From Mae to Madonna
From Mae to Madonna

Author: June Sochen

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-07-11

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0813149800

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Entertainers were the first group of successful women to capture the public eye, taking to the stage in vaudeville and film and redefining their place in society. June Sochen introduces the white, African American, and Latina women who danced on Broadway, fell on bananas in silent films, and wisecracked in smoky clubs, as well as the modern icons of today's movies and popular music. S ochen considers such women as Mae West, Bette Davis, Shirley Temple, Lucille Ball, and Mary Tyler Moore to discover what show business did for them and what they did for the world of entertainment. She uses the life of 30s and 40s Latina star Lupe Velez as a case study of the roles available to Latinas in popular culture. She then contrasts her story with that of the African American action star Pam Grier to demonstrate the old and new ways minority women are portrayed in popular culture. From Mae to Madonna places each woman within the context of her time and talks about her relationship with dominant female stereotypes. Sochen discusses women's roles as Mary, Eve, and Lilith and asks thought-provoking questions. Why did the Depression give women movie stars so many important roles while the so-called feminist 1970s did not? Why has television been a congenial venue for women comics while film has not? In examining how entertainers worked within or transformed particular genres and how their personal and public lives affected their careers, From Mae to Madonna casts the spotlight on a series of remarkable women and their dramatic effect on America's popular culture.

Guilty Pleasures
Guilty Pleasures

Author: Pamela Robertson

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780822317487

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Using detailed studies of stars such as Mae West, Joan Crawford and Madonna, Guilty Pleasures examines the tradition of feminist camp - a female form of aestheticism related to masquerade and rooted in burlesque, parallel but different to gay male camp.

From Hegel to Madonna
From Hegel to Madonna

Author: Robert Miklitsch

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1998-02-13

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 143841305X

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From Hegel to Madonna presents a genealogical survey of the discourses of negation and affirmation associated with the work of Hegel, Adorno, Deleuze, and Guattari; then, rotating from the philosophical to the political-economic axis, turns to the problem of a general economy of "commodity-fetishism." Drawing on the work of Marx and Freud, Miklitsch mobilizes a new, renewed understanding of "commodity fetishism"--what he calls the commodity-body-sign--in order to examine received notions of consumption and commodification. The aim is to envision a dialectical mode of critique, at once critical and affirmative, that can account for the cultural contradictions of late capitalism. The author also analyzes the phenomenon of Madonna Studies, reading the interest in the pop star as a sign of the academic times, a symptomatic figure not only of cultural studies in all its celebratory, cultural-populist excess but of a critical discourse responsive to postmodern culture in all its politically complex mutability.

Calixthe Beyala
Calixthe Beyala

Author: Nicki Hitchcott

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1846310288

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The most successful female writer from Francophone Africa, Calixthe Beyala occupies an unusual place in French literary and popular culture. Her novels are bestsellers and she appears regularly on French television, yet a conviction for plagiarism has tarnished her reputation. Thus, she is both an “authentic” African author and a proven literary “fake.” In Calixthe Beyala, Nicki Hitchcott considers representations of Beyala in the media, critical responses to her writing, and Beyala’s efforts to position herself as a champion of women’s rights. Hitchcott pays equal attention to Beyala’s novels, tracing their explorations of the role of migration in the creation of personal identity.

Madonna as Postmodern Myth
Madonna as Postmodern Myth

Author: Georges-Claude Guilbert

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-10-02

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0786480718

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Madonna has long been accepted as a pop culture icon, but this text postulates a greater cultural importance by analyzing her as a postmodern myth. This work examines how Madonna methodically discovered and constructed herself (often rewriting her past), the nature and extent of her ambition and the means she used to reach her goals. It also details the way in which she organized her own cult (borrowing from the gay community), devised her artistic output, and cunningly targeted different audiences. It also studies the fundamental contradiction--virgin or vamp? saint or prostitute?--that fuels Madonna's career and describes how Madonna reflects today's society, its contradictions and its attitudes toward sexuality and religion.

An Intimate Affair
An Intimate Affair

Author: Jill Fields

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2007-07-02

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 0520252616

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Presents the history of twentieth-century lingerie. This book examines the ways cultural meanings are orchestrated by the 'fashion-industrial complex, ' and the ways in which individuals and groups embrace, reject, or derive meaning from these everyday, yet significant, intimate articles of clothing.