"Foster presents a timely indictment of US "celebrity" culture, wherein a credit card, plastic surgery, and happy pills represent the keys to the American Dream. She examines how constant exposure to the fantasy world of the rich and famous impacts the lives of average individuals, who try to replicate these worlds through behavior, dress, and, in many cases, dieting and/or plastic surgery. And if all this fails to help them achieve the American Dream of unending luxury and fame, these celebrity-seduced individuals can always turn to pharmaceuticals for their ultimate happiness. Foster also points out that the illusions created by the media lead many to believe they can "class-pass" as one of their favorite celebrities with a mere swipe of their credit card, an idea promoted through advertisements, reality television shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and "documentary" programming like VH1's The Fabulous Life. Both timely and pertinent to the current discourse on class and culture in the US, Foster's book is a must. Summing Up: Essential. All readers; all levels. -- A. F. Winstead, CHOICE March 2006
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster holds the rank of Professor in the Department of English, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, specializing in Film Studies, Cultural Studies, and Postfeminist Critical Theory.
Foster's recent books include Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader (Routledge); Captive Bodies: Postcolonial Subjectivity in Cinema (State University of New York Press); and Troping the Body: Etiquette, Conduct and Dialogic Performance (Southern Illinois University Press); Identity and Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman (Southern Illinois University Press); and Performing Whiteness (State University of New York Press).
Foster has also published Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary (Greenwood Press) on the history and critical reception of women filmmakers in the United States and abroad, and Women Filmmakers of the African and Asian Diaspora (Southern Illinois University Press), on the work of women filmmakers within African and Asian society.
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Contact: gfoster@unlserve.unl.edu
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