As Lawrence Levine tracks in his book Highbrow Lowbrow:
The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, the
rich wanted their cultural institutions—as well as their
social institutions—to match Europe's, seen from across
the Atlantic as the benchmark by 19th-century Americans.1 They
moved to create a respectful air around what was once popular
entertainment enjoyed by all. The president of the New
York Philharmonic, George Templeton Strong, began his active
campaign against audience unruliness in 1870, and conductor
Theodore Thomas would humiliate noisy audience members
and even started barring them from entering the concert
hall if they were late, at least until the first selection
was over.2 Levine
notes that by the turn of the century American audiences
are considered more polite than European audiences,
to the chagrin of many.3
This need to control seeped into the art world as well;
the Metropolitan Museum of Art refused to allow a plumber
in overalls to enter the museum on a weekday afternoon, angering
some newspapers in the city and fueling such headlines as
"Sober Workman Has to Leave Art Galleries" (note the assumption that if a working man were barred, it was probably because he was drunk); "Art for
the Well Dressed"; "Sensitive and Refined Plumber Affronted."4 Until 1891 the museum
remained closed on Sunday, shutting out workers who might
have been able to enjoy the collection on their day off.5
Outcault mocked upper-class fascination with Europe during
the Yellow Kid's triumphal trip around the world beginning
in 1897, with text supplied by Rudolph Block and Edward Townsend, his collaborator on McFadden's Flats.
Although the series highlighted the follies of the rich,
the critique lacked the bite present in cartoons set in the
New York City, where readers could see impoverished living
conditions in comparison with the wealthy; the comic slipped
further away from its grounding in urban tensions, perhaps because the cartoon was striving
to reach a wider audience through the stunt.6 Around
the World with the Yellow Kid showed the Kid visit England,
where he schmoozed with royalty; Scotland; Ireland; France;
Spain; Switzerland; Italy; Germany; and Egypt, in a broad
farce that made fun of European institutions and stereotyped
countries' inhabitants. While Block or Townsend wrote the text for the
Around the World series, Outcault himself was likely the
author of the Yellow Kid Diary entries written during the
same period. Probably the height of the Around the World scenarios
was "Mickey and His Friends Hobnob with Royalty," (January
31, 1897), which shows the crowned Kid amidst a scene of
debauchery in the throne room; and "In the Louvre—The
Yellow Kid Takes in the Masterpieces of Art," which once
again presents a nightmarish scene for elite New Yorkers.
The Yellow Kid brandishes a dripping palette in the famed
museum, while other urchins are copying paintings very near
the actual painting. At the top, a kid has burst through
a painting. In the crowd are several upper-class pedestrians,
a couple of whom look concerned, but many of whom laugh at
the kids' antics. The book "How to Talk French" pokes
out of one kid's pocket, and Venus de Milo, the obvious
sign of high culture, bemoans "If I had my arms I would
spank some of these kids."
1 Beckert, Sven. The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 50.
2 Levine, Lawrence W. Highbrow Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1988. 186-187
3 Levine 194.
4 Levine 185.
5 Beckert 268.
Bill. Introduction. R. F. Outcault's The Yellow Kid: A Centennial Celebration of the Kid Who Started the Comics. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1995. 78. Editors had high hopes for increased sales, but tehre was no increase in middle-class subscriptions—readers just picked up the newspaper at newstands.