Harry Potter Film Wizardry

2010, HarperCollins first edition
Harry Potter Film Wizardry: From the Creative Team Behind the Celebrated Movie Series
Written (mostly) by Brian Sibley
Designed by Minalima Design
Bought new for $39.99
Hardcover in good condition
B+

Like the pop-up books, this is a lot of eye candy, even more so of course, since it runs to 160 pages.  There are no pop-ups, but there are lots of "paper ephemera," such as Harry's Hogwarts letter, booklets like Advanced Potion-Making, Honeydukes packages, and best of all, the Marauder's Map!  The book is arranged roughly in chronological order, although there will be focus on a person, place, or thing if particularly prominent in one film.  Understandably, given the timing of the release, there are only fourteen pages on DH1, and only two on DH2.  Still, it's a great way to relive the movie series.  If I have any quibble, it's that the writing by Sibley could've been stronger, but it doesn't get in the way too much, and I especially liked the pages by production designer Stuart Craig and producer David Heyman.  I also like that, while it's mostly about the film series, the book series is discussed where pertinent. 

Highly recommended for moderate to obsessive fans.  Appropriate for, say, ten years old and up, although Helena Bonham Carter does get a bit naughty at times.

Harry Potter: A Pop-Up Book Based on the Film Phenomenon

2010, Insight first edition
Harry Potter: A Pop-Up Book Based on the Film Phenomenon
Paper Engineering by Bruce Foster
Art by Andrew Williamson
Text by Lucy Kee
Bought new for $34.95
Hardcover in good condition
B

Although there's more to this than to 2008's Magical Scenes from the Sixth Film in the Harry Potter Series, it does promise more, so I can't give it a higher rating.

• Dumbledore's Office, this time with a packet from the Ministry and for some reason a Howler.
• Diagon Alley, with pop-up buildings and smaller pop-ups of Hedwig and the Weasley-twin joke-shop statue.
• Hogwarts pop-up, with a smaller pop-up of both the Beauxbatons carriage and the Durmstrang ship.
• Magical Creatures, including the Forbidden Forest, Hagrid's Hut, and smaller pop-ups of Fluffy and a Mandrake.
• "Magical Games and Sports," with Harry and the dragon in the First Task, smaller pop-ups showing the giant chess game and Ron as Quidditch Keeper.
• The Dark Arts, showing Voldemort torturing Harry in GoF, and this time three smaller pop-ups: Nagini, the Inferi, and Dementors.

There's more text than in Magical Scenes, although understandably still not very much.  I think rather than themes, I'd prefer a scene from each film to that point.  (Deathly Hallows, Part I was released that November, but they could've gone up to HBP.)  Or maybe they could've focused on a character, or group of characters, each spread.  The pop-ups are more detailed than before, including backs, but they seem to tilt more than necessary.  The book is probably less spoilery than Magical Scenes, although anyone willing to spend 35 bucks probably had seen all the released movies more than once by then.

The Rise of Enlightened Sexism

2010, undated later edition, from St. Martin's Griffin
Susan J. Douglas
The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild
Bought newish for $16.99
Slightly worn paperback
B-

This disappointing follow-up to Douglas's Where the Girls Are (1994) is not without its merits, but I do need to talk about its flaws first and foremost.  To begin with, the earlier book was written from her perspective as a fortysomething Baby-Boomer, while this time she's a "Vintage Female" and the mother of a then-twenty-year-old daughter.  She often writes here as if there was no generation of feminists in between, except for the riot-grrrls who produced music and zines.  Well, I was born in 1968, and I can't relate to any of the TV covered here, from Xena and Buffy to Survivor and The Real World, or even ER.  (I've seen more of the Elliott Gould sitcom of the same name!)  I have seen several of the movies she discusses, and I do appreciate, for instance, her appreciation of Clueless, but I think she missed the boat on Mean Girls and most definitely Down with Love.  I have seen a few celebrity magazines with the "baby bump" pictures.  And I sort of followed the way Janet Reno, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin were covered.

