01648nam a2200277Ia 4500 TVU_12843 210423s9999 xx 000 0 und d 0195105478 9780195105476 eng 791.43028 J309 Watts, Jill Mae West an icon in black and white Jill Watts Oxford,New York Oxford University Press 2001 x, 374 p. ill. 25 cm 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 West; Mae; Motion picture actors and actresses Jill Watts Trung tâm Học liệu Trường Đại học Trà Vinh