A “Woke” Wake For Gendered Performance
[The article below consitutes the MA Theatre Dissertation submitted in September 2020 including a limited Drag Glossary to briefly explain some of the genre-specific terminology used in the article, followed by an extensive Bibliography.]
Does drag subvert gender norms by reifying them or does it exist on the basis of perpetuating them?
A Brief, ahem, Her-story…
Writing about the reification of gender through the parodying form of drag performance as a high camp subversion or exaggeration of a genderless gendered form in a potentially low-art medium is a path strewn with difficulty, complication, and a multitude of grey areas and blurred lines. Particularly, when much of the given terminology is deemed “beyond definition”. In detailing a brief history of drag performance, many argue for its creation being in a Shakespearean theatre, with drag as an acronym meaning DRessed As Girl, despite its supposed origins arriving in a time before the popularisation of acronyms. Others might opt for a more modern interpretation, given that what we now consider as drag is more likely borne out of the Harlem ballroom culture, as depicted in Paris Is Burning (1991). I would argue that since drag is supposedly “beyond definition”, that iterations of drag, even before the 1870 use in publication of the word drag, may have existed in some manner for far longer than is documented freely. As with much of queer history through the ages, due to its illegality and existence as an actively hidden subculture, documentation around the performers & performances of drag, are relatively thin on the ground until the latter part of the last century.
Since variety performance first made its way to our screens, drag has always existed on television in some form, and despite its associations with homosexuality during times when it were considered illegal (until 1967), or classified as a mental illness (until 1992), or even with the effects of the Hay’s Code of 1930 still in place, drag survived and thrived on screen. There has been no point in the last 100 years that we have not frequently seen drag on screen in some form. From the music hall performers, bar & club crawlers, and then the beginning of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2009.
“I’m not going to prescribe to a one-size-fits-all understanding of drag and wouldn’t expect anyone else to do so either, however, I am going to posit that drag was always rooted in performance, and perhaps should stay this way. ”
Since its inception, Drag Race has crowned (at time of writing) 12 winners, 5 All Stars winners, plus a multitude of spin-off franchises internationally.
These winners have all been supposedly judged in many categories, many of which are predicated in drag pageantry, plus an array of other skills including lip-syncing, comedy, impersonation, costume design and construction, and the supposed innate ability of a gay man to spot a top from a bottom in a line-up.
There have been many off-shoots from drag in the late 20th century, including the tradition of Club Kids, drag as performance art in the stylings of Leigh Bowery, androgyny in music, that begins with Little Richard’s eyeliner, and currently holding the torch would probably be Lady Gaga, among many other queer-empowering and cross-dressing artists. Drag also crosses over into SFX makeup with the rise of Dragula (2016-present) and The Boulet Brothers, parodying Drag Race with its monsters and exterminations instead of the eliminations common in other reality shows.
I’m not going to prescribe to a one-size-fits-all understanding of drag and wouldn’t expect anyone else to do so either, however, I am going to posit that drag was always rooted in performance, and perhaps should stay this way.
Sontag (1966) describes “camp” as artifice and duality, and RuPaul (2019) describes drag as high camp, “seeing the façade of life from outside yourself, and laughing at its absurdity", where the duality of this artifice is present in its performance and the audience is aware of this duality and thereby, “in on the joke”.
Although, where on the myriad spectra of gender and sexuality, one might place camp now, is a fundamental re-write of Sontag’s Notes On Camp (1966) in itself.
Judith Butler has defined, reified, and redefined gender performativity repeatedly, and has revisited her earlier publications to account for more modern understandings of gender representation and changes in gender roles & accompanying subversions, such as in drag performance. Having re-addressed her notes on drag in the conclusion of Gender Trouble (1990) in Undoing Gender (2004), she defines drag as “not simply to produce a pleasurable and subversive spectacle but to allegorize the spectacular and consequential ways in which reality is both reproduced and contested”. Drag is subverting the spectacle and the norms of reality to produce the “unreal” when we perform gender. It should be made clear at this point that performance of gender and performative or performed gender should not be read as the same. This distinction should be made clear so that drag as a performance and as a camp or parodical expression is not infringing on the experiences of people exploring gender and sexuality for themselves in a more serious sense.
