The making of American audiences : from stage to television, 1750-1990 / Richard Butsch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Butsch, Richard, 1943- author.

Series:

Cambridge Studies in the history of mass communication.

Cambridge Studies in the history of mass communication

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Performing arts--Audiences--United States.

Performing arts.

Radio audiences--United States.

Radio audiences.

Television viewers--United States.

Television viewers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 438 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In The Making of American Audiences, Richard Butsch provides a comprehensive survey of American entertainment audiences from the colonial period to the modern day. Providing coverage of theatre, opera, vaudeville, minstrelsy, movies, radio and television, he examines the evolution of audience practices as each genre supplanted another as the primary popular entertainment. Based on original historical research, this volume exposes how audiences made themselves through their practices - how they asserted control over their own entertainments and their own behaviour. Importantly, Butsch articulates two long-term processes: pacification and privatization. Whereas during the nineteenth century, overactive audiences represented a threat to civic order through their unruly behaviour, in the twentieth century, audiences have become more passive, dependent upon and controlled by media messages. This timely study serves as an important contribution to communication research, as well as American cultural history and cultural studies.

Contents:

Colonial theater, privileged audiences

Drama in early republic audiences

The B'Hoys in Jacksonian theaters

Knowledge and the decline of audience sovereignty

Matinee ladies : re-gendering theater audiences

Blackface, whiteface

Variety, liquor, and lust

Vaudeville, incorporated

"Legitimate" and "illegitimate" theater around the turn of the century

The celluloid stage : nickelodeon audiences

Storefronts to theaters : seeking the middle class

Voices from the ether : early radio listening

Radio cabinets and network chains

Rural radio : "we are seldom lonely anymore"

Fears and dreams : public discourses about radio

The electronic cyclops : fifties television

A TV in every home : television "effects"

Home video : viewer autonomy?

From effects to resistance and beyond.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-511-20097-8

1-283-43725-2

9786613437259

0-511-39518-3

0-511-61971-5

0-511-39515-9

0-511-39516-7

0-511-39519-1

0-511-39517-5

OCLC:

711906301

Publisher Number:

2027/heb08300 hdl