Strut, Sing, Slay: Diva Camp Praxis and Queer Audiences in the Arena Tour Spectacle
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Strut, Sing, Slay: Diva Camp Praxis and Queer Audiences in the Arena Tour Spectacle by Konstantinos Chatzipapatheodoridis A dissertation submitted to the Department of American Literature and Culture, School of English in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Philosophy Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Konstantinos Chatzipapatheodoridis Strut, Sing, Slay: Diva Camp Praxis and Queer Audiences in the Arena Tour Spectacle Supervising Committee Zoe Detsi, supervisor _____________ Christina Dokou, co-adviser _____________ Konstantinos Blatanis, co-adviser _____________ This doctoral dissertation has been conducted on a SSF (IKY) scholarship via the “Postgraduate Studies Funding Program” Act which draws from the EP “Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning” 2014-2020, co-financed by European Social Fund (ESF) and the Greek State. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki I dress to kill, but tastefully. —Freddie Mercury Table of Contents Acknowledgements...................................................................................i Introduction..............................................................................................1 The Camp of Diva: Theory and Praxis.............................................6 Queer Audiences: Global Gay Culture, the Arena Tour Spectacle, and Fandom....................................................................................24 Methodology and Chapters............................................................38 Chapter 1 Times Goes by so Slowly: Madonna’s Camp(ed) Traditions................................................................................................49 DISCOnfessions: Performing “Madonna”.....................................56 The Legacy of Vogue.....................................................................82 Chapter 2 LaLaLas and WowWowWows: Approaching Kylie.........................100 The Cult of the Showgirl..............................................................106 Spectacular Athletica....................................................................123 Chapter 3 We Flawless: Beyoncé’s Politics of (Black) Camp.............................143 Staging “Queen Bey”...................................................................150 Slay Trick: Black Women and Gay Men in Formation...............170 Chapter 4 Camp Romance: A Gaga Asthet(h)ics................................................186 The Fantastic Stage and the Gendered Self..................................192 Free Bitch, Baby: Queer Youth and the Politics of Childishness.................................................................................226 Concluding Remarks....................................................................243 Chapter 5 Dressed for the Ball: Audience Drag in the Arena Space.................248 The Popularization of Drag........................................................254 Camp Fandom............................................................................269 Conclusion.............................................................................................289 Works Cited..........................................................................................294 Musicography / Videography..............................................................323 Interviews Jamel Prodigy (Derek Auguste)...................................................330 William Baker..............................................................................334 i Acknowledgements The process of writing this dissertation has truly been a memorable journey. With ebbs and flows, this journey was very much the result of individual effort as well as support coming from family, friends, professors, colleagues, institutions and people I have met along the way. First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Zoe Detsi who not only believed in me and my project, but, most importantly, kept pushing me in taking chances. Her continuous support and critical engagement are values that have strengthen my quality as a person and researcher. Needless to say that without her guidance and care this project would not have been realized. I would also like to thank the co-advisers of this dissertation, Dr. Christina Dokou and Dr. Konstantinos Blatanis. Their expertise and attention to every little detail was of invaluable help. May our academic paths always cross. This dissertation has been funded by IKY (State Scholarship Foundation Greece) which greatly facilitated the research process and helped attain both professional and personal goals. Speaking of goals and journeys, I am heavily indebted to the Fulbright Foundation for giving me the opportunity to travel to the University of Alabama in 2016 via the newly-founded Doctoral Dissertation Research Programme. Special gratitude to Ms. Artemis Zenetou, Ms. Els Siakos, Mr. Mike Snyder, and Ms. Angie Fotaki for promoting an inclusive ethos through their work in Fulbright Foundation Greece. A heartfelt thank you goes to Dr. Tatiana Summer and Dr. Joel Brouwer of the UoA without whom my access to the University campus and resources would have been impossible. ii I have also had the luck of gaining access to some of America’s most significant queer-related archives. I would like to thank the personnel, volunteers, and fellow researchers I have met in New York’s Center (LGBT Community Center and Archives) and Ft. Lauderdale’s Stonewall National Museum and Archive. I am also eternally grateful to the European Association for American Studies for awarding me with the Transatlantic Travel Grant and thus allowing me to travel to San Francisco, have access to the museum and archives of the GLBT Historical Society Archives as well as experience the city’s vibrant queer culture. Thank you to all individuals and organizations for preserving and promoting queer histories and for inspiring a future project and dream of mine. My purest feelings of appreciation and devotion are reserved for my second home, AUTh’s School of English, for giving me the best undergraduate years as well as very warmly accommodating my graduate steps. Thank you to my professors Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou, Dr. Savas Patsalidis, Dr. Giorgos Kalogeras, Dr. Domna Pastourmatzi, and my dearest Dr. Yiouli Theodosiadou. Huge thanks to all personnel, especially Mr. Christos Arvanitis and Ms. Fotini Stavrou. Special thank you to mentor and friend Dr. John Howard whom I’ve been lucky enough to have met. Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank the “invisible heroes” behind this incredible journey. Thank you to each and every single close friend of mine who has been guarding my steps, pushing me to unexplored corners of my mind, tolerating my quirks and mood-swings, and, most of all, showing me that although at times I travel alone, I never feel lonely. The ultimate and deepest thank-you of all, of course, goes to my family whose unconditional love and endless support keep shaping the best of me. Introduction Dorothy Gale singing “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz (1939) has constituted a defining moment both for Judy Garland’s career and her subsequent queer consecration as a gay icon. Longing for a land where the impossible can happen, little Dorothy managed to appeal to the queer psyche by offering a liberating songtext whose open-endedness could easily accommodate queer people’s desire for freedom of expression. The song was backed by the film’s colorful spectacle of esteemed for its time proportions that aided in vivifying the liberatory effect. Oz’s onscreen transition from black-and-white monotony to Technicolor-imbued imagery marked a connotative passage from secularity to dream and from seclusion to openness. Coupled with Dorothy’s otherworldly, albeit friendly, encounters in the Land of Oz, the transition’s queer message was indeed hard to miss. “Over the Rainbow” became Garland’s signature song as she went on to be established as one of the most iconic figures of American queer culture and perhaps one of the first to exert a wide queer appeal of considerate magnitude and longevity. More specifically, gay men’s attraction to Garland’s star icon was not simply directed toward the star herself, but was part and parcel of what the Garland experience enclosed: namely, the opportunity to find, in a very practical sense, the dreamland she was musing about. At a time when queer socialization was mostly under the radar, Garland’s appeal openly helped semantify queer bonds and culture sharing among gay men to the point where a cultural stereotype was birthed: “friends of Dorothy” became a euphemism for homosexual men, thereby exposing and specifying what had then been clandestine.1 Years later, impacting the queer community of New York City, Garland’s funeral service on 27th June 1969, which was followed by the Stonewall riots on 28th June, 1 Cf. Daniel Harris’ essay on “The Death of Camp: Gay Men and Hollywood” as this appears on The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture (1997). 2 circulated rumors that connected these two events. Though that idea seemed farfetched, one cannot overlook that what was possibly a coincidence was indeed a temporal landmark enveloped with queer affect which was triggered by the grief over the death of the icon as well as the aggressiveness of the Stonewall incident. Almost seventy years after Dorothy’s musical call to the Land of Oz, Kylie Minogue appears on a glittery crescent-moon prop to perform “Over the Rainbow” during the Dreams segment of her