Paul O’Grady, known in the drag world as Liverpudlian “Blonde Bombsite”, Lily Savage, has long expressed his critical views on Drag Race, stating that “Drag is an act, where you get up, you do your act, you get changed and you go home – you don’t parade around the streets doing all this business” (2017). He typifies “great comedians in drag” as the extent of drag as it was and should remain.
Parodying Hegemonic Culture
Drag as a performativity of gender would appear as, typically (as in drag queens), a cis-gendered male performing as a cis-gendered “woman”, playing on the assumed role as a homosexual man as inherently “feminine” or camp. Judith Butler sees this duality however, as a more tri-dimensional viewing of gender: “If the anatomy of the performer is already distinct from the gender of the performer, and both of those are distinct from the gender of the performance, then the performance suggests a dissonance not only between sex and performance, but sex and gender, and gender performance.” (1999)
Playing in the stereotype of the gay man as effeminate, the performer can speak about relationships with men as a man, using the man’s voice, through the lens of a heterosexual “woman”. Due to it’s parodical nature, a man may speak in his natural voice about honest experiences through this lens, while presenting an obvious duality in spectacle, so that we as an audience know that what we are seeing is a man dressed as a “woman”, able to express “feminine” views we might stereotypically associate with those of a gay man, but told through a lens which affords a certain levity and comedy, as this performance trope allows for a level of exaggeration and brutality that we would not ordinarily associate with a woman. The shock value of hearing a “woman” speak in a highly sexualised and abrupt way allows us while suspending disbelief at the inherent spectacle, able to find humour in the performance.
“If we are all doing drag every day in the way we “perform” our gender according to a heteronormative idea of what we should look like, then where does that leave drag as performance?”
Performativity of gender would refer to the performance of gender we might see on the streets in day to day life. Butler refers to performativity of gender as “doing gendered acts”, before which, nobody can be a gender. This theory implies that gender is a construct we embody and apply to ourselves, we perform our gender through acts of heteronormativity as perceived by a hegemonic culture, or in relation to the baseline of a heterosexual white male gaze.
RuPaul states frequently in his books and TV shows that “we’re all born naked, and the rest is drag”, which is his way of using drag as a synonym for performing gender, and as a way of breaking down drag to be accessible by everyone. However, is this method of making “drag” accessible by exploiting performativity of gender, and calling it drag instead of performed gender, a potentially dangerous and over-complicating idea? If we are all doing drag every day in the way we “perform” our gender according to a heteronormative idea of what we should look like, then where does that leave drag as performance? How can he justify fronting a reality tv show that seeks to enforce a cookie-cutter approach to the art form, and one that most certainly does not include everyone, not even all drag performers? (Drag Race has historically been in hot water over their continued exclusion of trans performers, drag kings, AFAB queens, bio-kings, non-binary performers, etc) If RuPaul is reducing all expressions of gender to his definition of drag as a serious prospect, and then making it camp and comedic, is he discrediting the experiences of people who identify as transgender as “just drag” too? And then, in making Drag Race a horrific spectacle akin to a gender-based Hunger Games where the best representation of a woman wins, even though what we are actually dealing with is “woman” as an artifice for performance, is he negating his own definitions of drag purely to make a television show?
Supposedly, Drag Race is put together of many different forms of “drag”, including the drag pageantry of Paris Is Burning, from which RuPaul has drawn much of the common Drag Race terminology. For example, the concept of lip-syncing on a runway, the category being “realness”, and further expressions of “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, & Talent”. To be judged on a reality TV show as a drag queen, under the category of “realness” should be portrayed as parody, but it is most certainly not.
