Straight White Male: Performance Art Monologues

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Mass media images of the male are central to popular culture. This book analyzes a genre known as "performance art monologues" as presented by white heterosexual men. Its focus is stand-up comedians and stage and screen artists, including Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Josh Kornbluth, Rob Becker, Andrew Dice Clay, Wallace Shawn, and Danny Hoch, whose acts portray and investigate power, politics, privilege, and community. This fascinating examination connects performance studies with the monologue traditions in theater history, with such contemporary cultural activities as the men's movement, and with the current interest in queer theory and gender studies. Acknowledging the complex politics of all performance, whether avant-garde or popular, this first book-length critique of heterosexuality, masculinity, and whiteness in solo performance asserts that straight white male monologues create an illusion of community rather than engaging with the politics of identity as a social fact.