Reviewing Joseph Roach’s It in the TLS (September 7), Michael Caines cleverly sums Roach’s history with: “Now it is celebrities who have two bodies: the body natural and the body cinematic.”
At the same time, he faults Roach for giving “relatively little attention to the techniques by which performers and their familiars perfect their act - the photographic conditions, for example, under which Greta Garbo’s face, as discussed by Roland Barthes, became the face of ‘the Divine’ - or the historical conditions that make one society’s ‘It’ distinct from another’s.”
To answer the question Caines poses early in the review, some are born with It, but some achieve It, and some have It thrust upon them.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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