Bike Boys, Drag Queens, and Superstars: Avant-Garde, Mass Culture, and Gay Identities in the 1960s Underground Cinema

by Juan A. Suarez

Overview

"This comprehensive, insightful study demonstrates that 1960s New York underground film fused 'artistic innovation and the exploration of everyday life' and distinctively interacted with mass culture.'" —Choice

" . . . thoroughly researched [and] engaging text . . . " —Library Journal

"This is a very timely and welcome book. . . . intervenes very effectively to rewrite the history of the 1960s American underground cinema." —UTS Review

At the confluence of experimental art and the gay subculture of early 1960s New York, Juan Suárez discovers a postmodern, gay-influenced aesthetic that "recycles" popular culture. Filmmakers Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol epitomize this sensibility, combining the influences of European avant-garde movements, comic books, rock 'n' roll, camp, film cults, drag performances, fashion, and urban street cultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253329714
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	03/22/1996
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

JUAN A. SUÁREZ is Assistant Professor of English at the Universidad de Murcia, Spain.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1. Avant-Garde and Mass Culture: Mapping the Dialectic
Chapter 2. The American Underground as a Cultural Formation: Practices, Institutions, and Ideologies
Chapter 3. The 1960s Underground as Political Postmodernism: From the New Sensibility to Cultural Activism
Chapter 4. Pop, Queer, or Fascist: The Ambiguity of Mass Culture in Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising (1963)
Chapter 5. Drag, Rubble, and "Secret Flix": Jack Smith's Avant-Garde Against the Lucky-Landlord Empire
Chapter 6: The Artist as Advertiser: Stardom, Style, and Commodification in Andy Warhol's Underground Films
Conclusions
Filmography
Bibliography
Index