Classics and Trash: Traditions and Taboos in High Literature and Popular Modern Genres

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince
George.

Classics and Trash is an engrossing and literate book that ranges, as
its title suggests, from “high” to “low” culture. It is a relief
to read a deconstructive analysis written in a language that doesn’t
sacrifice clarity to jargon. It also doesn’t sacrifice intelligence to
clarity. For those addicted to academic references and side issues there
are 17 pages of discursive notes at the end of the book.

The book examines novels, plays, and films as diverse as King Kong,Gone
With the Wind, King Lear, Daniel Deronda, Trilby, and The Red Shoes. The
breadth of referentiality and the synthesis of such diverse elements
into a coherent work is impressive.

Hawkins employs a feminist analysis that exposes gender stereotypes
that run across high and low art. She also reveals how these gender
stereotypes are culturally determined by comparing and contrasting
British and American works. For example, in Britain the cultivated
gentleman can be a hero and a sex symbol, but in America he is either an
incompetent (the absent-minded professor type) or a subtle and sneering
villain who will eventually be overcome by the down-to-earth,
plain-spoken hero. Hawkins also argues, most convincingly, that
successful art of both the high and low sort tends to subversively
undercut the female stereotypes, making appealing what should, by social
convention, be appalling.