Tag Archives: Constance Rourke

vaudeville: the eiron and alazon act

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Dave

Vaudeville. Vaudeville, from the height of its appeal to its demise (1870-1930) remained a mass entertainment firmly planted in the lowbrow. Beneath vaudeville was burlesque which occupied a narrow band that teetered towards pornography and back to decadence. But lowbrow … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Marketing/Advertising/Media, Miscellaneous, Music/Composition/Performance | Tagged Adele Astaire, Aleister Crowley, bill bojangles robinson, Constance Rourke, Edward Bernays, eva tanguay, Fred Astaire, george ade, george fuller golden, gilbert seldes, Herman Melville, kevin courrier, nathanael west, Randy Newman, shirley temple, travis stewart, Walt Whitman | Leave a comment

vaudeville: american culture is performance

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Dave

Vaudeville has been dead for over ninety years.The wandering minstrel had been replaced by the electronic age. The acrobats, the animal acts, the dancers, the singers, and the old-time comedians have all taken their bows and turned stage left into … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Marketing/Advertising/Media, Miscellaneous, Music/Composition/Performance | Tagged Al Jolson, alice lloyd, bert gordon, Constance Rourke, fred allen, gilbert sarony, gilbert seldes, H.L. Mencken, Jack Kerouac, june havoc, nancy a. walker, nathanael west, Norman Rockwell, Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Halperin, Samuel Beckett, Van Wyck Brooks, vaudeville | Leave a comment

DIDDLERS: SECRETS HIDDEN IN THE SHUFFLE

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Dave

It’s what Griel Marcus termed ”the old, weird America.”; a peculiar terrain, a strange yet familiar backdrop to a common cultural history of America : the “playground of God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence men, illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Marketing/Advertising/Media, Miscellaneous, Music/Composition/Performance | Tagged Boardwalk Empire HBO, Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Constance Rourke, David B. Kesterton, De Tocqueville, Edgar Allan Poe, Griel Marcus, Herman Melville, Jesse Bier, John Goodman, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Larry Charles, Luc Sante, Matt Goldberg, Michael Moore, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Fulford, Ruth Schwartz, Sinclair Lewis, Stephanie Zacharek, Stephen Matterson, Van Dyke Parks, Virginia Heffernan, William E. Lenz | Leave a comment

LAUGHING WITH THE SUB-LITERARIES IN DIXIE

Posted on November 28, 2009 by Dave

Whether or not humor has been considered too elusive or trivial to warrant serious study on its own terms ,like the popular culture of which it is both part and a partaker, is unclear. Some scholars such as Jesse Bier, … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Miscellaneous, Modern Arts/Craft | Tagged Alex Gross, Artemus Warde, Beverly Hillbillies, Bret Harte, Constance Rourke, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, George Washington Harris, Grouch Marx, Guy Owens, James Thurber, Jesse Bier, Joan Miro, Johnson J. Hooper, Mac Hyman, Mark Twain, Marx Brothers, Max Ernst, Nathaniel West, New Yorker, Otto Dix, Paul Newman, Ring Lardner, Thomas bangs Thorpe, Walker Percy, Walter Blair, William Faulkner, William Tappan Thompson | 4 Comments

CONFIDENCE MEN:Masquerade, Myth and Art

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Dave

For the confidence man to find a comfortable home in the heart of American culture, he needed a mask. And humor has often become an intricate part of the disguise. From the Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor in blackface which … Continue reading →