burlesque

(noun)

A genre of variety show emerging in the 1860s and evolving into a a very popular blend of satire, performance art, music hall, and adult entertainment.

Related Terms

  • Dime Museums
  • vaudeville
  • amusement park

Examples of burlesque in the following topics:

  • Cheap Amusements

    • American burlesque is a genre of variety show.
    • Derived from elements of Victorian burlesque and music hall and minstrel shows, burlesque shows in America became popular in the 1860s and evolved to feature ribald comedy elements such as lewd jokes and female striptease.
    • Burlesque gradually lost popularity beginning in the 1940s.
    • Charlie Chaplin, who starred in the 1915 film A Burlesque on Carmen, noted in 1910:
    • By the late 1930s, a social crackdown on burlesque shows began their gradual downfall.
  • Minstrel Shows

    • Minstrel shows originated in the early 1830s as brief burlesques with comic interludes and evolved into a national theatrical art form within the next decade, superseding less accessible genres such as opera for the general populace.
  • Vaudeville

    • Vaudeville had many influences, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary burlesque.
  • Fashion

    • A report in The Times of a 1915 Christmas entertainment for troops stationed in France described a soldier in drag burlesquing feminine flirtatiousness while wearing "short skirts, a hat of Parisian type, and flapper-like hair. "
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