I'm seeing a pattern

As I was going through this week’s reading, I was struck by the similarities between dime novels and our study of burlesque and black minstrelsy. Both burlesque and dime novels were/are considered lower forms of entertainment. Despite being enormously popular and prevalent, the texts were not saved and analyzed to the same degree as other forms of art. The mass production of these texts undermined their importance.

Another similarity was how all of these texts showed the differences in class and the class divides that solidifying during this time. While burlesque, black minstrelsy, and dime novels were widely popular and consumed by a diverse group of people, they definitely had a target audience. Burlesque was a very working class, bottom of the middle class form of entertainment. One group black minstrelsy appealed to was working class people that were uncertain of their position in the social rankings. The dime novels had enough subject matter that they appealed to men, women, and children but one group in particular was factory workers, mostly immigrants.

I was struck when Michael Denning wrote, “To view these books that collectors prize through the culture of craftworkers, factory operatives, and laborers rescues them from a kind of patronizing and patriotic nostalgia, and situates them not in a pastoral golden age but in the class conflicts of the gilded age” (p.88). These texts help us define the class conflicts that were happening during this time. By looking at who is watching and what they are watching, we are able to learn a lot about the conflict. I think what all of these texts demonstrate is that we as consumers are at once profoundly influenced by what is found in popular culture and greatly shape popular culture. It is this strange symbiotic relationship that is found throughout all popular culture.