Butler states, in her reading of Paris Is Burning, in her article Gender Is Burning (1993), “’realness’ is not exactly a category in which one competes; it is a standard which is used to judge any given performance within the established categories. And yet what determines the effect of realness is the ability to compel belief, to produce the naturalised effect.” An effect that she states, “no performance fully approximates” & also, “cannot be read”. Reading being the act of verbally taking something down in an insulting manner that “fails to work at the level of appearance” deemed passable in the context of “realness”. At least in the context of drag, C.U.N.T works as a series of vague interpretations, and serves the purpose of parody in saying the unsayable, in this instance, using language that would not be acceptable on television, in the same way that British sketch comedians would sneak swear words into character names, as in Ronnie Barker’s telling of Rindercella & her sugly isters, Mary Hinge & Betty Swallocks; or Fry & Laurie’s insistence on using the character name Ted Cunterblast.
Does the passability of “realness” serve a purpose in performing gender, or is it again blurring the lines between performance and the performed identity of gender to its detriment? If drag seeks to parody and reify gender such that it breaks down heteronormative patterns of gender constructs in wider society, then what performance space does drag carve out for itself in a world of a post-binary of gender?
As we welcome the next generation of “legendary children”, the RuPaul babies of drag that only know drag as one thing; are these fixed constructs obstructive to a wider view of drag, and do they perpetuate something which otherwise might not have been considered drag as performance, but more so as a daily performativity of gender?
Welcome to Gendernautica!
Based on Kinsey’s scale of sexuality, there are now four scales by which to “measure” sexuality or gender, as shown below. We can see scales for biological sex, sexuality, presentation of gender and identification of gender.
So, where would we place the drag artist? This issue becomes complicated when the Drag Race brand is built on phrases such as “gentlemen, start your engines, and may the best woman win”, and Drag Race alumni perpetuate the idea, as in Miz Cracker’s song “She’s A Woman!” (2020), and Trixie Mattel & Katya’s Guide To Modern Womanhood (2020). If a drag artist is free to be any sexuality, any sex, express their gender in any way, and identify in any way, in order to include trans & non-binary performers, whether as kings, queens, or genderfuck performers, does a performance of gender in any sense simply become a subjective experience? Do we as gender performers still look upon heteronormative values and constructs around gender and attempt to parody and disrupt those ideas? Is it more difficult to reify gender when all genders & sexualities can adopt the art form of drag as an expression of identity? Should the identifying terminology be different altogether?
“Is there harm in also identifying as the gender you are performing as a drag artist? ”
In my explorations of gender as identification and gender as presentation, I’ve separated performative gender from identifying gender into two distinct terms, Gendernautics & Andronautics. If we reduce all expressions of gender to performative, I would call that performative expression Andronautics, instead of relying upon established identifiers, and argue that all gender expression is androgyny as opposed to rupaul’s coarse definition of drag.
Gendernautics would be the self-exploration of your own identifying gender. The complications of drag in the realms of gendernautica and andronautica respectively, are that drag is a version of performing androgyny through the lens of drag performance, the framing of which is the stage performance of gender, not the daily expressions we would see as andronautics. In this instance, Bowie would be an andronaut, while Eddie Izzard would be a gendernaut, Bowie explored androgyny for performance of a persona, whereas Izzard used transvestism on his journey to being an out trans-woman.
I would argue that while in character, or while presenting as an on-stage persona it is perfectly acceptable to refer to a drag queen as she/her, due to lack of a better option, and he/him when out of drag and off-stage. Drag Race compounds the issue entirely by referring to all drag queens as she, in or out of drag, and by simplifying the contestants down to their stage names, such that we don’t know them as male or by male names.
