The happy stripper : pleasures and politics of the new burlesque

240 Pages·2008·3.25 MB·English

by  Willson

The
H S
appy tripper

The
H S
appy tripper
Pleasures and Politics
of the New Burlesque
Jacki Willson
Published in 2008 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
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In the United States of America and Canada
distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press
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Copyright © Jacki Willson, 2008
The right of Jacki Willson to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
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ten permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 84511 318 6
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Acknowledgements
I thank my editor Susan Lawson for her enthusiasm, rigour and in-
sights, as well as Dr Marsha Meskimmon for her advice, suggestions
and wholehearted encouragement.
I need also to express my warm thanks to the contemporary ar-
tistes and artists – Ursula Martinez, Jenny Saville and Immodesty
Blaize and her efficient assistant Minnie – who kindly allowed me to
include the striking and appropriate images in this book. Thanks also
to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their support.
Most of all I must lovingly thank George and Mathilde for their
support and patience throughout this project.
Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Introduction: Show Off 1
Empowering, Disempowering, Overpowering 1
Feminism and Post(-)Feminism 8
1. Burlesque 17
What is Burlesque? 17
Crossing into the mainstream 17
Democratic excesses 25
‘Stars’ and ‘Queens’ 33
The unruly woman 33
Menacing vamp 40
2. Body as Spectacle 49
The Nude 49
Pornography and erotica 49
Histories of female performance 56
The Female Body in Performance 63
Carolee Schneemann 63
Hannah Wilke 70
Contents
3. The ‘Leg Business’ 79
Money 79
The man’s world of business 79
Ruthless tycoons 87
Sex 95
The unholy trinity (strippers, hookers and porn stars) 95
The courtesan 101
4. Powers of Seduction 111
Painted Ladies 111
Artifice 111
Glamour 119
Veiling and Nakedness 126
Democracy 126
Freedom 133
5. Guerrilla Theatre 143
The Freak 143
Subversive submission 143
The freak show 150
Knowingness 157
Gossip 157
Networking 165
Conclusion: Showdown 173
Feminist Fluidity 173
Virus 180
Notes 189
Bibliography 211
Index 224
vii
Illustrations
Lydia Thompson as the ‘Girl of the Period’ (J. Gurney Studios,
c.1868). Courtesy of Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New
York Library for the Performing Arts, Astor Lenox, and Tilden
Foundations. 16
Plan, 1993, by Jenny Saville. Oil on canvas. 108 × 84 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery. 48
Gypsy Rose Lee. Courtesy of Culver Pictures. 78
West End bill poster advertising Immodesty Blaize and Walter’s
Burlesque, 2005. Courtesy of Immodesty Blaize, © Immodesty
Blaize. 110
Ursula Martinez in Show Off, 2001. Courtesy of Ursula
Martinez. 142
Introduction:
Show Off
Empowering, Disempowering,
Overpowering
I n 2001 I went to see a performance artist called Ursula
Martinez. The performance – Show Off – began with Ur-
sula, clothed sexily in a black dress and stilettos, seductively
stripping to music. For three long minutes I sat in a mixed audience
and watched, feeling a mixture of pleasure, anger and embarrassment.
Winking and smiling, she took off every scrap of clothing and then dis-
appeared behind the curtain. She then reappeared to tell us that that
was it, the show was over, and we were now going to have a question-
and-answer session. I left the theatre with many, many questions.
That experience was the catalyst for this book.
After the performance the striptease continued to bother me. Why
did it bother me? This woman was comfortable with her body, and
sexy in her confidence and charisma. Funny. Gutsy. Intelligent. Con-
trolled. Why, therefore, did it continue to bother me? For a start I had
voluntarily paid to enter the theatre, so with that payment came an
element of trust. I assumed that what I would be seeing would be art.
That same exchange of money created a very different situation when
I was confronted with striptease, however. I was then thrust into
The Happy Stripper
another relationship: that of a voyeur, a sex show client – that of ille-
gitimacy, of side streets, stale smoke, exploitation and cheap thrills.
How did stripping differ in my perceptions when it was advertised
as art and housed within an art establishment, rather than a sleazy
joint where I imagined men in shifty raincoats filling the room with
unrequited lust, dirty secrets and shame? My pleasure and anger
came from suddenly feeling immersed in this tense, intense inter-
play between legitimacy and illegitimacy, danger and safety, pleasure
and anger, liberation and vulnerability. I felt exposed and trapped,
resentful of being lured there yet completely relishing the experience
– shrinking into my seat yet urging Martinez on.
Did she also feel these polarized emotions? As a feminist, were
you meant to be feeling offended and uncomfortable with this ac-
tion? Or were you meant to be cheering her on in affectionate post-
feminist support and camaraderie? Was the fact of her being a les-
bian (a fact I discovered after the strip) supposed to alter any sense
of uneasiness on my part – was it fine to strip as long as you were gay
and doing it with a sense of irony?
Post-feminists and antifeminists seem to be saying that it’s fine
to strip nowadays; we can do what we want, when we want. Where
does that leave strippers as artistes? Have we got to the point in
feminist progression where these women should now be viewed
as empowered workers rather than disempowered, exploited and
somehow damaged victims? Should we differentiate at all between a
fully sentient performance by an artist like Martinez and a seeming-
ly politically naive performance by an artiste such as, for instance,
Dita Von Teese? Taking that further, what about that bad egg the
prostitute – is she now our contemporary ‘all-woman’ heroine?
Does any of this matter anymore? Some young women now feel
that these issues are old hat, tired, wearing thin and long overdue for
retirement. Does this undermine my own feminist ideals and 1980s
‘Alexis Carrington’ teenage years? For those not of my generation,
Dynasty’s acerbic but sexy Alexis Carrington, played by the indomi-
table Joan Collins, was iconic for her sex appeal, power-dressing,
2