Bound for controversy, this study admirably attempts to cross from the academy to popular culture, but theory here acts less...
An elaborate theory by Garber (English/Harvard Univ.), insisting that the transvestite is at the elusive heart of Western culture.
In a century-sweeping book, Garber applies current critical thought to the phenomenon of "cross-dressing'' in fact and fiction, high culture and low. Arguing that gender is culturally constructed, she contends that cross-dressing challenges the binary categories of male and female as well as the concept of category itself. It signals "cultural, social or aesthetic dissonances.'' Garber argues that critics have looked "through,'' not "at,'' the transvestite, failing to see what is a Freudian "primal scene.'' Defined here again and again, the transvestite is "the space of desire,'' "a space of possibility,'' a "third.'' Garber plays out her theory in detailed analyses of countless transvestite figures- -Shakespearean heroines, Tootsie, Lawrence of Arabia, M. Butterfly, Madonna, and Laurence Olivier (here portrayed at death as "the triumphant transvestite''). There is no shortage of provocative speculation and information, some worth considering and some—like that about transvestite magazines and the politics of transsexual surgery—not. Unfortunately, the sub-flooring of French critical terms sets Garber's argument on a slippery slope ending up too often in a theoretical mire where "the transvestite is both a signifier and that which signifies the undecidability of signification.'' A discussion of Elizabethan dress codes and costuming concludes with the typically reductive claim that "there is no ground of Shakespeare that is not already cross-dressed.'' Also, when critical terms are rampantly applied—Elvis and Liberace, for instance, labeled, like Peter Pan, "changeling boys''—they quickly lose impact.
Bound for controversy, this study admirably attempts to cross from the academy to popular culture, but theory here acts less as a window onto cultural evolution than as a screen drawing attention its own overwrought, repetitive pattern.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-415-90072-7
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991
A puzzling and unconventional excursion into art history by an unexpected author. In an unusual change of pace after Oswald's Tale (p. 363), Mailer sets out to make the legendary Picasso "real." In an admittedly personal interpretation of his life, psyche, and art, Mailer focuses on the artist's early years. Presumably, he feels that Picasso's greatest achievements as a painter came out of the period from the turn of the century to the end of WW I. It is also one of the most seductive periods in French cultural history and the era of his involvement with Fernande Olivier, who emerges as the heroine of Mailer's tale. We witness the events of Picasso's early career primarily through the eyes of this jilted lover whose two memoirs are quoted from extensively. Mailer lavishes an unseemly amount of attention on Oiivier, subjecting us to the lurid details of her coming of age, brutal marriage, and sexual awakening. She functions, too, as a masturbatory diversion (of which there are many here) for the author: "With Fernande, he [Picasso] had entered the essential ambiguity of deep sex, where one's masculinity or femininity is forever turning into its opposite, so that a phallus, once implanted in a vagina, can become more aware of the vagina than its own phallitude. . . ." While Mailer admits—correctly—that he makes no contributions to the already vast Picasso scholarship, the author does offer a number of peculiar and unconvincing explanations for shifts in the aesthetic direction of Picasso's work. What "altered the ground of cubism altogether," for example, and led Picasso to "never feel respect for himself again" was an incident in which he and Guillaume Apollinaire were wrongly implicated in a plot to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Mailer's biography, following in the footsteps of Arianna Huffington's notorious Picasso: Creator and Destroyer, a work Mailer unabashedly admires, emphasizes gossip and sex and leaves you wondering, "So what?"
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87113-608-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In her first book for adults, artist and children's author Ringgold tells an occasionally engaging but flawed account of her very full life. Ringgold has lived through much, suffered some, and occasionally hobnobbed with the great. Moving from the poorer Valley to Harlem's Sugar Hill, where she lived for most of her life, Ringgold recalls seeing Joe Louis before and after a big fight and listening to fledgling jazz musician Miles Davis. But these glimpses of Harlem high life are fleeting, while more of the work is focused on Ringgold's relationships, her activism, and her art. Ringgold began seriously studying art in college, and throughout her lifewhile teaching to help support her first husband, a jazz musician; after their divorce, as a single mothershe remained devoted to her work. She progressed from Impressionist-inspired paintings to protest art, African- type masks, children's books, and her trademark story quilts. In fact, the book often feels like a catalogue of Ringgold's artwork, divided by vignettes from her life. These are told with candor (and some complaining): her difficult relationship with her daughters, for example, or her inability to find acceptance as a black woman artist in either the white art establishment or in the male-dominated black artists' community. On the other hand, the experiences she recalls less vividly are suffused with a rosy glow. Ultimately, the book lacks of coherence. The story doesn't progress chronologically, but folds backward on itself again and again, unfocused and repetitive. And there is a YA flavor to the undertaking, as though Ringgold had managed to move up from children's stories but not quite to the level of her intended audience. A fine effort, but Ringgold's art speaks louder than her words. (photos and color illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8212-2071-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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