The “realness” of drag balls, and now Drag Race, adheres to a code of passability, in that they are read for not being passable. Passable in this sense would refer to whether a drag queen could feasibly “pass” as a woman on the street, which I would argue goes beyond the boundaries of drag performance. As seen in Paris Is Burning & Pose, passability is used to refer to trans people seen as being able to pass outside of the ball. Whether or not they accurately depict the societal norms and comply with the hegemonic understanding of whichever gender they are presenting as. It is not as crucial to the safety & wellbeing of a drag performer to be passable, as it might be for a trans person.
For a drag performer to be engaging in passability to this degree in order to continue their drag outside of its usual parameters, could leave trans people open to further abuse if their experiences are somewhat cheapened by being likened to that of a drag performer. I would argue that the only “drag” that could assist in deconstructing gender to a wider public audience, could be the performers who actively play with gender in its entirety, namely the genderfuck performers. Those that appear almost genderless. However, the appearance of a 6 and a half foot snatched drag queen who is beat for the gods and fishy as you like, padded, corseted, contoured and coiffed, isn’t doing all that much to help. That all having been said, drag can be a very powerful tool in creating cathartic performance of identity.
The only crossover in andronautics and gender expressions in drag, are that they both present small acts of social activism intended to query, and exaggerate what is seen as normal in terms of each fixed gender. The act of a drag queen may make us laugh because “a woman can’t say that, but a drag queen gets away with it”, and we have to ask ourselves “Why is that?”
In the same way that someone dressing in opposite clothing to their assumed gender raises questions, and we have to ask “why is he wearing that?” and then, “why do I think it’s a problem?” and begin the journey of questioning that leads us all on the journey to breaking down gender stereotypes and allowing us all to be free of our societal expectations. It is also empowering as an act of social activism, not just for myself, but for other people seeing me wearing a cross-gendered garment. It allows them to entertain the possibility of also doing the same. It’s a social invitation to join the party and start asking questions.
Drag as a performativity of gender, as a copied construct.
“Is a man in heels a threat to my masculinity? Is a same-sex relationship or marriage a threat to the sanctity of my own relationship or marriage? Is an exposed fluidity in all people regarding gender and sexuality an attempt to liquidise my heterosexuality, or deconstruct my gender? ”
Queering gender is an attempt to problematise the binary nature of gender, where queering sexuality would suggest the use of a spectrum for sexual preference. Queering drag would suggest moving from a fixed state of drag artist, namely that of a homosexual male performer enacting a copy of certain female attributes as dictated by societal gender norms within a heteronormative construct, and exaggerating them through the male perspective to enact performance of, and elicit laughter or engagement with a character. So that the queered drag performance may introduce a spectrum that would include drag kings, Afab queens, bio kings, genderfuck artists, and genderbending performers, to name but a few. Queering drag would also blur the lines on those inherent attributes we have previously sought to reduce, for example, the use of contouring to create a more “feminine” jawline structure, may be replaced by the wearing/use of a beard, therein problematising gender in drag. An example of this might be the difference between Roger Taylor’s interpretation of a schoolgirl in queen’s I Want To Break Free (1984) music video, and Freddie Mercury’s leather skirted vacuum-wielding matriarch with a moustache. Would we perceive one of these models to be drag and not the other? Is roger Taylor’s then-angelic countenance a more socially acceptable fit for the role of a woman in this instance, or is mercury’s more adept to fitting the role of what we perceive to be drag because of it’s problematising moustache? I’ll have to resist the temptation to derive interpretation further from the song’s lyrics, or the absurd cut scene where Mercury rolls about atop seemingly naked bodies.
Performativity of the female gender through the gay male gaze also highlights the acceptability of gender as a performative construct by women to problematise femininity with femininity, exaggerating the expectation of the patriarchal tropes and heteronormative understanding of femininity, and creation of a subversion to deconstruct. The issues surrounding such reification however are embedded deep within the insecurities of the heteronormative white male, where privilege, power and status still are rooted, and so they feel threatened by a performed agitation of their foundational thinking. Is a man in heels a threat to my masculinity? Is a same-sex relationship or marriage a threat to the sanctity of my own relationship or marriage? Is an exposed fluidity in all people regarding gender and sexuality an attempt to liquidise my heterosexuality, or deconstruct my gender? Should I be questioning my identity too? It’s perceived as a threat to what has been considered normal for centuries, however, now it is seen for its true colours, and is exposed as a series of systems designed to keep certain minorities and groups of people in particular places as designated by a white male hierarchy, built initially on the oppression of women, people of differing sexuality, people of varying skin colours, religions, etc. The list of the oppressed goes on.
Agitation of a centuries-old system is a long-overdue prospect. In a world that still makes allowances for racial discrimination to the point of violence and fatalities, a gender-defined pay gap in many industries, and the annual insistence that there should be a “straight pride”, we still have much work to do.
“No-one wants to listen to a supermodel talk about the hardships of “womanhood”, they want to hear the innate gritty wit of someone they can relate to on subjects that matter to them.”
The Myriad Futurity of Drag
Drag and female impersonation hold a prominent position in our current mainstream, and hold a place of responsibility for social change and activism, they enact a form of comedy by speaking out on stage on social issues and asking the difficult questions surrounding gender expression and sexuality. They hold a place of confidence from which they can speak their queer stories in full brutal truth, and they have a platform from which an audience will listen to them speak on such subjects. But, in keeping with the British tradition of drag, we should follow the paths of great comedians with an act (I wouldn’t consider lip-syncing an act, but the issue of removing your character’s voice to allow someone else to speak through you is another topic entirely), like Les Dawson’s Ada & Cissie, Monty Python’s Hell’s Grannies (among many, many others), Fry & Laurie’s numerous voxpop women, Paul O’Grady’s Lily Savage, and Barry Humphries’ Dame Edna Everage. They should continue to be an exaggeration of a common female archetype, a sign of the times. We need modern “women” speaking out on social issues, and agitating the constructs that restrict us day-to-day. The “female” character should be a parody, in the familiar guise of the glamorous gran, the shoplifting prostitute, the gossiping over the back fence “women”, the portly dinner lady, or the mum’s mate. We don’t need a swathe of RuPaul’s legendary children all chasing the dream of being the next drag superstar. No-one wants to listen to a supermodel talk about the hardships of “womanhood”, they want to hear the innate gritty wit of someone they can relate to on subjects that matter to them. I don’t want a performer to “lipsync for their life”, I want a performer to tell me to shut up by threatening to “rip off my head and shit in my neck”.
Parody and camp performance that moves beyond embodiment of gender becomes genderless in a sense, in that we aren’t expected to believe these are women, they are men playing the character of “woman” for comedic effect, and not to degrade or ridicule women, but to celebrate women and expose the limitations that societal norms place upon them on a daily basis.
Drag shouldn’t be necessarily involved in a serious conversation about gender politics. If a performer out of drag feels they are able to speak of their own experiences, then they should be able to do so, but shouldn’t rely on drag to do it. Drag can be thought-provoking and agitating to the point of questioning, but is rooted in comedy and should not be taken quite so seriously.
However, it is worth posing the question of where drag stands should all current gender constructs be removed or changed. If gender stereotypes change and disappear, how might drag continue and exist?
The Conversation Continues, indefinitely.
It appears as though the full drag taxonomy in its current state seeks to allow for all drag to be equally valid, but this is not necessarily reflected in the mainstream. Even with an accepting taxonomy of drag, and a unity in including all branches of gender play in spite of biological sex and gender representation, they “do not build toward any singular objective narrative or authentic definition. Just the opposite: they offer a fragmented mosaic of gender-bending, a series of partial drag perspectives that enrich our overall understanding of what the genre could be as well as what an efficacious drag practice could accomplish” as Heller concludes in her book, Queering Drag (2020). She also states that the difficulties in attempting to theorise and classify drag without a clear definition, means that the issue of “translating performance into prose, and prose into applicable theory” becomes a difficult task. She also argues that despite a long history of the art form’s association with mostly homosexual men, as drag has expanded to allow space for everyone, “drag is no longer guaranteed to manifest queerness”. The element of play inherent in gender-bending performance means that the freedoms of expression that have been afforded to drag in its recent history, results in more extensive categorisation, but even less clarity in a definition.
