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This collection of essays explores contemporary masquerade in its great variety. The contributors analyze how masquerade shapes popular taste while illustrating community cultural values and political issues. We continue to recognize and enjoy its traditional forms, but meanwhile a rapidly changing culture has also produced bold new versions of masquerade. The look of masquerade continues to evolve as historic non-Western traditions converge and even collide with contemporary settings, ultimately mirroring communities in transition. Performance art, photography, and comic books have all greatly influenced masquerade today. Furthermore, digital masquerade increasingly appeals to and unites global audiences.
Masquerade has become our contemporary version of the great shape-shifting masks and legends of the ancients. But while the ancient villager waited months for a community masquerade celebration or a visit from the shaman, we experience today’s masquerading forms everywhere in our daily lives on our television, film, and computer screens, in our theatres, museums, and sports arenas, in our popular magazines, and in community celebrations, re-enactments, and masquerade conventions. Masquerade functions as big theatre , big ritual , big religion , and also big business . This collection explores the diverse ways that masquerade has dramatically evolved.
