Week 9-Questioning subversion
-Watch the film, Paris is Burning
Viewing this film is mandatory for understanding this week’s readings
-bell hooks, “Is Paris Burning?” (Moodle)
dressing up as a male is play- like the plasticity of changing one’s appearance
Drag is a symbolic transgression and a crossing of borders from power→powerlessness and viceversa. is transition a loss? or a ridicule of black femininity?
Examples of black men channeling hate and contempt for bw through drag
Zach King
Caricatures like hot cheeto girl
Black men victimized like women in opera
Castration and emasculation of the Black men through racism, disallowing access to patrarichal power- they felt forced into the sphere of feminine powerlessness→overcompensation through misogyny
Critique of Paris is Burning- the femininity evoked and idealized is a constructed idea of white femininity! Dorian Carey- so pale, so small, so white
Lana Del Rey question for the culture “Let this be clear, I’m not not a feminist -but there has to be a place in feminism for women who look and act like me - the kind of woman who says no but men hear yes - the kind of women who are slated mercilessly for being authentic, delicate selves, the kind of women who get their own stories and voices taken away from them by stronger women or by men who hate women.”
The race+class longing of these drag queens and POC trans women is of to be in a position of privilege, part of the ruling class on the throne of a white man
Marilyn Frye (Lesbian Feminism and Gay Rights): gay men’s effeminacy and donning of feminine apparel displays no love or identification with women- The queer community is truly fractured and full of discourse- a completely imagined community that does not display the openness and unity of our imagination. “gold star lesbians",” terfs in the queer community, can lesbians like trans women? can bisexuals? all of these things!
All of this useless queer discourse of who gets to belong, fouculdian emphasis on labels and defining and delineating the “correct” definition.
hooks harkens balls to sports events, masculine aggression and competitive gaze
Politics of race/gender/class are “progressive and reactionary”
Paris is Burning is not liberating- graphic portrait of the way “in which colonized black people worship at the throne of whiteness and will do anything in pursuit of it”
but this “ideal life” and subject of longing is not named as whiteness
There’s no beauty to be found in blackness that doesn’t imitate whiteness
visible in beauty standards of today- what is the ideal black woman? asian woman? filipina?
Reasurres whitee audiences who have what the queens want
Selective allusions to the black experience in a racist society
“terrible sadness in this testimony” from what?
Paris is Burning doesn’t refer to the revolutionary aspects of teasing the dominant culture, or subverting them- it’s only emulating, not mocking. This challenges the status quo
The “realness” section
“makes it appear that the politics of ruling-class white culture are solely social and not political, solely “aesthetic” questions of choice and desire rather than expressions of power and privilege” - refers backt ot he Material Girl reading about how all modifications of appearance are trivialized and devoid of meaning because they are feminine. She’s not trying to be white, she’s trying to be sexy, or different
Jennie Livingston
Outsiders looking in convert meaningful ritual→spectacle.
Film is informed by her presence as a white lesbian filmmaker. She is removed but overseeing.
“innocence”- mild-mannered, “straight man” white woman daring to venture into the world of the abnormal and report her findings.
doesn’t answer questions about what it means to be a white woman making a film about black life.
“If you know someone over a period of two years, and they still retain their sex and their race, you've got ot be a pretty sexist, racist person." Yet it is precisely the race, sex, and sexual practices of the black men who are filmed that are the exploited subject matter.”
In her statement she implies there would be no difference between a black director and her
- tone of discovery of raw material… commodifcation and “newness” that artistic creators are always looking for
Paris is Burning inhabits a world all about questions of power and privilege and how racism is an obstacle for black progress- but doesn’t explore it. It’s just there
white assumption of the “neutral gaze” - Patricia Williams
Voyeuristic and intruding, but affable group of people have good intentions, no one iwll mind
“no one existed for them who could not be governed by their intentions”
Making displeasure heard- respectability
colonizing whites explore and discover the countries and cultures of “dark others” satisfied with the spectacle presented
The film’s tone and flitting between drag and intimate life trivializes the emotional vignettes of the film. Not testimony, only soectacle
Isolating the subculture
Livingston’s framing portrays black men as cut off from “reality” any familial ties of to the real world- THe ball is the center of life, heightening the fantasy and spectacle
Venus has been murdered- it’s shock, not mourning.
“Stars” and “legends” articulate these ideas of capitalist freedom, individualism, achievement in the democratic world.
Dorian Carey
Inside all of us is the longing to be glorified and great- everyone longs for love and recognition and desire!! The drag queen is not othered in htis way.
Carey: one can only love themself when they breakt hrough the illusion and recognize the limitations of fantasy.
Vieweres can’t properly absorb this message b/c he is overshadowed by spectacle
“by critiquing absorption in fantasy and naming the myriad ways pain and suffering inform an process of self-actualization, Carey’s message mediates between the viewer who longs to voyeuristically escape into film, to vicariously inhabit that lived space on the edge by exposing the sham, by challenging all of us to confront reality.”
Dorian Carey doesn’t glorify suffering or romanticize it- break through denial and longing so we can accept ourelves, fantasy and ritual can be true once that happens.
