Just wondering, …
Will we one day look back on drag queens in the same way that we now look back on the Black and White Minstrels?
Is it the same or is it different? I can’t make my mind up.
Just wondering?
Comments
21 responses to “Just wondering?”
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One difference is that people in blackface did not generally face discrimination (if they were white, they were treated as white not as black or worst than black). Drag queens and men dressing in women’s clothes in general did face discrimination (outside of a few specific cultural settings such as dames in panto). I’m not sure whether this is significant.
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And interesting comparison. Some women do indeed object to drag queens in the grounds that it exploits negative stereotypes about women, in a similar way that blackface (at least, blackface minstrelsy as it was practiced in North America, which is what I know – a smidge – about) exploited negative stereotypes about black people. But I still am rather tempted to think it’s different. But maybe just because it has been defined in many ways as a gender-bending, boundary crossing, liberating experience. Whereas blackface primarily worked to enforce stereotypes and status quo (of deep, blatant inequality). But that doesn’t mean that we might not understand it differently in the future, particularly for trans people. Mmm, pondering continues . . .
Also, ryan, I disagree about gender being constructed while race is not. What makes race a ‘given’, rather than a construction? In Bodies that Matter, Judith Butler has an interesting analysis about the construction of race (and how it is folded in with the construction of gender and sexuality) in Passing, the excellent 1929 novel by Nella Larsen.
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I still think you should all lighten up and get together round at Kelvin’s with a carry-out to watch The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. That’d sort the men from the … oops, sorry!
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Well said Layclerk! Too much introspection here. Enjoy and rejoice in the drag and treat it as subversive fun. Get tickets for Hairspray when next you’re in London (Michael Ball is great in drag)!
BTW not sure how drag is unhelpful to Transgender people – surely transvestites are totally different from TG’s?
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I always loved the self description of Eddie Izzard, who used to dress as a woman (for those who don’t know), as being a lesbian trapped in a man’s body!
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I think some things die a natural death – for instance the Victorians and Edwardians had a great line in male impersonators – Vesta Tilly being the most famous. The desire for them died out – I think because women are now free to wear bloke’s clothes – jeans, shirts, whatever. I have a female friend who always dresses in bloke’s clothes, ‘en travestie’, in the old phrase, but it causes no comment even in a very small community.
It is still infinitely harder for a man to appear dressed in some woman’s clothing (though my ex husband did wear some cast of jeans from a very beautiful actress, and refuse to part with them until threadbare) – if it were ever to change, I suspect the drag queen would also pass from favour, though perhaps not the pantomime dame. I can (and do) appear on a gentleman’s shirt and nobody blinks. Were a bloke to appear in public in a very feminine shirt I think it would (in some places and circles) cause comment.
Hence the drag queen, and the licence to transgress.
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I should have added – that the clothes indicate a deeper attitude to roles – what is and is not transgressive behaviour. I think society currently has more of a problem with men expressing aspects of themselves labelled as ‘feminine’ than it does with women expressing masculine traits.
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Elizabeth –
I thought one of the purposes of the term gender is to distinguish it from biological sex which is obviously, like race, a fact of sorts; I was thinking of Gore Vidal’s point that , if antisemitism disappeared, the Jewish identity would still be as strong but if societal homophobia disappeared then terms like gay would lose their purpose somewhat. But I haven’t read the books you cite and freely concede that I could well be wrong.
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Hi, movies play with this idea. What about Tootsie, Mrs Doubtfire, Victor/Victoria and i think there is a scene in The Rocky Horror Picture Show as well.
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The Buffolo Bill dancing in front of the mirror scene from Silence of the Lambs is good too (the song is called “Goodbye Horses” by Q Lazzarus and quite easy to find on iTunes. Worth reemphasisng that Silence is not GLBT-phobic as the point of Buffolo Bill is that he is *not* a true transsexual, as emphasised in the novel)
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