Harmonious relationships between groups are critical for democracy, and intergroup contact presents an appealing way to encourage this harmony. However, what kinds of contact work best? Ethan Busby reviews existing studies of contact, propose a framework for studying the political consequences of contact, and discusses four experiments following these recommendations. These studies focus on equal status contact and rely on different samples and contexts. Busby finds that equal-status does not promote more political support for racial and ethnic outgroups and can reduce outgroup support. The Element is concluded by discussing the implications of these findings for the study of contact generally.
In the United States, politics has become tribal and personalized. The influence of partisan divisions has extended beyond the political realm into everyday life, affecting relationships and workplaces as well as the ballot box. To help explain this trend, we examine the stereotypes Americans have of ordinary Democrats and Republicans. Using data from surveys, experiments, and Americans' own words, we explore the content of partisan stereotypes and find that they come in three main flavors—parties as their own tribes, coalitions of other tribes, or vehicles for political issues. These different stereotypes influence partisan conflict: people who hold trait-based stereotypes tend to display the highest levels of polarization, while holding issue-based stereotypes decreases polarization. This finding suggests that reducing partisan conflict does not require downplaying partisan divisions but shifting the focus to political priorities rather than identity—a turn to what we call responsible partisanship.
Drawing on a rich set of interviews and surveys, this book shows how the global AIDS treatment advocacy movement helped millions in the developing world gain access to life-saving medication. The movement achieved this by transforming the market for AIDS drugs from one which was 'low volume, high price' to one based on access for all. The authors suggest that a movement's ability to transform markets depends upon whether: (1) markets are contestable; (2) they have framed their arguments to resonate across their target audiences; (3) the movement itself has a coherent goal; (4) the costs are low, or the benefit-to-cost ratio is favourable; and, finally, (5) institutions are present to reward continued achievement of the new market principle. These insights are applied to a range of other cases including malaria, maternal mortality, water/diarrheal disease, non-communicable diseases, education, climate change, the ivory trade, sex trafficking and the Atlantic slave trade.
Harmonious relationships between groups are critical for democracy, and intergroup contact presents an appealing way to encourage this harmony. However, what kinds of contact work best? Ethan Busby reviews existing studies of contact, propose a framework for studying the political consequences of contact, and discusses four experiments following these recommendations. These studies focus on equal status contact and rely on different samples and contexts. Busby finds that equal-status does not promote more political support for racial and ethnic outgroups and can reduce outgroup support. The Element is concluded by discussing the implications of these findings for the study of contact generally.
When films like The Jazz Singer started to integrate synchronized music, in the late 1920s many ambitious songwriting pioneers of the Great White Way - George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Lorenz Hart, among many others - were enticed westward by Hollywood studios' promises of national exposure and top dollar success. But what happened when writers native to the business of Broadway ran into the very different business of Hollywood? Their movies had their producer despots, their stacking of writing teams on a single project, their use of five or six songs per story where Broadway fit in a dozen, and it seemed as if everyone in Hollywood was uncomfortable with characters bursting into song on the street, in your living room, or in "a cottage small by a waterfall." Did the movies give theater writers a chance to expand their art, or did mass marketing ruin the musical's quintessential charm? Is it possible to trace the history of the musical through both stage and screen manifestations, or did Broadway and Hollywood give rise to two wholly irreconcilable art forms? And, finally, did any New York writer or writing team create a film musical as enthralling and timeless as their work for the stage? In When Broadway Went to Hollywood, writer and celebrated steward of musical theatre Ethan Mordden directs his unmistakable wit and whimsy to these challenging questions and more, charting the volatile and galvanizing influence of Broadway on Hollywood (and vice versa) throughout the twentieth century. Along the way, he takes us behind the scenes of the great Hollywood musicals you've seen and loved (The Wizard of Oz, Gigi, The Sound of Music, Chicago, West Side Story, The Music Man, Grease) as well as some of the outrageous flops you probably haven't. The first book to tell the story of how Broadway affected the Hollywood musical, When Broadway Goes to Hollywood is sure to thrill theatre buffs and movie lovers alike.
Offers a history of American musical theater from the 1920s through to the 1970s, and includes such famous works as "Oklahoma!," "The Red Mill," and "Porgy and Bess.
In the 1960s, the Broadway musical was revolutionized from an entertainment characterized by sentimental standards, such as Camelot and Hello, Dolly!, to one of brilliant and bittersweet masterpieces, such as Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof. In Open a New Window, Ethan Mordden continues his history of the Broadway musical with the decade that bridged the gap between the romantic, fanciful entertainments of the fifties, such as Call Me, Madam, to the seventies when sophisticated fare, such as A Little Night Music and Follies, was commonplace. Here in brilliant detail is the decade and the people that forever transformed the Broadway muscial.
A map to the new frontier, and a rollicking ride across it Ethan Lou goes on an epic quest through the proverbial cryptocurrency Wild West, through riches, absurdity, wonder, and woe. From investing in Bitcoin in university to his time writing for Reuters, and then mining the digital asset ― Lou meets a co-founder of Ethereum and Gerald Cotten of QuadrigaCX (before he was reported dead), and hangs out in North Korea with Virgil Griffith, the man later arrested for allegedly teaching blockchain to the totalitarian state. Coming of age in the 2008 financial crisis, Lou’s generation has a natural affinity with this rebel internet money, this so-called millennial gold, created in the wake of that economic storm. At once an immersive narrative of adventure and fortune, Once a Bitcoin Miner is also a work of journalistic rigor. Lou examines this domain through the lens of the human condition, delving deep into the lives of the fast-talkers, the exiles, the ambitious, and the daring, forging their paths in a new world, harsh and unpredictable.
Hollywood in the years between 1929 and 1948 was a town of moviemaking empires. The great studios were estates of talent: sprawling, dense, diverse. It was the Golden Age of the Movies, and each studio made its distinctive contribution. But how did the studios, "growing up" in the same time and place, develop so differently? What combinations of talents and temperaments gave them their signature styles? These are the questions Ethan Mordden answers, with breezy erudition and irrepressible enthusiasm, in this fascinating and wonderfully readable book. Mordden illuminates how the style of each studio was primarily dictated by the personality, philosophy, and attitudes of its presiding mogul—and how all these factors affected the work and careers of individual actors, directors, writers, and technicians, and the success of the studio in general.
Vividly recreating the unique pleasure of experiencing a song-and-dance show, Broadway Babies spotlights the men and women who made a difference in the development of American musical comedy. Mordden's account features such show people as Florenz Ziegfeld, Harold Prince, Bert Lahr, Gwen Verdon, Angela Lansbury, Victor Herbert, Liza Minnelli, and Stephen Sondheim, and such musicals as Sally, Oh Kay!, Anything Goes, Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Follies, Chicago, and countless others. While theatrical historians traditionally have emphasized the role of the authors of musicals, Mordden also examines the personal styles of the directors, choreographers, and producers, in order to demonstrate not only what the musical became but what it was. The volume includes an extensive discography--the first of its kind--which offers a virtually self-contained history of recorded show music.
Americans spend far more time thinking about what to buy, and what not to buy, than they do about politics. Political leaders often make political claims while using consumer terminology. And political decisions resemble consumer decisions in surprising ways. Together, these forces help give rise to the consumer-citizen: A person who depends on tools and techniques familiar from consumer life to make sense of politics. Understanding citizens as consumer-citizens has implications for a broad array of topics related to public opinion and political behaviour. More than a dozen new experiments make clear that appealing to the consumer-citizen as consumer-citizen can increase trust in government, improve attitudes toward taxes, and enhance political knowledge. Indeed, such appeals can even cause people to sign up for government-sponsored health insurance. However, the consumer-citizen may also prefer candidates whose policies would explicitly undercut their own self-interest. Two concepts from consumer psychology, consumer fairness and operational transparency, are especially useful for understanding the consumer citizen. Although the rise of the consumer-citizen may trouble democratic theorists, the lessons of the consumer-citizen can be applied to a new approach to civic education, with the aim of enriching democracy and public life"--
Under what conditions do the governments of developing countries manage to reform their way out of political and economic instability? When are they instead overwhelmed by the forces of social conflict? What role can great powers play in shaping one outcome or the other? This book is among the first to show in detail how the United States has used foreign economic policy, including foreign aid, as a tool for intervening in the developing world. Specifically, it traces how the United States promoted land reform as a vehicle for producing political stability. By showing where that policy proved stabilizing, and where it failed, a nuanced account is provided of how the local structure of the political economy plays a decisive role in shaping outcomes on the ground.