-Judith Butler, “Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion” (Moodle)
Althusser’s interpollation- police intiating call/address make a subject socially constituted, becomes a part of recognized domain
Hey YOU!- You becomes recognized, “certain order of social existence” is received, they become indifferent/impossible →social domain of the subject
“relation of misrecognition” b/w law and the compelled subject- law can be refused, ruptured, questioned that is the range of disobedience
Constitutive failure of the performative
Interpellating calls and the “i” an enabling violation
One does not stand at an instrumental distance from the terms by which one experiences violation.- one cannot stand outside of power like foucault
Ambivalent Drag
Gender and race are reworked and unrecognizable- affirmed, defied, creating love and glory and stardom but reiterating norms. Imitating heterosexuality and the idea that small white, pale delicate is the only idea of beuty
Is drag subversive? Is “parodying the dominant norms enough to displace them?”
Drag does not inherently subvert- it can denaturalize and reidalize (like bell hooks)
It is a site of AMBIVALENCE
Normalizing the heterosexual and binary project
The idea of biopower and normalizing power as a resposne to what gets positive response is gender norms- continuous work, effort and performance goes into the imitation of an “original gender”
Drag as subversive that reflects on production of gender disputes heterosexuality as original and natural
Drag produced by het culture- tootsie, white chicks, some like it hot
Drag as misogynistic diagnoses crossdressing and drag as male homosexual - is homosexuality about women? rooted in misogyny- reverse colonization of feminism within queerness in the same way people perscribe lesbian to bad male experiences
According ot these views, drag is nothing but the dis- placement and appropriation of "women," and hence fundamentally based in a misogyny, a hatred of women; and lesbianism is nothing but the displacement and appropriation of men, and so fundamentally a matter of hating men—misandry.
performing=doing a sequence of acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame.
Gender is expression?
The hailing metaphor- the idea of performativity is the act of “being called into being” as a specific gender subject is enacted CONSTANTLY- through actions, calls
If we are “oppressed” by norms that determine us, these are norms that we are always citing and enacting- not just accepting the terms of hwat has been given to us.
If gender doesn’t determine us/is a choice- people who feel a sense of identification who don’t match with what they should be, but not all people are free agents,
People have the right to set the legal and linguistic bounds of their own identity
what does it mean to not be cis?
gender loop, heteronormative performativity goes into what you raise your children to do
how do new gender identities categories of identification that provide more possibility and freedom, become ossified into caricature? what are the ways in which the pendelum of progress and beauty standards reproducing femininity-
economic trouble- we see fashion going in a more
Judith Butler Reading guide
So what does performativity mean with regard to gender? It means that gender is an act that brings into being what it names. It constitutes the identity it purports to be. In other words, to continue the analogy above, there isn’t a person who stands in front of the wardrobe and chooses an outfit (or has one chosen for them). The gendered subject is only constituted through the act of wearing the outfit—an outfit which pre-existed them, and which they did not choose. (This is why Butler is not so fond of the wardrobe analogy.)
Butler replies to people who uplift drag and see it as inherently politically liberational and destabilizing norms
Performativity is not performance; it has nothing to do with theatricality per se.
-Jae Basiliere, “Staging Dissents: Drag Kings, Resistance, and Feminist Masculinities” (Moodle)
what is “realness”
Drag kings as creating feminine spaces reject strict boundaries of biologically deterministic ideas of women
instances of feminism making enemies- people who experiment with gender expression inherently perpetuate stereotypes
Thesis: Drag kings reclaim masculinity and decode its association with sexist misogyny- reappropriation creates unique subcultural coding about masculinity- creates feminist masculinities. Drag kings are representations of feminist masculinity
In other words, many drag kings deploy dominant or hegemonic masculinities in ways that do not celebrate the existence of a gen- dered hierarchy but rather serve to reimagine these tropes within an anti- oppressive context.
Method
Contrasting to Paris Is Burning- persceived power dynamic as insider complicated
how does one navigate insider research relationships with encountered people? is it productive or messy?
An intro to drag as resistance
Joe Calderone and Spacee
strategically drawing on tropes of dominant masculinity while simultaneously undermining those very stan- dards. This movement between and among multiple gendered spaces chal- lenges the assertion that drag kings are uncritically reproducing the norms of hegemonic masculinity. Critics who accuse drag king performances of cele- brating masculinity at the expense of femininity miss the nuances entwined in a performance that moves through both masculine and feminine spaces.
DISIDENTIFICATION of masculinity with men, and femininity with women
Drag kings pass as queer
Conclusion
Dismissing the work that drag kings do as inherently antifeminist simply because they en- gage with masculinity misses the larger picture.
Feminists centering themselves in trans/gender nonconforming spaces, and seeing these rejections of masculinity and satires of femininity as misogyny- both basiliere and bell hooks reject this
for you to make drag about femininity is to make lesbianism about men- can we conceive pleasures based off of what is being played with-
Subjection- you’re placed in this power structure but you are still legible to speak- a place of oppression, but a place of which to speak- context
Queer grad students doing these appearances- places of exploration
Identity is so so spatial- how does that figure? it can be kind hard to understand
Voyeuristic, hidden camera vibe- informative but OFF
Passing/Realness
Passing is about safety and access to literal and metaphorical spaces- realness is more celebrating successd
drag as subversive is context dependent
Troye Sivan and the subjugation of queer language-that’s also a racial thing- a successful gender is constituted through the proper sexual object choice- but that is racialized
totally discouraged from talking about race, but homophobic language is a part of masculinity
Schnyder- black physical labor / “horsepower” is fuel, dehumanized, functional for the benefit of the white coach
Multiculturism>difficult racial conversations, celebrate our differences and wear costumes, sing songs- not acknowledging structural differences is avoiding and actively telling a fantasy and different story- connection to Bordo’s endless pastiche of differences, equally devoid of meaning