Amy E. Hughes. Spectacles of Reform

The antebellum culture of reform thrived on spectacle, but most of its spectacles were rhetorical. Introducing his newspaper The Liberator to the public in 1831, William Lloyd Garrison exclaimed: “I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice... I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD.” Amy E. Hughes bridges the gap between the history of social reform movements and the history of American theater by contextualizing three famous theatrical spectacles: the delirium tremens scene in W. H. Smith's The Drunkard (1844); Eliza crossing the Ohio River in George Aiken's adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852); and the railroad rescue scene in Augustin Daly's Under the Gaslight (1867). Asserting the ideological importance of spectacle is the central objective of this book. Hughes contests the assumption that sensation scenes and staged spectacles functioned to evoke physical and visceral sensations rather than to engage the critical intellectual faculties of audiences. Hughes intends to “advance an alternative view: [that] the spectacular instant offered producers, reformers, audiences, and consumers a unique opportunity to articulate ideas” (p. 44). The impact of these scenes, Hughes argues, derives largely from their ability to compress active cultural debates into an image that embodies a particular cultural contradiction. Working from these three scenes, Hughes's research corkscrews deeply into the material culture that made up the daily life of temperance, antislavery, and the early women's rights movements. The book is at its most valuable in amplifying the cultural resonances that are evoked in sensation scenes. The connection between spectacle and the progress of reform movements gets somewhat less attention.

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Contradiction · Economic Justice · Ideology · Literature · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Popular culture · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Spectacle · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies