Watts – författare

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"Why don't you come up and see me some time?" Mae West invited and promptly captured the imagination of generations. Even today, years after her death, the actress and author is still regarded as the pop archetype of secual wantonness and ribald humour. But who was this saucy starlet, a woman who was controversial enough to be jailed, pursued by film censors and banned from the airwaves for the revolutionary content of her work, and yet would ascend to the status of a film legend?Sifting through previously untapped sources, author Jill Watts unravels the enigmatic life of Mae West, tracing her early years spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and underworlkd figures, nad follows her journey through vaudeville, Broadway, and finally, Hollywood, where she quickly became one of the big screen's most popular - and colourful- stars. Exploring West's penchant for contradiction and her carefully perpetuated paradoxes, Watts convincingly argues that Mae West borrowed haeavily from African Americna culture, music, adance and humour. Viewing West as a trickster, Watts demonstrates that by appropriating for her character the black tradition of double-speak and "signifying", West also may have hinted at her own African-American ancestry and the phenomenon of a black woman passing for white. This absolutely fascinating study is the first comprehensive interpretive account of Mae West's life and work. It reveals a beloved icon as a radically subversive artist consiously creating her own complex image.

The very word "barrages" is evocative. In the context of tidal waters it conjures up pictures of massive structures and environmental change. Barrages represent the engineer s success where King Canute failed to stop the tide coming in. They are hardly a new concept as man has for centuries tried to harness tidal power to drive his machinery, but a new breed of barrage is emerging, aimed at regenerating depressed urban areas. One of the primary aims of such schemes has been to drown "unsightly" mud flats. If you happen to be a wading bird used to enjoying the worms that live in intertidal mud flats you may not share that perspective. Indeed, many people today tend to side with the birds, fish and other ecological wonders and often find themselves in conflict with the promoters of a barrage scheme. How far are their fears justified? Are the negative impacts as bad as some people have predicted or even worse? How accurately can the impacts be predicted by scientific methods? Can the barrage be designed and its operation controlled to mitigate any negative effects as well as to optimise its primary objective? These issues are addressed in this book by authors drawing on their experience of research and practical experience.