Kamala's Post

Kamala Randjelovic
Blog Posting for October 15th, 2007

In Kasson’s “Amusing The Million” he describes the rise of amusement parks as being motivated to provide the “…largely untapped working class, all eager to respond to amusement in a less earnest cultural mood: more vigorous, exuberant, daring, sensual and uninhibited and irreverent”(6). For Gorky, the rise of amusement parks highlighted a desire of the working class to escape from the rigid structure of daily life and find an escapist outlet. Amusement park founders described participants as being able to ‘cut loose from repressions and restrictions, and act pretty much as they feel like acting- since everyone else is doing the same thing”(59). Amusement parks created a fantasy where “…everywhere was life- a pageant of happy people; and everywhere was color- a wide e harmony of orange and white and a gold…It was a world removed- shut away from the sordid clatter and turmoil of the streets”(63). Participants therefore “…became actors in a vast, collective comedy” (65). Kasson said activities at the amusement parks “…appealed to a latent cruelty in their audience” and various displays which “…reflected a fascination with disaster” (71-72). Kasson’s description of this false wonderland is what Maxim Gorky in his piece “Boredom” depicts as “Everything ‘round about glitters insolently and reveals its own dismal ugliness” (358). Gorky illustrates the paradox between Kasson’s description of an amusement park as a place of wonder and enchantment to an experience where Gorky observes people who “…swarm into the cages like black flies. Children walk about…their little souls upon this hideousness, which they mistake for beauty, inspires a pained sense of pity” (358). For Gorky, amusement parks responded to the acute deprivation of the daily lives in numerous participants who reveled in its cruel games and depiction. Gorky describes watching the crowd as a man chases a tiger in a cage, “…the primitive instinct is awakened in them. They crave fight, they want to feel the delicious shiver produced by the sight of two bodies intertwining, the splutter of blood and pieces of torn, steaming human flesh flying thru the cage and falling on the floor”(364). Gorky’s description and depiction of the events and crowds at the amusement park illustrate their appeal to the working class. In the absence of morals and values, the amusement park encourages participants to remain in a state of boredom without intellectual stimulation. Of the participants, he says, (they) “drink in the vile poison with silent rapture. The poison contaminates their souls. Boredom whirls about in an idle dance” (368). Within the looking glass of the amusement park, the most significant paradox lies in the eye of the beholder. Is it Kasson’s fantasy or Gorky’s nightmare or is it a little it of both?