Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: What Makes the Feminist Camp? 1 1. "The Kinda Comedy Where They Imitate Me": Mae West's Identification with the Feminist Camp 13 2. What Trixie and God Know: Feminist Camp in Gold Diggers of 1933 55 3. Camping under Western Stars: Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar 85 4. Does Feminist Camp Make a Difference? or, What We Talk About When We Talk About Madonna 115 Conclusion: The Queens Are Dead, Long Live the Queens 139 Notes 155 Bibliography 175 Index 189

About the Author

Pamela Robertson Wojcik is Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theater and Director of the Gender Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945-1975, also published by Duke University Press, and the editor of Movie Acting: The Film Reader.

Reviews

"Guilty Pleasures is a polished, provocative, and innovative scholarly work. Robertson addresses a timely set of topics (not only camp but also feminism, gender theory, the masquerade) from the perspective of star studies and queer theory. While theoretically sophisticated in its approach, and extremely well grounded in the scholarship on the texts and stars she analyzes, her book is written in a clear, direct, and witty style."-Steven Cohan, author of Telling Stories and coeditor of Screening the Male "This is one of the best film books I've read in years. It thoroughly situates contemporary debates in a well-established historical context. The theoretical conclusions are derived from the case studies, not imposed on them. It was fun to read and you can dance to it."-Jane Feuer, author of Seeing Through the Eighties and MTM: Quality Television "This is the most extensive-and the most subtle and complex-examination of the feminist 'angle' on camp I have seen."-Alexander Doty, author of Making Things Perfectly Queer and coeditor of Out in Culture