But this all may be a flaw in me as a reader, rather than her as a writer.  So let's take a look at her title, which was changed from the hardcover edition, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done.  Douglas's thesis is that the American media present the following intertwined messages:

• Women have achieved all of feminism's goals, as evidenced by all those women in power in real life and more particularly on TV.
• Therefore, we can now relax and enjoy sexism "ironically," by showing retrograde images, like of scheming, skinny, large-breasted blondes.  (Like in Marcotte's It's a Jungle out There.  Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

The first part is what she calls "embedded feminism," where female bosses, judges, and even presidents appear as characters.  She has a problem with this, because it doesn't reflect most women's lives.  Well, no, neither did Bewitched, but she seemed to appreciate that in the previous book.  Is the problem that what's shown on TV in recent decades, as opposed to the '50s and '60s, is meant to be real, even when it's contrived "reality TV"?  

And, yes, as the more recent subtitle indicates, she does discuss the Spice Girls, and the ambiguity of their message.  She doesn't even mention the equally British Hermione Granger, despite my earlier hopes, although there's quite a bit on Bridget Jones.  It's as if she doesn't want to include any recent positive images of girl culture.  Where the Girls Are was much more balanced.

Still, when she does what she does best, like examining the devolution of Cosmo or mocking Mel Gibson, the book is funny and, well, enlightening.  If she does another follow-up, some fifteen or twenty years down the road, I hope that either I'll be more into the pop culture of that time than I am now, or she'll pick a wider range of examples.

HPHBP: Magical Scenes from the Sixth Film in the Harry Potter Series

2008, Penguin first edition
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Magical Scenes from the Sixth Film in the Harry Potter Series
Copyright by Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.
Original price £9.99, bought newish for $7.95
Hardcover in good condition
B

Ironically, I find this more entertaining than the book or the movie, for what it is.  Not that it isn't odd to see a book with "pull-tabs, pop-ups and flaps" that involves romance and violence, but such is the oddness of a fandom that spans many ages and interests.  Each two-page spread has a different theme, not necessarily in order.  In fact, there are even spoilers for Deathly Hallows!  

• Hogwarts Express, with a ticket and four house badges
• Quidditch theme, with a flying Ron and a small poster
• "Severus Snape (TM) is the Half-Blood Prince (TM)."  You didn't know he trademarked it, did you?
• Quibbler salute, with awesome Spectrespecs
• Love and Friendship, with Harry/Ginny pop-up, although he's not even looking at her.  (Couldn't they have done the kiss, or at least hand-holding?)
• Death Eaters theme, with a big flap that reveals some of the D.E.s.
• Tom Riddle, with one flap revealing 1930s Dumbledore and another Voldemort's face hidden behind young Tom's.  Eek!
• Horcruxes, with a dial to see what they are, very spoilery.
• Room of Requirement, with pull-tab to see explanation, and a tab hiding Bellatrix in the Vanishing Cabinet.  Eek!
• Dumbledore, with pop-up Fawkes and a portrait flap I can't pull loose.

The design of the book is generally impressive, although it could've been better.

Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady...

2008, first edition, from HarperCollins
Maureen McCormick
Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice
Original price $25.95, bought used for $20.76
Hardcover in good condition
B-

Although this book is partly about McCormick dealing with the mixed legacy of her role as Marcia, there's not terribly much about the show or her life during that time.  Mostly, it's about the years afterwards, as she struggled with drug addiction and other serious problems.  Her family seems to have been very dysfunctional, from the beginning to the end.  (The last few chapters discuss her brother's elder abuse of their father.)  

It's an interesting read but, like other books of its time, it could've used a better editor.  Not only does she make mistakes about The Brady Bunch, things any fan could've fact-checked for her, but she thinks her hair is "chestnut," which is not a synonym for blonde.  There are typos as well.  And it felt like she rushed through the last twenty years or so.

