Product Description

Beginning with the bold claim, "There can be no culture without the transvestite," Marjorie Garber explores the nature and significance of cross-dressing and of the West's recurring fascination with it.

Vested Interests is a tour de force of cultural criticism: its investigations range across history, literature, film, photography, and popular and mass culture, from Shakespeare to Mark Twain, from Oscar Wilde to Peter Pan, from transsexual surgery and transvestite "sororities" to Madonna, Flip Wilson, Rudolph Valentino and Elvis Presley. What, Garber asks, does clothing have to do with sexuality? How do dress codes contribute to the organization of society? How is passing as a man or a woman related to racial passing? Is transvestitism a sign of homosexuality? What are the politics of drag? Why are cross-dressing rituals so commonly a part of the male power elite? How do transvestites appear--and disappear--in detective fiction? Is religious costume a kind of cross-dressing? Why is Peter Pan played by a woman?

The books fifteen chapters include "Cross-Dressing for Success," "Fetish Envy," The Chic of Araby," "Phantoms of the Opera," "Black and White TV" (on transvestitism in African-American literature and culture), Spare Parts" (on transsexual surgery, the surgical construction of gender) and "Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Bed."

Rich in anecdote and insight, Vested Interests offers a provocative and entertaining view of our ongoing obsession with dressing up--and with the power of clothes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #768046 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 456 pages

From Publishers Weekly
From the "transvestite theatre" of Shakespearean England and Japan's kabuki to Peter Pan, Boy George and female Elvis impersonators, cross-dressing is a pervasive social phenomenon, claims Garber, director of Harvard's Center of Literary and Cultural Studies. She states that "there can be no culture without the transvestite," who, she argues, calls attention to cultural, social or aesthetic dissonances. The weight of her thesis is carried by such figures as Liberace, Divine, Oscar Wilde and David Bowie, yet her witty, consistently provocative study demonstrates effectively how cross-dressing is wrapped up with recognition of the power of women, androgyny, responses to gay identity and anxiety over economic or cultural dislocations. Garber also looks at transsexuals, drag performances, plays and movies. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Do clothes really make the man? What do Elvis and Liberace have in common? Why is Peter Pan always played by a woman? These are just a few of the questions of sexual and sartorial politics raised by Garber. From the sumptuary laws of medieval Europe to "vogueing" in New York City in 1991, she traces Western society's inconsistent and often arbitrary views regarding the clothes we wear and how they affect class structure, gender stereotyping, and our own self-image. Garber boldly asserts that transvestism makes culture possible by deliberately confusing the constructs of gender identification and challenging the social control they seek to maintain. Well documented and thoroughly researched, Garber's book is a serious work that is not without a piquant feel for the ironic, especially as she details the lengths to which both men and women have gone to hide their gender in order to get ahead in the world. Often raising more questions than it answers, this is nevertheless a fascinating book about an equally fascinating subject. Highly recommended.
- Jeffrey Ingram, New port P.L., Ore.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
An elaborate theory by Garber (English/Harvard), insisting that the transvestite is at the elusive heart of Western culture. In a century-sweeping book, Garber applies current critical thought to the phenomenon of ``cross-dressing'' in fact and fiction, high culture and low. Arguing that gender is culturally constructed, she contends that cross-dressing challenges the binary categories of male and female as well as the concept of category itself. It signals ``cultural, social or aesthetic dissonances.'' Garber argues that critics have looked ``through,'' not ``at,'' the transvestite, failing to see what is a Freudian ``primal scene.'' Defined here again and again, the transvestite is ``the space of desire,'' ``a space of possibility,'' a ``third.'' Garber plays out her theory in detailed analyses of countless transvestite figures- -Shakespearean heroines, Tootsie, Lawrence of Arabia, M. Butterfly, Madonna, and Laurence Olivier (here portrayed at death as ``the triumphant transvestite''). There is no shortage of provocative speculation and information, some worth considering and some--like that about transvestite magazines and the politics of transsexual surgery--not. Unfortunately, the sub-flooring of French critical terms sets Garber's argument on a slippery slope ending up too often in a theoretical mire where ``the transvestite is both a signifier and that which signifies the undecidability of signification.'' A discussion of Elizabethan dress codes and costuming concludes with the typically reductive claim that ``there is no ground of Shakespeare that is not already cross-dressed.'' Also, when critical terms are rampantly applied--Elvis and Liberace, for instance, labeled, like Peter Pan, ``changeling boys''--they quickly lose impact. Bound for controversy, this study admirably attempts to cross from the academy to popular culture, but theory here acts less as a window onto cultural evolution than as a screen drawing attention its own overwrought, repetitive pattern. (Color and b&w illustrations--150--some seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

crossdressing & acadamic insight
first off, i can't say i would recommend this book to someone who doesn't have a more academic background, flitting as it does from foucault to freud & back again, but i have to say that it's critique & thesis are well-reasoned, well-argued, & definitely well-referenced! it's like a cross dressing field guide in some ways... i found myself making up a list of movies/books to check out. even moreso, it's a great book for anyone wanting to study gender construction in general... as it gets at that shadowy figure inbetween the genders, who belies/affirms all the constructs...

thank you marjorie garber!

Accumulating Dust, But Some Parts Still Worth More Than Just 3 Stars
I read the original 1992 hardcover edition. Which means, this book is dated. Definitely missing yet is for example the concept of metrosexuality. The newest films analyzed are Tootsie (1982) and Yentl (1983), already a decade old when this book was published.

Marjorie Garber uses a very rich vocabulary, some of which I was even able to stump internet dictionaries with. On the other hand, she uses unintended racist vocabulary. She may have known better in 1992.

Many parts of the 390-paged book (+ 35 pages of footnotes and 38 picture pages, some of which are in color) are very interesting to read. Usually, when playing topsyturvy with our Western concepts of gender. For example that the pink-blue baby colors were reversed before WWI. When and in what circumstances Muslim societies appear to harbor more gender freedoms than the West. (Though the author doesn't mention everything possible.) Many history lessons are to be learned, e.g. that Joan of Arc wasn't tried under the inquisition for heresy, but transvestism.

Lengthy chapters are reserved for classic films, sumptuary laws, Peter Pan, Salome, detective stories, M. Butterfly, the posthumous Harold Washington scandal, Josephine Baker and the image connection among Valentino, Liberace and Elvis. With most of these chapters I had the feeling that they were somewhat arbitrary or that separate long articles, worthy as they may be individually, were compiled for a book, which often loses sight of its overall coherence. Even though I liked reading about all of that, it felt too much like a patchwork text instead of clear messages.

If you are interested in gender studies, don't miss out on this one. Just make sure, this will not remain the only one. Some other books include The Mismeasure of Woman, Myths Of Gender: Biological Theories About Women And Men, Revised Edition, The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) and Nature's Body: Gender In The Making Of Modern Science