| This dissertation is a historical and conceptual project that examines the performance of fire at Coney Island's enclosed amusement parks at the turn-of-the-twentieth century. The performance of fire includes staged exhibits of fire-based disaster spectacles and real fires that plague Coney Island's history. While Coney Island placed fire in the center of its stage, fire has continuously burned its own bridge, destroying the producer who wants to make fire the star of his show. The real conflagrations at Coney Island history insert what precisely was missing from these staged performances: ephemerality, unpredictability, and newness of the present that serve as metaphors for both fire and for the development of the metropolis and the advent of modernity.;The fire-based spectacles explored in detail, "Fighting the Flames" and "Fire and Flames," staged the burning of a tenement-looking building, providing spectators with disaster that was thrilling yet benign. To understand the social, cultural, and performative implications of the fascinating and telling cultural phenomenon of fire-based disaster spectacles, this dissertation elaborates the histories of the "actors" (i.e., fire fighters) and the "set" (i.e. the urban order and fire) of these performances. This project examines the ways that the "real-world" phenomena of fire fighters and fire can be interpreted as spectacular entertainment while the "staged" performances of fire-based disaster spectacles claim to be "real," thereby blurring the division between staged representations and the real world.;The fire-based disaster spectacles of Fire and Flames (Luna Park) and Fighting the Flames (Dreamland) were the most popular exhibits at their respective amusement parks in the 1904 and 1905 season. These exhibits provide insight into urbanites' growing anxieties surrounding the influx of immigration, the growth of the metropolis, and the advent of modernity. This dissertation contributes the concept of "elemental performativity" to theorize what these exhibits "brought into being" in their historic and cultural specificity. |
