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8 - The Business of Pleasure

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

Chapter 8 retraces Ilf and Petrov’s businesslike investigation of the New York dreamworld of nightclubs, burlesque theaters, and other entertainments. Their exploration of American consumption and leisure provided them with a series of case studies that probed the line between the wholesome, “cultured” consumption promoted in the Soviet Union and capitalist vulgarity. Applying emerging Soviet understandings to the United States, Ilf and Petrov represented American men as often succumbing to the coarse charms of popular commercial spectacles; they associated American women with the obsessive consumption of vulgar things. Deploring women’s commodification under capitalism did not prevent men on the left, in the Soviet Union no less than in the United States, from representing women as “materialist viragoes.”

Type
Chapter
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Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip
, pp. 77 - 90
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • The Business of Pleasure
  • Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, West Chester University, Pennsylvania
  • Book: Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
  • Online publication: 18 January 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009008914.011
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  • The Business of Pleasure
  • Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, West Chester University, Pennsylvania
  • Book: Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
  • Online publication: 18 January 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009008914.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Business of Pleasure
  • Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, West Chester University, Pennsylvania
  • Book: Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists
  • Online publication: 18 January 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009008914.011
Available formats
×