Myra Breckinridge et le passager clandestin. Kitsch, camp et inconscient hollywoodien
Strongly criticised for its bad taste upon release, Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, Fox, 1970) was a commercial disaster. It was later rehabilitated as a cult movie thanks to a cultural reevaluation which has considered this narrative experimentation as a pioneering camp film of mainstream culture...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Presses universitaires de Rennes
2017-09-01
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| Series: | Revue LISA |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/9064 |
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| Summary: | Strongly criticised for its bad taste upon release, Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, Fox, 1970) was a commercial disaster. It was later rehabilitated as a cult movie thanks to a cultural reevaluation which has considered this narrative experimentation as a pioneering camp film of mainstream culture. This loose adaptation from Gore Vidal’s semi-pornographic novel (1968) attacks the Hollywood myths and questions film genre categories, the star system and gender identity. This article aims to analyze the complex entangling and overlapping of kitsch and camp used by New Hollywood to level criticism at classical Hollywood. The film’s aesthetic flamboyance accounts for its rejection by 1970 critical reception and audiences. It also explains its later camp and queer reevaluations. However, other than status acknowledgement, the extreme hybridisation and the lack of logic of Myra Breckinridge make for an unexpected statement. Born from the director’s imagination and that of the overall production process, the film stands as a metaphor of a dreamlike and phantasmatic intention that Gore Vidal’s novel had only just suggested. |
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| ISSN: | 1762-6153 |