Spectacular Realities
Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siecle Paris
Vanessa R. Schwartz(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Published on 25. January 1998
Book
Hardback
243 pages
978-0-520-20959-6 (ISBN)
Description
During the second half of the nineteenth century, Paris emerged as the entertainment capital of the world. The sparkling redesigned city fostered a culture of energetic crowd-pleasing and multi-sensory amusements that would apprehend and represent real life as spectacle.
Vanessa R. Schwartz examines the explosive popularity of such phenomena as the boulevards, the mass press, public displays of corpses at the morgue, wax museums, panoramas, and early film. Drawing on a wide range of written and visual materials, including private and business archives, and working at the intersections of art history, literature, and cinema studies, Schwartz argues that "spectacular realities" are part of the foundation of modern mass society. She refutes the notion that modern life produced an unending parade of distractions leading to alienation, and instead suggests that crowds gathered not as dislocated spectators but as members of a new kind of crowd, one united in pleasure rather than protest.
Vanessa R. Schwartz examines the explosive popularity of such phenomena as the boulevards, the mass press, public displays of corpses at the morgue, wax museums, panoramas, and early film. Drawing on a wide range of written and visual materials, including private and business archives, and working at the intersections of art history, literature, and cinema studies, Schwartz argues that "spectacular realities" are part of the foundation of modern mass society. She refutes the notion that modern life produced an unending parade of distractions leading to alienation, and instead suggests that crowds gathered not as dislocated spectators but as members of a new kind of crowd, one united in pleasure rather than protest.
More details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
50 b-w photographs, 1 map
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 0 mm
Weight
590 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-20959-6 (9780520209596)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Vanessa R. Schwartz is Associate Professor of History at the University of Southern California and coeditor of Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (California, 1995).
Content
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
I
Setting the Stage: The Boulevard, the Press and the
Framing of Everyday Life
2
Public Visits to the Morgue: Flanerie in the Service
of the State
3
The Musee Grevin: Museum and Newspaper in One
4
Representing Reality and the O-rama Craze
5
From Journal plastique to ]ournallumineux:
Early Cinema and Spectacular Reality
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
I
Setting the Stage: The Boulevard, the Press and the
Framing of Everyday Life
2
Public Visits to the Morgue: Flanerie in the Service
of the State
3
The Musee Grevin: Museum and Newspaper in One
4
Representing Reality and the O-rama Craze
5
From Journal plastique to ]ournallumineux:
Early Cinema and Spectacular Reality
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX