i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

The Creation (of a) Myth / 9try” that John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp had once mockingly declared hadseceded from the United States. Although the Greenwich Village of the early1930s had lost the revolutionary fervor of the prewar years, it remained the locusof alternative life-styles as well as of much important creative activity. Theutopian visions of a socialist activist like Polly Holliday may have been replacedby the barbed commentary of the essayist Dorothy Parker; nonethelessthe Bohemia of Greenwich Village could still be counted on to remain a thornin the side of polite society.The artistic and literary example of New York’s bohemia in these years providedrather „imsy material on which to construct an identity, however. Neelcame to maturity during the great age of ƒlm, and as Robert Sklar has observed,many men and women learned about social relations, and male-female relationshipsin particular, from what they saw on the screen. A prototype enjoyingwide popularity in media culture—the bawdy comedic type personiƒed by MaeWest—may have provided the most compelling topos for the construction ofNeel’s persona.Although the stereotypical virgin-whore opposition that dominated ƒn-desiècleart was perpetuated in the roles played by early ƒlm stars such as LillianGish and Theda Bara, a ƒgure such as Mae West could irreverently mock theentire system with her outrageous screen behavior (ƒg. 1). Aggressive and loudmouthed,but with her hair dyed platinum and her hourglass ƒgure swathed insequined gowns, West was part temptress, part truck driver. Like the transvestiteshe appeared to be, she could at once play and parody female sex roles.Perhaps for males, her homeliness and sexual ambiguity allowed them tolaugh at her jokes without feeling threatened by her professed voracious sexualappetite, but for women, her lack of concern for male opinions or approbationmust have provoked a different kind of awe. Here was a woman whose dedicationto her own sensual pleasure was so strong that she would refuse to conƒneherself by giving her hand in marriage to even the most cinematically desirablescreen bachelor. For young women, including Neel, who watched her asthey reached the age of consent, West offered the possibility of saying “no” tosociety’s expectations by insisting on putting her own needs ƒrst.According to June Sochen, bawdy comediennes such as Mae West andvaudevillian Eva Tanguay used bathroom humor and sexual jokes to takethe Eve image and turn it around; no longer was woman’s sexuality viewed as evil. . . They also displayed, as all iconoclasts do, a marked irreverence for sacred subjects.Nothing was out of bounds. No gesture, no thought, no action had to be selfcensoredor controlled . . . The female rebel performer would not ever becomea comfortable part of popular culture because she was too avant-garde, too outrageousin her words and actions. 7