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The highest-rated network program during its first three seasons,
comedy-variety show Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (NBC, 1968-1973)
remains an often overlooked and underrated innovator of American
television history. Audiences of all kinds - old and young, square
and hip, black and white, straight and queer - watched Laugh-In,
whose campy, anti-establishment aesthetic mocked other tepid and
serious popular shows. In Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, author Ken
Feil presents the first scholarly investigation of the series whose
suggestive catch-phrases ""sock it to me,"" ""look that up in your
Funk'n'Wagnalls,"" and ""here comes the judge"" became part of pop
culture history. In four chapters, Feil explores Laugh-In's
newness, sophisticated style, irreverence, and broad appeal. First,
he considers the show's indulgence of ""bad taste"" through a
strategy of deliberate ambiguity that allowed audiences to enjoy
countercultural, anti-establishment transgression and,
reassuringly, conveyed the sense that it represented the
establishment's investment in containing such defiant delights.
Feil considers Laugh-In's camp, otherness, and ""open secrets"" as
well as the show's conflicted positions on the ""private"" issues
of taste, sexuality, lifestyle, and politics. Sexual swingers,
stoned hippies, empowered African Americans, feminists, and
flamboyantly ""nellie"" men all filled Laugh-In's routine roster,
embodied by cast members Jo Anne Worley, Lily Tomlin, Chelsea
Brown, Alan Sues, Johnny Brown, and Judy Carne, along with regular
guests Flip Wilson, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tiny Tim. Related to these
icons, Laugh-In reflected on hotly politicized current events:
militarism in Vietnam, racist discrimination in the U.S., Civil
Rights and Black Power, birth control and sex, feminism, and gay
liberation. In its playful put-ons of the establishment, parade of
countercultural types and tastes, and vacillation between
identification and repulsion, Feil argues that Laugh-In's
intentional ambiguity was part and parcel of its inventiveness and
commercial prosperity. Fans of the show as well as readers
interested in American television and pop culture history will
enjoy this insightful look at Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.
Catalyzed by her notoriously "dirty," fabulously successful
bestseller Valley of the Dolls, the "Jackie Susann Sixties" brimmed
with camp comedy that now permeates contemporary celebrations of
the author, from Pee-wee's Playhouse to RuPaul's Drag Race and Lee
Daniels's Star. First christened "camp" by Gloria Steinem in an
excoriating review of Valley of the Dolls and compounded by the
publishing juggernauts The Love Machine (1969), Once Is Not Enough
(1973), and Dolores (1976), the comedy of Jackie Susann illuminated
conflicting positions about gender, sexuality, and aesthetic value.
Through a writing formula that Ken Feil calls sleazy realism,
Susann veers from gossip to confession and devises comedies of bad
manners spun from real celebrities whose occasionally queer and
always outre antics clashed with their "official" personas, the
popular genres they were famous for, and the narrow, normative
constructions of identity and reality shaped by the culture
industry. Susann's promotional appearances led to another comedy of
bad manners, this one populated with critics alternately horrified
and delighted by an upstart woman vulgarian barging into the male
literary firmament, and which continues to inspire fascination for
the author, her novels, and their legendarily bad film adaptations.
Catalyzed by her notoriously "dirty," fabulously successful
bestseller Valley of the Dolls, the "Jackie Susann Sixties" brimmed
with camp comedy that now permeates contemporary celebrations of
the author, from Pee-wee's Playhouse to RuPaul's Drag Race and Lee
Daniels's Star. First christened "camp" by Gloria Steinem in an
excoriating review of Valley of the Dolls and compounded by the
publishing juggernauts The Love Machine (1969), Once Is Not Enough
(1973), and Dolores (1976), the comedy of Jackie Susann illuminated
conflicting positions about gender, sexuality, and aesthetic value.
Through a writing formula that Ken Feil calls sleazy realism,
Susann veers from gossip to confession and devises comedies of bad
manners spun from real celebrities whose occasionally queer and
always outre antics clashed with their "official" personas, the
popular genres they were famous for, and the narrow, normative
constructions of identity and reality shaped by the culture
industry. Susann's promotional appearances led to another comedy of
bad manners, this one populated with critics alternately horrified
and delighted by an upstart woman vulgarian barging into the male
literary firmament, and which continues to inspire fascination for
the author, her novels, and their legendarily bad film adaptations.
