Here is a statement about the emancipatory power of drag wrapped in a tale of allyship — embalmed as it is in the limitations of the ’90s.
so refreshing about the movie in 1995: “Transvestism is now Hollywood’s favorite form of safe sex,” she wrote, “since its naughtiness is so toothless and lends itself to such happy platitudes.” If the line nags when read now, it’s not just because Maslin needlessly conflates drag performance with “transvestism.” It’s also because she so casually presumes that cross-dressing was already ripe for Hollywood sterilization close to three decades ago.
When Vida , Noxeema Jackson and Chi-Chi Rodriguez first arrive in Snydersville, the women of this rundown town look at them with apprehension — and the men, with lust and violence in their eyes. The queens worry for their safety, in part because of their desire to pass as, ahem, “real” ladies by staying in drag at all times. Literally: Vida always looks ready to host a bridge club in Stepford. Noxeema, like she’s about to walk a 1970s New York City runway.
winner Monét X Change tells me. “I mean, drag queens being in drag all the time? They are the pioneers of ‘I woke up like dis!’” She says she enjoyed always staying in drag when she got started too. Although she now rarely wears heels, even on the way to the stage, she remembers theFor others, the characters operating more like cross-dressers than drag queens remains a sticking point.
There was really no big sense of tragedy around these characters. They were people who brought a positive influence to the world around them. And it was fabulous.Some point to the film as an example of Hollywood’s disinterest in the drearier, day-to-day aspects of drag. In an interview conducted a month beforenever spoke to her reality. Her kind of drag was a far cry from the film’s. “I prefer drag to be subversive and kind of dangerous,” she said.
The film’s unabashed sense of sisterhood, welcoming all and not just cis gay men, exemplifies what drag can and should be — even if Swayze’s softhearted, motherly performance and Snipes’s quick-witted, no-nonsense one skirt the line between queer portraiture and facile caricature. Silly as the film is designed to be, it’s also a call to arms. “This America does not respond kindly to our sort of person,” Noxeema says in the film. That still rings true.are sweeping the U.S.
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