“Enough of Being Basely Tearful”: “Glitter and Be Gay” and the Camp Politics of Queer Resistance

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 422-445
Author(s):  
MATTHEW J. JONES
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Leonard Bernstein ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Witch Hunts

AbstractUpon its publication in 1759, Voltaire'sCandide, or The Optimistscandalized Europe. Banned for its blasphemous and politically seditious content, it became asuccès de scandaleand one of the most widely read books of its time. Leonard Bernstein adapted Voltaire's work for the stage in the 1950s. With its emphasis on the improbable, the artificial, and the insouciant,Candidepractically begs for a camp (re)interpretation, and it is just such an analysis I offer here. After outlining camp as social critique, I turn to Cunégonde's aria “Glitter and Be Gay” and trace its path through camp's causeways in two different decades: first, in the United States of the 1950s, a period marked by McCarthy's witch-hunts, Cold War anxieties, intense homophobia, and the composer's personal struggle to accept his homosexuality, and second, in the late 1980s, when singer, songwriter, and AIDS activist Michael Callen (1955–1993) recorded his own camped-up version of “Glitter and Be Gay” for what would become his last musical project, a posthumous double album entitledLegacy(1996). By following Cunégonde's sparkling trail of glitter and gemstones through two historical moments, I demonstrate how camp functions as a tool of queer resistance across the last half of the twentieth century.

scholarly journals The Trumpet of the Swan

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-186
Author(s):  
Karen Ann Donnachie ◽  
Andy Simionato
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Autonomous Robot ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Twitter Account ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Natural Media

This paper will outline the ideation, background and development of the electronic artwork The Trumpet of the Swan (Donnachie & Simionato, 2017) presented by the authors at the Electronic Literature Organisation conference in Porto, Portugal in 2017. The artwork is a custom-coded drawing-robot which automatically inscribes in natural media, every post published from the personal Twitter profile of the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, identified on Twitter as @realDonaldTrump. The machine, which has the appearance reminiscent of a swan, including a broad “body” balanced on two short legs that end in webbed “feet”, is a semi-autonomous robot that writes in a pen, crowned by a long white plume, on a continuous scroll of paper while producing bird-like sounds. The drawing-robot remains permanently in a state of attention and the demonstrated sequence of actions can only be triggered remotely and by the 45th President of the U.S.A. himself (or more precisely, by whomever publishes a new tweet through his Twitter account ‘@realDonaldTrump’). In other words, to borrow a popular phrase taken from twentieth century cold-war propaganda: only the President has the ability to “launch” this artwork which otherwise remains dormant, in waiting.

Altar Call in Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Altar Call ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
International Ministry

This book provides a transnational history of Billy Graham’s revival work in the 1950s, zooming in on his revival meetings in London (1954), Berlin (1954/1960), and New York (1957). It shows how Graham’s international ministry took shape in the context of transatlantic debates about the place and future of religion in public life after the experiences of war and at the onset of the Cold War, and through a constant exchange of people, ideas, and practices. It explores the transnational nature of debates about the religious underpinnings of the “Free World” and sheds new light on the contested relationship between business, consumerism, and religion. In the context of Graham’s revival meetings, ordinary Christians, theologians, ministers, and church leaders in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom discussed, experienced, and came to terms with religious modernization and secular anxieties, Cold War culture, and the rise of consumerism. The transnational connectedness of their political, economic, and spiritual hopes and fears brings a narrative to life that complicates our understanding of the different secularization paths the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany embarked on in the 1950s. During Graham’s altar call in Europe, the contours of a transatlantic revival become visible, even if in the long run it was unable to develop a dynamism that could have sustained this moment in these different national and religious contexts.

España Libre and Its Editors

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-78
Author(s):  
Montse Feu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Diplomatic Recognition ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Franco Dictatorship

España Libre’s editors invigorated the periodical’s proletarian counterculture to both fascism and elitism and sustained an ongoing resistance through times of harsh repression in Spain and Cold War political tensions in the United States. In the 1940s editorials focused on alerting readers about the spread of fascism to the Americas and encouraged fundraising for refugees. By the 1950s, the increasing international diplomatic recognition of the Franco dictatorship disquieted members and the editorials published during that decade were heavily focused on denouncing that recognition. However, by the 1960s the periodical concentrated its efforts on supporting the weakened underground labor opposition in Spain and in coordinating efforts with other political forces. In the 1970s, España Libre published homages to exiles for the antifascist resistance they put forth.

Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan J. Dominy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Southern Literature ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Societal Pressure ◽  
The Cold War

The formalized study of southern literature in the mid-twentieth century is an example of scholars formalizing the study of modernist aesthetics in order to suppress leftist politics and sentiments in literature and art. This formalized, institutional study was initiated in a climate in which intellectuals were under societal pressure, created by the Cold War, to praise literary and artistic production representative of American values. This even in southern literary studies occurred roughly at the same time that the United States sought to extoll the virtues of America’s free, democratic society abroad. In this manner, southern studies and American studies become two sides of the same coin. Intellectuals and writers that promoted American exceptionalism dealt with the rising Civil Rights Movement and the nation’s complicated history with race and poverty by casting the issues as moral rather than political problems that were distinctly southern and could therefore be corrected by drawing on “exceptional” southern values, such as tradition and honor. The result of such maneuvering is that over the course of the twentieth century, “south” becomes more than a geographical identity. Ultimately, “south” becomes a socio-political and cultural identity associated with modern conservatism with no geographical boundaries. Rather than a country divided into south and north, the United States is divided in the twenty-first century into red and blue states. The result of using southern literature to present southern values as appropriate, moderate values for the whole nation during the Cold War is to associate these values with nationalism and conservatism today.

Background in the United States and Great Britain to 1950

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Public ◽  
The 1950S

Throughout the twentieth century, folk music has had many definitions and incarnations in the United States and Great Britain. The public has been most aware of its commercial substance and appeal, with the focus on recording artists and their repertoires, but there has been so much more, including a political agenda, folklore theories, grassroots styles, regional promoters, and discussions on what musical forms—blues, hillbilly, gospel, Anglo-Saxon, pop, singer-songwriters, instrumental and/or vocal, international—should be included. These contrasting and conflicting interpretations were particularly evident during the 1950s. This chapter begins by focusing on Alan Lomax (1915–2002), one of the most active folk music collectors, radio promoters, and organizers during the 1940s. Lomax had a major influence on folk music in both the United States and Great Britain, tying together what had come before and what would follow. The chapter then discusses folk festivals and performers; British folk music, musicians, and trans-Atlantic musical connections; and Carl Sandburg's publication of the The American Songbag in 1927.

scholarly journals Techno-Transatlantic Science and Technology in Relations Between the United States and Europe

Ad Americam ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 89-106
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Zachara
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Technology Development ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transatlantic Cooperation ◽  
Transatlantic History ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Cold War

The article focuses both on account technology as a factor in the twentieth-century relations of the United States and Europe and a view of transatlantic history through the lens of technology. It describes the trajectory of modernization through technology in certain characteristically transatlantic contexts – including the Cold War role, the advancement in military technologies and the international political competition. It demonstrates that technology development in many ways, provides structure for transatlantic cooperation and acting as a force reshaping political relations.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Culture ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Billy Graham ◽  
The Status ◽  
The 1950S

The introduction embeds the revival meetings American evangelist Billy Graham organized in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany in the 1950s in the existing historiography of religious life in the 1950s, America’s spiritual Cold War, and the interplay between religion, consumers, and business culture. It contends that transnational phenomena such as Cold War culture, white middle-class economic aspiration and increasing prosperity, and religious revivalism blended in Graham’s spiritual and ideological offer and explain its attractiveness on both sides of the Atlantic. By introducing the concepts of everyday and lived religion, the introduction argues for a fresh interpretation of the status of religious life and the process of secularization in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. In centering the voices and practices of ministers and ordinary Christians, this new approach makes the contours of a transatlantic revival visible.

Readers and Writers

2020 ◽  
pp. 74-105
Author(s):  
Judith G. Coffin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Book Publishing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
French Intellectuals ◽  
Day By Day

This chapter elaborates how Simone de Beauvoir burst into the world of literary stardom in the 1950s. It begins with Mandarins from 1954, Beauvoir's novel about postwar French intellectuals' political, literary, and ethical debates, and their love lives, which won many readers and gained a blizzard of publicity. It also cites the novels, plays, and philosophical essays on justice, ethics, and morality that Beauvoir has written as an accomplished writer. The chapter talks about Beauvoir's publication of her reflections on her travels through the United States, America Day by Day, which was dedicated to Richard and Ellen Wright. It describes the outcome of Beauvoir's hard work as an epic of postwar existentialism and its attendant anguish, a readable and serious fare that fueled the mid-twentieth-century expansion of book publishing.

Dearest Lenny

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Yoshihara
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Relationship ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Leonard Bernstein ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World

Buried in the massive archives of Leonard Bernstein are many letters to the maestro from two unknown Japanese individuals: Kazuko Amano, who became a loyal fan of Bernstein in 1947, and Kunihiko Hashimoto, who fell deeply in love with Bernstein in 1979 and later came to be professionally involved in the maestro’s work. Using their passionate letters to trace their special relationship with Bernstein, Dearest Lenny explores how Bernstein, a quintessential American in so many ways, became the world maestro who reached and communicated so powerfully across borders. It follows Bernstein’s transformation from an American icon to the world maestro against the backdrop of the changing geopolitics and economy during the second half of the twentieth century. During this period, Japan’s place in the world and its relationship to the United States changed dramatically, which also shaped Bernstein’s relationship to the world and to the two individuals in important ways. In tracing Bernstein’s worldwide reach through the decades, Dearest Lenny looks at many forms of relationships—not only between Bernstein and the two individuals but also between art and life, the United States and the world, culture and commerce, artists and the state, the private and the public, conventions and transgressions, dreams and realities. Amano’s and Hashimoto’s stories provide a unique window into these relationships, as well as the deep, intimate bond each of them built with their beloved maestro.

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