Customer Reviews

Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability (Theories of Representation and Difference)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is fascinating and compelling to read. I am thankful to Patricia White for doing all this research. I can't wait to watch these films.

applicable to literary theory as well. so well written, especially for a scholarly book! don't miss the conclusion, where you will be blown away. and the intense reading of "all about eve" will take your breath away.

This book is good when it covers new ground, but can be dull and didactic when it isn't. Like many LGBT books one has to go through the standard regurgitations of Foucault, Sedgwick, and even a few shaky analogies to the case histories of Freud to get to the author's points, which are often steeped in jargon. And by the time it is set aside there isn't much; "The Haunting" is the only one of the films and icons that gets a "full" treatment, a blow by blow interpretation of the film's "lesbian" (as defined by code era Hollywood) symbols and imagery. Often the author writes up enough on a film to note a particular favored icon and drops it. The woman's film of the 30-40's she rightly argues encompasses lesbian desire and imagery, but the choices are suited to the author's tastes: five Bette Davis films (NOT including "Dark Victory" and its near overt homoeroticism?) but a few measly paragraphs about "Mildred Pierce," a pondering of "Stella Dallas," and that's it. I found myself wondering how broad the author's knowledge of early cinema is. In an earlier chapter discussing classic Hollywood images in gay art, the author wonders why a queer artist chooses to superimpose a picture of herself helping Linda Darnell (just because Darnell is not a gay icon?) tie a tie, appearing not to know that there is just such a scene in one of Darnell's early films. She has a rigid canon borrowed from past authors and, deeply talented as she is, seems unwilling to step out of it. This book was 3.5 stars good when it could have been brilliant...