ESSAYSONCAMP, DRAG, AND SEXUALITY 306.766 M6132A ESSAYSON CAMP, DRAG, AND SEXUALITY MOEMEYER MA ATER Macater Press ,vww.n1acaterpress.com Copyright © 20 I 0 Macat er Press All rights reserved . No part of this p ublication may be reprod uced, stored in a retri eval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mecha nical, photocopying, record ing, or otherwise, witho ut the prio r written p ermission of the p ublisher. Printed in the United States of Amer ica Meyer, Moe An Archaeology of posing: essays on camp, drag, and sexuality ISBN 978-0-98 14924-5-2 Library of Cong ress Con trol Number: 20099 13712 Design: Zuc ker Design Cover image: Harvey Reddin g, Anatomy Lesson, 1978. CONTENTS Acknowle dgm ent s vii Introduction Unveiling th e Word : Science and Narrat ive in Tra nssexual Striptease 13 2 Reclaiming the Discou rse of Camp 33 3 The Signifying Inver t: Camp and the Performa nce of Nineteent h- Centu ry Sexology 53 4 Top Camp/Bottom Camp 73 5 Rethinking Paris Is Burning: Performing Socia l Geography in Harle m Drag Balls 105 6 Celeb rity Jack: The Internet and th e Dea th of Camp 141 7 In Defe nse of Gay/Perfo rm ance 151 by Thomas A. King and Moe Meyer Appendix 182 Notes 185 Work s Cited 203 Index 219 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS take this opportunity to thank the many individuals who, at different stages of these writings, offered invaluable criticism and suggested new Itra jectories: Sam Abel, Jeff Abell, Tim Benzie, Joan Jett Blakk, Jonatha n Bollen, Caro l Burbank, Sue-Ellen Case, Freder ick C. Corey, Margaret Thompson Drewal, Laura Edmondson, Gabri el Gomez, Teri Kapsalis, Pamela Karantonis , Thomas A. King, E. Patrick Johnson , Kobena Mercer, Cynt hia Morr ill, William Peterson, Paige Schilt, Mady Schutzm an, and Mar tin Worman . I also thank some of those who generously offered op­ port unities to present these works while in -prog ress: Oscar Brockett , Susan L. Foster, Dick Hebdige, Shannon Jackson, and Gay McAuley. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers and journals for permi ssion to reprint prev iously pub lished materials . "Un­ veiling th e Word: Science and Narra tive in Tra nssexual Str iptease;' rep rint ed from Gender In Performance:The Presentation of Difference in the Performing Arts, ed. Laurence Senelick (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992). Reprin ted with permi ssion. "Reclaiming the Discourse of Camp;' reprint ed from The Politicsand Poetics of Camp (London: Routledge, 1994) © 1994 Moe Meyer. "The Signi fying Invert : Camp and the Performanc e of Nineteenth-Centu ry Sexology;' reprinted from Text & PerformanceQuarterly 15.4 ( 1995). Reprinted with per mis­ sion. "Rethinkin g Paris Is Burning: Perform ing Social Geogra phy in Harlem Drag Balls;' reprint ed from Theatre Annual 50 (1997). Reprint ed with permiss ion. "In Defense of Gay/Perfo rman ce" © 2010 Thom as A. King. 1n cluded with permi ssion. And special thank s to the following for p1:rmission to reprint pho tograp hs and art: Athletic Model Guild, Geny­ phyr Nova k, and l.l arvcy Redd ing. INTRODUCTION or the last two years, I have been an avid fan of the telev ision show Ru Paul'sDrag Race,an elimina tion show in which drag queens com­ Fpete to be the new American drag supe rstar. The show has been amaz ingly successful in promoting drag as an art form in its own right while bringing in huge new audie nces to local live drag shows. The new audiences are younger, just as often stra ight as gay. Due to the fam iliar­ ization effects of the television show, drag is no longer viewed as a sort of contag ion. Prox imity to drag queens in gay social contexts (as opposed to the long history of"tou rist shows") is no longer thr eaten ing, and being prese nt as an audi ence member no longer calls into quest ion one's own personal sexua l orientati on or identity throu gh a guilt by associat ion. On the one hand, this has been refreshing for build ing an appreciat ion of a minority art form. On the other, the show evokes an odd kind of nos­ talgia; perhaps we cou ld call it hyper-nosta lgia. For in the show's glitzy packaging , med iated and edited imagery, and high-profi le marketing, I also exper ience a melanchol y, a feeling ofloss, a longing for the "good old days" when the shock and awe created by the social stigma of dra g could produce notewort hy cultur al and political effects. I began to ask: is Camp dead? As mu ch as Ru Paul'sDra g Race could be said to inaugurate a new era for Camp and drag, it