Although Susan Olsen (little sister Cindy) hasn't yet written an autobiography, she will have her say on the Brady legacy in the book she cowrote, Love to Love You Bradys: The Bizarre Story of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, coming up in '09....

Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality

2008 edition updating from '06, from Seven Stories Press
Stuart Ewen & Elizabeth Ewen
Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality
Original price unknown, purchase price $14.00
Slightly worn paperback
B-

The Ewens take a look at the ways that people (mostly white male Europeans and Americans of the last two or three centuries) have tried to label others, using dubious science (some of which threw out data that contradicted the thesis), as well as various forms of art and entertainment.  I found the book to be a bit unfocused, and there were some distracting typos, most oddly enough involving the word "the." However, there is some interesting information, from a 1910ish intelligence test to the Russian attitude towards "Caucasians."  Some of it's funny, but some of it's tragic, like the fate of Saartjie Baartmann, the Khosian woman who was exploited during her life and mutilated after her death, all in the cause of "scientific inquiry."

Yes, the Ewens discuss The Birth of a Nation, as well as other early movies.  Although there are times that they make connections to the present, such as wondering what "your face is destiny" theorists would've done in the modern world of make-up, contact lenses, and plastic surgery, the book would've been strengthened by more on the post-World-War-II era.

It's a Jungle Out There

2007, 2008 Seal Press edition
Amanda Marcotte
It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments
Original price $13.95, purchase price $6.98
Slightly worn paperback
C

I'm going to discuss the controversy surrounding this book, because I think it highlights something I noticed about other aspects of the writing.  Marcotte uses the symbol of the jungle to represent the sexism that feminists must battle.  That in itself is troubling, and related to her preference for urban over rural communities.  (Probably the result of her growing up in rural Texas.)  But wait.  What is the definition of a jungle?  "An area of land overgrown with dense forest and tangled vegetation, typically in the tropics."  So trees, right?  Yet almost none of the illustrations at the beginning of the chapters show trees.

Instead they display a busty, scantily clad blonde fighting the dangers of the African plains.  Suffice to say, none of these dangers look like Jerry Falwell or Bill O'Reilly.  They look like wild animals and menacing black natives.  Marcotte and Seal Press apparently didn't see anything wrong with racist imagery in a book promoting feminism, not even after the original cover, of a blonde being abducted by a gorilla, was criticized and withdrawn.  (This edition, she battles a crocodile.)  It's as if they couldn't see the trees for the jungle.  

I could cut Marcotte some slack, since she was young, but it's not as if she was fresh out of college.  She turned 30 that year, making her not much younger than Mary Wollstonecraft publishing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman at 33.  And if Ellerbee, Ivins, and Hightower have taught me anything, it's that left-wing rural Texans are definitely aware of issues surrounding race.  Perhaps the pictures from the '50s comic books about Lorna the Jungle Girl were meant in an ironic, campy way, but that doesn't make them non-racist, no matter how many anti-racist blogs Marcotte mentions.

It's three years since The Midnight Disease, where "blog" had to be defined, but this book is almost equally dated in its excitement over blogging.  As I think I've amply proved over the past couple years, any idiot with an Internet connection can have a blog, and blogs have not turned out any more remarkable than print books, except in the case of speed.  And you can turn a blog into a print book pretty darn quickly anyway.  This book seems to have evolved out of Marcotte's blog, and it shows signs of not being well edited, as in the "pubic" for "public" slip.  (It's still miles better than the editing in Forever Summer though.)

The racism and the giddiness contribute to a carelessness that I haven't seen in a feminist since Germaine Greer, almost 40 years earlier.  Marcotte shares with Greer a blindness to the full history of feminism.  (In Marcotte's case, "riot-grrrl" days are quaint, and the '70s are ancient, while no feminism existed before, say, 1965.)  Also like Greer, Marcotte (whatever mentions of lesbians and women of color she makes) is writing for women like her: white, young, straight, and a bit shallow.  Yes, anal bleaching, purity balls, and Girls Gone Wild manage to be both ridiculous and disgusting, but are they the biggest issues facing modern women?  Marcotte puts them almost on a level with reproductive rights and equal pay.

