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Reinventing the Wheel: The Hostess Trope in the Twenty-First Century

Reinventing the Wheel: The Hostess Trope in the Twenty-First Century Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 2015 Vol.15, No.2,150163, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2015.1089802 Reinventing the Wheel: The Hostess Trope in the Twenty-First Century Elena Knox* The deployment of young, pretty women for hostessing events, shows, expositions and competitions has a fascinating and often chilling fictive history permeating Gothic, sci-fi and other literature, variety theatre, the ensuing development of cinema, and modern-day advertising and branding. Material manifestations span Edison’s 1 2 doll factories, the first Hadaly robots, virtual lady ‘chatterbots’, Bellmer’s Dolls, sports mascots, and onward to a twenty-first century rollcall of RealDolls and gynoid androids. In the last 30 years I have watched television game-show hostesses in electric boxes acting as if they were performing androids, and in my performance/video works and writings I map one presence onto the other to highlight a vocabulary of being that is proving to be perilously regenerative. Pragmatically, it’s not hard to comprehend that the persona of the welcoming hostess is delimiting and demeaning. Yet it persists. Little is done pragmatically, practically, to intervene in its delimitation; despite its being emblematic of repressive gender politics, the trope is at once widely disseminated and popularly dismissed as either positive, relatively harmless or, worse, a fundament of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Taylor & Francis

Reinventing the Wheel: The Hostess Trope in the Twenty-First Century

Knox, Elena
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art , Volume 15 (2): 14 – Jul 3, 2015
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Reinventing the Wheel: The Hostess Trope in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 2015 Vol.15, No.2,150163, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2015.1089802 Reinventing the Wheel: The Hostess Trope in the Twenty-First Century Elena Knox* The deployment of young, pretty women for hostessing events, shows, expositions and competitions has a fascinating and often chilling fictive history permeating Gothic, sci-fi and other literature, variety theatre, the ensuing development of cinema, and modern-day advertising and...
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2015 The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Inc
ISSN
2203-1871
eISSN
1443-4318
DOI
10.1080/14434318.2015.1089802
Publisher site
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Abstract

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 2015 Vol.15, No.2,150163, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2015.1089802 Reinventing the Wheel: The Hostess Trope in the Twenty-First Century Elena Knox* The deployment of young, pretty women for hostessing events, shows, expositions and competitions has a fascinating and often chilling fictive history permeating Gothic, sci-fi and other literature, variety theatre, the ensuing development of cinema, and modern-day advertising and branding. Material manifestations span Edison’s 1 2 doll factories, the first Hadaly robots, virtual lady ‘chatterbots’, Bellmer’s Dolls, sports mascots, and onward to a twenty-first century rollcall of RealDolls and gynoid androids. In the last 30 years I have watched television game-show hostesses in electric boxes acting as if they were performing androids, and in my performance/video works and writings I map one presence onto the other to highlight a vocabulary of being that is proving to be perilously regenerative. Pragmatically, it’s not hard to comprehend that the persona of the welcoming hostess is delimiting and demeaning. Yet it persists. Little is done pragmatically, practically, to intervene in its delimitation; despite its being emblematic of repressive gender politics, the trope is at once widely disseminated and popularly dismissed as either positive, relatively harmless or, worse, a fundament of

Journal

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jul 3, 2015

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