“It would be further limiting and doing a great disservice to the full gender-bending spectrum of drag to boil the whole thing down to whatever RuPaul Charles is doing. ”
I would then ask, what could drag become, if problematised to allow for a fuller spectrum of exploration, allowing queer space for all gendernauts, and what space does that create for the individual to identify for themselves, in terms of andronautics beyond gendernautica? I would argue that the proliferation of more expansive queer spaces has already begun, but for the individual beginning to find their own taxonomy in a very complex, and convoluted queer system (not to mention a particularly difficult socio-political climate at the time of writing), the task has never been more challenging in embracing a journey of self-discovery, but with the freedoms that no generation before has known so freely. As Juno Dawson states “simply existing in the world as a minority is activism” (2017), and exploring and understanding one’s own gender & sexuality, performed or performative, allows us to navigate the world with a little more ease.
BLANK, Start Your Engines, and may the best BLANK win!
While it may be simplistic to conclude that Drag Race alone is limiting in terms of gender and experiences of drag. and that because of its basis in drag pageantry and ball room culture, that it seeks to create an entirely female (as opposed to “female”) façade as the only route to creating drag performance. I think it would be further limiting and doing a great disservice to the full gender-bending spectrum of drag to boil the whole thing down to whatever RuPaul Charles is doing.
The questions now, as we celebrate gender burning, is whether or not there is still a prescient need for definition beyond definition, by which we can hope to establish and allow queer space for all identity, as individuals, and as performers. Whether we need to find ways to define without constraining, identifying without labelling, and whether we can make terminology and taxonomy accessible to all so that everyone can navigate performance of gendernautica safely, swiftly, and respectfully, for the future of all gender-bending performance.
At the opening of Sasha Velour’s Nightgowns, she delivers an opening speech that seeks to clarify & explain the history of drag so that we can allow space for all in the future of drag. She says "Somehow, there continues to be a very oxymoronic debate about what constitutes “real drag”” The Nightgowns definition of drag is “what we use to transform ourselves into unique, hyper-gendered queer fantasia.”
Sasha Velour’s explanations on drag history are very clear, and she closes with her statement on the future of drag: “There is more than just RuPaul’s Drag Race. The history could not be clearer, and the future is in your hands. So, document it, talk about it, research it, celebrate it, facetune it, or not, and just fucking enjoy it!”
GLOSSARY
Woke – alert to injustice in society
Hay’s Code - The Hays Code was the informal name for The Motion Picture Production Code, adopted in 1930. The Code was a set of rules governing filmmaking that shaped—and in many ways stifled—cinema for over three decades. The effects of which can still be seen in cinema today, in particular with its regulations on representation of differing sexualities as demonised or characterised by mental illness.
Genderfuck - to subvert traditional gender binary by mixing or bending one's gender expression, identity, or presentation
Cis-gender - a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex
AFAB/AMAB – assigned female at birth/assigned male at birth
Bio Queen/King – bio queen or king refers to someone who is performing the gender they are also biologically assigned
Legendary Children – a term that makes reference to the generation of drag artists borne out of, or having competed in RuPaul’s Drag Race
Snatched – refers to something that looks perfect, or passable, as it were
Beat for the Gods – To apply the perfect amount of makeup on the face, resulting in a flawless look
Fishy - A term used to describe a drag queen who looks extremely feminine or one who convincingly resembles a biological woman
Padded - refers to the use of padding and shapewear used to create a feminine body shape
Contoured – the makeup technique used to achieve a more feminine face, creating a sharper jawline, and the illusion of higher cheekbones
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