Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.21 (661 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 081357482X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2018-01-18 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Questioning the assumption that cross-dressing women were automatically viewed as transgressive, she finds that these figures were popularly regarded as wholesome and regularly appeared onscreen in the 1910s, thus lending greater respectability to the fledgling film industry. . Horak also explores how and why this perception of cross-dressed women began to change in the 1920s and early 1930s, examining how cinema played a pivotal part in the representation of lesbian identity. What few modern viewers realize, however, is that these seemingly daring performances of the 1930s actually came at the tail end of a long wave of gender-bending films that included more than 400 movies featuring women dressed as men. Laura Horak spent a decade scouring film archives worldwide, looking at American films made between 1908 and 1934, and what she discovered could revolutionize our understanding of gender roles in the early twentieth century. Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn all made lasting impressions
Three Stars Bonnie De Clark good information based upon a historical review but not an easy read. It could have been better written.
"Horak has produced a meticulously researched, astutely argued, and highly readable text … her use of archival materials is impeccable and her filmic and historical analyses clearly display a nuanced understanding of her topic."