Spectacles of Reform: Theater and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America

Introduction

1 Introduction For many Americans, the word melodrama usually brings a specific image to mind. In it, a black-­ clad mustachioed villain is tying a woman to the railroad tracks, cackling as he secures his prey. Checking his work with a firm tug, he hisses something about the brilliance of his devilish plan (or, perhaps, the devilishness of his brilliant plan), then scurries away, disappearing into the woods. As the heroine wiggles prettily on the rails, a whistle wails thinly in the distance and the ground begins to shake: a train is approaching. Realizing she is in danger of imminent death, she calls out desperately for help. “Will no one aid me?” The tumult of the oncoming locomotive grows louder; so do her fearful cries. When it seems all hope is lost, a dashing young man appears. With a few quick movements of his dexterous hands, he unravels her bonds and removes her from harm’s way, a slim second before the train rushes by in a satisfying cacophony of sound and smoke. Our heroine has been saved, in the nick of time, by the hero. This sensational scene, firmly embedded in the collective imagination, has in many ways come to symbolize melodrama itself, exemplifying the decadence , extremity, and excess associated with the genre as a whole. Endlessly revised and reprised, it has appeared in an astonishing variety of contexts, ranging from early film serials and animated cartoons to product advertising and pop-­music album art (fig. 0.1). Despite the passage of time, fluctuations in taste, and the transformation of melodrama from genre to joke, the railroad rescue has endured, serving as fecund fodder for artists, humorists, and corporate entities. The notoriety and ubiquity of this image belie its complicated, convoluted history. The version circulating today actually constitutes a “flamboyant display of historical forgetfulness,” as Nan Enstad notes.1 Railroad sequences began 2 Spectacles of Reform appearing on stage and in fiction during the mid-­ nineteenth century, and the scenario we recognize today first became popular in the United States after the premiere of Augustin Daly’s melodrama Under the Gaslight (1867).2 Daly’s “railroad sensation,” which concludes the fourth act, features a man—­ a one-­ armed Civil War veteran named Snorkey—­ tied to the tracks, who is saved from an oncoming train by the play’s heroine, Laura. A century and a half later, this spectacle seems progressive, even feminist, when compared to the “gender-­ correct” copy circulating today. What did nineteenth-­ century audiences see in this sensational scene? What politics shaped and informed it? Would the answers to such questions allow us to understand better what we see—­and what we need to see—­ in the reformed representation that is instantly recognizable today? Apparently, when nineteenth-­ century Americans thought about melodrama , specific images came to their minds, too. In the biography of his brother Augustin, Joseph Daly reminisces about his early theater experiences by describing some of the extraordinary scenes he has seen. As if sifting through a collection of dusty playbills, he muses, And how the inky blackness of the bills of the play is illumined by strange meteors that flashed for their brief moment and were gone! Here is the singular Hebrew star, Adah Isaacs Menken . . . who has left some memories of herself as Mazeppa bound to a trained steed. . . . Here the bills show fairyland—­ Niblo’s Garden with the Ravel pantomimists—­ and here the Revolutionary drama, a favorite entertainment when our country was young, in which one Yankee easily whipped half a dozen Britishers, and George Washington always appeared with red fire, in a final tableau.3 What is striking about this passage is the way in which Daly remembers: he reports the spectacle he sees when looking at a particular bill. Outstanding performers, sequences, and tableaux emerge from the complex layers of his memory. The sensations evoked by spectacle serve as a technology of recollection , a mechanism by and through which Daly relays his personal version of theater history. Even more striking, Daly describes the bodies within each spectacle : the barely clad Menken on horseback; the dexterous Ravels populating a fairyland at Niblo’s; the singular Yankee triumphing over the unfairly advantaged British; George Washington surrounded by flames. Each is a fleeting, sensational moment in performance that, by virtue of its power and palpability, Introduction 3 burns itself into memory. Daly’s method of recall underscores the importance of the...