HIUS 131 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Amusement Arcade, Marionette, Voyeurism
HIUS 131 – Textbook Notes – Cheap Amusements, CH 6: Cheap Theater and the Nickel
Dumps
• Picture shows, vaudeville drew on fads, sexuality, pleasure that WC youth loved while also
creating new forms of culture
• Powerful because most people could access, unlike other forms of amusement
Working-Class Theater Before the Movies
• Theater-going popular among WC women before movies
• Sense of community in the theater as audience participation is encouraged
• Cultural theater
o Yiddish plays, Italian marionette
• Music halls
o Stemming from male subculture where saloons would have music rooms in the back starting
in 1860s
The Emergence of a Female Audience
• Moving from concert-saloon -> variety/vaudeville shows in order to be more moral and attract
women
o Matinees, women get in free, household items as prizes to be won
o Saloon in theater, but only drinking during intermission
o Only doing clean acts
o Encouraging audience to be respectful
o Getting rid of immigrant experience dramas in favor of comedies
o By 1900 even Bowery was like this
o Gaining more and more popularity so ethnic shows like Yiddish plays and Italian marionette
suffered
o Most women couldn't afford to go often because it was expensive, had to rely on treating
o Native-born people more likely to attend than immigrants
o Mixture of Victorian sentiments with raunchy jokes, which kept some women away
The Advent of the Movies
• Movies shown before or after vaudeville performances, and only vaudeville theaters had
projection equipment
• Penny arcades having kinetoscopes -> nickelodeons (projecting movies in part of the place)
• 3/4 of movie-goers in 1910 WC
• 60% of workingmen went to the movies, regardless of income or ethnicity
• Super cheap
• Only an hour long, so it didn't add too much to your day if you worked long hours
• Silent, so immigrants could see them without worrying about language barrier
Women's Culture and the Movies
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