ABSTRACT One Touch of Venus is a musical comedy starring Ava Gardner as an ancient statue of Venus brought to life in a department store. The film’s release coincided with the rising late-1940s press discourse of the screen ‘goddess’ and ‘Venus’, as well as that of the ‘war goddess’, a figure closely aligned with the femme fatale of film noir. This article discusses how Universal-International’s campaign exploited Gardner’s rising profile, including the Bakelite figurine of the star distributed to exhibitors, and beauty contest tie-ins where fans could measure themselves up against star and sculpture alike. This Bakelite Venus mediates between the marble fantasy of Gardner’s screen Venus, the authorship of the star, and the enveloping myth of screen stardom. But Hollywood pedestals are built to crumble, and the constructed ideals of classical beauty are here also exposed as a commodified travesty in marble, flesh and Bakelite. While Gardner was ‘built-up’ as a goddess, like her peers Rita Hayworth and Maureen O’Hara, this patriarchal construct of female beauty was also repressive, disempowering and de-humanising. This article uses the Bakelite Venus as a case study into the still-resonant divinising, and desecrating, connotations of such publicity.

中文翻译：

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大理石和胶木维纳斯：阿瓦·加德纳和维纳斯一碰（1948）

摘要“金星一碰”是一部音乐喜剧，由阿瓦·加德纳（Ava Gardner）主演，是一部古老的金星雕像，在百货商店中栩栩如生。这部电影的发行与1940年代后期银幕上的“女神”和“维纳斯”以及“战争女神”的新闻话语日渐高涨的时期相吻合，这个数字与黑色电影的蛇蝎美人密切相关。本文讨论了环球国际的竞选活动如何利用Gardner的崛起形象，包括分发给参展商的明星的胶木雕像，以及选美比赛的搭档，球迷们可以以此来与明星和雕塑相提并论。这个胶木维纳斯在加德纳的银幕维纳斯的大理石幻想，明星的创作权以及银幕明星包围的神话之间进行了调解。但是好莱坞的基座却崩溃了，在这里，古典美的理想构造也以大理石，果肉和胶木的轻浮怪诞而暴露。尽管加德纳像同龄人丽塔·海沃斯（Rita Hayworth）和莫琳·奥哈拉（Maureen O'Hara）一样，是作为一个女神而“集结”起来的，但这种重男轻女的女性美态也令人压抑，无能为力，并失去了人性化。本文以胶木维纳斯为例，研究了这种宣传仍然令人共鸣的神化和亵渎的内涵。