Still, I laughed at the book a few times.  Like Michael Moore, it's hard to tell how serious she is in some of her suggestions, so, as with Moore, I see this more as "funny politics" than humor per se.  I can't recommend it, but if you come across it, you might enjoy it if you just focus on the text and set your standards low.

The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America

2007, first edition, from Henry Holt and Company
Susan Faludi
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
Bought new for $26.00
Good condition hardcover
B+


Albert: That's too bad 'bout some folks not wantin' to be rescued from trouble by the Loan Arranger.
Noah: Some is even more fierce.
Albert: More fierce?
Noah: Some won't get in trouble for him in the first place.  Not very obliging.

--Prehysterical Pogo (1967)


I kept asking myself why, as I read this.  Why did a tragedy whose victims were mostly male get recast as a need for men to protect women?  Why were the same men who failed to protect the 9/11 victims recast as heroic studs?  (As if Donald Rumsfeld's "sexiness" or George W. Bush's ability to cut brush, or for that matter John Kerry's huntin', would've stopped the attacks, or even upgraded the firefighters' communications system.)  And why was it, as it always seems to be in the mainstream media, feminism's fault?

Faludi points out the lack of logic, but she also shows why the particular myths took hold at that time.  She draws parallels not only to, of course, the 1950s but also to the second half of the 1800s, with a look at the very different attitudes of the 1600s and 1700s.  (In that earlier time, white Christians saw themselves as weak and vulnerable compared to God, and they were fine with this.) 

When Americans of the last two centuries feel vulnerable, they often hope for cowboys and other heroes to ride to the rescue.  (And, yes, she quotes Rogin on The Birth of a Nation.)  But for some men, perhaps most especially the men who are most scared and least able to admit it, there's a corresponding need to believe that women are, or should be, damsels in distress.  If women are strong, including Daniel Boone's "skilled markswoman" wife Rebecca, then it makes the men seem weak, and thus vulnerable to Injuns, Commies, and terrorists.  If a woman is actually a victim, like Jessica Lynch, her victimhood is magnified so her rescue can be enlarged.

As the discussion of America's early days shows, it wasn't always like this, and Faludi sees it as a pattern that can be broken.  Her book obviously has a sad, frightening base, but I was surprised how much I laughed.  As always, her speaking truth and cutting through the crap delighted me.

The title comes from the novel The Searchers.  She discusses that book, its movie, and other media, although as usual not much about music, other than Neil Young's "Let's Roll."

1973 Nervous Breakdown

2006, first edition, from Bloomsbury
Andreas Killen
1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America
Original price $24.95, purchase price $1.00
Hardcover in good condition
B-

This is only the second time I've read this book, and I'm still not sure if I like it, or even if it's a book that can be "liked."  Killen focuses on the pivotal year 1973, with some looks forward and back, but not only is this far from my favorite year of the 1970s, I don't think of most of the topics that he focuses on, Watergate aside.  POWs, skyjackers, and religious cults are not terribly interesting to me.  Even when Killen focuses on pop culture besides Warhol, it's things that I've never seen or heard, like the New York Dolls, Fear of Flying, Badlands, and An American Family (the reality-TV pioneer about the Loud family), or ones that aren't very meaningful to me, like American Graffiti.  (Even so, I felt like like I knew that movie better than Killen, since he thinks Wolfman Jack is "a person of color.")  Also, it seems wrong that Ronald Reagan is repeatedly mentioned, sometimes as being elected "at the end of the decade," while Carter merits only one mention, for pardoning Patty Hearst.  True, few outside Georgia knew who Carter was in 1973, while Reagan was a nationally known Governor of California, but couldn't Killen have connected Carter's election with the breakdown of three years earlier?

