Popular Culture Review
54
because a group of people was labeled and punished. This labeling caused
communities to virtually implode.
Goldberg’s project Book no doubt complicates the general public’s idea
about public notoriety and the projection of female African American celebrity
image in the genre of autobiography. Goldberg’s discourses endow Book with a
different quality of storytelling, separate and apart from the sugarcoated portraits
presented by Dandridge and Carroll. The conjoining of scatology with sensible
advice about sex is evidence of Goldberg’s efforts to construct a more
comprehensive African American female. Somehow, Book restores Sarah
Bartmann, expands the dialogue Dandridge and Carroll began, and permits
women to engage in bawdy language. It’s ok. For sure, Dandridge and Carroll
manage to retain the perfect assembled Hollywood persona at the end of their
texts, and this complies with film culture’s building of entertainment images.
Together, the language of Dandridge, Carroll, and Goldberg asserts a Black
woman’s power in looking . . . and . .. talking.
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Kwakiutl L. Dreher
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Bogle, Donald. Dorothy' Dandridge: A Biography. New York: Amistad, 1997.
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Dandridge. Dorothy. Every thing and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy with Earl
Conrad. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1970.
De Leon. Ferdinand M., and Sally MacDonald, "The Politics o f Labels: Does It Matter
What We're Called?" Our Times: Readings from Recent Periodicals. Ed.
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Goldberg, Whoopi. Book. N ew York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1997.
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William L. Andrews. N ew Jersey: Prentice, 1993.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Feminism and Film Theory. Ed.
Constance Penley. New York: Routledge. 1988.
Preminger, Otto. dir. Carmen Jones. Perf. Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Pearl
Bailey, Diahann Carroll. 20th Century Fox, 1954.