Simon Doonan: Drag: The Complete Story (2019) [a]
Alt. cover feat. Curtis Dam-Mikkelsen (aka Miss Fame)
Photo by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba
I.
And so we come to chapter 7: Popstar Drag ...
Doonan claims that for most of the 20th century, "the guiding principle for men's clothing design was anonymity" (163) and that's true, though perhaps requires some qualification - and I don't believe it's because the average male is "terrified of being stared at" (163).
Actually, the desire for anonymity - founded upon uniformity of dress and the will to conformity - can be traced back to a shift in sensibility known as the Great Male Renunciation, which began in the late- 18th century and saw men abandon ornate and colourful clothing in favour of more sober, functional attire.
It was the age of the dark suit, designed to signal seriousness and professionalism as well as social conformity. But the aim was not anonymity per se, but to look the business whilst not being conspicuous [b].
It's the modern pop star - that 20th century dandy born of the music business in the 1950s - who challenges this: "In order to sell records, the male popstars of the conservative American mid-century needed fans to take notice, and a sure-fire way to stand out was to raid the feminine repertoire." (163)
Doonan continues (in a passage that again rather reinforces the argument often put forward by conservative critics; namely, that pop music was an assault on manly virtue):
"The boys were encouraged in their flamboyance by a select and influential group of homosexuals, such as gallery owner Robert Fraser, interior designer Christopher Gibbs, Brian Epstein (manager of The Beatles), Robert Stigwood (Cream and Bee Gees), Simon Napier-Bell (The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan), Billy Gaff (Rod Stewart) and Ken Pitt (David Bowie). These gay Svengalis were drag enablers ..." (165) [c]
For Doonan, two names in particular stand out when it comes the golden age of glam rock in the 1970s: Bolan and Bowie - but they were by no means the only two camping it up:
"Billowing bohemian blouses and cascading tresses became the norm. Boys wore girls' skimpy knits and crop tops with unisex crushed-velvet bellbottoms. Ladies' accessories [...] were piled on with gypsy-ish abandon. The emerging popstar drag was nothing if not radical." (166)
At this point, Doonan return us to his (strangely unisex) vision of utopia "where men and women overcame their vast differences by dressing alike" (168).
I'd really like to know what he thinks these differences are exactly; is he here talking about differences that are constructed socially, or differences that have a crucial biological basis? If these differences are so vast - his word - then can they really be overcome simply by wearing the same clothing or shade of eyeshadow? I doubt it.
And I'm pretty sure also that Doonan's claim that glam rock (or what he calls popstar drag) was "repellent to the establishment" (171) is simply not the case. It may have been viewed by some members of the older generation with mild disdain and dislike, but, in general, it was met with confusion and amusement. It was certainly not feared and hated in the way that punk rock would be a few years later (or even the countercultural, drug-taking hippie movement had been in the '60s) [d].
While androgynous fashions, a garish use of makeup, and gender troubling behaviour were scandalous to some, glam was a popular, commercial force that was ultimately tolerated - and often enjoyed - by the wider public; Bowie and Bolan and company were regulars on Top of the Pops and their records were not banned (cf. the Sex Pistols).
In sum - and despite what Doonan likes to think - popstar drag was considered frivolous rather threatening and its huge commercial popularity meant it was soon just seen as another form of showbiz. That was true in the 1970s and it remained true in the 1980s, when figures like Boy George and Marilyn [e] were dominating the charts and airwaves.
And don't get me started on Eurovision - an annual festival of "gloriously naff pop, easy to mock but never boring" (181) - if Doonan really thinks this is in anyway radical or presents a positive vision of the future, then, I'm afraid to say, he's more naive than I thought he was.
II.
From the world of pop drag to the world of movie drag ...
Those of you who read part 2 of this post will recall I have already noted my favourite celluloid scene involving drag.
For those of you who haven't read part 2, it's the one in Carry On Constable (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1960), in which officers Benson and Gorse - played by Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey respectively - drag up as Ethel and Agatha in order to go undercover as store detectives.
For me, this scene is as good as it gets when it comes to comedy drag on film and I rank it above the work even of Laurel and Hardy in Twice Two (dir. James Parrott, 1933), or Curtis and Lemmon in Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot (1959). But, funnily enough, Doonan doesn't mention the film - so I guess it's not amongst his favourites, although he predictably raves about the latter as "the most beloved movie of all time" (187).