Still, I found the book well written and sometimes insightful.  I'll give Killen kudos for presenting 1973 as it seemed to him and making it more interesting than I expected.  And if it was true seven (almost eight) years ago that we were still experiencing the aftershocks of that earthquake of a year, it's still true now.

Barbra: The Way She Is

2006, first edition, from HarperCollins
Christopher Andersen
Barbra: The Way She Is
Original price $25.95, purchase price $7.80
Hardcover in good condition
B-

Not since Schorer's Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (1961), have I come across a biographer who seems to dislike his subject so much.  This book can be summed up as "Barbra Streisand is very talented and very bitchy."  Other than his attitude, and his frequent misuse of "proverbial" (hint, is the item actually in a proverb?), the book isn't bad.  Andersen traces Barbra's life through her unhappy childhood, her awkward adolescence, and on to more than four decades of (super)stardom.  Although I've followed her career off and on (seeing a movie or two every decade), I'm not a huge fan, and there was much here I didn't know.  However, Andersen does jump to conclusions, as when he strongly implies that Streisand had an affair with Bill Clinton.  (Not that that's implausible of course.)  And he seems to exaggerate her neglect of her sister.  

One thing that does come through the book, whether or not Barbra is a good person, she is very witty!  If she ever writes her autobiography, I'd love to read it, even if she doesn't quite tell all.  

Since Andersen discusses Streisand's creative endeavors, in between the gossip, I'm using all these "criticism" tags.  And, yes, I'm also using the "LGBT" tag, in honor of Barbra's son and many of her fans, and because of course the subject of homosexuality comes up repeatedly.

Backstage with the Original Hollywood Square

2002, possibly first edition, from Rutledge Hill Press
Peter Marshall with Adrienne Armstrong
Backstage with the Original Hollywood Square
Bought newish for $24.99
Hardcover in good condition, "includes CD of Zingers from The Hollywood Squares"
B-

Marshall looks back fondly on the popular game show he hosted for sixteen years.  For a long time, THS was assumed to be lost, but shortly before this book came out, many hours were rediscovered and ended up on the Game Show Network.  I have to admit, based on the 45-minute CD and what I've seen on Youtube, the program hasn't aged well, unlike the still funny and fun-to-play-along-with-at-home You Bet Your Life, Match Game, and Bert-Convy-hosted Password.  (Marshall by the way hates Convy, but doesn't explain why, unlike his dislike of Dan Rowan, which he goes into a bit.)  I probably got more laughs out of the print collection of Zingers from '78.  Yet, there are some behind-the-scenes anecdotes that are worth reading.  Marshall is still alive at 87 and last month was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, although this show is his main claim to fame.

(Includes film criticism in the sense that Marshall talks about his not very well known movies, and there's some biography, including that he's actress Joanne Dru's brother.)

Bachelor Girl: ...A Social History of Living Single

2002, 2003 Perennial edition
Betsy Israel
Bachelor Girl: 100 Years of Breaking the Rules-- A Social History of Living Single
Original price unknown, purchase price $7.50
Slightly worn paperback
B-

I found this about equal to Blumberg's The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls (1997), with which it somewhat overlaps.  Despite the subtitle, we're actually looking at more like 150 years of single "girls."  And some of these singles are young, under 21, although she does discuss older "spinsters," of 30 or 40 or even 50.  She goes roughly chronologically, but sometimes with a few decades in one chapter.  The book didn't quite jell for me, although there was some interesting material.  And, yes, both Sheila Levine and Bridget Jones make appearances, as do some TV characters like Mary Richards and Ally McBeal.  Israel was single and 27 when the "marry a terrorist" study came out, although she wed soon after.  I wish she'd gone into more about the binary assumption of married and single-- as a divorced childless woman I identify as neither-- but I do appreciate that she includes lesbians to some degree.

