Reviewed by:

• Tennessee Williams, T-shirt Modernism and the Refashionings of Theater by S. E. Gontarski
• John S. Bak (bio)

Tennessee Williams, T-shirt Modernism and the Refashionings of Theater by S. E. Gontarski proposes to come "to grips with the Williams we thought we knew, as he grew, developed and reconfigured himself into a playwright we didn't" (7). Gontarski's main argument is that Williams's continued popularity owes much to Europe's recognition of his experimental nature, present even in his early plays, a point that American theatre largely missed or ignored in the 40s and 50s (as it had locked Williams into a naturalistic mode to better work through its own cultural preoccupations with sexuality) and purposefully excoriated in the 60s and later (when it had labeled Williams derivative of the European avant-garde). It is a bold, albeit not entirely new, approach to reexamining the classic Williams plays and revisiting his vilified late work within a contemporary Euro-American theatre scene. While there are certainly moments of original insight and astute analysis, the book's over-ambitious attempt to capture so large a portrait on so small a canvas, and its infelicitous efforts to force the various arguments of eight previously published articles into one encompassing thesis, ultimately render it more patchwork than monograph.

A rather thin book, comprised of three chapters, an introduction and an afterword, Tennessee Williams, T-shirt Modernism and the Refashionings of Theater covers a lot of ground in Williams's theatrical career on both sides of the Atlantic, from early to contemporary productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to Clothes for a Summer Hotel. In the opening pages, entitled "Saint Tennessee: An Introduction," Gontarski establishes his thesis that Williams repeatedly attempted "to refashion himself amid the vortices of changing sexual mores, including the redrafting of masculinities and the queering of theater, the struggle for a literate, literary theater and the place of the theatrical experience in contemporary culture" (7). In defending that claim, Gontarski aims to "continu[e] and exten[d] the reappraisal of Tennessee Williams" that previous research on his post-1960 image had initiated (notably through the work of David Savran, Annette Saddik and Linda Dorff) by refocusing Williams's work "against the larger fabric of cultural change in the post World War II era in which he came to prominence" (7).

Chapter 1, "T-shirt Modernism and Performed Masculinities: The Theatrical Refashionings of Tennessee Williams and William Inge," details Gontarski's intriguing twist on the paradigm shift in masculine semiotics in the U.S. from a sartorial perspective, an echo of Jacqueline O'Connor's 2008 work, "'Feathers and Furs': Dressing and the Performance of Identity in A Streetcar Named Desire." Undergarment companies, such as Hanes and Jockey, were at the fore of the movement's push to replace the formal suit as a masculine signifier with more [End Page 548] casual wear, such as blue jeans, T-shirts and, when The North Face and Nike expanded their market influence, athletic and outdoor wear (9-10). He argues convincingly here that Williams's Broadway productions, namely Streetcar's T-shirt sporting Brando, had played no small role in sexualizing working-class masculinity onstage. While Gontarski rightly points out the earlier efforts of U.S. dramatists O'Neill, Rice, and Treadwill to celebrate the working-class male, he glosses over the role Hollywood had played in sexualizing that American male, such as when Clark Gable stripped onscreen in the 1934 film It Happened One Night to reveal a T-shirt-free bare chest, apocryphally prompting a slump in undergarment sales for men by 75 percent in the U.S. Arguably, Hollywood's impact on the masculine paradigm shift in the U.S. was much stronger and widespread than Broadway's.

Gontarski next applies this T-shirt Modernism theory to Streetcar. He innovatively argues that sporting underclothes became socially acceptable (and sexually defining) for men in the U.S. once the...

审核人：

• 田纳西·威廉姆斯，T 恤现代主义和SE Gontarski的剧院改造
• 约翰·S·巴克（生物）

田纳西·威廉姆斯，T 恤现代主义和剧院改造SE Gontarski 建议“与我们认为我们认识的威廉姆斯交手，随着他的成长、发展和重新塑造自己成为我们不知道的剧作家”（7）。Gontarski 的主要论点是，威廉姆斯的持续受欢迎很大程度上归功于欧洲对他的实验性质的认可，甚至在他早期的戏剧中也出现了这一点，美国戏剧在 40 年代和 50 年代很大程度上错过或忽视了这一点（因为它已将威廉姆斯锁定在一种自然主义模式中更好地解决其自身对性的文化关注），并在 60 年代及以后（当时它已将威廉姆斯标记为欧洲前卫派的衍生品）有目的地受到谴责。这是一种大胆的，尽管不是全新的方法，重新审视威廉姆斯的经典戏剧，并在当代欧美剧院场景中重新审视他被诽谤的晚期作品。

一本相当薄的书，由三章、引言和后记组成，田纳西威廉姆斯，T 恤现代主义和剧院重塑涵盖了威廉姆斯在大西洋两岸的戏剧生涯的许多领域，从早期到当代作品一辆名为欲望和猫的有轨电车在热铁皮屋顶上为夏季酒店穿上衣服. 在题为“圣田纳西州：简介”的开篇中，贡塔斯基确立了他的论点，即威廉姆斯反复尝试“在性观念变化的漩涡中重塑自己，包括重新塑造男性气质和戏剧的酷儿，争取识字的斗争、文学戏剧和当代文化中戏剧体验的场所”（7）。在为这一主张辩护时，贡塔斯基旨在“继续[e]并扩展[d]对田纳西·威廉姆斯的重新评估”，这是先前对其 1960 年后形象的研究已经开始的（特别是通过大卫·萨夫兰、安妮特·萨迪克和琳达·多尔夫的工作）通过重新聚焦威廉姆斯的作品“反对他在二战后声名鹊起的更大的文化变革结构”（7）。

第 1 章，“T 恤现代主义和表演男性气质：田纳西·威廉姆斯和威廉·英格的戏剧改造”，详细介绍了 Gontarski 从裁缝角度对美国男性符号学范式转变的有趣转折，与 Jacqueline O'Connor 2008 年的作品相呼应作品，“‘羽毛和皮草’：欲望号街车中的着装和身份表现。” 内衣公司，如 Hanes 和 Jockey，站在运动推动力的前列，用更多[End Page 548]休闲装取代正式西装作为男性象征，如蓝色牛仔裤、T 恤和 The North Face耐克扩大了他们的市场影响力，运动和户外服装（9-10）。他在这里令人信服地争辩说，威廉姆斯的的 T 恤运动白兰度，在舞台上的工人阶级男子气概中发挥了不小的作用。虽然 Gontarski 正确地指出了美国剧作家 O'Neill、Rice 和 Treadwill 早期为庆祝工人阶级男性所做的努力，但他掩盖了好莱坞在使美国男性性感化方面所扮演的角色，例如当 Clark Gable 在银幕上脱光衣服时1934 年的电影《一夜情》揭露了一个没有 T 恤的裸露胸部，杜撰地导致美国男性内衣销量下降了 75%百老汇的。

接下来，Gontarski 将这种 T 恤现代主义理论应用于Streetcar。他创新地辩称，一旦……