Lisa Shaw Celebrity Studies article

From the perspective of cultural studies, in its dialogs with feminist and queer studies, this article analyzes the identification of various publics with Carmen Miranda based on the consumption of her filmic, musical and artistic products, accessing her professional trajectory in its imbrication with its various forms of reception. The focus will be on the negotiations of the artist with her publics, touching on how her career involved reconfigurations concerning aspects of gender, race and sexuality. It is based on a perspective that considers the dynamism of mass culture, considering possibilities for various forms of appropriation of cultural products, as well as shifts and dissonances in receptions. To analyze these aspects, the paper focuses on feminine receptions in Brazil and the United States, and those of a male homosexual public contemporary to her career

By contrasting the ambivalent interpretations and appropriations of Carmen Miranda's image in both the United States and Brazil, this article examines the aesthetic and political implications of Miranda's emergence as an international celebrity in the construction and dissemination of a certain Brazilian identity within Brazil and worldwide.

Revue Française d Etudes Américaines, 2014

Cet article examine quelques aspects des fondements culturels et symboliques de la Politique de Bon Voisinage, la doctrine politique régissant les Amériques dans les années 1930-1940, dans le sillage de la Grande Dépression et de la Première Guerre mondiale. Les questions du regard, de la représentation, du corps et surtout un projet pédagogique spécifique pour le public américain seront examinées par le biais d'une référence aussi bien aux travaux de Guy Debord sur la société du spectacle qu'à ceux de Robyn Wiegman sur les régimes de connaissance visuelle. L'objet d'étude est Carmen Miranda, la baiana stylisée, une image qui a largement circulé à travers les technologies visuelles de la Politique de Bon Voisinage. Le but de cet article est de démontrer comment le corps de Miranda a orchestré à la perfection les impératifs de cette politique en fournissant une nouvelle source de connaissance sur l'Amérique latine fondée sur des représentations visuelles. Enfin cet article met en évidence les stratégies déployées afin de transformer l'image de Miranda en marchandise. "The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image." (Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 34)

Contemporânea - Revista de Sociologia da UFSCar, 2020

This article examines the role leading twentieth-century Brazilian popular culture figure, Carmen Miranda, had in shaping modern ideas of brasilidade/Brazilianness. I show that she became a popular film and radio star in 1930s Brazil not only because she was an adept performer, but also because she crafted a public image inspired by Hollywood glamour. Unlike the World War II-era Latin American caricature she became in the United States, from 1929 to 1939 Carmen Miranda was a culturally influential and modern star in Brazil. Inspired by the Hollywood styles that she observed in imported films and that were featured in domestic magazines, Carmen Miranda became one of Brazil’s first film stars, the nation’s international ‘Ambassador of Samba’ and an important influence on modern understandings of brasilidade.

European Journal of Women's Studies, 2016

Tilda Swinton’s status as a fashion icon exemplifies the contradictory functions that Walter Benjamin attributes to fashion as both exemplifying commodity fetishism and expressing a utopian ‘image wish’. This vexed relationship with fashion inflects Swinton’s cinematic performances, enhanced by her emphasis on disguise and transformation that calls into question the nature of identity and its authenticity. Her persona speaks to the fluid and fragmented dimensions of contemporary European identities, which are rooted, but also cross borders, national and otherwise; similarly, her public presence testifies to the way that contemporary culture has generated new forms of celebrity as a means of representing identities in which the negotiation of gender is a significant component.

Celebrity Studies, 2010

Anna Sten was a Russian émigré star who, thanks in great part to an aggressive promo- tional campaign, became a household name for the four years she was contracted to Sam- uel Goldwyn during the 1930s, only to fall into obscurity by the end of the decade. This article considers her ethnicity as a significant reason why she failed as a Hollywood star. I do this by means of a textural analysis of the various promotional texts (film stills, glamour portraits, press articles and fan magazine features) that shaped Sten’s cumulative star persona by casting her in relation to contradictory stereotypes of ethnicity. The archived correspondence documents written by Samuel Goldwyn and members of his publicity department are another important source. These are illuminating in terms of the strategies employed by the studio in their marketing of Sten as ‘foreign’. This article builds upon the work of scholars such as Diane Negra, Christian Viviani and Linda Mizejewski on the representation of foreign stars in America during the first decades of the 20th century, as well as Philip Gleason’s work on the assimilationist drive of the era. As the failure of Sten’s ethnicity coded persona during the xenophobic 1930s suggests, during this era Hollywood and American society were apt to conceptualise ethnicity only in relation to a limited number of rigidly defined ethnic types.

Comunicação e Sociedade

This is a study on the costumes worn by Carmen Miranda during the Hollywood film “Week-End in Havana”, released in 1941. It analyzes the elements of costume and discusses how they are appropriate in the current fashion discourse reinforcing or perpetuating, somehow, the discourse about Brazil and Latin America created by the performance of Carmen many decades ago.

2013