Eng-Beng Lim
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814760895
- eISBN:
- 9780814760567
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814760895.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This chapter explores the Singapore's tendentious investment in pink-dollar capitalism and the blind spots of global queering as a discourse for the country's recent, English-language gay theater. It ...
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This chapter explores the Singapore's tendentious investment in pink-dollar capitalism and the blind spots of global queering as a discourse for the country's recent, English-language gay theater. It presents a case of theatrical trilogy Asian Boys, Vols. 1, 2, and 3, by playwright Alfian Sa'at, whose work alongside that of other local artists raises important questions about the boy's autoexotic display and gay agency in the region. The chapter suggests that the theatricality of the Asian boys has to be read as a glocalqueer production that serves a number of critical functions, including the way it can undo the binaries often internalized in studies about queer and postcolonial productions.Less
This chapter explores the Singapore's tendentious investment in pink-dollar capitalism and the blind spots of global queering as a discourse for the country's recent, English-language gay theater. It presents a case of theatrical trilogy Asian Boys, Vols. 1, 2, and 3, by playwright Alfian Sa'at, whose work alongside that of other local artists raises important questions about the boy's autoexotic display and gay agency in the region. The chapter suggests that the theatricality of the Asian boys has to be read as a glocalqueer production that serves a number of critical functions, including the way it can undo the binaries often internalized in studies about queer and postcolonial productions.
Sos Eltis
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199691357
- eISBN:
- 9780191751448
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199691357.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, Drama
This concluding chapter sketches the impressive endurance of the ‘fallen woman’ plots traced in this book through the later twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The plots and tropes used in ...
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This concluding chapter sketches the impressive endurance of the ‘fallen woman’ plots traced in this book through the later twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The plots and tropes used in the nineteenth century to debate and warn against transgressive female sexuality were redeployed in the twentieth century in early plays engaging with homosexuality. Familiar Victorian anti-feminist dramatic plots were brought back to life in early homophobic plays, and then challenged and subverted once more by playwrights seeking to challenge the judgemental sexual morality which underpinned them. The pathetic and tragic death of the sexually transgressive woman was replayed and adapted in theatrical responses to the horrific depredations of AIDS. The theatrical heritage of the fallen woman and her most famous embodiment, Marguerite Gautier, the lady of the camellias, remains visible in contemporary theatre and filmLess
This concluding chapter sketches the impressive endurance of the ‘fallen woman’ plots traced in this book through the later twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The plots and tropes used in the nineteenth century to debate and warn against transgressive female sexuality were redeployed in the twentieth century in early plays engaging with homosexuality. Familiar Victorian anti-feminist dramatic plots were brought back to life in early homophobic plays, and then challenged and subverted once more by playwrights seeking to challenge the judgemental sexual morality which underpinned them. The pathetic and tragic death of the sexually transgressive woman was replayed and adapted in theatrical responses to the horrific depredations of AIDS. The theatrical heritage of the fallen woman and her most famous embodiment, Marguerite Gautier, the lady of the camellias, remains visible in contemporary theatre and film
Sos Eltis
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199691357
- eISBN:
- 9780191751448
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199691357.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, Drama
From seduced maidens to adulterous wives, bigamists, courtesans, kept women, and streetwalkers, the so-called ‘fallen woman’ was a ubiquitous and enduring figure on the Victorian and Edwardian stage. ...
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From seduced maidens to adulterous wives, bigamists, courtesans, kept women, and streetwalkers, the so-called ‘fallen woman’ was a ubiquitous and enduring figure on the Victorian and Edwardian stage. Acts of Desire traces the theatrical representation of illicit female sexuality from early nineteenth-century melodramas, through sensation dramas, Ibsenite sex-problem plays, and suffrage dramas, to early social realism and the well-made plays of Pinero, Jones, Maugham, and Coward. This study reveals and analyses enduring plot lines and tropes that continue to influence contemporary theatre and film. Women’s illicit desires became a theatrical focus for anxieties and debates surrounding gender roles, women’s rights, sexual morality, class conflict, economics, eugenics, and female employment. The theatre played a central role in both establishing and challenging sexual norms, and many playwrights exploited the ambiguities and implications of performance to stage disruptive spectacles of female desire, agency, energy, and resourcefulness, using ingenuity and skill to evade the control of that ever watchful state censor, the Lord Chamberlain. Acts of Desire challenges the currency and validity of the long-established critical term ‘the fallen woman’. Encompassing a vast range of published and unpublished plays, archival material, censorship records, social and political texts, and contemporary reviews, it reveals the surprising continuities, covert meanings, and exuberant spectacles which marked the history of theatrical representations of female sexuality. Engaging with popular and ‘high art’ performances, this study also reveals the vital connections and exchange of influences between Victorian drama, narrative painting, and the novel, and shows theatre to be a crucial but neglected element in the cultural history of women’s sexuality.Less
From seduced maidens to adulterous wives, bigamists, courtesans, kept women, and streetwalkers, the so-called ‘fallen woman’ was a ubiquitous and enduring figure on the Victorian and Edwardian stage. Acts of Desire traces the theatrical representation of illicit female sexuality from early nineteenth-century melodramas, through sensation dramas, Ibsenite sex-problem plays, and suffrage dramas, to early social realism and the well-made plays of Pinero, Jones, Maugham, and Coward. This study reveals and analyses enduring plot lines and tropes that continue to influence contemporary theatre and film. Women’s illicit desires became a theatrical focus for anxieties and debates surrounding gender roles, women’s rights, sexual morality, class conflict, economics, eugenics, and female employment. The theatre played a central role in both establishing and challenging sexual norms, and many playwrights exploited the ambiguities and implications of performance to stage disruptive spectacles of female desire, agency, energy, and resourcefulness, using ingenuity and skill to evade the control of that ever watchful state censor, the Lord Chamberlain. Acts of Desire challenges the currency and validity of the long-established critical term ‘the fallen woman’. Encompassing a vast range of published and unpublished plays, archival material, censorship records, social and political texts, and contemporary reviews, it reveals the surprising continuities, covert meanings, and exuberant spectacles which marked the history of theatrical representations of female sexuality. Engaging with popular and ‘high art’ performances, this study also reveals the vital connections and exchange of influences between Victorian drama, narrative painting, and the novel, and shows theatre to be a crucial but neglected element in the cultural history of women’s sexuality.
