Queens, Queers, and Blackface: How “Drag” Culture Politics Affects Body Identity

In Gender Trouble, feminist critic Judith Butler lays out what she regards as the common critical interpretation of drag—drag as parody—and adds the complication that perhaps drag “gives us a clue to the way in which the relationship between primary identification—that is, the original meanings accorded to gender—and subsequent gender experience might be reframed” (175). Using this definition, identities of race and sexuality can also be reframed between the “original meanings” of these identities and the subsequent lived experience that would constitute “race trouble” or “sexuality trouble.” However, race and sexuality have their own performance and rules of parody that are different from—and have different cultural outcomes—then the parody of drag and gender.

Drag, the act of mimicking a gender not one’s own, relies on a shared understanding by the audience and performer that there is a physical gender, a gender identity, and gender performance. Gender drag stereotypes exist—loud, brassy men/women who overemphasize and almost vulgarize feminine traits with garish make-up, big hair, and gaudy clothing.  It is part art and part camp, but it does rely on a script and expectations from both the performer and the audience. A meek, quiet drag queen is likely to seem more out of place than a drag queen mimicking the iconic drag queen from the 1970s, Divine. The performance is meant to highlight through parody the markers of what we consider gender to be by also using markers of drag and parody we recognize. As Butler states, “In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender roles itself—as well as its contingency” (175, emphasis hers). 

Race, too, is built on original meanings, and racial identity has a long history of parody. The vaudeville comedy act of blackface allowed white performers to paint their faces black, exaggerating physical features thought dominant to blacks such as their lips and acting in a manner that parodied the culturally homogenous (white) view of what black culture was. From that, the racial stereotypes of the black race emerge about personality (e.g., lazy, likes to laugh) as well as cultures, such as the ridiculous notion that all black people like watermelon and chicken. Unlike drag, however, the parody that blackface offered was less about parody as it is about maintaining the hegemonic structure of the dominant culture suppressing the minority culture. 

Today, black comedians (the descendants of vaudeville) play their own version of blackface, parodying black culture of what comedians like Richard Pryor and Chris Rock would refer to as “there are black people and there are ‘niggas’” (Rock). Rock’s bit is scathing and political, criticizing members of the black community for self-identifying with the parody “nigga” identity—uneducated, unemployed, irresponsible but proud. It is also as exaggerated as the drag queen: at one point Rock suggests hiding money in books because “books are like kryptonite to a nigga” (Rock). In this case, his parody is not meant to suppress the minority culture but to expose racism in the culture and call the black culture to action.

Sexual identity “drag” emphasizes parodic behavior of the performer’s self-identification as well as the gender counterpart. Men do not play women; instead, the homosexual man assumes the performance of “fairy” or “flamer” who takes on many feminine characteristics, while homosexual women have the extremes of the masculine “bull dyke.” These performances are similar to gender drag in that they play on notions of masculinity and femininity; however, the purpose of the parody here is often comic and not very often political. The gay characters on the show Modern Family emphasize the theatrics and gender quality more associated with drag than they do with sexual identity. In fact, very little sexuality exists between the characters. 

Sexual identity is perhaps one of the most troubling for people to deal with in an open manner. The idea of homosexuality is still not accepted by half of the country, and identity that does not conform to the “A or B” identity, such as being asexual or bisexual, is still considered deviant in a way that race is less so. A person who is of mixed heritage from multiple racial backgrounds is not judged nearly as harshly as someone who would admit to engaging in both homosexual and heterosexual acts. Perhaps this is because sexuality and intimacy are issues that are also connected to vulnerability, and a fluid sexual identity poses uncertainty, and therefore risk, as a result of that vulnerability. This is perhaps why our culture is still closer to its “blackface era” when it comes to sexual identity.

As Butler describes, “If the body is not a ‘being,’ but a variable boundary, a surface whose permeability is politically regulated… then what language is left for understanding this corporeal enactment, gender, that constitutes its ‘interior’ signification on its surface?” (177). Race, gender, and sexuality are equally variable boundaries that are understood in the context of the interplay between interior and exterior, and they can all be explored and discussed through the medium of parody and drag. However, cultural assumptions and norms about sexuality are more rigid and have a stronger political regulation that can countermand the politics of parody. 

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Bring the Pain. Perf. Chris Rock. Dreamworks Records, 1996. CD.