The Populist Palatial

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-218
Author(s):  
Rohan McWilliam
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Music Hall

This chapter explores the West End music hall, which drew on a heterogeneous audience, drawing all classes in for a smart night out. The argument is that we can observe a cultural style that is called here the ‘populist palatial’, which the West End helped propagate. This meant flattering audiences through spectacular buildings and high profile performers. The chapter looks in particular at the London Pavilion music hall on Piccadilly Circus and at two music hall stars: Jenny Hill and the Great MacDermott. Music hall gave women a voice allowing them to be comedians and the source of knowing humour. MacDermott was associated with music hall jingoism and patriotism. West End music hall expressed something of the liberating set of emotions that urban mass culture released.

scholarly journals Jazz and Music-Hall Transgressions in Theatre Workshop's Production of A Taste of Honey

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-336
Author(s):  
Alec Patton
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Music Hall ◽  
The Right ◽  
Original Production ◽  
The University

Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey in the Theatre Workshop production of 1959 opened to the sound of a fast twelve-bar blues played on trumpet, saxophone, and guitar by musicians sitting in a box to the right of the stage. Though rarely mentioned by historians, the ‘Apex Jazz Trio’, as they were called, were a lively and unpredictable element in the production. Between the actors' open acknowledgement of the band, and Avis Bunnage's direct comments to the audience, the play shattered the ’realistic‘ conventions that still held sway in the West End, at the same time transgressing the distinction between ‘serious’ theatre and music hall (where the boundary of the proscenium was never respected obsequiously). Alec Patton, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, draws on original interviews with actors from the cast, a member of the first-night audience, and the leader of the band that accompanied the show to offer a re-assessment of the role of music and music hall in the original production of A Taste of Honey.

The Language of Adam, Epistemic Crisis, and the “Radical Truths” of John Dee

2021 ◽  
pp. 161-173
Author(s):  
Anton V. Karabykov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Cultural Status ◽  
Linguistic Material

The life and work of John Dee (1527–1608/9), an English mathematician, eru­dite and occultist, remains an enigma that gives rise to intensive controversies, puzzles scholars, and nourishes imagination of mass culture makers. The aim of the article is to consider a magical practice of the late Dee and a unique narrative recorded in his diaries, in a context of the intellectual situation of that epoch. The analysis is concentrated on a role of those practice and narrative in dialectics of the search for the perfect language which took place in the West in 15th–17th cc. A technical facet of crystallomancy and its standing in the Renaissance culture as well as conditions and motives urging Dee to invest his years in practicing the magic of that kind. A special attention is paid to the course and results of re­vealing of the primordial tongue by the ‘angels’ and to the Adamic myth that accompanied the linguistic material and informed of substance, functions, and historical fate of Ursprache. It is argued that despite its reprehensibility crystal­lomancy took a relatively high cultural status and a wide spreading. Dee became its convinced adept due to a deep inner crisis caused by eschatological anxiety, collapse of traditional epistemology, and discontent with his previous intellectual initiatives. As spirits claimed, the language that they were imparting to him con­nected the protoplasts with God and angels in Eden and served Adam as a per­fect instrument of knowledge and magic. Explaining his lasting failure of com­prehending of the revealed language the spirits persuaded Dee that it was not time yet for activation of its potencies but that it was very near though known only to God. That time had never come in the magician’s life. Nonetheless, glad­ness of (seeming) communication with the ‘angels’ compensated for bitterness of futile expectations.

scholarly journals Nigeria's Quest to Recover Looted Assets: The Abacha Affair

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
David U. Enweremadu
Keyword(s):  
Money Laundering ◽  
Foreign Banks ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Public Funds ◽  
Transparency International ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
Democratic Rule ◽  
Domestic Level

After a successful transition to democratic rule in 1999, Nigeria launched a high-profile campaign aimed at securing the repatriation of looted public funds being held in foreign banks. This campaign was championed by President Olusegun Obasanjo, a long-standing critic of corrupt military regimes and co-founder of the global anti-corruption NGO Transparency International, throughout his eight-year tenure. By the time Obasanjo left office in May 2007, he had secured the recovery of approximately 2 billion USD in assets and triggered some vital international initiatives against money laundering. However, his efforts were hampered by a combination of local and external obstacles. Externally, the campaign was marked by the absence of sufficient international political will. While at the domestic level, it was undermined by a lack of transparency, the excessive fixation with the Abacha loot, inadequate legal and accounting skills, the uncooperative attitude of accused persons and limited domestic political will. This paper illustrates how these issues have combined to frustrate moves to recover Nigeria's stolen billions sitting in the West.

scholarly journals The phenomenon of Korean wave in Metamodern European cultural environment

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
Larysa Osadcha
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
The West ◽  
Korean Wave ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Cultural Science ◽  
Favorable Conditions ◽  
Artistic Heritage ◽  
Export Product

