La rueda de la maravilla y el deseo inalcanzable del Sueño Americano

El Sueño Americano es un concepto central en el discurso de la identidad del pueblo estadounidense, desde su constitución como país hasta la actualidad. En términos generales, consiste en trabajar arduamente y progresar hasta lograr el éxito, pudiendo ser alcanzado por todos sus habitantes. Para Chomsky (2017) estamos asistiendo al réquiem de ese sueño, supuestamente igualitario y justo, debido a la creciente degradación democrática y concentración de la riqueza, que otorga mayor poder político a los ricos. El objetivo de nuestro trabajo es abordar esta temática desde las representaciones de La rueda de la maravilla (Woody Allen, 2017) un film que combina drama y tragedia con una puesta en escena en la que lo cinematográfico se une con lo teatral. Ambientada durante la década del ´50 -en que el crecimiento económico y el consumismo parecían asegurar esa movilidad social para todos los ciudadanos- y situada en Coney Island, centro turístico situado al sur de Brooklyn, símbolo de un esplendor ya decadente en esos años. La historia se centra en una pareja que trabaja en el parque de diversiones, Humpty (James Beluschi) manejando el carrusel, y Ginny ( Kate Winslet ) mesera en un restaurante de almejas. La acción es narrada por el guardavida de la playa, Mickey (Justin Timberlake) que mantiene una relación amorosa con Ginny, hasta que se enamora de la hija de Humpty, Caroline (Juno Temple) quien viene a Coney Island huyendo de la mafia. A través de estos personajes insatisfechos emocionalmente, el texto fílmico condensa a aquellos norteamericanos que han quedado fuera del sueño americano, dejando en claro que se trata de un mito inspirador más que de una realidad.

Chapter 4

Archie Leach’s struggle to establish himself in show business during the years 1922 to 1927 is discussed in Chapter 4. He was able to find work as an acrobat and, now in the Lomas Troupe, he continued touring in vaudeville throughout North America. However, with no experience of speaking on stage, he found it difficult to find any other form of stage work. To make ends meet, he took a job on the Coney Island boardwalk, advertising Steeplechase amusement park by stilt-walking outside the park’s entrance. In 1924, his maturing, handsome good looks caught the eye of writer-producer Jean Dalrymple, who gave him his first speaking role, in the vaudeville playlet The Woman Pays (1924), a show he toured with this show for 14 months. It was also during these years that he became friends with the future costume designer Jack Kelly (who would become known as Orry-Kelly). Drawing on Orry-Kelly’s recently published autobiography, Women I’ve Undressed (2016), the chapter discusses the friendship between Archie and Jack, concluding that it was not, as suggested in the documentary Women He’s Undressed (2015), a romantic or sexual one.

“Disguised beyond any possibility of recognition”: The Seaside and the Subversion of Social Norms at Coney Island

This essay directs attention to the original attraction of those amusements outside the city proper: natural landscapes at the edge of cities in which popular amusements were constructed. Here, the heart of subversive possibility was located where the immutable, uncontrollable natural elements interacted with constructed ones. In the case of Coney Island and similar coastal landscapes, this meant the seashore. The beach broke down manufactured limitations, exposing all beachgoers—particularly women—as the same under the sun. I examine the impact that Coney's seashore had on defining class-bound womanhood. I argue that within the island's liminal confines, the beach's natural elements exposed the fallacy that well-off women were naturally cleaner, both physically and morally, than not just men, but also working-class women. Nature trumped the manufactured to sully both the bodies and, metaphorically, the respectability of the women who flocked to Coney. The farther that women ventured toward the ocean, the more the seascape nullified their differences and democratized its allegedly hygienic visitors. This concept normalized in the early twentieth century as city borderlands, primarily the seashore and mountains, introduced possibilities for more porous gender and class identities in urban areas.

Planning Local Uniqueness: Drawing the Line between Development and Loss

This article looks at a redevelopment conflict arising from divergent ways of addressing the perceived uniqueness of Coney Island, a historic amusement destination in Brooklyn, New York. By examining this conflict, this study helps explain the paradoxical confluence between planning efforts to promote unique development and accusations that such efforts have the opposite effect and engender sameness. It also thereby demonstrates the advisability of looking beyond the stark pro- and anti-development distinction to consider ways in which the negotiation of alternative forms of “uniqueness” can provide a means for addressing community demands in the face of perceived neighborhood threats.

The Old Northwest

On the morning of Monday, October 12, 1931, early risers in northern Portland noticed a strange creature with smooth black skin in Columbia Slough, right next to the Jantzen Beach Amusement Park. Locals debated its identity. Some argued it was a sturgeon, others a sei whale all the way from Japan. Finally, an old salt tagged it as a small “blackfish.” News of the novelty spread like wildfire, drawing thousands of spectators and causing gridlock on the interstate bridge between Portland and Vancouver, Washington. A local newspaper warned that killer whales were one of the ocean’s “most vicious” creatures, but this one promptly stole Portland’s heart. “From the looks of things,” declared Deputy Sheriff Martin T. Pratt, “nearly everyone in the city is determined to see the visitor,” and when some locals began shooting at the animal, Pratt and his men arrested them. The number of sightseers grew each day, and that weekend, tens of thousands crowded into Jantzen Beach to catch a glimpse of the whale, while enterprising fishermen charged twenty-five cents for whale-watching rides. By that time, someone had dubbed the orca Ethelbert, and the name stuck. Why the little whale had arrived there, a hundred miles up the Columbia, remains a mystery. It had probably become separated from its mother and lost its bearings, wandering up the great river that divides western Oregon from Washington State. But Columbia Slough was no place for an orca. In addition to lacking salt water, it was the main outlet for Portland’s sewage. In summer, the waterway grew so foul that workers refused to handle timber passing through it. As the days passed, observers grew worried. The whale seemed sluggish, and its skin began to show unsightly blotches. The owner of Jantzen Beach proposed capturing the animal with a net and placing it in a saltwater tank. It would have been an extraordinary attraction for his amusement park—already known as the Coney Island of the West. But members of the Oregon Humane Society denounced the scheme as rank cruelty. Instead, they proposed blowing the young orca up with dynamite.