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Example research essay topic: Louise Brooks And Josephine Part 2 - 2,533 words

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... the implication of such confinement reflects the fate of the French at the end of the Third Republic and beyond: either outright expulsion or the colonial policy of exclusion from within (Asante, 1993 p. 157). However, more importantly, attesting to Bakers singing style, one reviewer proclaimed: Her singing, like a wounded bird, transported the crowd (New York Times, 28 Feb. 1932). The singing and dancing talent that escalated Baker to stardom made her the focus of the American press. Baker had sought refuge from the dire poverty of St.

Louis by perfecting her dancing and singing talent. Recognizing that in order to create appeal in the theatrical world, she had to be more than ordinary, she focused on becoming extraordinary, promoting herself as a comic dancer. Baker had been a stage performer in the United States prior to traveling to Europe, where she performed as a chorus girl with Noble Single and Eubie Blake's stage show Shuffle Along (1921) and, later, Chocolate Dandies (1924). In 1925, Baker was recruited for the Parisian stage and established herself as an entertainer in Revue Near. With one offer leading to another, Baker was soon performing at the Folies-Bergere and becoming the darling of the Parisian stage. At the Folies-Bergere, Baker appeared on stage wearing nothing but a little skirt of plush bananas.

It was the outfit she would be identified with virtually for the rest of her life, a witty thing in itself and wittier still when Baker started dancing and set the bananas in jiggling motion, like perky, good-natured phallus es (Haviland, 1935, p. 97). Elevated to stardom, by 1926 Baker was the rave of Paris as she spawned an onslaught of costumes, dolls, perfumes, and pomades (Haviland, 1935, p. 100). Bakers stage career was often interrupted by films. She landed her first screen role in La Scene des Tropiques (1927). Later films include the previously mentioned Zou Zou (1934), Princess Tam Tam (1935), and The French Way (1940). It is of note that although she is exotic ized in these films, rarely is she racialize d in the manner that she would have been in American films, where she would have been reduced to a subordinate or parodic construction.

Bakers growing reputation resulted in her launching an international tour throughout Europe; she performed in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and South America (Rose 138). Her international reputation landed her an invitation to return to the United States to appear in the previously mentioned stage production of Ziegfeld Follies (1936). This performance ended with Bakers receiving a cool reception as she endured the racial politics that prevailed in America (Haney, 1981, p. 202). By 1926, Baker was such a popular icon that the advertising industry recruited her to endorse products -- products designed to enhance racially oriented sex appeal for those seeking identification with Baker.

Her endorsement of Plus hairdressing read: Beautiful Josephine Baker tells how you can make your hair straight, soft and beautiful, too (Susman, 1984, p. 27), a line that conveyed this sex symbol's approval of Eurocentric standards of beauty, in a culture that preferred straight hair. Baker, having made her mark, updated it but still conformed to the dominant cultures accepted standards of beauty. According to one critic, At [the] height of the flapper age, mannish cuts, worn... by...

Josephine Baker, were [a] rage (New York Times, 28 Feb. 1932). Bakers masculine hairstyle was indicative of her emancipation; during this period, women considered cutting their hair an act of liberation: their first action was to cut their hair short and take off most of their clothes (New York Times, 28 Feb. 1932). Such action, while liberating women, challenged the masculine patriarchy that dictated to women and invokes the question of whether these women who were seeking their liberation were at the same time trying to identify with the very men from whom they were seeking freedom. Regardless of the answer, at least women were attempting to empower themselves during a period when power had been denied to them, regardless of their race.

Another question also arises: Was Bakers flaunting of a mannish haircut somehow a reflection of her attempt to assert the masculine side of herself? Was this an attempt to elicit the gaze of females who might have found Baker as conveying desirability for them? Or was this simply another attempt to increase her ability to elicit the gaze of males -- of all races? Whichever answer or combination of answers applies, Bakers hairstyle becomes yet another point of conjecture surrounding her sexuality, her multifaceted desirability, and the press's effort to capitalize on Bakers stardom.

The flapper era was the time of the worship of youth. Flappers were women of the Jazz Age. Among them is the great actress and personality Louise Brooks. She had measurements of pre-adolescent boy, with no waistline, no bust, and no butt. As the other flappers, she had short hair worn no longer than chin length, called bobs. Her hair was often dyed and waved into flat, head-hugging curls and accessorized with wide, soft headbands.

