Types and Beauties: Evaluating and Exoticizing Women on the Midway Plaisance at the 1893 Columbian Exposition

Abstract

ON THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE OF THE 1893 Columbian Exposition, outside parameters of White City and just a short jaunt from iconic Ferris Wheel, stood a theater patronized by old men and wicked youths who watched, in a bleary-eyed ecstasy, Oriental athletes of stage as they danced, toyed with cigarette, and by their smiles gave a Persian Parisian charm to anomalous entertainment.1 Colorful descriptions of Midway Plaisance heavily populated souvenir books commemorating Chicago Worlds Fair. Filled with photographic portrait types, landscape scenes, and ebullient commentary, souvenir books simultaneously reproduced and shaped experience of fairgoer (See Figure 1). As a cultural text constructed by and for a white, masculine American subject, souvenir book reveals objectives and weaknesses of hegemonic projects in United States during nineteenth century. In particular, representations of female bodies on Midway Plaisance illuminate intersecting discourses of race and gender.As a combination and juxtaposition of White City and foreign villages of Midway Plaisance, Columbian Exposition functioned as an expression of national identity. Hegemonic forces in Chicago and United States at end of nineteenth century shaped imagining of nation, and Exposition served as a powerful tool for their project.2 Robert Rydell asserts that Worlds fairs propagated ideas and values of country's political, financial, corporate, and intellectual leaders and offered these ideas as proper interpretation of social and political reality.3Alan Trachtenberg identifies powerful perpetuators of national as established, propertied, and wealthy elite who aimed to subsume subaltern under banner of 'peace, prosperity, progress and patriotism.'4 Indeed, Chicago business interests and financial leaders who lobbied to bring fair to city elected Exposition's board of directors. In turn, fair's administration used White City to showcase a grand vision of American and human progress.5While operating as mechanisms of hegemony, expressions of national unity like Columbian Exposition nevertheless belie internal contradictions. Lauren Berlant cautions that a national still inherits tensions that exist in national space. Although political legitimacy depends upon the cultural expression of national fantasy, narratives of national identity mask inherent conflict.6Indeed, numerous domestic tensions plagued last decade of nineteenth century. Lingering cultural and economic differences between North and South frustrated post-Reconstruction politics. Rural America engaged in widespread political mobilization as Populist movement gained ground. Meanwhile, labor skirmishes erupted in United States cities; Chicago itself would serve as site of infamous Pullman strike year following Fair. The social climate was further exacerbated by racial anxieties surrounding influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. To top it off, a severe economic depression overcame United States very year of Columbian Exposition.7 Economic instability, racial anxiety, and political uncertainty contributed to a contentious national environment.Frank Ninkovich contends that domestic issues and United States' uncertain role in international arena combined to create significant identity crisis during 1890s. The resulting anxiety took form of hyper-aggressive nationalist public opinion known as jingoism.8 Trachtenberg similarly argues that late nineteenth century elites in business, politics, and culture were working to win hegemony over dissident but divided voices of labor, farmers, immigrants, blacks and women.9 The ruling class during final years of nineteenth century, therefore, fashioned dominant narratives of national identity as a way of dealing with nation's internal tensions. …