Rising Star, Dandyism, Gender, and the Performance in the Fin De Siecle [Anglais] [Broché]

Garelick (comparative literature, Univ. of Colorado) finds the birth of the modern celebrity in the "dandy" of 19th-century France and England. From Mallarme to Madonna, Oscar Wilde to Jackie O, Balzac to the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, the self-constructed cult personality figures of the past two centuries share many of the same traits. When the cultural tradition of the dandy merged with the erotic icon of the female stage performer, the modern star was born. Electronic mass-media only served to further distance the performer from the audience and the world in general. The richly annotated title's somewhat narrow, albeit interesting, focus makes this purchase more suitable for academic libraries, especially those collecting in the fields of entertainment, the arts, and cultural studies.?Jeffery Ingram, Newport P.L., Ore.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"Original and indeed fascinating.... Intelligently argued and elegantly written." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Rising Star is gracefully and clearly written, thoroughly researched, and copiously documented. . . . By showing the affinities between nineteenth-century French culture and our own, Garelick sheds provocative new light on both.

Celebrity personalities, who reign over much of our cultural landscape, owe their fame not to specific deeds but to the ability to project a distinct personal image, to create an icon of the self. Rising Star is a fascinating look at the roots of this particular form of celebrity. Here Rhonda Garelick locates a prototype of the star personality in the dandies and aesthete literary figures of the nineteenth century, including Beau Brummell, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Oscar Wilde, and explores their peculiarly charged relationship with women and performance.

When fin-de-siècle aesthetes turned their attention to the new, "feminized" spectacle of mass culture, Garelick argues, they found a disturbing female counterpart to their own highly staged personae. She examines the concept of the broadcasted self-image in literary works as well as in such unwritten cultural texts as the choreography and films of dancer Loie Fuller, the industrialized spectacles of European World Fairs, and the cultural performances taking place today in fields ranging from entertainment to the academy. Recent dandy-like figures such as the artist formerly known as Prince, Madonna, Jacques Derrida, and Jackie O. all share a legacy provided by the encounter between "high" and early mass culture. Garelick's analysis of this encounter covers a wide range of topics, from the gender complexity of the European male dandy and the mechanization of the female body to Orientalist performance, the origins of cinema, and the emergence of "crowd" theory and mass politics.

Celebrity personalities, who reign over much of our cultural landscape, owe their fame not to deeds but the ability to project a distinct personal image, an icon of the self. Author Rhonda Garelick locates a prototype of the star personality in the dandies and aesthete literary figures of the 19th century, such as Beau Brummel and Oscar Wilde, comparing them with Prince, Madonna, Jackie O. and other dandy-like figures of today. 19 photos. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"A wonderfully written book that joins extensive and solid research with imaginative interpretation. Rhonda Garelick makes highly intelligent use of contemporary cultural critique, materials on queer performance, commodity merchandising, and interpretive mediation. I was fully engaged, entertained, and enlightened."--Mary Ann Caws, author of The Art of Interference and The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter

Rhonda K. Garelick is Assistant Professor of French at Connecticut College. She has written on European literature, mass culture, female performance, and modern dance. She is currently writing a book on the dancer Loie Fuller. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.