Overview

Today, vaudeville is imagined as a parade of slapstick comedians, blackface shouters, coyly revealed knees, and second-rate acrobats. But vaudeville was also America's most popular commercial amusement from the mid-1890s to the First World War; at its peak, 5 million Americans attended vaudeville shows every week. Telling the story of this pioneering art form's rise and decline, David Monod looks through the apparent carnival of vaudeville performance and asks: what made the theater so popular and transformative? Although he acknowledges its quirkiness, Monod makes the case that vaudeville became so popular because it offered audiences a guide to a modern urban lifestyle. Vaudeville acts celebrated sharp city styles and denigrated old-fashioned habits, showcased new music and dance moves, and promulgated a deeply influential vernacular modernism. The variety show's off-the-rack trendiness perfectly suited an era when goods and services were becoming more affordable and the mass market promised to democratize style, offering a clear vision of how the quintessential twentieth-century citizen should look, talk, move, feel, and act.

Full Product Details

9781469660554

Table of Contents

Reviews

""A necessary read for scholars and students of popular music, theatre, and even film studies [that] outlines the historically specific, and in some cases quite unorganized, fashion in which mass entertainment first developed in America. . . . Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment demonstrates the crucial historic influence of the whole complex medium, not just of a few performers and businessmen, on the industry and conceptions of popular entertainments we enjoy today.""--CAML Review ""The history of vaudeville theater is complex and contradictory. . . . In Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 1890-1925, David Monod explores this intricate history with strong research and insightful analysis.""--New York History

Author Information

David Monod is professor of American social and cultural history at Wilfrid Laurier University.

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