Drag University and the Figure of the Drag Queen

Judith Butler in her landmark book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity utilizes the concept of drag to illustrate, what she proposes, gender performativity. In her analysis she argues that "in imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself - as well as its contingency" (175). Drag, she argues, reveals how there is not an "original" gender, but that that the parody of drag is "the parody of the very notion of the original" (175). Drag in its excessive, parodic performance illuminates the complexity of gender, anatomical sex and gender performance whereby the gender does not align with the sex but with a particular performance creating an allusion or illusion of something that is idealized, but unattainable by any one.

Butler's use of drag was quickly taken up, but in problematic ways as Butler herself discusses in her later book Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Here Butler re-articulates or clarifies her arguments, bringing to light that she is not arguing that gender is voluntaristic - that we wake up in the morning and simply don whatever gender it is we would like. Rather, gender is complicated by the discourses available and the possibilities within such discursive structures. Drag, simply put, is only a helpful illustration. It illuminates the ways in which gender is performed and relies on particular performances structured within particular symbolic systems but gender is not the same as "drag," in that drag queens and kings can don persona in ways different from the everyday. Drag is a performance, but gender performativity rests on the reiteration of norms, of performances that upon constant reiteration and repetition become seen as the norms.

Of course Butler's engagement with drag and gender are far more nuanced and complicated than I have written...but I begin by thinking about Butler because of the re-emergence it seems of the figure of the drag queen within popular culture - notably the return of RuPaul in Logo's 1st and 2nd seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race and the 1st season of Drag U. Both of these shows are fascinating for a variety of reasons and arguably bring drag to a broader audience in intelligent and thoughtful ways (as in, drag is re-presented as an art, a performance art, with a history AND not simply a spectacle...but of course it is not drag without the spectacle for sure).

My interest in this however, is the strange dynamics with gender that emerge in the new Drag U where biological woman come on the show and are taught how to be fierce like a queen by the former contestants of RuPaul's Drag Race Seasons 1 and 2. The women and their drag queen professor(s) help them overcome certain barriers and upon doing so draguate with one of the women winning top honors.

Yet, who are the women that come on the show? The women that come on the show thus far seem to fail at being women - they are tom boys, they are single, they are blue collar. They are not the idealized woman that is beautiful, fashionable, and taken (or at least having sex). They are failed women. But, as advertised, they are everyday women making it seem that perhaps the everyday woman is a failed woman. And, she needs help from the drag queen who in her parody of gender simultaneously seems to illuminate the failure of gender while reinscribing what it means to be a "real" or "successful" woman. I should note that call the "everyday woman" a failure is not meant to be an insult to the everyday woman...I know in the current time no one like to be a failure, but I think the notion of the fail perhaps provides critical space to think about gender. I also utilize the notion of failure because this is a university and the women are graded in order to see who draguates with the highest DPA.

The everyday women come to the University presided over by RuPaul to learn how to be powerful women and they are taught how to do so by as Ru refers to them as "Lady-Boys". Queens and the everyday women join together to learn about themselves and the power of the feminine. Yet, both the professor and the student are at the outset, failures. The women are "everyday," they are not exceptional like a queen must be. But the queens are parodic and failure to meet the ideals by which they base their performance off. They will never be "biological women" even as they perform the "woman" better than any "biological woman" on the show. Yet, in this, the individuals illuminate the power of the feminine and at times the "everyday women" seem to take back ownership of their lives. Of course interestingly, we never see the queens break down and discuss their own traumatic pasts that have propelled them to drag and to teaching...but that is of course, not the premise of the show.

What I found interesting watching the show at this point in the season, very early indeed, is the looks on the women's faces when they received a "poor grade" and lose the competition to have "top honors". What happens when one begins a failed woman in need of a drag-make-over, only to fail at that very endeavor? Or is it not failure, but a jump up in one's grade of being "female"? What happens when one "passes" perhaps, but not at the top of one's class? Does this produce a hierarchy of "womanhood" whereby a woman's performance of her gender is graded...and the everyday woman is simply a failure?

The dynamics of the show further complicate this issue as there are drag queens, RuPaul in her male form, and guest judges who are biological males and females. The grading then of the performance of these women is done then by a diverse group of bodies. Experts in drag (e.g. Lady Bunny and RuPaul) and experts in other realms of performance come together to grade the performances of these ladies who are not creating a new "gender" for themselves, but performing something new "one night only." One must ask then if this one time performance is capable of changing the women, of transforming them, or if come the day after, the women fall back into the repetition of their own gender pre-university training? Does RuPaul's Drag U actually illuminate the misreadings of drag a la Butler's theory of gender performativity whereby it becomes an issue where the "performance" of drag is believed to represent the possibility of disrupting gender norms...when it is actually a voluntary performance that fails at addressing the ways gender is discursively created? Does this show "drag u" back into beliefs that we can simply change our genders over night OR does it "drag u" into an uncharted path that allows these women to be "new" and "improved" as opposed to the failed women they were before the show?

