The Playful Crowd : Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century

From "Sodoms by the sea" at Coney Island and Blackpool to carefully orchestrated corporate entertainment, __The Playful Crowd__ compares the pursuit of pleasure on both sides of the Atlantic. The authors capture the gritty vulgarity and charms of Coney Island and Blackpool and examine how Disneyland and Beamish, a heritage park that celebrates Britain's industrial and social history, evoke certain types of nostalgia. During the first part of the twentieth century thousands of working-class New Yorkers flocked to Coney Island in search of a release from their workaday lives and the values of bourgeois society. On the other side of the Atlantic, British workers headed off to the beach resort of Blackpool for entertainment and relaxation. However, by the middle of the century, a new type of park began to emerge, providing well-ordered, squeaky-clean, and carefully orchestrated corporate entertainment. Contrasting the experiences of Coney Island and Blackpool with those of Disneyland and Beamish, Gary S. Cross and John K. Walton explore playful crowds and the pursuit of pleasure in the twentieth century to offer a transatlantic perspective on changing ideas about leisure, class, and mass culture. Blackpool and Coney Island were the definitive playgrounds of the industrial working class. Teeming crowds partook of a gritty vulgarity that offered a variety of pleasures and thrills from roller coaster rides and freak shows to dance halls and dioramas of exotic locales. Responding to the new money and mobility of the working class, the purveyors of Coney Island and Blackpool offered the playful crowd an "industrial saturnalia."Cross and Walton capture the sights and sounds of Blackpool and Coney Island and consider how these "Sodoms by the sea" flouted the social and cultural status quo. The authors also examine the resorts' very different fates as Coney Island has now become a mere shadow of its former self while Blackpool continues to lure visitors and offer new attractions. The authors also explore the experiences offered at Disneyland and Beamish, a heritage park that celebrates Britain's industrial and social history. While both parks borrowed elements from their predecessors, they also adapted to the longings and concerns of postwar consumer culture. Appealing to middle-class families, Disney provided crowds a chance to indulge in child-like innocence and a nostalgia for a simpler time. At Beamish, crowds gathered to find an escape from the fragmented and hedonistic life of modern society in a reconstructed realm of the past where local traditions and nature prevail. During the first part of the twentieth century thousands of working class New Yorkers flocked to Coney Island in search of a release from their workaday lives and the values of bourgeois society. On the other side of the Atlantic, British workers headed off to the beach resort of Blackpool for entertainment and relaxation. However, by the middle of the century, a new type of park began to emerge, providing well-ordered, squeaky-clean, and carefully orchestrated corporate entertainment. Contrasting the experiences of Coney Island and Blackpool with those of Disneyland and Beamish, the authors explore playful crowds and the pursuit of pleasure in the twentieth century to offer a transatlantic perspective on changing ideas about leisure, class, and mass culture. Blackpool and Coney Island were the definitive playgrounds of the industrial working class. Teeming crowds partook of a gritty vulgarity that offered a variety of pleasures and thrills from roller coaster rides and freak shows to dance halls and dioramas of exotic locales. Responding to the new money and mobility of the working class, the purveyors of Coney Island and Blackpool offered the playful crowd an "industrial saturnalia." Here the authors capture the sights and sounds of Blackpool and Coney Island and consider how these "Sodoms by the sea" flouted the social and cultural status quo. The authors also examine the resorts' very different fates as Coney Island has now become a mere shadow of its former self while Blackpool continues to lure visitors and offer new attractions. The authors also explore the experiences offered at Disneyland and Beamish, a heritage park that celebrates Britain's industrial and social history. While both parks borrowed elements from their predecessors, they also adapted to the longings and concerns of postwar consumer culture. Appealing to middle-class families, Disney provided crowds a chance to indulge in child-like innocence and a nostalgia for a simpler time. At Beamish, crowds gathered to find an escape from the fragmented and hedonistic life of modern society in a reconstructed realm of the past where local traditions and nature prevail. -- From publisher's website. Thomas A. Chambers, Niagara University:The Playful Crowd does what few studies of leisure have attempted--compare tourism across time and space. Auvo Kostiainen:A valuable book for students studying pleasure, leisure, and tourism. Scott C. Martin:The Playful Crowd succeeds admirably, both as comparative history and as a study of popular leisure. Susan Currell:Engaging ... fascinating ... excellent ... a model of collaborative scholarship, this book contributes much to the history of twentieth-century amusements. Brad Beaven, University of Portsmouth: ... A fascinating account of the changing nature of the pleasure-seeking crowd in the US and Britain during the twentieth century. This book, which is vividly and engagingly written, makes a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of a cultural phenomenon. Social history at its best ... Essential. Ellen Furlough, University of Kentucky, coeditor of Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern Europe and North America:Cross and Walton's well-researched and elegantly written study tracks the historical trajectories of popular resorts, theme parks, and open air museums in the U.S. and Britain ... The result is a fascinating and nuanced book that attends to the diverse regional, national, and entrepreneurial factors that shaped these designed and mostly commercial places. It also takes seriously the generative capacities and leisure practices of the 'playful crowds' themselves. A lively, intelligent, and pleasurable read! Peter Bailey, University of Manitoba, author of Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian Gary S. Cross is professor of history at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of several titles, including An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (Columbia, 2000). John K. Walton is professor of social history at the University of Central Lancashire. His most recent book is The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century. HIS036060,History/United States/20th Century,HIS037030,History/Modern/General None None Making the Popular Resort: Coney Island and Blackpool About 1900 Industrial Saturnalia and the Playful Crowd The Crowd and its Critics Decline and Reinvention: Coney Island and Blackpool The Disney Challenge "Enrichment through Enjoyment": The Beamish Museum in a Theme Park Age The Crowd Transformed? None None