Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class - Hardcover

Savran, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0472116924 ISBN 13: 9780472116928

Verlag: The University of Michigan Press, 2009

Über diesen Titel

Críticas:

"David Savran's thought-provoking book will cause scholars to reconceptualize American culture during the Jazz Age... "Highbrow/Lowdown" demonstrates the centrality of jazz as arbiter of class and taste in the formation of early twentieth-centry American culture." --;i>American Studies"--Katie N. Johnson "American Studies " "Impressive in depth as well as breadth, "Highbrow/Lowbrow" rewrites 20th-centure theatre history."--Shane Vogel, Indiana University, "The Drama Review"--Shane Vogel "The Drama Review " "Like a canny fight promoter in the perennial American culture wars, David Savran puts the reader ringside for a blow-by-blow account of the Battle of the Brows--high, middle, and low. Setting Jazz Age entertainments at one another, with 'legitimate theater' duking it out with nightclub revues and movies pummeling vaudeville, "Highbrow/Lowdown "tracks the rise of heavy-weight Eugene O'Neill to the top of the card, but it also makes heroes of the referees--the drama critics and audiences who crowned the winners. This is performance history as an innovative 'political economy of culture, ' and it's a knock-out."--Joseph Roach, Sterling Professor of Theater, Yale University--Joseph Roach (02/03/2009)

Reseña del editor:

"Highbrow/Lowdown" explores the twentieth century's first culture war, and the cultural forces that permanently transformed American theater into the art form we know today. The arrival of jazz in the early part of the twentieth century sparked a cultural revolution that was impossible to contain. The music affected every stratum of U.S. society and culture, confusing and challenging long-entrenched hierarchies based on class, race, and ethnicity. Jazz was considered the first distinctively American art form, and its dissemination across the globe served to launch the U.S. as a cultural force to be reckoned with.The popular theatrical entertainments of the period, especially vaudeville and musical comedy, quickly embraced this new musical craze, but it also found its way into legitimate theater. The centrality of jazz caused tremendous anxiety among playwrights and critics at a time when American theater was redefining itself, and it proved decisive in separating the newly emerging literary theater from its illegitimate cousins. Countless books have argued that jazz forever changed the course of American music. "Highbrow/Lowdown" demonstrates that jazz sparked an even broader cultural revolution.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: The University of Michigan Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0472116924
• ISBN 13: 9780472116928
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336