Synopses & Reviews
The one thing everybody knows about Jerry Lewis is that he is beloved by the French, those incomprehensible hedonistic strangers across the sea. The French understand him, while in the U.S. he is at best a riddle, not one of us. Lewis is someone we take profound pleasure in excluding, if not ridiculing.
Enfant Terrible! Jerry Lewis in American Film is the first comprehensive collection devoted to one of the most controversial and accomplished figures in twentieth-century American cinema. A veteran of virtually every form of show business, Lewis's performances onscreen and the motion pictures he has directed reveal significant filmmaking talents, and show him to be what he has called himself, a "total filmmaker." Yet his work has been frequently derided by American critics.
This book challenges that easy reading by taking a more careful look at Lewis's considerable body of work onscreen in 16 diverse and penetrating essays. Turning to such films asThe Nutty Professor, The Ladies Man, The King of Comedy, The Delicate Delinquent, Living It Up, The Errand Boy, The Disorderly Orderly, Arizona Dream, and The Geisha Boy, the contributors address topics ranging from Lewis's on- and offscreen performances, the representations of disability in his films, and the European obsession with Lewis, to his relationship with Dean Martin and Lewis's masculinity. Far from an out of control hysteric, Enfant Terrible! instead reveals Jerry Lewis to be a meticulous master of performance with a keen sense of American culture and the contemporary world.
Contributors include: Mikita Brottman, Scott Bukatman, David Desser, Leslie A. Fiedler, Craig Fischer, Lucy Fischer, Krin Gabbard, Barry Keith Grant, Andrew Horton, Susan Hunt, Frank Krutnik, Marcia Landy, Peter Lehman, Shawn Levy, Dana Polan, Murray Pomerance, and J. P. Telotte.
Review
“The Myth of Empowerment artfully documents 150 years of American efforts at self-improvement. Re-reading such sociological classics as Bellah, Lasch, Reiff, and Reissman, Becker expands (and sometimes explodes) their arguments by inserting women into their accounts of social life. Moving next to a savvy account of popular women-centered therapies arising out of the late 20th century feminism, Becker shows how they unwittingly incorporate some of the very premises that they repudiate. The Myth of Empowerment--delightfully informed by a witty sensibility, written with brio and clarity, and cast in elegant prose--is compelling reading.”
-Jeanne Maracek,
Review
“Dana Becker writes that for the past few decades women have been encouraged to believe that by taking care of their psychological selves they are becoming ever more powerful. Not so. In this intelligent and chilling examination, Becker traces how the repackaging of the psychological as power has led to the ultimate colonization of women's psyches. She is a beautiful writer, an exacting historian of ideas, and a tremendously intelligent guide through these troubled waters.”
“I was impressed with how the author marshaled this critical literature into a coherent and...compelling narrative.”
“The Myth of Empowerment artfully documents 150 years of American efforts at self-improvement. Re-reading such sociological classics as Bellah, Lasch, Reiff, and Reissman, Becker expands (and sometimes explodes) their arguments by inserting women into their accounts of social life. Moving next to a savvy account of popular women-centered therapies arising out of the late 20th century feminism, Becker shows how they unwittingly incorporate some of the very premises that they repudiate. The Myth of Empowerment--delightfully informed by a witty sensibility, written with brio and clarity, and cast in elegant prose--is compelling reading.”
Review
"A witty, provocative, and necessary re-evaluation of the phenomenon known as Jerry Lewis. I myself have loved and despised Jerry, often both at the same time; I needed this book to tell me why."-David Cronenberg,
Review
"These original, varied approaches are the heftiest appreciation of Lewis in English... Recommended." -Booklist,
Synopsis
The Myth of Empowerment surveys the ways in which women have been represented and influenced by the rapidly growing therapeutic cultureboth popular and professionalfrom the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The middle-class woman concerned about her health and her ability to care for others in an uncertain world is not as different from her late nineteenth-century white middle-class predecessors as we might imagine. In the nineteenth century she was told that her moral virtue was her power; today, her power is said to reside in her ability to “relate” to others or to take better care of herself so that she can take care of others. Dana Becker argues that ideas like empowerment perpetuate the myth that many of the problems women have are medical rather than societal; personal rather than political.
From mesmerism to psychotherapy to the Oprah Winfrey Show, women have gleaned ideas about who they are as psychological beings. Becker questions what women have had to gain from these ideas as she recounts the story of where they have been led and where the therapeutic culture is taking them.
About the Author
Murray Pomerance is Chair of the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University, whose edited volumes include Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls: Gender in Film at the End of the Twentieth Century, and Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood.