Performing gender in the studio and postmodern musical

Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media - Researching Creative Practice: Terminology, Policy, Models ◽

10.33178/alpha.3.02 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 19-35

Author(s):

Michael Charlton

Keyword(s):

First Century ◽

Marilyn Monroe ◽

Female Roles ◽

Studio System ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Judy Garland ◽

Studio Era ◽

Howard Hawks ◽

Historical Periods ◽

A Performance

This essay explores two distinct historical periods in the Hollywood musical through a Butlerian reading of gender as a performance. The two example films from the studio era, Howard Hawks’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and the restored version of George Cukor’s A Star is Born (1954), are contextualised not only within the studio system but through the constructed star personae of their leads—Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Rob Marshall’s Chicago (2002), the two example films from the twenty first century, are contextualised within a Jamesonian post-modern aesthetic and as examples of the non-studio, non-star filmic text as act of nostalgia. In contrasting these historical periods, the essay posits that the studio musical was, in fact, always already “post-modern” in its fragmentation of narrative in favour of the star performance, which constructs the gendered persona of the star. In addition, it is suggested that the sub-textual subversion of traditional female roles within the studio star performance is in many ways more effectively critical of gender conventions than the intentionally parodic aesthetics of Luhrmann and Marshall.

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Socio-cultural Positioning of Age Identities in Picturebooks

Journal of Literary Education ◽

10.7203/jle.3.17415 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 137

Author(s):

Johari Murray

Keyword(s):

First Century ◽

Biological Phenomenon ◽

Geographic Locations ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

And Gender ◽

Ethnicity And Gender ◽

Cultural Positioning ◽

Social Act ◽

Historical Periods ◽

Complementary Analysis

This study explores literal and metaphorical narrations of age by looking closely at two picturebooks published at the turn of the twenty-first century. The evolutionary Western understanding of the child, childhood and children’s literature is briefly periodized as a tension between pragmatic and philosophical concerns. Representations of age are taken to be embedded in socio-cultural positions that implicate historical periods, geographic locations, and economic structures. Ethnicity and gender are similarly discussed as immanent features. Age is presented as much a biological phenomenon as a performative social act of a given culture. The ideas, feelings and events depicted in each picturebook are approached from a structuralist and a postmodernist perspective with the aim of providing a complementary analysis of child representations in alignment with the adult presence, and not necessarily through the lens of aetonomativity. My analysis points to possible applications of the design of age narrations to current and future literacies.

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Always Lonely: Celebrity, Motherhood, and the Dilemma of Destiny

PMLA ◽

10.1632/pmla.2011.126.4.1110 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 126 (4) ◽

pp. 1110-1117 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Brenda R. Weber

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Harriet Beecher Stowe ◽

First Century ◽

Famous People ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Judy Garland ◽

American Author

Just what is it about fame that so alienates women? or, why is it that famous women often speak of their experience of celebrity as something that is ultimately lonely and a shabby substitute for love? And why are these statements of loneliness in celebrity attenuated for mothers? Whether it is a famous American author of the nineteenth century and mother of seven, Harriet Beecher Stowe; an iconic and volatile star of the mid–twentieth century and mother of three, Judy Garland; or a twenty-first-century reality celebrity and mother of eight, Kate Gosselin, these women suggest that the experiences of fame are isolating and ultimately unsatisfying. To paraphrase Stowe, it is not fame and celebrity that satisfies the heart of the female star; it is the old-fashioned comforts of love. Their combined comments are thus a corrective to fans' implied perception of famous people as happy, when, indeed, their celebrity seems to have alienated them from love. Whether the female celebrity seeks romantic or familial love is not clear, and we would do well to realize that the abstract palliative is actually a culturally imagined comfort that probably has little to do with either these women in particular or stardom more broadly. But the consistent remarks about fame as a condition of loneliness establish a discursive imperative that the famous woman speak of longing for affective completion, in turn suggesting that public ardor cannot satisfy the woman's heart. In other words, fame cannot replace love.

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