| EastWesterly
Review
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The Mainly Annual
EastWesterly Review/Postmodern Village
14th Annual Conference
 Brontë-saurus:
Evolution, Romanticism, and the Fossil Record in the 19th Century
Brit-Lit Zeitgeist
by Anita Dovertu
The bones of fish on mountains? Zounds! Thus does Dovertu slowly
pick from the matrix of 19th century English fiction the traces
of the traces of ages past and, reassembling all the pieces
with painstaking care and gallons and gallons of superglue,
shows how it all comes together to make Darwin's discovery not
mere genius but utterly inevitable despite all the random modifications
of social ferment and the careless idylls of the scribe. |
 Maxfield
Parrish Hilton: Klass Meets Trash, or High Culture Becomes Low
Art in Self-Identifying Prophesy
by Nast E. Thomas
The recent movement to replace all the nudes in Maxfield Parrish's
prints with Paris Hilton spawned a backlash in the illustration
community unseen since the manipulation of a Norman Rockwell
print to show a mixed race couple kissing. The presentation
was okay, but the best part was the back table with its oddities:
the urinal cake with the Mona Lisa on it (does that explain
the weird smile?), tons of things with polo ponies on it, and
the cell phone that plays the second Brandenburg Concerto. (That
phone may or may not have been part of the exhibit. Hard to
tell.)
|
 Club
Anschluss: The Sound of Music Enters the Gay Cabaret,
or The Rocky Horror Effect Goes Viral
by Madge Enta and Cole Umbria
The gentle reader has no doubt heard of the popularity of The
Sound of Music singalongs and their largely gay, male participants.
But, argue Enta and Umbria, it is this effect, this need to
belong and be hip and unabashedly camp (or even a bit
vamp) that's driving otherwise well-adjusted hetero, Republican,
suburban people into karaoke bars in droves, or, just as frequently,
in Chevy Tahoes. Enta and Umbria's background music was disco-techno
remix, but their floorshow was flamin'.
|
 Fistful
of Dimebag: the Heavy Metal Ethos as Reflected in Spaghetti
Westerns, a Search for Origins in the Playlists on a Video iPod
by A.C.E. Murderface
Murderface rocked the house, but the paper's content was difficult
to read on that tiny little screen. You can download the podcast
at www.murderface.net. Point taken. |
 The
Mercury Magnificent 7: A Hopalong Hoedown in Near Earth Orbit,
or The Tom Wolfe Two-Step
by O. Wen Wistler
Wistler won the showdown contest with the previous paper and
provided the best square dancing of the whole conference, bar
none—also, and not coincidentally, the moniker of circular
brand, O. Wen Wistler uses on his cattle ranch in rural Rhode
Island. Interestingly, our own E.W. Wilder and Melissa Thompson
had the "right stuff" to boot-scoot well enough to
Wistler's live jugband, to earn them a blue ribbon and a case
of Coors. |
 Moral
Majority Minus One: Conservative Electoral Calculus in the Post-Falwell,
Pre-Obama Age: An Essay in Interpretive Dance
By Olivia Graham-Newton
The best dancing of the conference was not presented
alongside this paper, but this paper was presented
as. This reporter would describe it, but there was
far too much architecture. Suffice it to say, Graham-Newton
does not suggest packing your bags in anticipation of the Apocalypse—at
least not until the fall. |
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