Linda S. Kauffman turns the pornography debate on its head with this audacious analysis of recent taboo-shattering fiction; film; and performance art. Investigating the role of fantasy in art; politics; and popular culture; she shows how technological advances in medicine and science (magnetic resonance imaging; computers; and telecommunications) have profoundly altered our concepts of the human body. Cyberspace is producing new forms of identity and subjectivity. The novelists; filmmakers; and performers in Bad Girls and Sick Boys are the interpreters of these brave new worlds; cartographers who are busy mapping the fin-de-millennium environment that already envelops us.Bad Girls and Sick Boys offers a vital and entertaining tour of the current cultural landscape. Kauffman boldly connects the dots between the radical artists who shatter taboos and challenge legal and aesthetic conventions. She links writers like John Hawkes and Robert Coover to Kathy Acker and William Vollmann; filmmakers like Ngozi Onwurah and Isaac Julien to Brian De Palma and Gus Van Sant; and performers like Carolee Schneemann and Annie Sprinkle to the visual arts. Kauffmans lively interviews with J. G. Ballard; David Cronenberg; Bob Flanagan; and Orlan add an extraordinary dimension to her timely and convincing argument.
#1491097 in eBooks 1999-09-30 1999-09-30File Name: B003AU4ELS
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Banet-Weiser is successful in arguing for the importance of the beauty pageant as a site for cultural workBy Tova JohnsonWith The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity. Sarah Banet-Weiser takes scholars to task for not treating beauty pageants with the intellectual attention they deserve. Beauty pageants. she argues. are far from the anachronistic. anti-feminist. vapid cultural spectacles that many scholars perceive them to be; in fact. they articulate complex notions of national identity and womanhood. mixing liberal feminist ideology with traditional norms of femininity.Banet-Weiser employs interviews with pageant contestants and officials. cultural criticism. and ethnographic research to interrogate the ways in which race. ethnicity. and disability status intersect with constructions of femininity and nationhood on the pageant stage. Pageant contestants must perform feminine respectability and ldquo;typicality.rdquo; constructs aligned with white femininity; any difference from the white. heterosexual. able-bodied. feminine norm is muted. Vanessa Williams. the first Black Miss America. who lost her crown in 1984 after nude photos of her were published in Penthouse magazine. and Heather Whitestone. the 1995 pageant winner whose deafness was downplayed on the pageant stage and circuit. support Banet-Weiserrsquo;s arguments.Although compelling. Banet-Weiserrsquo;s thesis suffers from a curious lack of attention to the evening gown portion of the Miss America pageant as she focuses almost exclusively on the swimsuit. talent. and interview segments. She also fails to adequately extend her discussion of pageants beyond the Miss America competition. As she repeatedly emphasizes how Miss America is different from other beauty pageants. she undermines any effort to generalize her arguments to beauty pageants as a whole.Despite the weaknesses in Banet-Weiserrsquo;s analysis. she is ultimately successful in arguing for the importance of the beauty pageant as a site for cultural work. She reminds us that while beauty pageants and other popular culture forms may seem simplistic on their surface. they encompass. articulate. and enact our complex notions of race. gender. class. and national identity. As such. beauty pageants are worthy of serious intellectual attention. Readers interested in cultural studies. popular culture. consumer culture. race. and womenrsquo;s and gender studies. will find this work especially appealing.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Good book.By Ferne D. SpenceFun and informative book on beauty pageants that shows another dimension to the froth of pageantry.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Is "whiteness" the new pink?By VinceThe Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity. written by Sarah Banet-Weiser. focuses on the social issues and concerns. such as race. disability. objectifying the womanrsquo;s body. and intellectual attention. involved with the American tradition of beauty pageants. After performing ethnographic research and interviews with contestants and officials. Banet-Weiser breaks down the famous Miss America pageant and gives an outstanding insight to the swimsuit. talent. and interview portions of the competition. However. her analysis is sometimes irrelevant and unreasonable when it comes to the topics of culture and ethnicity. In the chapter ldquo;If You Were a Color. What Color Would You Be?rdquo;. which discusses the importance of the interview section of the pageant. Banet-Weiser states ldquo;What is also interesting it consider is whether this question is ever asked of a black contestant.rdquo; She continues to explain how this question subliminally brings up the topic of race because it assumes ldquo;whitenessrdquo; is normal. I personally feel the analysis here is opinionated and uncalled for. Granted. the majority of Miss America participants are Caucasian. I hardly believe that in todayrsquo;s society people would consider white skin tones as the norm. As a whole. though. I found this book to be well- informed and intriguing. I am personally doing an ethnography project and choose to read Banet-Weiserrsquo;s The Most Beautiful Girl in the World for some intuition and understanding of the beauty pageant culture. This book gave me reliable and useful information that I will be able to use in further research and interviews. Other recommended works written by Banet-Weiser include. Kids Rule!:Nickelodeon and Consumer Censorship and Authentic(TM): The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture.
