Mae West: An Icon in Black and White
"Why don't you come up and see me sometime?" Mae West invited and promptly captured the imagination of generations. Even today, years after her death, the actress and
author is still regarded as the pop archetype of sexual wantonness and ribald humor. But who was this saucy starlet, a woman who was controversial enough to be jailed, pursued by film censors and
banned from the airwaves for the revolutionary content of her work, and yet would ascend to the status of film legend?
Sifting through previously untapped sources, author Jill Watts unravels the enigmatic life of Mae West, tracing her
early years spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and underworld figures, and follows her journey through burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway and, finally, Hollywood, where she quickly became
one of the big screen's most popular—and colorful—stars. Exploring West's penchant for contradiction and her carefully perpetuated paradoxes, Watts convincingly argues that Mae West borrowed heavily from African American culture, music, dance and humor, creating a subversive voice for herself by
which she artfully challenged society and its assumptions regarding race, class and gender. Viewing West as a trickster, Watts demonstrates that by appropriating for her character the black
tradition of double-speak and "signifying," West also may have hinted at her own African-American ancestry and the
phenomenon of a black woman passing for white.
This absolutely fascinating study is the first comprehensive, interpretive account of Mae West's life and work. It
reveals a beloved icon as a radically subversive artist consciously creating her own complex image.
About the Author: Jill Watts is Associate Professor of History and has served as the Director of the History Department and Co-Director of the Women's Studies Program at California State
University, San Marcos. She is the author of God, Harlem, U.S.A.: The Father Divine Story.
ISBN-13 : 9780195161120
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date : 04/28/2003
Author : Jill Watts
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Did the sassy, hip-wiggling Hollywood goddess of the double-entendre base her image, her career, and her comedy on African-American culture? Since her death in 1981 at 87, Mae West's reputation has been rising. Once viewed as a tawdry, camp caricature who ceaselessly exploited her bad-girl
burlesque, she's more recently been hailed as a proto-feminist who wrote her own plays, directed herself, and refused to be manipulated by the Hollywood studios. Watts (History/California State;
"God, Harlem, U.S.A", 1992) adds another twist by portraying West as an archetypal African-American trickster heroine
who may have had a black ancestor (on her father's side) and who certainly found her initial theatrical inspiration in the songs and comedy of Bert Williams and the earthy blues of Bessie Smith.
(West always credited these artists, as well as drag queens, as key influences.) "The African-American practice of
signifying, a subversive rhetorical device that uses multiple and conflicting messages to obscure rebellious meanings" was the primary element West adapted to her performing style, states Watts.
The author goes on to speculate that because West's parents encouraged her to perform as a sexually precocious preteen, she must have been sexually abused; furthermore, Watts argues, West identified with the blacks and homosexuals as exploited individuals who had to resort to subterfuge to express
themselves artistically. The author's urge to tie West to African-American culture becomes shrill when she consistently characterizes "She Done Him Wrong", "My Little Chickadee", and West's other movie comedies as calculated triumphs of cultural subversion aimed at the white establishment. It's possiblethat
they were funny, too. She done her wrong.
Meet the Author
Jill Watts is Associate Professor of History and has served as the Director of the History Department and Co-Director of the Women's Studies Program at California State University, San Marcos.
She is the author of God, Harlem, U.S.A.: The Father Divine Story.