Creating Carmen Miranda

Race, Camp, and Transnational Stardom

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by Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez

Type

Stories

Subject

Actress > Carmen Miranda

Keywords

Carmen Miranda, dance

Publishing date

2022

Publisher

Vanderbilt University Press

Collection

Performing Latin American and Caribbean Identities

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 304 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-0-8265-0528-6

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Book Presentation:
Carmen Miranda got knocked down and kept going. Filming an appearance on The Jimmy Durante Show on August 4, 1955, the "ambassadress of samba" suddenly took a knee during a dance number, clearly in distress. Durante covered without missing a beat, and Miranda was back on her feet in a matter of moments to continue with what she did best: performing. By the next morning, she was dead from heart failure at age 46.

This final performance in many ways exemplified the power of Carmen Miranda. The actress, singer, and dancer pursued a relentless mission to demonstrate the provocative theatrical force of her cultural roots in Brazil. Armed with bare-midriff dresses, platform shoes, and her iconic fruit-basket headdresses, Miranda stole the show in films like That Night in Rio and The Gang's All Here. For American film audiences, her life was an example of the exoticism of a mysterious, sensual South America. For Brazilian and Latin American audiences, she was an icon. For the gay community, she became a work of art personified and a symbol of courage and charisma.

In Creating Carmen Miranda, Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez takes the reader through the myriad methods Miranda consciously used to shape her performance of race, gender, and camp culture, all to further her journey down the road to becoming a legend.

About the Author:
Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez is a professor of Portuguese and gender and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is coeditor of Performing Brazil: Essays on Culture, Identity, and the Performing Arts.

Press Reviews:
"Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez has written a veritable tour de force that will stand as the definitive study of Carmen Miranda for many years to come."
—Christopher Dunn, author of Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture

See the publisher website: Vanderbilt University Press

See the complete filmography of Carmen Miranda on the website: IMDB ...