Coney_Island

Coney Island At the turn of the 19th century Coney Island, following societal queues began to emerge as the entertainment capital of America. Today, with a Disneyworld on each coast, they boast an even more extravagant, elaborate amusement park then Coney Island could have imagined in its heyday. However does Disneyworld, despite its impressive, technologically advanced enchantment offer the same liberation from routine as Coney Island did' In short no, the extreme cultural difference, and escape from routine Coney Island offered is unmatched even in today’s digital world. For us to see how Coney Island provided such a release to its visitors we must take a look at the cultural norms of the Victorian era. “Beginning in the antebellum period a self-conscious elite of critics, ministers, educators, and reformers… had arisen to assume cultural leadership.” This group of elite grown from the Protestant middle class “believed all activities both in work and in leisure should be ultimately constructive.” Even when people were spending time off from work, “Leisure…should be spent not in idleness but in edifying activities…poetry, fiction, the visual arts, and related pursuits were legitimized not ‘“for art’s sake”’ but for their moral and social utility.” coney, island, offered, routine, release, park, visitors, however, experience, even, disneyworld, different, turn, today, sort, new, liberation, genteel, cultural, century, amusement, world, work, victorian, time, themselves, social, same, place, people, offer, must, leisure, heyday, generation’s, generation, express, ever, escape, entertainment, elite, culture, ‘real, ‘new’, ‘for, youthful, younger, young, york, world’