Bike Boys, Drag Queens and Superstars: Avant Garde, Mass Culture and Gay Identities in the 1960's Underground Cinema Book

At the confluence of experimental art and the gay subculture of early 1960s New York, Juan Su rez discovers a postmodern, gay-influenced aesthetic that recycles popular culture. Filmmakers Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol epitomize this sensibility, combining the influences of European avant-garde movements, comic books, rock n roll, camp, film cults, drag performance, fashion, and urban street cultures. Su rez contends that the avant-garde must be understood in relation to dominant modes of artistic and cultural production, including mass culture and the practices and varieties of community. Beginning with the intellectual and institutional history, and the cultural politics, of American underground cinema, Su rez moves to the filmmakers' work Anger's taste for ornamentation, stylistic excess, and hot-rod and motor-cycle subcultures; Smith's interest in 1920s and 40s movie glamour and decaying urban landscapes; and Warhol's explorations of style, fashion, and superstardom.Read More