Acting Out Contradictions

It's great to see that Katie has jumpstarted our conversation on the British Blondes. Katie anticipated some of the questions I'm going to be pushing us on these next weeks, specifically the challenge of analyzing cultural forms contextually. How do you make a cultural form intelligible within its own moment? Especially when it is a performance?

With Charlotte Temple we tried to analyze a text on its own terms while subjecting it to critical analysis. As 21st-century women, we found Charlotte's choices (or lack thereof) extremely frustrating. We considered Rowson's larger message to her readers, and debated different interpretations of Charlotte's fall. Was she a woman undone by passion or indecision? Who was the real villain, her true seducer, Montraville or La Rue? Perhaps women at the time were equally irritated with Charlotte. However, we didn't focus on contemporary conversations about novel, but instead subjected it to our own readings.

Well what happens when the text we want to analyze is a performance that we will never see? We can read some of the burlesques Lydia Thompson and her British Blondes performed and examine photographs but those sources only underscore the difficulties we face as historians trying to understand this distant cultural phenomenon. SO how does Allen do it? As you read through this book, pay careful attention both to what he tells us about burlesque but also his methods as a scholar. Paying attention to his methodology is challenging but extremely important because his approach can help us think about our own projects and how to approach the history of popular culture.

How would you characterize Allen's larger goals? What is the relationship between his interest in burlesque and his interest in 19th-cenury America? Why, according to Allen, does the study of burlesque matter? Consider what he means on p. 27 when he explains, "burlesque is emblematic of the way that popular entertainment becomes an arena for 'acting out' cultural contradictions and even contestations and is exemplary of the complexities and ambiguities of this process."

(We're also going to start talking more about your own project ideas. Bring a few ideas to class Tuesday as well.)