Any girl who twists her hat will be fired! – Florenz Ziegfeld And no Ziegfeld girl ever did as she made her way down the gala stairways of the Ziegfeld Follies in some of the most astonishing spectacles the American theatergoing public ever witnessed. When Florenz Ziegfeld started in theater, it was flea circus, operetta and sideshow all rolled into one. When he left it, the glamorous world of "show-biz" had been created. Though many know him as the man who "glorified the American girl," his first real star attraction was the bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, who flexed his muscles and thrilled the society matrons who came backstage to squeeze his biceps. His lesson learned with Sandow, Ziegfeld went on to present Anna Held, the naughty French sensation, who became the first Mrs. Ziegfeld. He was one of the first impresarios to mix headliners of different ethnic backgrounds, and literally the earliest proponent of mixed-race casting. The stars he showcased and, in some cases, created have become legends: Billie Burke (who also became his wife), elfin Marilyn Miller, cowboy Will Rogers, Bert Williams, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor and, last but not least, neighborhood diva Fanny Brice. A man of voracious sexual appetites when it came to beautiful women, Ziegfeld knew what he wanted and what others would want as well. From that passion, the Ziegfeld Girl was born. Elaborately bejeweled, they wore little more than a smile as they glided through eye-popping tableaux that were the highlight of the Follies, presented almost every year from 1907 to 1931. Ziegfeld's reputation and power, however, went beyond the stage of the Follies as he produced a number of other musicals, among them the ground-breaking Show Boat. In Ziegfeld: The Man Who Created Show Business, Ethan Mordden recreates the lost world of the Follies, a place of long-vanished beauty masterminded by one of the most inventive, ruthless, street-smart and exacting men ever to fill a theatre on the Great White Way : Florenz Ziegfeld.
This is a chronological review of both the plays and the people that brought the world of homosexuals, bisexuals, transexuals, metrosexuals, and the sexually fluid to the American stage. The plays--which take in a few foreign imports--treat strong gay content (e. g., The Boys in the Band or The Killing of sister George), or minor gay content (Season In the Sun, The Nervous Set), or even a phrase in passing (as in New Faces of 1956's joke about Rome's piazza Di Spagna, so niche that perhaps fifty people got it during the show's six-month run). I have included as well plays that portray gay through dog whistles (such as Bell, Book and Candle, in which the witches are really gay people) and even plays whose sense of parody or outright camp (such as Little Mary Sunshine or Johnny Guitar) are at least gay-adjacent. As for the people in the book--writers, actors, creatives-- I have included profiles of some who, though gay, had little interest in portraying gay lives--Edward Albee, for example, even as his influence not as a writer about gay but rather as a writer who is gay was extremely broad, so conclusive that he takes pride of place at the end of this volume. These so to say pre-Stonewall eminences--actor-manager Eva Le Gallienne is another one--are as much a part of the chronicle as such overtly gay-in-content writers as Terrence McNally"--
Ethan Mordden's new entry in his history of the Broadway musical looks at an era that brought us not only the gritty reality of "A Chorus Line" and the brilliantly bittersweet works of Stephen Sondheim, but also the nostalgic crowd-pleasers "No, No, Nanette" and "Annie." It was a time when Broadway both looked to its past, but also to its future and allowed reality to enter. Mordden writes of the last time we ever saw true greatness on the stage of the Broadway musical. "[A] treasure trove for fans of the musical theatre." - Richard Ouzonian, Toronto Star
In the 1930s, Broadway's lights still burned brightly. Ethan Mordden completes his history of the Broadway musical by taking a look at this forgotten era. Shows like Anything Goes brought the glitter of Cole Porter and Merman's brass to the public. Innovations in dance were pioneered by Balanchine and others. Scenic advancements made Astaire's The Band Wagon move across the stage in novel ways. Gershwin's revolutionary Porgy and Bess entered the canon of American Classics. And The Cradle Will Rock and Johnny Johnson took the American political temperature. With his trademark wit and style, Ethan Mordden shines the spotlight on Broadway's forgotten decade.
