expansion created many fears and anxieties for the White settlers of the land. After the closing of the frontier in 1890, Americans began to face new anxieties that European settlers would come from all parts of Europe and demolish the democracy that America had worked so hard to create.\r\nWe can accredit most of the need in America for White Americans to p ortray themselves as Indians to the concept of Modernization. With Modernization came the invention of the railroads and the travel which gave a stronger push toward urbanization. White Americans felt the need to seek simpler times like they had before industrialisation and modernization took their course on American popular culture. Throughout American popular culture, there has forever and a day been a need to enforce a social hierarchy to make sure that minority groups bust’t gain any power.\r\nThis has proven to be true throughout America history with different racial groups, but minorities do not stop at race. During the 19th and 20th century, women were seen an inferior to men in America simply because they are a different gender. The concept of gender identities is often visited in American popular culture. In lecture, we have discussed how gender roles play out in public spheres of the modern city such as dance halls where women were precondition freedom to dance and the creation of department stores which gave women the excerption to work and be part of something outside the home.\r\nHowever, former to the mid-19th century, women were meant to adhere to tradition gender roles placed on them by society. The rise of the theater and vaudeville house, between 1820s and the 1900s, allowed for popular theater to emerge in the confabulation of sexual identities. The female performers in Vaudeville became the agents and metaphors for antique social roles. This was the era associated with the â€Å"new charr”, who became perceived by the public eye as non-traditional. The new muliebrity was both a social reality, as depicted by Sarah Bernhardt and a cultural concept, as shown by the feminist revolution.\r\nIt was coined at the end of the century, and depict a fair sex changing her public way and adopting new roles within a previously submit society. At the turn of the 20th century, American had a new league of ambitious, educated w omen who often put off or refused marriage, and dedicated themselves to political causes and social reforms †these women were part of what was labeled as the new woman of the 20th century. By the time of World War I, women demanded political and economic equality with men.\r\nMost historians have seen the rise of the political women, but particularly in urban slices of society, an important venue of acceptance was seen. Sarah Bernhardt embodies this idea of the â€Å"new woman”, or a woman who doesn’t see her gender as a limitation to her life. Sarah Bernhardt formed her own theater company, and she was the first actor to electrical circuit on an international circuit. She often played the roles of women, many of which were familiar to American audiences. She also accredited for pioneering the form of the woman torn between power hungry aggressions and passive submissions.\r\nOnstage, she was usually very outstanding and could perform hysteria without shame, whi ch was usually considered not ladylike. She caused many scandals by playing the roles of men in her plays, like in 1899 where she played the role of Hamlet. She upstaged men performing alongside her, jumping across virile and feminine roles at the same time, blurring the grapevines between men and women, and blurring the account between a bad woman and a good woman. Whatever the case, her personality eer dominated the characters she played. â€Å"She had an immodest presence and was known for shameless and bold packaging stunts.\r\nShe could seize the possibilities for self-construction afforded by mass culture and spectacle” (Kasson, Amusing the Millions). She invented the farewell tour, and each tour was loaded with drama and tears. She did this to heighten a dramatic sense of finality, and was a master of advanced publicity and that of her own self-image. She was in control of her own self-image, not unlike women promoted by PT Barnum. Unlike jenny Lin, Bernhardt ca lled the shots for her performances, and that image was that of a high-strung and egotistic person.\r\nShe took monomania of her public image, and though she was adored, she was criticized by males for being too unladylike. This could have suggested gender confusion at the time. Nonetheless, she contributes to the large visibility of women, and showed how women could change the terms with public culture. This created new examples of women that were willing to stand for their rights by asserting their demands for political equality. In contrast to the Bernhardt image, there were images in the 20th century American popular culture, which reinforced women as ornaments which were to be produced and handled by men.\r\nThe creation of the let loose line gave birth to a new type of objectification. The frolic of the line resided with the ability for women who were the entire same image to show their ability to synchronize and choreograph their movements together. The line symbolized the application of the principles of scientific management to mass entertainment. These women who danced in the line all looked the same and held the same seventh cranial nerve feature throughout the show almost as if they were wound up robots with someone controlling their every move.\r\nThe idea is to synchronize limbs and bodies to a series and different steps, and in turn it reflects a faith into human engineering as entertainment. The chorus line was referred to a small army of femininity where women worked rigorously into being part of the crowd, and not an individual. They are parts of a whole, and are theatrically useless when they are quarantined from each other. They were displays of mechanical awareness, and that also broke the body to eroticize particular parts of the body, exposing these previously well incomprehensible body parts to the public gaze.\r\nHistorians argue that the chorus line is a perfect example of how men view women within a society; they are just piece s of a machine waiting to harmonize with a strong males command. These two different types of women that emerged in the 19th and 20th century in America show the strong influence that males had over women during this time period. The â€Å"new woman” was a rebellion against traditional gender roles, while the chorus line depicted a submissive woman who needs male guidance. Throughout 19th and 20th century American popular culture, there has been a lot of discrimination towards this idea of the â€Å"outsider”.\r\nIn the minstrel show the outside is shown as an African-American male and the â€Å"insider” is the White family who paid to see the show. The creation of The Buffalo Bill show painted Native Americans as the â€Å"outsiders”, even though they inhabited the land before Americans even got here. Finally, American popular culture allowed for women to be depicted as the â€Å"outsider” and males to be presented as the â€Å"insiders”. However, even though these tragedies plague American popular culture minorities still find ways of resistance.\r\nWhether it be through Irish and Jewish culturally subordinate groups portraying the stereotypes of another minority to try to fit into mainstream American, or women like Sarah Bernhardt who don’t set limitations to their ambitions ascribable to their gender, American counter culture has always found a way to strike back and its oppressor. I believe that American popular culture has allowed green Americans to get a better perspective of the hardships faced every day by someone who is considered a â€Å"second class citizen”.\r\nAmerican popular culture as both provided a gateway for minorities to fit into modern American society, as well as crumbled any hope for a sensitive bridging of gaps between social, political or racial groups within America. flora Cited Kasson, John. Amusing the Millions: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. cumulation and Wa ng; First Edition edition, 1978. Print. Levine, Lawrence, â€Å"American Culture and the owing(p) Depression,” The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American pagan History Oxford University Press, 1993. Print. Nasaw, David, and . Going Out: The Rise and make up of Public Amusements. Harvard University Press, 1999. Print.\r\n'