Going on the Offensive: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in American Stage Comedy from 1881 to 1932
Item
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Title
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Going on the Offensive: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in American Stage Comedy from 1881 to 1932
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:e3d200cfb252:11905
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identifier
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12528
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Creator
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DesRochers, Rick,
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Contributor
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James Wilson | Jean Graham-Jones
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater history | Film studies | Ethnic studies | Comedy | Progressive Era | Silent Film History | Vaudeville
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Abstract
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Going on the Offensive: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in American Stage Comedy from 1881 to 1932 defines the new humor and how it was practiced by comic vaudevillians with an emphasis on the historical and cultural significance of their acts. The performers discussed in this project include the comedy team of Joe Weber and Lew Fields; the family act of the Three Keatons; medicine show stump speeches of W.C. Fields and Will Rogers; the school acts of the Marx Brothers; and the burlesque-inspired comedy of Mae West. Performances will be examined in relationship to progressive era reformers and their attempts to control and regulate popular entertainments on the vaudeville stage, as well as the divide between high and lowbrow American entertainments from the 1880s through the early 1930s. The new humorists will be evaluated with regard to their engagement and challenges to Americanization driven by such reformers as Jane Addams, Elbridge Thomas Gerry, E.A. Ross, and John Dewey. This analysis of comic vaudevillians serves to illustrate that the new humor of vaudeville comedy was intentionally disruptive to Anglo-American values through satire, broad physicality, and the mockery of middle-class propriety. Audience and critic's responses to the new humor on the vaudeville stage provide an understanding of how significant comedy became as an art form that critiqued the divisions of class, ethnicity, and gender, during this period. This dissertation concentrates on the conflicts that progressives wanted to exploit in order to promote an Anglo-American agenda.;Going on the Offensive is a unique study in that it compares popular comic stage entertainment forms in relationship to suppression through sociocultural reform and censure. This is an area that needs further examination with consideration to the political and social pressures put on comic stage performers during the modernist era. By examining iconic and lesser-known comedic performing artists, Going on the Offensive seeks to reclaim an important part of American theatrical and cultural history that requires additional attention in United States performance studies and its influences on Americanness during the early twentieth century.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Theatre