Doonan also indicates how movie drag is often associated with pervy horror and homicidal insanity - starting with Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and coins the amusing term dragsploitation. Being dressed to kill often means putting on a frock and wig in the mainstream cinematic imagination.
Meanwhile, underground movie makers - including Andy Warhol - also liked to include elements of drag:
"What was unsavoury and objectionable to a mainstream audience - as we've seen, drag was acceptable only as laughable slapstick or the prelude to a homicidal bloodbath - was given a warm and rousing reception in the art houses of yore." (192)
What he had done for soup cans, Warhol also did for drag queens and trans women:
"Warhol's genius was to plonk [... marginal figures and] unconventional attention junkies in front of the camera and let their natural charisma do the rest. Plots were thin but the screen magic is undeniable." (192)
I don't mind Candy Darling, but, I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of Divine; described by Doonan as the "empress of underground movie drag" (192), so will skip past the films made by John Waters ...
And, because I hate them so, I'm also not going to say anything either about those "upbeat, non-sexual, non-homicidal, and worthy" (195) films made in the 1980s, when drag became family-friendly, Tootsie (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1982), starring Dustin Hoffman, and Mrs. Doubtfire (dir. Chris Columbus, 1993), starring Robin Williams.
Similarly, I don't wish to say anything about The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (dir. Stephan Elliott, 1994) - although that's not a film I've seen (and, by the sound of it, don't think I want to, either; even Doonan describes it as shrill and cartoony).
Ultimately, whilst I'm all for films spreading joy and celebrating individuality, I don't want to have sequins thrown in my face and an ideological message shoved down my throat to do with the need for greater DEI.
In other words, I prefer those films involving drag and/or trans actors that are non-shrill and non-cartoony and don't invite audiences to dress up and sing along à la The Rocky Horror Picture Show (dir. Jim Sharman, 1975) - films such as Sean Baker's Tangerine (2015), described by Doonan thus:
"Tangerine is a groundbreaking 2015 movie that combines the early Warhol approach - find charismatic gender-fluid individuals and let the cameras roll - with more solid plotlines. It is is also very Warholian in that the individuals are not presented as noble or worthy." (204)
III.
And finally ... chapter 9 - Radical Drag - and a chance to really examine the politics of the topic (or at least Doonan's understanding of such) ...
Before we turn to the material in chapter 9, however, I'd like to pick up on a sentence from earlier in the book (ch. 8), which suggests where I think Doonan will be heading:
"In these trans-positive times [...] nobody is going to high five a hetero dude for frocking up unless he actually means it. Dragging up purely for attention or dough would, in our era of increased sensitivity, be viewed as less than respectful." (185)
That, I think, is true - but it's also a call for authenticity that I find problematic and something which has led to a lot of recent debate within the acting profession: should a straight cis male actor be able to play gay or trans (even if he does so in all sincerity and his performance is sympathetic and convincing)? [f]
I would answer 'yes' to this, but understand the controversy surrounding the issue - particularly when it is presented in terms of representation and opportunity, rather than in terms of authenticity or the need for lived experience in order to play a part (lived experience is the most overrated thing in the world - something that the unimaginative unempathetic pride themselves on).
And surely, if drag is radical in any sense, it's precisely because it deconstructs gender roles; how does that square with a modern sensitivity that insists only certain people have the right to inhabit certain identities? Answer: it doesn't.
Moving on ...
Predictably - but still a bit disappointingly - in chapter 9 Doonan returns to all his favourite themes to do with Victorian prudery and puritanism in contrast to the subversive fuck you attitude of drag queens whose rebellion against the binary nature of society is to be uncritically lauded:
"Even when done in jest, the donning of a frock or a drag king suit is a provocation that automatically messes with the stale conventions of any society." (208)
Subscribing to this line of thought gives Doonan a good deal of what Foucault called speaker's benefit - i.e., a false sense of pride in one's own courage and rebelliousness in daring to speak up and speak out on issues which are (mistakenly) believed to still be feared and subject to censorship by mainstream society.
Foucault argued this perceived transgression actually reinforced existing power structures and that the benefit of speaking in terms of repression and resisting power is merely a way to feel edgy and enlightened, while still adhering to an old-fashioned and untenable model of sexual politics.
