Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 1890-1925

by David Monod

Book 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1469660555
• ISBN13: 9781469660554
• Release Date: October 2020
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"