H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-PCAACA@msu.edu (March, 1995)
Peter C. Rollins and Susan W. Rollins, Editors. GENDER IN
POPULAR CULTURE: IMAGES OF MEN AND WOMEN IN LITERATURE, VISUAL
MEDIA AND MATERIAL CULTURE. Cleveland, OK: Ridgemont Press,
1995. 272 pp. Paper: $16.50.
Reviewed by Marshall Fishwick, Virginia Tech, for H-PCAACA.
The Popular Culture Association's new Director of
Development, Peter Rollins, is half of a Mom and Pop team. This
lively new book shows that they intend to keep us all popping.
A collection of papers originally delivered at our national
meeting, they boldly enter the Gender War and emerge triumphant.
The eleven essays do what the subtitle promises. They indicate
how popular culture reflects aspects of gender issues often
missed in the more "official" and "academic" material. Instead
of officialism we have focus, insight, and balance. As Jane
Bakerman claims in her Preface, they "avoid useless speculation
and concentrate on analysis and information."
Part One deals with "Star and Reverential Images" and
includes case studies of Madonna, Ethel Waters, and Anais Nin.
There are also essays on women in baseball films, clothing and
self image, and cross-dressing. Misty Anderson argues that most
accounts of Madonna "reveal only a political schizophrenia that
misses the innovative twist in Madonna's post-modern, popular
culture work. She offers not content but forms that challenge
traditional s structures of visual pleasure." Wendy DuBow's
essay on "The Diary of Anais Nin" suggests that Nin's diaries
"highlight important tensions within contemporary feminism and,
therefore, deserve close attention." She finds in the diaries an
ambivalence about popular success and the accompanying public
life it demands. Nin dislikes the idea of hostility between the
sexes, "I love men, I think the most courageous thing to do today
is to conquer ourselves from within--not to blame others."
Part Two, entitled "Books and Their Readers," ranges from
Edith Wharton to Dorothy Parker, and even includes "The Case of
the Vanishing Role Model: The Judy Bolton Mysteries." If there
is an over-all challenge, it is put forth by Cathy Fagan: to
create equitable, gender-free expressions of authority. "That
challenge," Ms. Fagan writes, "assures us that pretty women and
their handsome princes have not yet rescued each other."
There is much that is new and fresh here. The writers begin
at the present (which is the key to popular culture) but show the
relevance of the past. In Jane Bakerman's syllogistic summary:
they simplify as they amplify.
The writers and editors have done their job well, and the
books should find readers everywhere.
Virginia Tech Marshall Fishwick
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