Dusty!: Queen of the Postmods by Annie J. Randall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not a biography, this book is both about Dusty Springfield the singer, the business woman as much as it is an examination of what other people thought of her. In fact, as Randall points out, it’s impossible to discern who Dusty Springfield is because even interviewing people about her reveals that the interviewees were also influenced by the discourse surrounding her.
What Randall teases out is that Dusty Springfield enters into the music industry in the 60s as her own person, against the patriarchial system of white males writing about music (that even if you weren’t white male writing about music, the point of view of the industry still takes those values to be neutral values to have). Dusty’s ability to do this muscially, breaking genre boundaries, is also mirrored in her persona onstage and “behind the scenes” in the music industry. As much as she wanted to be private about her private life, this absence of personal data spun the rumor mill, exaggerating the data that was already there, to create an onstage persona that was both larger than life and allowed people to connect to her through her music and performances. In creating a “camp” identity for herself both with soul music and adopted operatic melodrama gestures, Dusty figures, in a big way, as the first postmodern performer, taking cliches from other areas and embodying them as her own just as gay men may “do dusty” to dress as her and sing as her. I thought Randall’s teasing out of this kind formed object of identity in discourse was particularly interesting, although she didn’t need to split this last point until the end.
I am not as familiar with Dusty Springfield as some others might be; she could have opened with a chapter on Dusty’s life. All in all, I think Randall hits her mark in examining the discourse of Dusty through this book… even though I think she could have introduced some more theory background, which was only grazed lightly (such as Judith Butler’s idea of sexuality as performance, something apparent to Randall, as Dusty did much preforming.)… but if Randall wanted to hit a larger audience, (which may be why she went lighter on some theory aspects) I think she could have presented a strong biography, with a narrative hook.
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