Book contents
- Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
- Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration and Translation
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Promised Lands
- Part II New York and the Eastern States
- 5 Extraordinary Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
- 6 Photographing New York
- 7 Dos
- 8 The Business of Pleasure
- 9 Black New York
- 10 Complex Hybrids
- 11 Squaring the Circle
- 12 The Apex of Middlebrow Culture
- Part III To the Pacific Ocean
- Part IV The Golden State
- Part V Journey’s End
- Select Bibliography
- Index
12 - The Apex of Middlebrow Culture
from Part II - New York and the Eastern States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2024
- Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
- Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Transliteration and Translation
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Promised Lands
- Part II New York and the Eastern States
- 5 Extraordinary Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
- 6 Photographing New York
- 7 Dos
- 8 The Business of Pleasure
- 9 Black New York
- 10 Complex Hybrids
- 11 Squaring the Circle
- 12 The Apex of Middlebrow Culture
- Part III To the Pacific Ocean
- Part IV The Golden State
- Part V Journey’s End
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In their published work, Ilf and Petrov equated low culture – trashy movies, wrestling, burlesque – with American culture. At the other end of the spectrum, they endeavored to show that American high culture consisted entirely of high-priced European imports that wealthy patrons appreciated only as luxury commodities, not art. Nothing, Ilf and Petrov emphasized, could be further from the situation in the Soviet Union, where the state-supported opera houses and concert halls made high culture available to all. Recovering the encounters with middlebrow culture that Ilf and Petrov’s travelogue largely ignored, Chapter 12 argues that Soviet and American cultural producers shared some of the same aims and challenges – even as they operated under different constraints.
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- Soviet Adventures in the Land of the CapitalistsIlf and Petrov's American Road Trip, pp. 121 - 134Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024