Culture of Brooklyn
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Brooklyn has played a major role in various aspects of American culture including literature, cinema and theater as well as being home to the Brooklyn Academy of Music and to the second largest public art collection in the United States which is housed in the Brooklyn Museum.
Literature
In 1930, poet
Betty Smith's 1943 book
There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly...survives without sun, water, and seemingly earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.
— A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Introduction
More recently, Brooklyn-born author
Film
Brooklyn has played a key role in multiple films of various
One iconic Brooklyn film is 1945's A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, based on Betty Smith's novel of the same name. It was the first film directed by Greek-American director Elia Kazan, starring James Dunn (who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), Dorothy McGuire, Joan Blondell, and Peggy Ann Garner (who won the Academy Juvenile Award). Around that time other Hollywood films also depicted Brooklyn of that era and milieu, like the dark comedy Arsenic and Old Lace.
In the late 1980s, African-American communities in Brooklyn achieved a new cultural prominence with the films of
The nostalgic 2005 film
Other films set in Brooklyn include Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn Castle and Brooklyn Matters.
Television
Brooklyn has been the setting for a variety of television shows, including the 1950s era Honeymooners starring Jackie Gleason, and the 1970s sitcom, Welcome Back, Kotter, starring Gabe Kaplan. In the 1980s, The Cosby Show was set in a Brooklyn Heights brownstone. In the 1990s, Brooklyn Bridge (about a Jewish American family living in Brooklyn in the middle 1950s) starring Marion Ross aired on CBS.
In the 2010s, a number of shows focused on young, primarily white people in gentrified areas like Williamsburg, including Girls on HBO and 2 Broke Girls on CBS, as well as culturally mixed shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine on NBC.
Additionally, many shows are filmed in Brooklyn even if they are not set there, such as The Good Wife (set in Chicago) and Boardwalk Empire (set in Atlantic City).
Theater
The
Lynn Nottage's 1995 play Crumbs from the Table of Joy is set in post-World War II Brooklyn and deals with the hopes and frustrations of an African American family recently arrived from Florida. Neil Simon's 1983 play Brighton Beach Memoirs is set in 1937 Brooklyn.
Music
Brooklyn has a thriving contemporary classical music scene led by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, now over 150 years old.[3]
The Brooklyn Jazz Hall of Fame and Museum is located in Brooklyn.
Many pioneers and icons of
Punk rock pioneers like Patti Smith and The Shirts were based in Brooklyn in the 1970s. Around the turn of the millennium, North Brooklyn neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick developed a major rock scene that incubated bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Grizzly Bear, TV on the Radio and the Dirty Projectors.
In the early 2000s the Williamsburg neighborhood became a center of electroclash with bands like Fischerspooner and promoter Larry Tee making a local breakthrough with the scene via his Berliniamsburg party at the Luxx Club and the Electroclash Festival in 2001.[4]
The late 2010s saw a resurgence in the borough’s rap scene with the emergence of Brooklyn drill, a fusion of Chicago and UK drill music. Several of the scene’s pioneers, most notably Pop Smoke, are from the southeastern sections of the Brooklyn. The genre has since spread throughout the city and is especially popular with local born black and Latin youth.
Art
The
Architecture
There are a wide array of architectural styles represented in Brooklyn. The architectural eras and styles range from original
Gallery
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DeWitt Clinton memorial at Green-Wood Cemetery
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Cartonnage of Nespanetjerenpere at the Brooklyn Museum
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Desdemona Cursed by her Father, Eugène Delacroix
References
- ISBN 978-0-8131-8764-8.
- ^ "Spike Lee on Why Brooklyn Has a Starring Role in His Films". Marriott Bonvoy Traveler. 2015-12-04. Retrieved 2022-02-20.
- ^ Bartolomeo, Joan. "One of the Nation's Groundbreaking Music Ensembles". Brooklyn Tourism and Visitors Center. Archived from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 26 June 2011.
- ^ "Electroclash 2001 Festival: Bringing Innovative Music to NYC". FREEwilliamsburg, Issue 19, 2001. October 2001. Retrieved 26 August 2016.[permanent dead link]