The Music Diva Spectacle

Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis

Description

This original new book has a unique focus on diva camp as popular music praxis. The author analyses case studies of diva concert tour shows in order to present a performance studies reading of camp, the culture-sharing process of production, and audience reception. Detailed case studies include contemporary stars Madonna, Kylie, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and a look at audience drag.

The book contains detailed descriptions of artists’ performances, along with the analysis of exciting and popular contemporary performers. The emphasis on camp is particularly interesting, as thinking about queerness has pushed camp into the background in recent years. This is an interesting and exciting revival of the question of camp in contemporary queer performance.

The book considers and investigates the relationship between camp theory as an academic subject and the figure of the diva as one that utilizes and expresses camp in various ways. It seeks to establish how camp is appropriated or owned by the diva and how this impacts on, and is in turn appropriated and owned by, the audience.

Primary readership will be among researchers and educators working in the fields of cultural studies, performance studies, theatre studies, music studies, LGBTQ+ studies, critical race studies, as well as undergraduate students interested in these topics. It will be a useful classroom resource and addition to recommended reading lists.

The Music Diva Spectacle may have interest for more general readers with an interest in the subjects of the case studies, but the main focus is on the academic market.

Introduction

 

1. Time Goes by so Slowly: Madonna’s Camp Revivals


2. LaLaLas and WowWowWows: Approaching Kylie Minogue’s Extravaganzas


3. We Flawless: Beyoncé’s Politics of Black Camp


4. Highway Unicorns: Camp Aesthet(h)ics and Utopias in Lady Gaga’s Tours


5. Dressed for the Ball: Audience Drag in the Arena Space

 

Conclusion

Works Cited

Sujets

• Musique
• Musique
• Madonna
• Kylie Minogue
• Music
• Cultural Studies
• General
• Beyoncé Knowles
• Lady Gaga
• Musician
• General officer
• Multiple signal classification
• Popular culture
• Popular music
• Beyoncé
• LGBTQ

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 10 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781789384383
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Music Diva Spectacle
The Music Diva Spectacle

