Tin Pan Alley paved the way for musical entertainment that we enjoy to this day. According to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, The term “Tin Pan Alley” originally referred to W. 28th Street in New York around 1910 when during it’s heyday because songwriters would be creatively banging around on lower end pianos that you could hear from the street. Tin Pan Alley was the basis for traditional music that surrounds us to this day. Without the pianos that wailed their tunes through publisher’s doors beginning in 1880, people would have been deprived of the musical entertainment that Tin Pan Alley so strongly influenced. From Vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood musical movies, to ragtime, jazz, swing, and rock and roll, all the way to television variety shows after the depression; the pianos of Tin Pan Alley are credited for laying the foundation for the many entertainments that have endured for over two hundred years.
Texts are often influenced by the values and attitudes of their authors, and always reflect the time in which they are composed. Christopher Isherwood's novel Goodbye to Berlin (1939) and Bob Fosse’s musical Cabaret (1972) are both texts that explore the economic, social and political unrest and internal decay of Berlin in the 1930s. Inflation, World War 1, the failure of the Weimar Republic and a hedonistic society form the context of Isherwood's stories. In contrast, Fosse transforms Isherwood's stories into another form of entertainment, Hollywood musical, and demonstrates how a shift in context to a 1970s audience with a post-holocaust retrospection accounts for a shift in values. An inverse relationship is developed between the two texts, which establishes the notion of the Nazis' rise to power and the pursuit of a decadent lifestyle Both Goodbye to Berlin and Cabaret reflect anti-Semitic values and the rise of Nazism in Berlin in the 1930’s.Goodbye to Berlin was written at a time of political and economic instability in Europe, particularly Germany.
In Midnight in Paris, Gil undertakes an imaginative journey as a result of his nostalgia. The dissatisfaction of the present drives Gil to the 1920’s- an era of Modernism. Along the journey, he meets individuals that are critical in changing his perspective including the influential writers Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and Adriana, a person of the 1920s with Golden Age thinking of La Belle Époque. The linguistic features depicted by the artists through dialogue gives strong impressions of individualism and hold an epicentre of modernistic beliefs. The characters are essential in setting the backgrounds and morals to the time period so that the viewers are able to gain a better understanding to Gil’s desires and emotions.
“North End Faust” By Ed Kleiman 1. The title of this story uses an allusion. “Faust or Faustus (Latin for "auspicious" or "lucky") is the protagonist of a classic German legend who makes a pact with the Devil in exchange for knowledge. The meaning of the word and name has been reinterpreted through the ages. "Faust" (and the adjective "Faustian") has taken on a connotation distinct from its original use, and is often used today to describe a person whose headstrong desire for self-fulfillment leads him or her in a diabolical direction” (Wikipedia).
The story was turned into a musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb, famous for writing the song “New York, New York”, which opened on Broadway in 2010. The musical used the format of a classic minstrel show in order to tell the grotesque story of the ‘Scottsboro Boys’. The minstrel show format, which once was the main form of entertainment, is now deemed highly offensive but is it possible for the format to be used to demonstrate racist stories and be an effective form of story telling. The story of the ‘Scottsboro Boys’ has been studied and analyzed since it first the 1930’s. Douglas O. Linder, a legal professor at the University of Missouri, writes: “No crime in American history-- let alone a crime that never occurred-- produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight run on March 25, 1931.
This rise of Napoleon also triggered lavish spending, ultimately causing the French economy to suffer. “ (page 1) “The England was largely unaffected by the French Wars during the 19th century. However, much of the area ruled by the French allies in Europe suffered in the early part of the century because of Napoleon’s zeal to take over the world, England enjoyed the benefits of the Industrial Revolution, which brought prosperity, particularly from the textile industry. These technical revolution brought along with it new textile production. methods and influenced the development of European costume throughout the continent, extending to the Americas.” (page 2) “Inspired by the First Empire and coinciding with a narrower fashion period referred to as the Director that ranged from 1790 to 1800, the Empire era lasted from 1790 to 1820.
Traditionally, when we think of drama and scripts we are transported to the various worlds of William Shakespeare. We might think of the glorious fall of Romeo and Juliet, or perhaps the poisoning of the king in Hamlet. In America though, a much darker drama has been brewing for nearly as long as the country has existed - Racism. In "The Great White Way", Debra Dickerson refers to it as the "central drama" of American history. Because of racism's place in society, and the way that it has woven itself through politics, and displays of social queue alike, it is understandable how one might compare it to a drama or even just one big angry monologue between an antagonist and protagonist.
This imagined meeting took place in lively bar in 1904, the Lapin Agile, a famous cabaret in the Montmartre district of Paris. Famous for its clientele, the Lapin Agile, at the turn of the 20th century, was like a camping ground for the artistic type, such as Picasso. Lapin Agile, is just French for the name Nimble Rabbit. I think this is very symbolic of the colorful characters that Picasso, Einstein and Presley encounter during their time in this popular Paris bar. The way I would describe this
German Expressionist films and Surrealist films are on the same page when it comes to the use of bold images and the unexpected. However, they vary when it boils down to the approaches they use to achieve this goal. In order to understand how these two movements captivated their audience, it is first best to examine how these two movements contrast each other. German Expressionism exploded with artistic activity that “followed the fall of the Kaiser and the founding of the Weimar Republic; making itself felt in all the arts, especially the cinema” (Mast, 2012). The dominating presence of German Expressionism was made possible through the movement’s exaggeration of mise-en-scene, which simply means everything that a scene is composed of.
A DYSTOPIC PIECE OF FILM The movie “Metropolis” by Fritz Lang portrays a futuristic world split in two. There is a clear division of class in the film, one being the working class and the other being the ruling class. Both classes are in conflict with one another with the struggle between good and evil. The idea of a futuristic world ruled by a dystopian force was not a new concept at the time, but more of a conscience. The movie premiered between the two World Wars in 1927 and Marx theory was still a part of popular literature at the time.