Having a deep history Coney Island impacted the lives of Americans. According to Amusing the million by Kasson, it was a place that connected different cultures and created a mass culture that never existed before. This demi-island caused cultural changes within the United States of America. Coney Island is historical in many terms, including the entertainment industry and the unification of cultures.
Coney Island became a place full of fun and freedom that attracted people and also a place to forget social hierarchy. It was a place of inventions, where the prototype of the rollercoaster and the first Luna park appeared, and the sale of the world’s first hot dogs began. In Amusing the million, Kasson uses the term “mass culture,” which means the set of practices, interests, and even food or drinks prevalent in society, which is what happened on Coney Island. American mass culture covered different practices that existed on the margins of American life before. Many examples demonstrate the change, including “ragtime and the cakewalk in the 1890s, Afro-American music and dance emerging out of black communities, and the demimonde being commercialized and transformed for white urban audiences” (Kasson 8). Central Park was created to bring transcendentalist ideas back to the masses, and the Columbian Exposition demonstrated that people wanted entertainment instead of genteel values.
To conclude, Coney Island played a significant role in the development of popular culture. Alongside other events, such as the foundation of the Central Park and the Columbian Exposition of 1893, it affected the lives of Americans and introduced a different outlook on it. It also stratified the population into other groups and classes, such as middle-class, working-class, and high society.
Works Cited
Kasson, John. Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. Hill & Wang, 1978.