It was a new and most original style for women. So much make-up was worn by Louise that she even put on in public, which was once unheard of and considered something done only by actresses and whores. Louise wore short, straight dresses often covered with beads and fringes, and they were usually worn without pantyhose. Louise Brooks was a big part of the Jazz Age and had a lot of influence on the women of the 1920 s. Being a film star with a great, original character, she is known for being one of the most extraordinary women to set forth the Flapper era. Her sleek and smooth looks with her signature bob helped define the flapper look.

On November 14, 1906, in Cherryvale, Kansas, Mary Louise Brooks was born. She had two brothers, one sister, and parents, Leonard and Myra Brooks, who was a costume maker and pianist. In 1910, Brooks performed in her first stage role as Tom Thumbs bride in a Cherryvale church benefit. Over the next few years, she danced at men and womens clubs, fairs, and various other gatherings in southeastern Kansas. At ten years old she was already a serious dancer and very much interested in it.

In 1920, Brooks family moved to Wichita, Kansas, and at 13 years old, she began studying dance. Louise Brooks had a typical education and family life. She was very interested in reading and the arts, so in 1922 she traveled to New York City and joined the Denishawn Dance Company. This was the leading modern dance company in America at the time.

In 1923, Brooks toured the United States and Canada with Denishawn by train and played a different town nearly every night, but one year later, she leaves Denishawn and moves back to New York City. Not too long after her return, she gets a job as a chorus girl in the George White Scandals. Following this she and a good friend of hers sailed to Europe. At 17 years old, she gained employment at a leading London nightclub.

She became famous in Europe as the first person to dance the Charleston in London, and her performances were great successes. In 1925, Louise Brooks returned to New York and joins Ziegfeld Folies, and performed in the Ziegfeld production, Louie the 14 th. That summer she had an affair with Charlie Chaplin. At the same time, Brooks also appeared in her first film, The Streets of Forgotten Men, and signed a five-year contract with Paramount. This same year, she had her first appearance on a magazine cover. In 1926, she featured as a flapper in A Social Celebrity that launched her film career and introduced the flapper era (pandora box / chron ) In 1933 Brooks married wealthy Chicago playboy Deering Davis, but within six months, they were separated.

In 1956, she met James Card, the legendary film creator at George Eastman House, and moved to Rochester, NY. Here she studied film and continued to write at the House. Throughout her life, she found employment on the radio, as a model, and stared in many more films in which many of them she portrayed the rapidly spreading style of a flapper. She is a miraculous woman who helped to unfold and expand the flapper era throughout the world (pandorasbox / chron ). Not only did Louise Brooks and Josephine Baker have a great impact on the culture revitalization of the 1920 s, but they also left contributions that are still evident today. The year is 2003, and everywhere we look this so-called new fashion is becoming popular, but look again.

Dresses just above knee length with fringes and frills being worn by teenage girls and women, are the same style as those worn in the 1920 s. These famous flappers of the 1920 s also started a new phase of rebellion that would be passed on for decades. Before the 1920 s, girls and women were always refined, reserved, daddies girls. With the help of the flappers, this new era brought more unrefined, unpolished, and more rebellious girls.

It brought women with attitude and youth, which is obvious in todays society. Teenage girls today are constantly disobeying their parents and staying out past curfew. They are said to have a mind of their own. And of course, they are wearing things of which their parents disapprove, just as flappers like Louise Brooks and Josephine Baker wore clothing that would have been deemed whorish and vulgar if it was not for their stardom and acting success.