simult aneous ly mark s the end of a previous one. I have mainta ined an understanding of Camp as the production of gay soc ial visibility, i.e. the process for the soc ial signification of gayness. I have not wavered from that basic definiti on. But what has changed dra­ matically is the need for such visibilit y. Traditio nally, Camp has been cen­ tral to the process of ind ividual identity formati on, th e forging of rn m111unity, and a viable political tactic . In the last decade , the need for ( ::1111p the need to produ ce a soc ial significatio n of gay iden tit y- has wa11l'd. It certain ly is not· dead, despite the death cer tificates prematur ely bs 11n l hy many c:1 itics buth pro and con. C11111p rl'vcnb lt~t·lf', a~ I orig inally orgucd in "'n1e Signifying Invert ;' 111111 MH i.d ttf\\'11ry 1>,,sr d 0111 t·11,c111lw 1in g :incl citing the bodies or gay 2 ARCHAEOLOGYOFPOSING INTRODUCTION forebears; it is a set of strategies and tactics that exist withi n th e collective mativity critics find material performances to be inadequate to the stud y memories (the performance repert oire) of gay men. We saw thi s clearly of identity/performance. In fact, in prefacing remarks to Cruising the Per­ when the Camp political tactics of Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in the late f ormative, editors Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Foster mak e the 60s and early 70s, used to contest oppressive discourses of gender, were claim that "perfo rm ativity" offers a broader perspective on all varieties of recovered and redep loyed in the late 80s and early 90s by organizations performance tl~an the concept of "performance" can itself offer ! As such as ACT UP and Queer Nation to negotiate and contest the oppressive Thomas A. King has explained: discourses surrounding AIDS. The denigration of performance vis-a-vis performativity is based The discourse of Camp is in fact concre te and knowable; it is a set of on an assumption that bounded performances enacted by identi ­ accessible techniques localized in body/space. Indeed, this was Foucau lt's fiable agents reinscribe a hu mani stic subject who is alleged to hold argument in the Archaeologyof Knowledgewhere his model of discourse a power to effect change through intent ional acts or utteran ces. was the troubl esome, often overlooked, and misinterpreted concept that The distinction assumes [on the part of the performativity criti c] discourses are only called into being through practices, techniques , and that agents/performers understand that there is a hom ologous re­ spaces. A discourse may not be able to be accounted for by a chrono logical lation betwee n performances and ident ities:' ' analysis of causes and effects; it may in fact skip in and out of history, as Hence Judith Butler's dictum that "The reduction of performat ivity to per ­ I demonstrate in "Rethink ing Paris Is Burning:' Perhaps this is what was formance would be a mistake:' 2 If material performance analysis is redu c­ happening when 60s GLF Camp tactics reappeared in 90s Queer Nation tionary (and a mistake) then contemporary Camp may be also. activism . The time gap between these two deployments of Camp calls into Contemporary Camp in the early twenty-first century is charact er­ question the death metap hors that have so often been applied. ized by the reduct ion of its own performativity to performances that arc The title of Caryl Flinn 's essay "The Deaths of Camp" (1995) wryly al­ highly bounded and framed (often ritualized) material ena ctments. Dur­ ludes to just how many times Camp has been declared dead. Of course, ing a green room gab session in season two of Ru Paul's Drag Race, the Camp is not really dead, not as long as there are bodies out there that can que ens discussed their mot ives for doing drag . The conse nsus was th"t even potentially re-claim, re-enact, and re-deploy it. Flinn concludes that drag was the only way that gay male effeminacy was currentl y accept;1blt· what is called a "death" of Camp is a metaphor marking a reconfiguration and legitim ated . An effeminate male had to push his manneri sms tn tilt' of Camp. I am not so sure. Rather than a reconfigurationof the discourse, edge, and then institutionalize his performance withi n the context nl ,, I see instead a re.figurationof theframe of performance. It is thi s refigura­ traditional art form . What started out as an everyday life enact mc11t\1 11 tion of the frame that is so fabulously str iking about Ru Paul'sDrag Race.