Purpose of the article is to analyze reasons of rapid growth of the Korean cultural product popularity in European cultural environment, to identify coincidence of the worldview, aesthetic, gaming demands of the Western consumer audience and art patterns of the Korean mass-culture. The phenomenon of the rapid popularity growth of Korean cultural products is called the “Korean wave. According to statistics, K-pop forms 2% of GDP (for comparison, Korean aviation – 0,7 %). On March 2020 the artistic heritage of the nowadays most popular Korean pop-band BTS was recognized “the strategic export product” of South Korea. That’s why it is actually to study out reasons for the great popularity of the “Korean wave” among the Western European cultural environment. Methodology. Theoretical basis of the exploration includes authors as of the applying field of cultural science, so of the fundamental one. For example, N. Tytkova (2020) analyzes style peculiarities of the Korean wave, Y. Pak (2015) outlines the genealogy of the phenomenon according to the Korean ethnic mentality specificity. Appealing to the theoretical works of R. Popty (1996) and F. Jameson (2008), T. Vermeulen and R. van der Akker (2010) has facilitated deeper understanding as of the Metamodern features of the actual European culture so the specificity of nowadays Korean pop-culture. Scientific novelty. Popularity of the Southern Korean pop-culture in Europe and Northern America is caused not only by the marketing peculiarities of the K-pop industry but also by its reasoning with key values and demands of the metamodern Western culture, such as “new sincerity”, “sober fanaticism”, “pragmatic romanticism”, “causal esotericism”. Conclusions. The powerful request for the youth artifacts and practices is been formed in the West. But artistic and academic discourse is still been under the influence of distrustfully critical postmodern narrative. Thus, the rupture between the West’s philosophical self-reflective vocabulary and applied requests for the new sincerity, and new romanticism has created favorable conditions for the youth-oriented mass-culture import.

Bulgarian Culture after 1989

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-302
Author(s):  
Kiril Vassilev
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The West ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
The Social ◽  
Arts And Culture ◽  
Modernization Process ◽  
Value Crisis

This article deals with the changes in Bulgarian culture after the fall of the Communist regime in Bulgaria in 1989. The first sections sketch the state of the Bulgarian culture and society during the later years of the communism. They describe the change in official ideology, i.e. the return to nationalism. The controversial role of the Communist regime in the modernization process of society is analyzed, with its simultaneous modernization and counter-modernization heritage. Then we shift to the changes in society and culture that have taken place since the fall of the regime. Attention is focused on the new mass culture, the embodiment of the value crisis in which the post-Communist Bulgarian society is located. The radical transformations in the field of the so-called ‘high’ culture are examined, especially the financial difficulties and the overall change in the social status of arts and culture. The basic trauma of the Bulgarian culture embodied in the constantly returning feeling of being a cultural by-product of the West is brought out. The article concludes that Bulgarian post-Communist culture has failed to create a more complex and flexible image of the “Bulgarian” that can use the energies of globalization without feeling threatened by disintegration.

‘Gratuitous Assistance’? The West End Theatre Industry, Late Victorian Charity, and Patterns of Theatrical Fundraising

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Hindson
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Economic Potential ◽  
The West ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
And Performance ◽  
End Stage ◽  
University Of Bristol ◽  
The University

London's theatre industry and charity culture have been closely connected since the mid-nineteenth century. In this article Catherine Hindson explores the nature of this relationship in the later years of the century. Focusing on a charity bazaar held at the Royal Albert Hall in June 1899 to raise funds for the Charing Cross Hospital, she argues that extra-theatrical occasions staged for charity organizations were firmly located within the stage culture of the day. Rather than peripheral occasions, high-profile, public charity events functioned as significant forces in the reputation and success of the West End theatre industry and its personnel. They held cultural, social, and economic potential for theatrical performers and represent a key factor in the improvement in the moral and social status of the stage in this period. Catherine Hindson is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Bristol. She has published widely on popular performance between 1820 and 1930 and is currently completing a monograph on the actress, the West End stage, and charity between 1880 and 1930.

scholarly journals Mediated Spies

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (s1) ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Paul Bjerke
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Government

AbstractThis article explores how 13 mainstream newspapers in five countries (Norway, Sweden, BRD, DDR and UK) covered the first week of three high-profile spy affairs in the late Cold War: Arne Treholt (Norway), Geoffrey Prime (UK) and Günter Guillaume (BRD).The Eastern European newspapers followed in their governments’ footsteps and prolonged the politics of silence. In the West, newspapers framed the espionage using an issue-specific cultural frame, the traitor. Stories are spiced up by irrelevant and false facts, inspired by the spy stories in the fiction media. The traitor frame is constructed in two variations: the single spy betraying his country and the government forsaking its people by being “soft on the Soviets” or “careless about security”. The study indicates no significant differences in coverage between the four Western countries or between the three espionage affairs.

Gaiety Nights

2020 ◽  
pp. 219-246
Author(s):  
Rohan McWilliam
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Musical Comedy ◽  
Music Hall

This chapter identifies the emergence of ‘light entertainment’ in the West End. Linked to music hall, this was a form of performance that was aspirational and less vulgar. It led to the construction of large variety houses such as the London Coliseum. The chapter moves from musical comedy to variety, vaudeville, and the exotic ballets at the Alhambra. These were entertainments that offered sophistication but rarely pretended to be high culture. The chapter examines theatres such as the Alhambra and the Empire variety houses who were attacked because of the sexual nature of their ballets as well as their toleration of prostitutes. The figure who dominates the chapter is the impresario George Edwardes who turned the Gaiety Girl into an icon of the age. Light entertainment was conservative but had its utopian dimensions.

Mass Media and the Generation of Conflict: West Germany's Long Sixties and the Formation of a Critical Public Sphere

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA VON HODENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The Media ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Professional Ethos

From the 1950s to 1970s the West German public sphere underwent a rapid politicisation which was part of the ongoing socio-cultural democratisation of the Federal Republic. This article examines the role of the mass media and journalistic elites in bringing about this change. It analyses how and when political coverage in the media evolved from an instrument of consensus to a forum of conflict. Arguing that generational shifts in journalism were crucial to this process, two generations, termed the ‘45ers’ and the ‘68ers’, are described in regard to their professional ethos and their attitudes toward democracy, mass culture, German traditions and Western models.

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