Coney Island as a Place of Freedom

Coney Island, for a couple generations, was a place of wonderment, with nothing else even close to comparison in the entire world. Hundreds of thousands of bright shining lights at night, towers that soared into the sky, strange and wondrous things happening all around when least expected, and a hotel in the shape of an elephant were just a few of the many reasons that individuals enjoyed Coney Island. Who would not want to go to a place full of oddities such as this? As an individual who has spent his life as a member of what would be equivalent to the working class during the era of Coney Island, I believe that Coney Island to me, in its day, would have been a place for release and freedom.

In Sadie Frowne's story, I learned that she worked six eleven-hour days per week, with the constant threat of stabbing herself in the finger while sewing, along with harassment from co-workers. According to Sadie, her boss often called her a "stupid animal", and she later adds,"Sometimes in my haste I get my finger caught and the [sewing] needle goes right through it...sometimes a finger has to come off." Although Sadie did not necessarily have a good job, her job was not the worst one either. Boys and young men my age quite often had fairly dangerous jobs in factories, where disease, filth, and generally hazardous conditions existed. It was common to be working under the continuous fear of taking a wrong step and dying, having an arm or leg ripped off, or becoming significantly physically disabled in some way. Being under these types of risks and stress, for sixty hours per week, 3432 hours per year, along with the stresses of life at home and in general, would run any type of person down, and any reasonable person would be looking for something fun or an amusing diversion to give his mind a break from so much stress. I know that I would certainly agree with Frowne's point of view, and see Coney Island as a place of freedom where I could escape all the stresses and difficulties of day-to-day life.

Progressives such as Belle Israel criticized Coney Island because many girls went out to Coney Island to drink and tried their best to get men to buy them drinks. She quotes one individual from Coney Island as saying,"If you haven't got girls, you can't do business! ...The fellows will come if the girls are there" (487). Women would then sometimes end up having sex with the men who had "treated" them to the drinks, purposely or not, and this was a very disturbing behavior to Israels, who viewed this as a form of prostitution. As a progressive, she promoted a more constructive means of amusement, such as dance halls, and that girls should be accompanied by chaperones when going to dance halls. However, supervised dance halls just are not any fun in any way to a young adult. Dance halls were filled with good social etiquette, genteel values, and otherwise predictable human behavior-where is the fun in that? Etiquette and genteel values are actually part of another system of moral values designed to curb human behavior into what a few individuals consider "good moral behavior." Part of Coney Island's lure was the fact that almost anything could happen at any moment. John Kasson, author of Amusing The Million, writes, "Boisterous laughter, frenzied objurgations, frantic cheers, are needed to impress the merriment or wrath or enthusiasm of the crowd" (97). I would view Coney Island-with its constant chaos, loud scenes, and unusual actions a place of freedom to where I could go to completely let go of myself and do whatever I wanted, without worrying about the consequences. Monitored dance halls would make me feel uncomfortable, on guard, and above all-controlled, and I feel that Israel's idea restricts freedom just a little too much, and I don't think that it would appeal to many people. I can agree with Israel because she is correct in that Coney Island did have a negative element, including prostitution and acts similar to it, and I'm sure that she is truthful in saying that prostitution did occur. I think that a better solution would be to find some sort of method to curb how much people drink, such as putting a couple ordinances in place that regulate bars. Prostitution was a problem, but not a large-scale problem, so it should be treated that way. Not everyone participated in the prostitution, and I know that I certainly wouldn't have contributed to the problem, so I would have liked to go to Coney Island to experience complete and total freedom.

I also agree with Simon Patten in that Coney Island is a place of freedom. In The New Basis of Civilization he states, "Instead of restraining impulses and instincts, it [Coney Islands and other amusements] seeks to free the imagination, to stir and spur the desires..." (126). I cannot agree with this statement more. A place that is unlike any other in existence, full of glorious expositions and technology, would stimulate my imagination and help to fill me with zest for life. I know that Coney Island did attract an unpleasant element of drinking and prostitution, but that is not what the majority of individuals used it for. Measures should have been taken to discourage these behaviors, but it is important to remember that the intent of Coney Island was not to attract crime, but to amaze, amuse, and provide the common man with diversion from the grind of daily life. It is not even the drinking that is causing this decline in values-it is the excessive drinking to the point where one cannot control himself that is causing the unpleasant element. I believe that, like Patten argued, Coney Island was an end product of the average American worker's hands. No direct action by the average worker created the park, but each individual's little job-sweeping the floors, slaughtering the pigs, sewing the clothes-put just that little bit more into the economy and finally put enough into it that a grand end product like Coney Island was produced, available to anyone who wanted to enjoy it, and without the social and moral restrictions imposed on it by those of higher social class, like was seen in everyday city and work life.

Finally, I agree with John Kasson's overarching view that Coney Island was a place of fun for the working class. In Amusing The Million, Kasson called Coney Island,"...an invitation to collective gaiety and release. Coney Island plunged visitors into a powerful kinesthetic experience that, like the surf itself, overturned conventional restraints, washed away everyday concerns, buoyed and buffeted participants as they submitted to its sway" (49). Kasson gives a specific description of what was going on that made Coney Island seem so freeing: "Midgets, giants, fat ladies, and ape-men were both stigmatized and honored as freaks. They fascinated spectators in the way they displayed themselves openly as exceptions to the rules of the conventional world" (Kasson 50). Things happened to women that were very shocking in the day of Coney: "Various amusements contrived to lift women's skirts and reveal their legs and underclothing, while numerous others provided opportunities for intimate physical contact" (Kasson 42). Kasson describes movement in city-life:"[participants in New York's Easter parade] maintained a strong situational presence and sense of propriety that restrained self-dramatizing gestures or intense personal interaction" (43) and then contrasts that rigid movement with movement on Coney Island: "...bathers call explicit attention to the freedom Coney Island permitted by striking broad, dramatic poses and exuberantly mugging for the camera. Lifting and supporting one another, arms and bodies interlinked, they display a sense of solidarity and mutual pleasure in the release of social restraints" (46). From these examples, I can only conclude that Coney Island is a place of freedom for the working class. All day long and for many hours per week and year, working class individuals have to conform to societal norms they don't necessarily like. Now, they have a place to go to where they can do, act, and say whatever they want, wherever they want, however they want, and whenever they want. What could feel more freeing to an individual than that?

I think that I have clearly shown with my examples that Coney Island was, in my view, a place of freedom, and not one of control. It did have some negative elements to it, but everything has some sort of disadvantage, and we should look at Coney Island's many advantages and good sides, rather than focusing on the fewer bad ones. In the end, Coney Island provided that release and freedom for the individual to do whatever it is that he wanted-which kept this individual from doing whatever it is he wanted in the streets of the city, and possibly committing crimes instead. I think it is a good thing that Americans in the early 1900's had this park for freedom, and I think it's good that we have many amusement parks in which to enjoy our freedom today.