The rise of true crime: twentieth century murder and American popular culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (06) ◽  
pp. 46-3040-46-3040
Author(s):  
Line Seistrup Clausen ◽  
Stine Ausum Sikjær

This MA thesis examines the connection between the rise of the podcasting medium and the rise of the true crime genre. The ways in which true crime and podcasting have influenced each other reflect the dynamic relationship between media, genre, technology, and audience behavior, which is ultimately useful in better understanding contemporary American popular culture. The true crime genre helped popularize the podcasting medium, and today, true crime podcasts hold a significant place within popular culture. Together, they went from niche to mainstream, and we might refer to this process as genre-medium coevolution. Throughout this thesis, it will become evident that neither genre nor medium is static, and whereas the two might have benefitted from each other at an early stage of development, they might not continue to.


Author(s):  
Clovis E. Semmes

This chapter examines the life of pioneer dance instructor Hazel Thompson Davis in early twentieth-century Black Chicago. Contextually, diverse venues for live entertainment in the broad spectrum of American society created significant demand for a trained theatrical workforce, of which varieties of dancers were major components. By 1916, Chicago’s Hazel Thompson Davis began to meet this demand through the school she created and the performing artists she trained. A pioneer and innovator in her field, the Chicago tradition in dance instruction and performance initiated by Davis would make Chicago a powerful force in the instruction of an African American theatrical workforce nationally and internationally, in the broader cultural renaissance taking place in Black communities across the country, and in the evolution of American popular culture.


Author(s):  
Laurence Maslon

The ways in which music from Broadway reached listeners were different than most of popular music: show tunes had content, but full scores from Broadway had context as well as content. The act and the art of recovering the musical experience of a Broadway show for home listeners were both complex and challenging; how producers and composers met the technical and aesthetic challenges of capturing a narrative stage experience is the journey of this book. The songs from Broadway were and are an intensely personal and popular aspect of American popular culture; likewise, the cast albums themselves—and the songs from them—were among the most commercially successful recordings of the twentieth century.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Acharya ◽  
Eric Kaufman

The musical Kismet opened on Broadway in 1953. This commercially successful play, translated into a film version released two years later, included some of Jack Cole’s most widely viewed and popular choreography, which resulted in the exposure of Bharata Natyam to a mass audience through its incorporation into jazz dance. Cole’s ‘Hindu swing’ continues to confound years later, even as Bharata Natyam has ever-increasing prominence in global theatre. This article considers how the form, in migration from Madras to Manhattan, was (and is) materialized and reinscribed, discussing how exoticism and Orientalism are implicated in the mechanisms of this transmogrification. Exploring Cole’s involvement with ‘Hindu’ dance calls into question a range of issues related to the parallel histories of musical theatre dance in the mid-twentieth century, and classical Indian dance in the period of transition from colonial possession to postcolonial independence. We investigate the ways in which Indian culture in diaspora has been translated in our practice, and the ways in which the reception of dance reflects an ‘invisibilization’ of ‘foreign’ cultural practice in American popular culture. Collaborating on presenting our juxtaposed experience brings embodied reflection into dialogue with dance scholarship, while also exploring the intersection of these distinct and seemingly discrete dance practices.


Ballet Class ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 277-304
Author(s):  
Melissa R. Klapper

Ballet’s popularity as entertainment has grown steadily in the United States since the early nineteenth century, and it has appeared in a wide variety of cultural spaces. Three arenas of American popular culture where ballet has consistently been important are movies, television, and the ubiquitous holiday performances of The Nutcracker. Dance was the subject of some of the earliest movies ever filmed and has remained a frequent theme. Millions of Americans have seen ballet on television, and as many have also seen performances of The Nutcracker. Over the course of the twentieth century many Americans have been inspired to take ballet classes or send their children to ballet classes as a result of their engagement with ballet in popular culture.


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