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jerihurd 's review for:
I've been waiting for this book for six months-- and, like any Hollywood movie, it was bound to struggle to live up to the anticipation. Don't get me wrong; for any lover of classic hollywood, this is a good read, and I'd probably have loved it if I hadn't been devouring Anne Helen Peterson's online articles--whether through Hairpin, Buzzfeed, her blog, or other media--for a couple years now. But I have and therein, I think, lies the slight disappointment with the book.
While the promos promise the chapters are not repeats of the Hairpin articles, that is a bit disingenuous. The articles aren't transplanted verbatim, but many of the stories (Fatty Arbuckle, Clara Bow Dorothy Dandridge, Montgomery Clift, and others) are repeats and cover familiar territory.
Still, a good story is always worth rereading. What I miss most in the book is the lively, irreverent, voice Peterson uses in her online pieces, which often read like a personal email to you, the reader. SHE IS FUNNY. Her side remarks on Hollywood hypocrisy and comments on the plethora of images that populate her online text are vastly entertaining and sadly missing in this text
Read this comment on a still of Lana Turner in a turban from the Postman Always Rings Twice:
"I mean, THIS IS IT, right? Like there’s no need for another seduction scene ever? And the high-waisted white shorts and the knotted crop top ... does Urban Outfitters carry those in my size? Can someone teach me how to make my towel topknot look like that? Do I need to live in the South, seduce some guy who comes to the diner owned by my old boring husband, and get him to kill said husband? "
Isn't that great? Doesn't it make you want to just hang with her, watching old movies and debating whether Joseph Cotton or Melvyn Douglas would be better movie star boyfriends?
Unfortunately, there's too little of that in the book. While it's not academic, one can feel the influence and the self-restraint (believe me, I've written enough deadly literary analyses myself to know). There is an occasional glimmer of the old style, as in this sly comment on Marlon Brando's engagement: "And as she [his fiancee] told the press, she didn't love Brando because he was a star, but as a man like any other. Plus, she was a 'sloppy dresser' with 'odd manners,' and the two had first met at his analyst's office--clearly, they were meant for each other."
I snorted latte out my nose at that one, and it made me long even more for the AHP of Hairpin.
Now, it's doubtless a monetary/copyright thing, but there's also an odd dearth of photographs--especially in the Kindle version that I read, which delegates the few images to the back of the book, where I only found them after I'd finished reading. A good part of the power in her online writing lies in the plethora of accompanying imagery, whether movie stills, shots of gossip mags or whatever. They not only allow the reader to visualize the commentary, but also engage in the analysis with AHP. Plus, as I said, her comments on the images are darned funny. That interaction is lacking in the book.
Nevertheless it says something that I started reading this Tuesday night, and finished by 11 am Wednesday morning. And that I'm actually bothering to write a Goodreads review, which I don't usually do. It's a good and enjoyable read. AHP has really carved a niche for herself in her analysis of Hollywood semiotics and what it means for the rest of us. She takes gossip and makes it respectable.
I'd definitely encourage you to head over to the Hairpin though, and spend a day reading the articles.
UPDATE: I just finished reading some of the other reviews. In AHP's defense, I think many of the readers missed the point of the book, when they complain the incidents she cover aren't "scandalous." As she states herself, the point of the book is Hollywood's manipulation of lives and media to its own interests, not just the relating of "gossip." Moreover, it's not about whether we see these events as scandalous now, but about views and values THEN.
While the promos promise the chapters are not repeats of the Hairpin articles, that is a bit disingenuous. The articles aren't transplanted verbatim, but many of the stories (Fatty Arbuckle, Clara Bow Dorothy Dandridge, Montgomery Clift, and others) are repeats and cover familiar territory.
Still, a good story is always worth rereading. What I miss most in the book is the lively, irreverent, voice Peterson uses in her online pieces, which often read like a personal email to you, the reader. SHE IS FUNNY. Her side remarks on Hollywood hypocrisy and comments on the plethora of images that populate her online text are vastly entertaining and sadly missing in this text
Read this comment on a still of Lana Turner in a turban from the Postman Always Rings Twice:
"I mean, THIS IS IT, right? Like there’s no need for another seduction scene ever? And the high-waisted white shorts and the knotted crop top ... does Urban Outfitters carry those in my size? Can someone teach me how to make my towel topknot look like that? Do I need to live in the South, seduce some guy who comes to the diner owned by my old boring husband, and get him to kill said husband? "
Isn't that great? Doesn't it make you want to just hang with her, watching old movies and debating whether Joseph Cotton or Melvyn Douglas would be better movie star boyfriends?
Unfortunately, there's too little of that in the book. While it's not academic, one can feel the influence and the self-restraint (believe me, I've written enough deadly literary analyses myself to know). There is an occasional glimmer of the old style, as in this sly comment on Marlon Brando's engagement: "And as she [his fiancee] told the press, she didn't love Brando because he was a star, but as a man like any other. Plus, she was a 'sloppy dresser' with 'odd manners,' and the two had first met at his analyst's office--clearly, they were meant for each other."
I snorted latte out my nose at that one, and it made me long even more for the AHP of Hairpin.
Now, it's doubtless a monetary/copyright thing, but there's also an odd dearth of photographs--especially in the Kindle version that I read, which delegates the few images to the back of the book, where I only found them after I'd finished reading. A good part of the power in her online writing lies in the plethora of accompanying imagery, whether movie stills, shots of gossip mags or whatever. They not only allow the reader to visualize the commentary, but also engage in the analysis with AHP. Plus, as I said, her comments on the images are darned funny. That interaction is lacking in the book.
Nevertheless it says something that I started reading this Tuesday night, and finished by 11 am Wednesday morning. And that I'm actually bothering to write a Goodreads review, which I don't usually do. It's a good and enjoyable read. AHP has really carved a niche for herself in her analysis of Hollywood semiotics and what it means for the rest of us. She takes gossip and makes it respectable.
I'd definitely encourage you to head over to the Hairpin though, and spend a day reading the articles.
UPDATE: I just finished reading some of the other reviews. In AHP's defense, I think many of the readers missed the point of the book, when they complain the incidents she cover aren't "scandalous." As she states herself, the point of the book is Hollywood's manipulation of lives and media to its own interests, not just the relating of "gossip." Moreover, it's not about whether we see these events as scandalous now, but about views and values THEN.