Our Blessed Rebel Queen: Essays on Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia
is the first full-length exploration of Carrie Fisher's career as
actress, writer, and advocate. Fisher's entangled relationship with
the iconic Princess Leia is a focal point of this volume. Editors
Linda Mizejewski and Tanya D. Zuk have assembled a collection that
engages with the multiple interfaces between Fisher's most famous
character and her other life-giving work. The contributors offer
insights into Fisher as science-fiction idol, author, feminist
inspiration, and Lucasfilm commodity. Jennifer M. Fogel examines
the thorny ""ownership"" of Fisher's image as a conflation of fan
nostalgia, merchandise commodity, and eventually, feminist icon.
Philipp Dominik Keidl looks at how Carrie Fisher and her iconic
character are positioned within the male-centric history of Star
Wars. Andrew Kemp-Wilcox researches the 2016 controversy over a
virtual Princess Leia that emerged after Carrie Fisher's death.
Tanya D. Zuk investigates the use of Princess Leia and Carrie
images during the Women's March as memetic reconfigurations of
historical propaganda to leverage political and fannish ideological
positions. Linda Mizejewski explores Carrie Fisher's
autobiographical writing, while Ken Feil takes a look at Fisher's
playful blurring of truth and fiction in her screenplays. Kristen
Anderson Wagner identifies Fisher's use of humor and anger to
challenge public expectations for older actresses. Cynthia Hoffner
and Sejung Park highlight Fisher's mental health advocacy, and
Slade Kinnecott personalizes how Fisher's candidness and guidance
about mental health were especially cherished by those who lacked a
support system in their own lives. Our Blessed Rebel Queen is
distinct in its interdisciplinary approach, drawing from a variety
of methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Longtime fans of
Carrie Fisher and her body of work will welcome this smart and
thoughtful tribute to a multimedia legend.
Our Blessed Rebel Queen: Essays on Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia
is the first full-length exploration of Carrie Fisher's career as
actress, writer, and advocate. Fisher's entangled relationship with
the iconic Princess Leia is a focal point of this volume. Editors
Linda Mizejewski and Tanya D. Zuk have assembled a collection that
engages with the multiple interfaces between Fisher's most famous
character and her other life-giving work. The contributors offer
insights into Fisher as science-fiction idol, author, feminist
inspiration, and Lucasfilm commodity. Jennifer M. Fogel examines
the thorny ""ownership"" of Fisher's image as a conflation of fan
nostalgia, merchandise commodity, and eventually, feminist icon.
Philipp Dominik Keidl looks at how Carrie Fisher and her iconic
character are positioned within the male-centric history of Star
Wars. Andrew Kemp-Wilcox researches the 2016 controversy over a
virtual Princess Leia that emerged after Carrie Fisher's death.
Tanya D. Zuk investigates the use of Princess Leia and Carrie
images during the Women's March as memetic reconfigurations of
historical propaganda to leverage political and fannish ideological
positions. Linda Mizejewski explores Carrie Fisher's
autobiographical writing, while Ken Feil takes a look at Fisher's
playful blurring of truth and fiction in her screenplays. Kristen
Anderson Wagner identifies Fisher's use of humor and anger to
challenge public expectations for older actresses. Cynthia Hoffner
and Sejung Park highlight Fisher's mental health advocacy, and
Slade Kinnecott personalizes how Fisher's candidness and guidance
about mental health were especially cherished by those who lacked a
support system in their own lives. Our Blessed Rebel Queen is
distinct in its interdisciplinary approach, drawing from a variety
of methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Longtime fans of
Carrie Fisher and her body of work will welcome this smart and
thoughtful tribute to a multimedia legend.
Dying for a Laugh looks at the evolution of the contemporary
disaster film from the 1970s to the present. Ken Feil argues that
contemporary camp culture has influenced and reformed the
conventions of the 1970s disaster film, in both its production and
reception. The book chronicles how the genre rose to prominence,
sank into critical and popular disrepute, and became
unintentionally campy. Through close readings of films including
The Poseidon Adventure, The Swarm, Ghostbusters, Independence Day,
and Mars Attacks , along with film reviews, entertainment reports
and publicity materials as evidence, Feil shows that the renewal of
the disaster genre in the 1990s hinged on self-parody, ironic
self-consciousness, and state-of-the-art effects. Feil also looks
at the impact of 9/11 on the genre's campy, sadistic pleasures
through movies such as The Sum of All Fears, The Core, and The Day
After Tomorrow. This analysis of "high concept camp" draws from
diverse methodologies and theories, such as historical reception,
textual analysis, neoformalism, political economy, genre analysis,
feminism, and queer theory.
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