Pop Culture Text - St. Dominic High School

viii PrefaceIt has both provided important cultural ties in times of crisis and triggeredconflict. 3The processes by which assorted amusements have become mainstreamentertainment have resembled the dynamics between a circus’s big tent andthe outlying sideshows. The owners of the big tent typically move cautiously,courting relatively well-to-do and respectable middle-class audiences. Inorder not to offend people with money and status or create problems withlocal authorities, the big tent’s offerings must be decent, reputable, and notoverly controversial. Yet acts that are too bland or uninteresting may failto attract customers. In that regard, the sideshow exhibits have played crucialroles. Sideshows aim to shock. They appeal to society’s allegedly baserinstincts. For a small fee, customers can peek briefly into forbidden or unsettlingworlds—the worlds of freaks, nudity, the risqué, the exotic, and theerotic. In their quest for new, exciting fare, operators of the big tent havehistorically reached, however tentatively, into the sideshows for material.Despite ongoing resistance from authorities and moral guardians, the sideshowshave eventually influenced what happens in the big tent. But it isonly as tamer, cleaner versions that sideshow acts have eased into the spotlight.The acts must qualify as “respectable” fare, fit for general audiences.As a result, it is only in sanitized form that many once-boisterous, daring,lower-class entertainments have eased into more prosperous, bourgeoisvenues. But, even as the big tent incorporates and tames the sideshows’more risqué and edgier elements, it is invigorated and energized by them. 4The history of popular culture has consisted of ongoing exchanges andsometimes brutal struggles between society’s outsiders and insiders.Sometimes outsider status has been primarily a state of mind, a result ofperceived snubs and slights. In most instances, however, American entertainershave truly come from society’s margins—from the difficult worldsof new immigrants, racial minorities, the working class, and women whochafed under the restrictions of a patriarchal environment. Lacking powerand influence, and often struggling against discrimination, prejudice, andpoverty, they have looked to entertainment as a “way out.” The amusementbusiness, although harsh and demanding, has been alluring as a placein which to demonstrate talent, achieve individual attention, and perhaps—as a few have done—become rich and famous. Too often, talented and innovativepeople who helped clear the way for their more celebratedsuccessors have labored in obscurity. In a number of instances, the environmentsin which they have worked have been hostile. Still, in significantways, popular culture has provided a ladder of opportunity for some giftedindividuals who have lacked financial resources, education, social connections,and status. As products of society’s peripheries, and while laboringagainst considerable odds, they have helped forge and disseminate a varietyof amusements that in notable instances influenced society.