All About "All About Eve"

2001 update from 2000, this edition from St. Martin's Griffin
Sam Staggs
All About "All About Eve":  The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made
Bought new for $15.95
Worn paperback
B

This is similar to Aljean Harmetz's 1977 Wizard of Oz book, focusing as it does on one classic movie that was the highlight of many careers.  I didn't grow up watching All About Eve of course, in fact I think I was in my 30s before I saw it.  But the first time I did, I thought it was one of the wittiest movies ever.  I don't know about bitchiest, but Staggs definitely writes from a middle-aged gay man's perspective.  There's certainly queer content in the film, although obviously there's a lot of straight content, too, with Bette Davis and Gary Merrill blurring with their characters, and Marilyn Monroe making a very memorable appearance.  The book is basically a long, sometimes repetitive, but almost always fascinating love letter to not just this movie, but Old Hollywood.  I'm also using the "literary criticism" tag because Staggs has quite a bit about the short story that inspired the film.

I'm going with the 2001 update rather than the original copyright, because it includes, among other things, Celeste Holm's reaction to Staggs's opinions.  She was the only surviving cast member (she died last year) and refused to be interviewed for the book, and yes, she and Staggs are pretty bitchy about each other.

Subject to Debate

2001, possibly first paperback edition, from Modern Library
Katha Pollitt
Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture
Bought new for $13.95
Worn paperback
B+

Instead of the longer essays of Reasonable Creatures, this is more of a "best of" from Pollitt's column in The Nation called, yes, "Subject to Debate."  As such, I didn't feel it sustained the heights of its predecessor, although she's still probably my all-time favorite columnist.  I had a Nation subscription into at least '95, and I remember seeing some of these pieces for the first time almost twenty years ago.  And yet, I found myself laughing hard early on, when she zaps Clinton, and Nixon.  There's a definite New-York-centricity to her writing, and so we get a slightly different take on Giuliani vs. Ofili's "elephant-dung Virgin Mary" artwork than in Lechner's book.

Pollitt's daughter Sophie was growing up, seemingly untraumatized by her mother's divorce and subsequent live-in with "The Last Marxist," and it's the then ten-year-old who makes the best comments on Titanic.  But understandably the elder Pollitt has great insights into The First Wives Club, which I recently saw for the second time.  Ironically, she comments on her future publisher Modern Library's choice for the 100 best books of the 20th century.*  Pollitt mostly writes of politics of course, local, national, and international.  I agreed with her for the most part, especially in why "we were wrong" to vote for Clinton in '92, and again when she reacts to how Clinton tried to cover up the fuss over the Lewinsky scandal by "carpet-bombing Iraq without so much as a phone-call to Congress, much less the U.N."

This book goes up to October 2000, the outer edge of the Clinton years.  We'll see what she says about the first half of George Bush II's administration in Virginity or Death!: And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time in 2006.... 


*No "television criticism" tag though because, as Pollitt admits in an endnote, she lacked "television savvy."  I've never watched NYPD Blue either, so I identified with her there, too.

The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America

2001, first edition, from Public Affairs
Lawrence J. Epstein
The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America
Original price $27.50, purchase price $7.35
Hardcover in good condition
B-

Epstein traces Jewish-American comedy from its roots in 1880s immigration (with an afterword that goes back centuries) to then present day.  Obviously, some of this has been covered elsewhere, including in my book collection, but he does a decent job of bringing it all together without too much redundancy.  (And he's right that it's a "startling fact" that "Moe Howard of the Three Stooges was the first American actor to portray Adolf Hitler.")  I did find Epstein's style surprisingly bland, including a tendency to over-euphemize (not easy with the likes of Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, and Seinfeld), but there are enough interesting quotes from others to compensate.

I was surprised that Epstein didn't mention Gabe Kaplan (who was a big part of Jewish sitcom humor of the '70s, as Gabe Kotter on the show with the Puerto-Rican Jew named Epstein), but he does mention some then new comics like Jeffrey Ross.  (I've never heard Ross, now going by Jeff, but he is still working.)   I did like that Epstein acknowledges the extra hurdles that gay and/or female Jewish comedians face(d).  And he addresses the ways that the often very verbal Jewish comedy, and specific comics, had to adapt to silents, vaudeville, talkies, radio, television and "the 'Net." 

Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis

2000, 2002 Da Capo Press edition
Eric Myers
Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis
Original price $16.95, purchase price unknown
Slightly worn paperback
B

I found this biography to be about equal to Dennis's fiction, not so much because of Myer's writing style, since that's a little flat and overly redundant (he tells us several times that one of Dennis's nieces became a nun), but because Dennis was even more of a colorful personality than any of his characters.  Whether he was a 10-year-old dressing up as Margaret Dumont, or a fiftysomething working incognito as Ray Kroc's butler, he was the life of the party.  Even his letters to friends, family, and his editor are priceless.

Myers never quite finds the right tone to address the darker side of Dennis's real life as Edward "Pat" Tanner, the depression, suicide attempts, and struggle to deal with his sexuality.  Tanner was campy before camp was recognized (including as a Boy Scout), and yet he was never involved with men until he was in his 40s, leading to a very long separation, but never divorce, from his wife.  (They reunited not long before his death, still in love.)  I consider him to be bisexual, but of course for most of his life-- he died in 1976-- that wasn't an accepted orientation.

As in Dennis's best fiction, there's a vibrant cast to back up the "lead," and Myers does a good job of digging below the stereotypes, so that Louise Tanner isn't just the long-suffering wife, or Corry Salley the Hattie-McDanielesque maid.  And we learn more about the folks behind Little Me, which sounds like it was even more fun to make than to read.

Note, I'm using the "film criticism" tag as well as the "literary criticism," because Myers does talk about the movie versions of Auntie Mame.  Dennis thought Rosalind Russell was great but found Lucille Ball "a little too c-mm-n for the role."

Alternate Channels

2000, possibly first edition, from Ballantine Books
Steven Capsuto
Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television
Original price $18.00, purchase price $2.00
Slightly worn paperback
B

Unlike Bryant's Bisexual Characters in Film (1997), I felt like this lived up to its potential.  True, Capsuto goes quickly from the 1930s to the '60s, and about half the book covers the '90s, but that's because LGBT (yes, he covers bi and trans images, too) characters increased exponentially over time.  It was interesting to read, for instance, an excerpt from a 1950 radio sketch with Hope, Crosby, and Garland, with her performing a mock wedding for the men.*  Capsuto half seriously says early on that he won't be discussing such maybe-queer characters as Miss Hathaway or Mr. Smith (from Beverly Hillbillies and Lost in Space respectively), but he does consider any character who has at least a moment of same-sex attraction.  

I have to admit that what most pleased me was the chapter called "The Ellen Morgan Story," because here was a show I watched from the beginning (the These Friends of Mine days) until the bitter end, and it bothered me when people (including gays) said it was less funny after Ellen D. and Ellen M. came out.  Capsuto instead believes that this finally gave the show focus, although the angry tone of the second half of the season (when DeGeneres was fighting ABC) hurt the humor.  He also has good things to say about Roseanne, although he misses the classic exchange about lesbians and LensCrafters.

There are some redundancies, and the ending feels a bit rushed-- basically "Now we have Will & Grace, where the likable gay man who never gets to date is the lead character, oh, and by the way lesbians are disappearing in the post-Ellen era," but overall it's a solid, enlightening book.  (The L Word wouldn't premiere till 2004, and at the time this book was published, the British version of Queer as Folk was only a year old and Capsuto might not have seen it.)  Since I no longer watch new programs on television, I Googled and found a few current lists, as well as this article:  
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/lgbt-tv-characters-down-2012-647281

Note, the numbers are still impressive compared to even the mid-'90s, although still far from proportional to the real population.  And Capsuto is still lecturing on the topic, as he has since 1989.


*I don't have a "radio criticism" tag, but I am using the one for "film criticism," because Capsuto points out the influence of LGBT film characters in opening doors on the little screen.

