An edition of Place for us (1998)

Place for us

essay on the Broadway musical

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Last edited by Jenner
October 12, 2021 | History
An edition of Place for us (1998)

Place for us

essay on the Broadway musical

In Place for Us, D. A. Miller probes what all the jokes laugh off: the embarrassingly mutual affinity between a "general" cultural form and the despised "minority" that was in fact that form's implicit audience.

In a style that is in turn novelistic, memorial, autobiographical, and critical, the author restores to their historical density the main modes of reception that so many gay men developed to answer the musical's call: the early private communion with original cast albums, the later camping of show tunes in piano bars, the still later reformatting of these same songs at the post-Stonewall disco.

If the postwar musical may be called a "gay" genre, Miller demonstrates, this is because its regular but unpublicized work has been to indulge men in the spectacular thrills of a femininity become their own.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
141

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Place for us
Place for us: essay on the Broadway musical
1998, Harvard University Press
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Published in
Cambridge, Mass

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
782.1/4/0973
Library of Congress
ML1711 .M58 1998, ML1711.M58 1998

The Physical Object

Pagination
141 p. :
Number of pages
141

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL355886M
Internet Archive
placeforusessayo00mill
ISBN 10
0674669908
LCCN
98015685
OCLC/WorldCat
38924192
Library Thing
1214965
Goodreads
3340520

Work Description

It used to be a secret that, in its postwar heyday, the Broadway musical recruited a massive underground following of gay men. But though this once silent social fact currently spawns jokes that every sitcom viewer is presumed to be in on, it has not necessarily become better understood.

In Place for Us, D. A. Miller probes what all the jokes laugh off: the embarrassingly mutual affinity between a general cultural form and the despised minority that was in fact that forms implicit audience. In a style that is in turn novelistic, memorial, autobiographical, and critical, the author restores to their historical density the main modes of reception that so many gay men developed to answer the musicals call: the early private communion with original cast albums, the later camping of show tunes in piano bars, the still later reformatting of these same songs at the post-Stonewall disco.

In addition, through an extended reading of Gypsy, Miller specifies the nature of the call itself, which he locates in the postwar musicals most basic conventions: the contradictory relation between the show and the book, the mimetic tendency of the musical number, the centrality of the female star. If the postwar musical may be called a gay genre, Miller demonstrates, this is because its regular but unpublicized work has been to indulge men in the spectacular thrills of a femininity become their own.

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October 12, 2021 Edited by Jenner Edited without comment.
August 23, 2020 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
February 14, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot remove fake subjects
October 25, 2012 Edited by ImportBot Added subject 'In library'
December 9, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page