Mae West an icon in black and white

Sifting through previously untapped sources, author Jill Watts unravels the enigmatic life of Mae West, tracing her early years spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and underworld figures, and follows her journey through burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway and, finally, Hollywood, where she quickl...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Watts, Jill
Autres auteurs: Jill Watts
Langue:Undetermined
English
Publié: Oxford,New York Oxford University Press 2001
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Thư viện lưu trữ: Trung tâm Học liệu Trường Đại học Trà Vinh
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Résumé:Sifting through previously untapped sources, author Jill Watts unravels the enigmatic life of Mae West, tracing her early years spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and underworld figures, and follows her journey through burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway and, finally, Hollywood, where she quickly became one of the big screen's most popular--and colorful--stars. Exploring West's penchant for contradiction and her carefully perpetuated paradoxes, Watts convincingly argues that Mae West borrowed heavily from African American culture, music, dance and humor, creating a subversive voice for herself by which she artfully challenged society and its assumptions regarding race, class and gender. Viewing West as a trickster, Watts demonstrates that by appropriating for her character the black tradition of double-speak and "signifying," West also may have hinted at her own African-American ancestry and the phenomenon of a black woman passing for white
Description matérielle:x, 374 p.
ill.
25 cm
ISBN:0195105478
9780195105476