It strikes me as a little odd that, having compiled a complete history of drag, Doonan sometimes writes as if nothing important really happened before the late-1960s and '70s (i.e., when he was a young man):
"When, in the late 1960s, the counter-culture began to bloom - black power, gay lib, women's lib - drag followed suit. With the gays for solidarity, drag finally had the support it needed to hit the streets and to walk tall [...] Harassment and discrimination continued, but this time the dragsters fought back, birthing new and creative genres of drag activism." (210)
Out of this period of political upheaval, three radical groups emerged: the Cockettes [i], the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence [j], and the Radical Faeries [k] ... Now, without wishing to denigrate members of these groups - about whom my knowledge is strictly limited - one might ask whether they are truly sticking it to the Man or, actually, just engaging in theatrics and arty provocation?
The fact is that, during the period Doonan specifies, drag was already being recuperated into the Spectacle as a safe (and highly commercial) form of subculture - as he himself has shown in his chapters on popstar drag and movie drag.
I have respect and admiration for those highly idiosyncratic individuals and brave souls who "through a combination of daring, resilience and reckless disregard for their own safety, lubricated the wheels of social progress" (218), but I have to admit I'm increasingly bored by radical activists of every stripe - dragged up or otherwise.
That doesn't mean I'm a Trump supporter. But it does mean I don't find drag so "wickedly compelling in these new politicized times" (233) and don't believe that drastic times require dragtastic measures.
Doonan closed his 2019 study insisting that, thanks to technology and social media, "mocking, shocking, radical satirical drag" (233) would spread into "every corner of the universe" (233), presumably changing things for the better.
And yet, as we know, Trump won the Presidency for a second time in 2024 - winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote - and his administration has taken a firm stance against drag culture, prioritising the removal of drag performances from public venues like and limiting federal funding for related initiatives.
So it seems that a revolt into a queer politics of style might not be the answer after all ...
Notes
[a] The page numbers given here (in round brackets) refer to the 2024 concise paperback edition published by Laurence King.
[b] Roland Barthes writes about all this in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter (Berg, 2006).
[c] Some might also suggest that Doonan's enabler narrative strips the artists of their own agency; framing them as puppets of a homosexual cabal (a trope that again feeds into the conservative and homophobic agenda).
[d] Doonan doesn't say much about punk, other than that it was unconventional in every way, but not drag-friendly: "While drag was largely anathema to the genre, the punk makeup styles [...] have proven influential to subsequent drag queens." (175)
Again, I'm tempted to push back on this claim ... An openly queer aesthetic - informed by the drag queens, transvestites, and transsexuals associated with Warhol - was crucial to the clothing designed by McLaren and Westwood for their boutique, Sex. Iconic items of punk clothing - such as bondage trousers and the Tits T-shirt - were intentionally transgressive and could be worn by either sex.
One might even describe Jordan - with her extreme theatrical look - as a kind of drag queen. And who can forget Malcolm's cross-dressing in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)?
[e] Doonan obviously had the hots for gender-bending popstars Boy George and his pal Marilyn, admitting that he was "totally smitten" (176) with the former and claiming (rather laughably) that the latter's appearance on Top of the Pops in 1983 "is seared into the national consciousness" (178).
That might be true of a few ageing new romantics and homosexuals, such as Doonan himself, but I suspect it's not true for most UK residents.
[f] The same debate is also taking place with reference to race and disability; should a black actor, for example, be allowed to play a role previously associated with a white actor (a lot of people were exercised by the prospect of Idris Elba becoming James Bond); or should an able-bodied actor be given the role of a paraplegic - think, for example, of Tom Cruise as Ron Kovic in Oliver Stones's Born on the Fourth of July (1989)?
Again, as I say in the main text, I recognise that there are a limited number of roles open to actors belonging to minority groups, but, even so, I can't get behind the idea that an actor must be X, Y, or Z in order to play the part (though the current trend within the profession seems to be moving more and more in that direction).
[h] See Foucault writing in The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge (1976).
[i] With their glitter-encrusted beards, the Cockettes "pioneered a delightfully amateurish do-it-yourself genre of performance drag" (213).
[j] The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were a "group of gays [... wearing] nun's habits and a smidgen of makeup" (214), who wished to challenge religious fundamentalism with impromptu street theatre. According to Doonan: "By combining elements of religious piety with rampant decadent artifice, they successfully satirize conventions of gender and morality." (214)
[k] Founded in California in the late '70s, the Radical Faeries "embody many aspects of counter-culture, including environmentalism, paganism, communal living and free love" (215). Their drag is characterised by "a wilful randomness and lack of rigour" (215) and often they prefer nudity and body paint.
To read part 1 of this post, click here.
To read part 2 of this post, click here.
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