Camp, Female Performers, and Queer Audiences in the Arena Tour Show
Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis
First published in the UK in 2021 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2021 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Alex Szumlas
Copy editor: Newgen
Production manager: Sophia Munyengeterwa
Typesetting: Newgen
Print ISBN 978-1-78938-436-9
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78938-437-6
ePub ISBN 978-1-78938-438-3
Printed and bound by Short Run.
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This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Time Goes by so Slowly: Madonna’s Camp Revivals
2. LaLaLas and WowWowWows: Approaching Kylie Minogue’s Extravaganzas
3. We Flawless: Beyoncé’s Politics of Black Camp
4. Highway Unicorns: Camp Aesthet(h)ics and Utopias in Lady Gaga’s Tours
5. Dressed for the Ball: Audience Drag in the Arena Space
Conclusion
References
Index
Acknowledgments
The process of writing this book has truly been a memorable journey. Starting with little steps in the form of term papers for my master’s program and then becoming a venture into the world of spectacle as part of my doctoral dissertation, it has been quite a fulfilling as well as challenging experience to watch it evolve through each stage.
This journey has been the product of individual effort as well as support coming from family, friends, professors, colleagues, institutions, and people I have met along the way. First of all, I would like to express my immense gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Professor Zoe Detsi, who not only believed in me and this project but, most importantly, kept pushing me toward the path of critical exploration while making sure I didn’t deviate from the set track. Her continuous support and professionalism are values that have greatly honed my work ethic. I would also like to thank the members of the co-advising committee behind this project, Dr. Christina Dokou and Dr. Konstantinos Blatanis, who alongside Professor Detsi kindly offered their expertise by paying attention to every little detail of the work and sparking stimulating debates—an invaluable help indeed. May our academic paths always cross!
I am also heavily indebted to the foundations that financially supported this project while still at an early stage. First of all, the Hellenic State Scholarship Foundation significantly facilitated the research process and helped me attain both professional and personal goals. Speaking of journeys, I owe a lot to Fulbright Foundation Greece for giving me the opportunity to travel to the University of Alabama in 2016 via the newly founded Doctoral Dissertation Research Programme. My sincerest gratitude goes to Artemis Zenetou, Els Siakos-Hanappe, Mike Snyder, and Angie Fotaki for promoting an inclusive ethos through their work at Fulbright. My heartfelt appreciation goes to Dr. Tatiana Summer and Dr. Joel Brouwer without whom my access to the campus and resources of the University of Alabama would have been impossible. Last but not least, I would personally like to thank my mentor and friend Professor John Howard with whom I was lucky enough to reunite during my stay at Alabama and who subsequently agreed to join my dissertation defense committee.
I am also blessed to have been given access to America’s most important queer archives. I would like to thank the personnel, volunteers, and fellow researchers I met at New York’s The Center (The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center) and Fort Lauderdale’s Stonewall National Museum and Archives. I am also eternally grateful to the European Association for American Studies for awarding me with the Transatlantic Travel Grant and thus allowing me to travel to San Francisco, have access to the museum and collection of the GLBT Historical Society archives, and, of course, experience the city’s vibrant culture. Thank you to all individuals, groups, and organizations for preserving and promoting queer histories and for inspiring a future project and dream of mine.
My purest feelings of love and devotion are reserved for my academic home, the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Thank you for giving me the best undergraduate years as well as warmly accommodating my graduate steps along with quite a few interesting side projects. A huge thankyou to my professors Tatiani Rapatzikou, Savas Patsalidis, Giorgos Kalogeras, and Domna Pastourmatzi and especially my diploma thesis supervisor Yiouli Theodosiadou, as well as to all the personnel in the administration offices, the library, and the technical support center for making my academic journey a veritable adventure.
Last but certainly not least, I am eternally grateful for the “invisible heroes” behind this incredible journey and practically behind my whole life. Thank you to each and every single close friend of mine who has been guarding my steps, pushing me to unexplored corners of my mind, tolerating my quirks and mood swings, and, most of all, showing me that although at times I may be traveling alone, I never feel lonely. The ultimate and deepest thankyou of all, of course, goes to my family whose unconditional love and endless support keep shaping the best of me.
Introduction
Dorothy Gale singing “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz has constituted a defining moment both for Judy Garland’s career and her subsequent queer consecration as a gay icon. Longing for a land where the impossible can happen, little Dorothy managed to appeal to the queer psyche by offering a liberating songtext whose open-endedness could easily accommodate queer people’s desire for freedom of expression. The song was backed by the film’s colorful spectacle esteemed for its time proportions that aided in vivifying the liberating effect. Oz ’s onscreen transition from black-and-white monotony to technicolor-imbued imagery marked a connotative passage from secularity to dream and from seclusion to openness. Coupled with Dorothy’s otherworldly, albeit friendly, encounters in the Land of Oz, the transition’s queer message was indeed hard to miss. “Over the Rainbow” became Garland’s signature song as she went on to be established as one of the most iconic figures of American queer culture and perhaps one of the first to exert a wide queer appeal of considerate magnitude and longevity. More specifically, gay men’s attraction to Garland’s star icon was not simply directed toward the star herself but was part and parcel of what the Garland experience enclosed: namely, the opportunity to find, in a very practical sense, the dreamland she was musing about. At a time when queer socialization was mostly under the radar, Garland’s appeal openly helped semantify queer bonds and culture sharing among gay men to the point where a cultural stereotype was birthed: “friends of Dorothy” became a euphemism for homosexual men, exposing and specifying what had then been clandestine. 1 Years later, impacting the queer community of New York City, Garland’s funeral service on June 27, 1969 followed by the Stonewall riots on June 28 instigated rumors that connected these two events. Though that idea seems far-fetched, one cannot overlook the fact that what was possibly a coincidence was indeed a temporal landmark enveloped with queer affect, which was triggered by the grief over the death of the icon as well as the aggressiveness of the Stonewall incident.
Almost 70 years after Dorothy’s musical call to the Land of Oz, Kylie Minogue appears on a glittery crescent moon prop to perform “Over the Rainbow” during the Dreams segment of her Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour ( in 2005 ). Kylie, whose notoriously lavish extravaganzas have for years attracted international audiences, has emerged as a contemporary gay icon catering to her queer market as well as serving as an advocate of the modern LGBTQ+ movement. Her choice to include Garland’s classic in the concert setlist of her greatest numbers is a self-conscious one that aims at bringing together the queer past and present. Minogue and her creative team are well aware of both Kylie’s and Garland’s queer appeal; the idea to have the former quote the latter is a musical nod to the cultural canon of queer iconicity and repertoire. Such acts of intergenerational homage and cultural exchange are frequent among divas who generally share the target groups of queer audiences. In fact, since pop culture serves as a plateau of sharing and intertextuality whereupon producers and consumers of culture navigate accordingly guided by tastes, desires, and sensibilities, it is conditional that the linking lines between producers and consumers are dynamically formed out of the specificity of the cultural codes they (wish to) share. The line established between divas and queer audiences, for that matter, relies on culturally specific information available to queer groups and, at the same time, generates new relational codes that preserve and forge the said link. Kylie’s tribute to Garland is a demonstration of knowing her audience by addressing all these elements that constitute Garland’s as well as her own relationship to queer culture.
Divas and queer people have long been affiliated. The cultural production of queer communities manifests a wide range of divas coming from the popular fi