Aug 1, 2016 10:25 PM
http://www.publicbooks.org//multigenre/h...ism-spread
EXCERPT: It seems unlikely that any era in human history was without its fascination with death or the desire to communicate with those who have passed into it. But the 19th century was a period in which breakthroughs in scientific inquiry, advances in technology, and renewed religious fervor in America and Europe conspired to offer the public imagination the apparent possibility of direct communication with the spirit realm, as well as methods to prove such communication was genuine.
Victorian spiritualism was a religious and cultural movement that began in upstate New York, in 1848, with the “rapping” sounds summoned by Margaret and Leah Fox, young sisters who became the first national celebrities of the spiritualist movement. The movement grew quickly, spreading across America and to England, and, from there, to the European continent. Its followers were not only religiously inclined country folk, but members of the urban middle classes: intellectuals, scientists, politicians, aristocrats, and artists.
The promise of spiritualism, what made it the right religious movement for its age, lay not only in its democratic nature—anyone, it turned out, could become a medium—but in its claims to be a “scientific religion.” In this age of reason and scientific discovery, spiritualism seemed to offer verifiable proof of the existence of a spirit world by providing direct contact with that world through ritualistic séances conducted by mediums in private homes, public halls, and theaters. “The spiritualist séance,” writes media theorist John Durham Peters, “offered a variety of religious experience that was potentially subject to empirical investigation.” And as the exhibition of spirit manifestations often mirrored the scientific lectures and demonstrations that were also popular at the time, those who bore witness to spirit communications could imagine themselves as participants in the rational evaluation of a natural phenomenon.
Spirit communication started as simple rappings in the dark, construed as coded knocks on walls, floors, and tables and bearing a conspicuous resemblance to the coded taps of telegraphic communication. In the context of the séance circle, these rappings seemed to answer questions with inexplicable accuracy. As the movement grew in popularity, the spirits expanded their repertoire to include writing, talking, singing, and lecturing (all performed through their medium hosts); physical manifestations such as the levitation of tables; the manipulation of objects and the playing of musical instruments; and, finally, the production of ectoplasm, a mysterious and ghostly substance often perceived to ooze from the orifices of the mediums themselves.
Media theorists have long noted the coincidence of the rise of spiritualism and that of telegraphic communication. In his new book, "Supernatural Entertainments, Simone Natale likewise observes that “early spiritualists appropriated this technology as a metaphorical reference to explain communication with the world of spirits.” But, as he goes on to argue, “spiritualism … also coincided with another significant process in the history of media: the rise of show business and industrial entertainment.” And as much as spiritualism brought science and religious belief into conversation, its spread took place not through religious or scientific channels—networks of churches or scientific journals—but rather through the rapidly expanding world of the mass media. For the age of the telegraph was also the age of Barnum and the penny press.
The first form of media that specifically addressed itself to the masses was the penny press, which started in the 1830s, a decade and a half before the spiritualist movement. Prior to the penny press, newspapers served only the political and industrial elites, who could afford subscriptions and whose interests the papers represented by printing mostly party opinion and industry-related data (pricing, shipping rates, and so forth). By dropping the price, selling papers in shops and on street corners, and operating on an ad-based revenue system, the penny press democratized access to information. As they were now selling audiences to advertisers, they also understood that their income depended on their publishing a wide range of information to feed the diverse interests of their readership, so that a typical penny paper was a hodgepodge of sensational crime reports, civic announcements, and salacious gossip, along with reports on social issues, scientific discoveries, and politics. In short, however much the penny press may have democratized access to information and instituted new forms of journalism—becoming a check on power in the name of the common man—its success relied on providing a spectacular array of information that entertained as much as it informed.
P. T. Barnum was a prescient figure in the development of the new mass media, and played the penny press like a virtuoso—often pseudonymously planting stories in newspapers to stir controversy and using competing papers to alternately confirm and refute his most outrageous claims....
EXCERPT: It seems unlikely that any era in human history was without its fascination with death or the desire to communicate with those who have passed into it. But the 19th century was a period in which breakthroughs in scientific inquiry, advances in technology, and renewed religious fervor in America and Europe conspired to offer the public imagination the apparent possibility of direct communication with the spirit realm, as well as methods to prove such communication was genuine.
Victorian spiritualism was a religious and cultural movement that began in upstate New York, in 1848, with the “rapping” sounds summoned by Margaret and Leah Fox, young sisters who became the first national celebrities of the spiritualist movement. The movement grew quickly, spreading across America and to England, and, from there, to the European continent. Its followers were not only religiously inclined country folk, but members of the urban middle classes: intellectuals, scientists, politicians, aristocrats, and artists.
The promise of spiritualism, what made it the right religious movement for its age, lay not only in its democratic nature—anyone, it turned out, could become a medium—but in its claims to be a “scientific religion.” In this age of reason and scientific discovery, spiritualism seemed to offer verifiable proof of the existence of a spirit world by providing direct contact with that world through ritualistic séances conducted by mediums in private homes, public halls, and theaters. “The spiritualist séance,” writes media theorist John Durham Peters, “offered a variety of religious experience that was potentially subject to empirical investigation.” And as the exhibition of spirit manifestations often mirrored the scientific lectures and demonstrations that were also popular at the time, those who bore witness to spirit communications could imagine themselves as participants in the rational evaluation of a natural phenomenon.
Spirit communication started as simple rappings in the dark, construed as coded knocks on walls, floors, and tables and bearing a conspicuous resemblance to the coded taps of telegraphic communication. In the context of the séance circle, these rappings seemed to answer questions with inexplicable accuracy. As the movement grew in popularity, the spirits expanded their repertoire to include writing, talking, singing, and lecturing (all performed through their medium hosts); physical manifestations such as the levitation of tables; the manipulation of objects and the playing of musical instruments; and, finally, the production of ectoplasm, a mysterious and ghostly substance often perceived to ooze from the orifices of the mediums themselves.
Media theorists have long noted the coincidence of the rise of spiritualism and that of telegraphic communication. In his new book, "Supernatural Entertainments, Simone Natale likewise observes that “early spiritualists appropriated this technology as a metaphorical reference to explain communication with the world of spirits.” But, as he goes on to argue, “spiritualism … also coincided with another significant process in the history of media: the rise of show business and industrial entertainment.” And as much as spiritualism brought science and religious belief into conversation, its spread took place not through religious or scientific channels—networks of churches or scientific journals—but rather through the rapidly expanding world of the mass media. For the age of the telegraph was also the age of Barnum and the penny press.
The first form of media that specifically addressed itself to the masses was the penny press, which started in the 1830s, a decade and a half before the spiritualist movement. Prior to the penny press, newspapers served only the political and industrial elites, who could afford subscriptions and whose interests the papers represented by printing mostly party opinion and industry-related data (pricing, shipping rates, and so forth). By dropping the price, selling papers in shops and on street corners, and operating on an ad-based revenue system, the penny press democratized access to information. As they were now selling audiences to advertisers, they also understood that their income depended on their publishing a wide range of information to feed the diverse interests of their readership, so that a typical penny paper was a hodgepodge of sensational crime reports, civic announcements, and salacious gossip, along with reports on social issues, scientific discoveries, and politics. In short, however much the penny press may have democratized access to information and instituted new forms of journalism—becoming a check on power in the name of the common man—its success relied on providing a spectacular array of information that entertained as much as it informed.
P. T. Barnum was a prescient figure in the development of the new mass media, and played the penny press like a virtuoso—often pseudonymously planting stories in newspapers to stir controversy and using competing papers to alternately confirm and refute his most outrageous claims....