Frank Tashlin (1913–1972) was a supremely gifted satirist and visual stylist who made an indelible mark on 1950s Hollywood and American popular culture—first as a talented animator working on Looney Tunes cartoons, then as muse to film stars Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, and Jayne Mansfield. Yet his name is not especially well known today. Long regarded as an anomaly or curiosity, Tashlin is finally given his due in this career-spanning survey. Tashlinesque considers the director’s films in the contexts of Hollywood censorship, animation history, and the development of the genre of comedy in American film, with particular emphasis on the sex, satire, and visual flair that comprised Tashlin’s distinctive artistic and comedic style. Through close readings and pointed analyses of Tashlin’s large and fascinating body of work, Ethan de Seife offers fresh insights into such classic films as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, The Girl Can’t Help It, Artists and Models, The Disorderly Orderly, and Son of Paleface, as well as numerous Warner Bros. cartoons starring Porky Pig, among others. This is an important rediscovery of a highly unusual and truly hilarious American artist. Includes a complete filmography.
A charismatic young soldier meets a tragic end in this moving and mesmerizing account of murder and suicide in New Orleans. Brown discovers that this tragedy--like so many others--could have been avoided.
Music and girls are the soul of musical comedy," one critic wrote, early in the 1940s. But this was the age that wanted more than melody and kickline form its musical shows. The form had been running on empty for too long, as a formula for the assembly of spare parts--star comics, generic love songs, rumba dancers, Ethel Merman. If Rodgers and Hammerstein hadn't existed, Broadway would have had to invent them; and Oklahoma! and Carousel came along just in time to announce the New Formula for Writing Musicals: Don't have a formula. Instead, start with strong characters and atmosphere: Oklahoma!'s murderous romantic triangle set against a frontier society that has to learn what democracy is in order to deserve it; or Carousel's dysfunctional family seen in the context of class and gender war. With the vitality and occasionally outrageous humor that Ethan Mordden's readers take for granted, the author ranges through the decade's classics--Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Phinian's Rainbow, Brigadoon, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific. He also covers illuminating trivia--the spy thriller The Lady Comes Across, whose star got so into her role that she suffered paranoid hallucinations and had to be hospitalized; the smutty Follow the Girls, damned as "burlesque with a playbill" yet closing as the longest-run musical in Broadway history; Lute Song, in which Mary Martin and Nancy Reagan were Chinese; and the first "concept" musicals, Allegro and Love Life. Amid the fun, something revolutionary occurs. The 1920s created the musical and the 1930s gave it politics. In the 1940s, it found its soul.
In the United States, politics has become tribal and personalized. The influence of partisan divisions has extended beyond the political realm into everyday life, affecting relationships and workplaces as well as the ballot box. To help explain this trend, we examine the stereotypes Americans have of ordinary Democrats and Republicans. Using data from surveys, experiments, and Americans' own words, we explore the content of partisan stereotypes and find that they come in three main flavors—parties as their own tribes, coalitions of other tribes, or vehicles for political issues. These different stereotypes influence partisan conflict: people who hold trait-based stereotypes tend to display the highest levels of polarization, while holding issue-based stereotypes decreases polarization. This finding suggests that reducing partisan conflict does not require downplaying partisan divisions but shifting the focus to political priorities rather than identity—a turn to what we call responsible partisanship.
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