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12 - The Apex of Middlebrow Culture

from Part II - New York and the Eastern States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2024

Lisa A. Kirschenbaum
Affiliation:
West Chester University, Pennsylvania
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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 Capitalists
Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip
, pp. 121 - 134
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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