They gave life to a new style would influence women for years to come. A contribution to the field of ballroom dancing literature reached America as Louise Brooks The Fundamentals of Good Ballroom Dancing book went on sale. Written by Wichita's Louise Brooks, the booklet on ballroom dancing thoroughly codifies and synthesizes the fundamental basics of ballroom dancing technique in a handy, pocket-size manual. The popular priced publication is not only for the sincere student of dancing and those hundreds to whom dancing affords a major recreation, but also for the thousands who dance only occasionally and need the knowledge and sureness that comes from the application of simple rules and fundamentals of movement. This purpose is adequately described in the booklets foreword, this booklet is restricted solely to the outline and review of those basic fundamentals that are the essence of good dancing wherever discriminating people gather Regardless of ones knowledge of dancing, the application of the fundamentals outlined in these pages will permit anyone to improve his or her dancing immeasurably and give the sureness and poise that comes from a firm foundation of propriety and taste. (Szabo, 1940) Miss Brooks experience as a star of the stage and screen and an exhibition dancer who has performed in the leading social resorts of two continents lend to her composition the authoritative touch gleaned by her cosmopolitan life and her association with the worlds finest ballroom dancers. That was the era when New York was the hub of film activity, but she would later join Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles during Hollywood's so-called Golden Era.

Her film career spanned 13 years and 24 films, making the transition from silent films to talkies. Not many of them are remembered, but some of the early titles hint at the gaudy, decadent era of the 1920 s and 1930 s they reflected: Evening Clothes, Rolled Stockings and The City Gone Wild. She was in A Girl in Every Port with Victor McLaglen and in Beggars of Life with Wallace Berry and Richard Arlen. However, she refused to play by Hollywood rules. Disenchanted with the American film industry, at age 24 she went to Europe. It was there that she made Pandora's Box and its sequel, Diary of a Lost Girl, for German director G.

B. Pabst, creating her best known screen role: the amoral profligate and indelible Lulu. In recent decades, she contributed articles to film magazines based on her recollection and reminiscences of that heady period of the 1920 s and 1930 s. She moved to Rochester in 1958 because of Eastman's film archives where she could research her writings. There were many differences in the appearance of women between 1910 and 1920. In 1910 women dressed very conservative, they were always covered and never showed skin in public.

Their hair was usually long and pulled back and their skirts were always very long. In the 1920 s all that changed. Louise Brooks and Josephine Baker made a big contribution to the new era. Looking at those beautiful and bold flappers, women began to show skin and wore sleeve-less tops and shorter skirts. The short bob was the new hair style that became the new fashion. Young flappers were known to be very rebellious against their parents, and society blamed their waywardness partially on the media, movies, and film stars like Louise Brooks and Josephine Baker (Szabo, 1940).

The flappers Baker and brooks were also part of a self-conscious generation, the first of many in American history. The Flaming Youth of the 1920 s were the first to proclaim themselves products of different influences (especially the World War) than those that shaped their parents lives. They wore different clothes, listened to different music, danced different dances. They dated, also something new in American life.

The flapper used make-up. Before the 1920 s only actresses and prostitutes, professions not always distinct in the public mind, painted their faces. Lipstick and rouge had signaled sexual availability. Flappers also smoked. Not all of them, but enough so that another practice associated with loose women became commonplace. These are the consequences of Brooks and Baker influence on the contemporary epoch.

Therefore, every time we read about the 1920 - 1930 s we cant but mention these famous personalities that actually formed the era. Words: 4806 Bibliography: Primary sources: Susman, Warren Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984; Art and Josephine Baker. New York Times 28 Feb. 1932, sec. 7: 8. Asante, Kariamu Welsh. Josephine Baker.

Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Ed. Darlene Clark Hine. New York: Carlson, 1993. 75 - 78.

Haney, Lynn. Naked at the Feast: A Biography of Josephine Baker. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981. Flapper Culture and Style: Louise Brooks and the Jazz Age. The Louise Brooks Society.

web 3 / 22 / 00. Szabo, Julia. Oh, Those Flabbergasting Flappers! Long Island Our Story.

Wichita Eagle, December 17, 1940 Secondary sources: Pleasant's, Henry The Great American Popular Singers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974; Harrison, Joyce. Josephine Baker. Contemporary Musicians 10. Ed. Julia N.

Rubber. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994. Haviland, Ted. Ten Years Made a Lot of Difference in Josephine Baker.

Afro-American (Baltimore) 7 Dec. 1935: F. Scott Fitzgerald Flappers and Philosophers. First edition NY: Scribner's, 1920 Millard, Andre A History of Recorded Sound. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 104 - 5 Friedwald, Will Jazz Singing: Americas Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond. New York: Scribner's, 1990, pp. 50 - 51;


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