Reflections on MJ: The King of Pop

As the spotlight shone down on an empty microphone, the memorial service over and the sound of his music yearning for his voice, I realized I had just witnessed the end of an era for no longer would that microphone be sung into by the King of Pop as his voice is now present only in memory - memories memorialized in his albums. And it is those albums and the sound of his voice, that brought the world together again to say goodbye and begin to heal our own wounds - wounds created by the loss of our King.

Michael wanted to heal the world and he sought to heal that world through his song, through asking his listeners, asking us, to believe not just in his message, but in ourselves and our own ability to heal the world. We are not alone he told us and we weren't alone today as the world came together to mourn the loss of our King. It is there, in the state of mourning, that a thank you should be given to his family as they opened up their own grief to mourn with us, to help us mourn, and in such mourning begin to celebrate the life of the one lost. While some may have called it a spectacle, a bunch of "hoop-la", they miss the beauty of the moment as millions across the globe entered public spaces, sat in private spaces, to watch on TV or live stream on the internet to be together and mourn the lost object of Michael Jackson. This coming together traversed not only the boundaries of private/public but national boundaries and as some have noted illustrated Michael's message in "Black or White" where it doesn't matter if you're black or white. Yet, in this mourning, we see a beautiful figure in Michael Jackson and it is that beauty - a rather queer beauty - that I seek to reflect on.

As I listened to the stars speak of their memories and experiences of Michael, it was apparent that this man was loved by many, even after he had found himself so often in strange predicaments, inevitably creating him as a strange man in the minds of many. While Al Sharpton noted to Michael's children - "your daddy wasn't strange, what was strange was what your daddy had to deal with", his sentiment fails to recognize the importance of Michael's strangeness and how it was his strangeness that captivated us - that made Michael beautiful.

Michael was strange because he believed in kindness - a queer thing to believe in these days - and his message was always one of kindness. In his soft-spoken voice he spoke of his love of the world and of children - sentiments that are often positioned with the feminine. He believed, even with all he had been through and all that goes on in the world that it could be healed. Yet, in such a soft-spokenness he disrupted our images of the masculine male and as such was seen as "strange" for what kind of man would act like that? A "kind" man would but in such kindness must be positioned as "feminine", as less manly. I would argue it was this kindness that was misunderstood and allowed him to be derided for being “jacko the wacko” for being a boy in a man’s body...for being "crazy". Perhaps, as his actions are positioned as "crazy", we can see that it is kindness that is crazy as we would prefer to not allow ourselves to believe in it, questioning it and anyone who embraces it as "strange". But, Michael was put in strange predicaments because he lived in a strange world in a body that was strange...but it was this strange body that allowed us to see other possibilities and it is in his strange body that he had such power.

Michael Jackson was a queer body as he transgressed so many of our naturalized categories. He challenged our assumptions about race, gender, age, and sexuality. He was black, but white - telling us that it didn't matter. Yet, it does as we hear people ask if he wanted to be white, question him for having "white" kids, or claim him for "their" group - defeating his message of healing. He was man but could pass as woman at times, transgressing the gender binary and causing us to take a second look or even mock him for looking so strange. He wanted to show other possibilities, to show it didn't matter...but we want it to matter, we wanted to box him in...to produce him as a coherent "subject". He transgressed sexual norms as people pondered his sex life and accused him of perverse sexual dealings with children. Yet, these disruptions are not as disruptive as his disruptions of age and that adult-child binary.

It is his traversing the adult-child binary that is most fascinating. Berry Gordy Jr. noted that in his personal life, Michael was shy and child-like. Brooke Shields noted that Michael had to grow up and lose out on his childhood as he entered the adult world of the music industry as a child. He was an adult but always seemed child-like but as a child he had to be adult. His growing up was to quick but as a grown up - he grew beside himself to be "child" while "adult". And it was his original loss of childhood that perhaps provoked him to fight for the child and embrace his own child-ness - to forever traverse that strange boundary between the adult and the child. Yet, when "adults" embrace their childness and when men love children such beings are produced as having had something gone awry - something all to evident in Michael's life.

Yet, it is his child-like status that will allow us to remember Michael forever, for the child is never to be lost, the child is to outlive the adult and in dying as the shy, quiet child-like man he was in his personal life, Michael will live on forever young, forever growing beside himself as his life expands across the globe and throughout time to perhaps continue on in his quest to heal the world. In dying as the child, he remains forever child...never an old man, never anything but that which he sought his whole life to find and protect.

In mourning his lost, the world perhaps found moments where it came together and began to see itself healing from its loss, bringing to fruition - albeit fleetingly - Michael's dream…And, in such a moment, the world perhaps began to see healing in other ways as people reached across to aisle to grasp the hand of an other to fleetingly feel connected as they watched Michael go out with style in New York, Milan, Ghana, Hong Kong, and beyond.

And so with that, I end this reflection...thanking Michael for always sharing his genius with the world, even in strife, to help make it a better world. I thank him for his queerness...for transforming his body in strange ways to perform different possibilities, even if such possibilities often got him in the tabloids for being "wacko". You will live in your music as your voice becomes a testament to your dreams. May you rest in peace.