Holding My Own in No Man's Land

1997, possibly first edition, from Oxford University Press
Molly Haskell
Holding My Own in No Man's Land: Women and Men and Film and Feminism
Original price $25.00, purchase price $12.50
Hardcover in good condition
B-

Although there were times when I didn't feel like Haskell was being very clear, this does overall feel less confusing than her From Reverence to Rape (1974), ironically considering it's deliberately less focused.  It includes essays and columns from roughly 1972 to the-then present.  Much of it is interviews with Hollywood legends, from John Wayne and Doris Day to Meryl Streep and Liv Ullman.  But she also discusses television (quite a bit on The Carol Burnett Show, with quotes from Burnett's autobiography), literature (including Jane Austen's Emma), and some not directly media-related concerns, like make-up.  I thought the most interesting essay was "Rape: The 2,000-Year-Old Misunderstanding."  Since Haskell parts company with many feminists on some topics, I was intrigued by her belief (as always of course, not terribly well expressed) that when some women say "rape fantasy," they mean something more like a seduction, in which the man's/men's desire is what matters, while some men's "rape fantasies" more often emphasize the violence and domination.

It's telling that the glowing reviews on the back cover are from such definitely not-feminist men as Richard Schickel and Lionel Tiger.  But Haskell would likely say, as she does in her introduction, that this is because feminists don't understand her.  If you can get past the martyrdom of that attitude (as suggested by the title, which she admits swiping from Gilbert and Gubar although for a different purpose), she does provide food for thought.

Bisexual Characters in Film: From Anais to Zee

1997, possibly first edition, from Harrington Park Press
Wayne M. Bryant
Bisexual Characters in Film: From Anais to Zee
Possibly bought newish for $17.95
Slightly worn paperback
C+

Although this book had potential, I didn't think it lived up to it.  The biggest problem is that Bryant arranges the book thematically, rather than chronologically or some other approach that would eliminate all the redundancies.  Not only are films discussed in more than one chapter, often the same information is repeated.  Also, of course, the book is dated, and not in an interesting way like the different editions of Celluloid Closet.  (I've read two but don't own any.)  As Bryant admits, the bi pride movement was then about fifteen years behind that for gays and lesbians.  So there weren't terribly many movies with clearly bi characters.  (And he misses one of my favorite moments, Terry-Thomas in Where Were You When the Lights Went Out [1968]: "I dislike women and men alike.  Does that make me bisexual?")  You could probably find equally good or better lists and analyses on the Internet these days.  Still, points for being a pioneer.

The Queening of America: Gay Culture in Straight Society

1995, possibly first edition, from Routledge
David Van Leer
The Queening of America: Gay Culture in Straight Society
Possibly bought newish for $12.99
Worn paperback
B

Van Leer looks at the ways that "gay culture" impacts "straight society," and vice versa.  His examples go from the low culture of Hollywood Squares, to middlebrow culture like Damn Yankees, to academic approaches to the topic of AIDS.  I'm not sure how well the book hangs together, or if Van Leer proves a thesis as such, but it's always an interesting read, looking at language and appearance in particular.  I think this is a good example of a nonfiction book that gets a B rather than a B+.  B+s make me go "Wow!", while B's make me go, "Hm."

It's a very '90s book in the way it looks back at the "post-war" era (roughly 1945 to '69), as well as the "liberated 1970s" and the "reactionary 1980s" (my terminology, he might disagree).  There's distance, but not as much as now of course.  For instance, he talks about the generational differences for middle-aged gay men who'd lost many friends to AIDS, as opposed to younger gay men who grew up with the threat of the disease as an aspect of their sexuality.  He doesn't ignore lesbians, and one of the most interesting sections is on Larsen's Passing.  He's very good at finding layers of meaning, even in something like a Paul Lynde quip, or the works of Patrick Dennis.  I of course enjoyed the pop-culture stuff most, but I could see how the "higher" culture relates to it.