Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American CultureBurlesque was a cultural threat, Allen argues, because it inverted the "normal" world of middle-class social relations and transgressed norms of "proper" feminine behavior and appearance. Initially playing to respectable middle-class audiences, burlesque was quickly relegated to the shadow-world of working-class male leisure. In this process the burlesque performer "lost" her voice, as burlesque increasingly revolved around the display of her body. Locating burlesque within the context of both the social transformation of American theater and its patterns of gender representation, Allen concludes that burlesque represents a fascinating example of the potential transgressiveness of popular entertainment forms, as well as the strategies by which they have been contained and their threats defused. |
Contents
The playbill for Ixion | 4 |
The Intelligibility of Burlesque | 23 |
The Historical Contexts of Burlesque | 43 |
Copyright | |
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American Burlesque American theater appeared Astor Place audience ballet Barnum Barnum's American Museum beauty became Black Crook blackface blonde Bon-Ton Boston bourgeois Bowery Broadway burlesque performer burlesque theaters burlesque troupes burlesque's called carnival century City comic concert saloon cooch dancer costumes culture dance discourse dramatic dress exhibition female minstrel feminine sexual films grotesque High Rollers High Rollers Extravaganza History of Burlesque Howells humor Ibid inversion Ixion Keith legitimate theater lesque Library of Congress living pictures Logan Lydia Thompson male Menken middle-class Minsky Minsky's Burlesque minstrel show minstrelsy moral museum Mutoscope Niblo's onstage opera P. T. Barnum patrons Photographs Division play pleasure police popular entertainment Prints and Photographs production prostitution riot role season sexual display show business social songs street striptease theatrical Thompsonian burlesque tion tour transgressive variety vaudeville Weber and Fields White woman women Wood's working-class York Clipper York Stage Ziegfeld