Genders OnLine Journal - Presenting innovative theories in art, literature, history, music, TV and film.
Issue 42 2005
Passing As Queer and Racing Toward Whiteness
To Wong Foo, Thanks but No Thanks
By KATHRYN KANE
My inspiration for the script came from watching the religious right
videotape The Gay Agenda. There's a scene where they show drag
queens going through a town, and the narrator is warning viewers
that these people will take over your town, and I thought, 'Well,
that would be fun.'
- Douglas Carter Beane, Screenwriter,
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
[1] As the three main characters of the film To Wong Foo, Thanks for
Everything! Julie Newmar pull out of the used car lot in the
Cadillac convertible they intend to buy, the dealer implores them to
reconsider, "Wait. It's a wreck." In response to this, the
dominant lead, Vida, says to her friends, "Well pumpkins, it looks
like it comes down to that age-old decision: style or substance."
The film shifts to a shot of the three "drag queens" looking at a
mirror's reflection of themselves in the car while they strike a
pose that signifies pondering, and the audience understands that for
these three, it will always be about "style." The style that To
Wong Foo's drag queens reflects, a style devoid of connections to
power and place, indicates that this very split is a substantive
problem. The Douglas Carter Beane quote that frames this article
indicates issues of gay rights and social power that this film
covers over with its romp into style. In this article I will show
how this glittery fantasy about socially disadvantaged groups, a
format that has found a niche in American film at this historical
moment, aligns with a larger agenda of neoliberalism.
[2] I choose to ground my analysis in this film for two reasons.
First, I am interested in To Wong Foo as a text that forged a path
for representing the relationships between racial and sexual
minorities. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar,
released on September 8, 1995, was one of the first mass-marketed
drag movies with gay characters and an interracial lead cast. As
such, it offers a particularly intriguing window into the ways that
differentiated socially disadvantaged identities are represented in
relation to one another. While the press made quite a bit out of
the film's gay plot line, casting it as the United States' version
of the surprisingly successful 1994 gay themed Australian film
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, no particular attention was given to
the interracial casting. I believe that this response reflects the
popular sense that racial integration is no longer an issue in the
United States, something the prevalence and general social
acceptance of interracial buddy movies illustrates. In Framing
Blackness, Ed Guerrero explains, "blacks appear on the screen in the
1980s predominantly in the biracial 'buddy formula,' which reveals
all the strategies by which the industry contains and controls the
black filmic image and conforms it to white expectations" (127).
Michael Rogin supplies an excellent reading of the limits of
interracial buddy movies in Chapter Seven of his book Blackface,
White Noise. Both authors illustrate the ways interracial buddy
movies present a vision of the U.S. landscape in which racial
tensions are no longer a critical issue. In my analysis, I will
show how this "post-racism" assumption informs To Wong Foo's
narrative. This is a critical intervention, as the racial politics
of the film connect to contemporary tensions that exist between gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) and African American
activists. The paper shows the way To Wong Foo mobilizes a surface
vision of equality to mask its circulation of racist and
heterosexist cultural ideals. Further, it illustrates how
discourses that attempt to understand gender by separating it from
racial and sexual identity formations undergird such narratives.
[3] Second, I am interested in the way To Wong Foo aligns with
contemporary neoliberal discourses. In the mid 1990s, the time of
To Wong Foo's release, regulations regarding public presentation of
homosexuality were shifting. This was due in large part to AIDS
activism, which changed the terms of public awareness of
homosexuality. Mobilized and organized by their fights for AIDS
funding and research, the gay and, to a lesser extent, lesbian
population became a recognized demographic with some political
clout. This shift led to the active courting of gay and lesbian
voters as part of the Clinton campaign strategy. It is important to
note, however, that Clinton's political machinations also involved a
very purposeful "whitening" of the Democratic Party. Thus, a time
of new possibility regarding the presentation of homosexuality can
also be effectively read in terms of compromised racial politics
(Davis). I situate To Wong Foo as a response to this historical
moment, one that attempts to neutralize the new threats of gay
visibility with the difference-blind discourses of neoliberalism,
the very discourses that supported the "whitening" of the Democratic
Party. In her recent book The Twilight of Equality?, Lisa Duggan
notes that "'the Achilles' heel of progressive-left politics since
the 1980s, especially, has been a general blindness to the
connection and interrelations of the economic, political and
cultural, and a failure to grasp the shifting dimensions of the
alliance politics underlying neoliberal success" (Duggan xvi).
Reading To Wong Foo in relation to neoliberalism and focusing on the
economic, political and cultural meanings of the text, I establish
social and political costs of neoliberalism and offer indication of
how to respond to neoliberalism's obfuscations.
Building a National Body
[4] To Wong Foo tells the story of three gay male drag performers
traveling from New York to Los Angeles to compete in the "Drag Queen
of America" contest. The white protagonist, Vida Boheme, played by
Patrick Swayze, and the black protagonist, Noxeema Jackson, played
by Wesley Snipes, secure their right to participate in this
cross-country journey through a split victory in New York's regional
"Drag Queen of the Year" competition. Under Vida's urging, as all
of the group's actions take place under pressure from Vida- the duo
extends their good fortune to the Latino performer Chi Chi
Rodriguez, played by John Leguizamo. Vida considers it her duty to
socialize the masses striving to reach her level of sophisticated
self-articulation. Thus, she cannot resist "assisting" the hapless
and confused Rodriguez. Vida makes overt her socializing goals as
she claims that she will change Chi Chi, who Noxeema declares is
currently nothing more than "a boy in a dress," into a full-fledged
drag queen. While attempting this transformation, the trio
encounters a myriad of problems, including an attempted sexual
assault by a racist and homophobic police officer and car troubles
that leave the group stranded in a small town near the site of the
assault. The police officer, whom Vida knocks unconscious when his
sexual aggression leads to his discovery of her "true" gender, takes
on the crusade of finding and exposing the trio. As I will discuss
later, the ridiculous antics of this pathetic officer make a mockery
of the threats posed by a racist, homophobic, and sexist state.
[5] While stranded in the middle of America, the "colorful" trio
wakes up a sleepy town and adds meaning to the lives of the washed
out, tired, and abused women they encounter. The film positions the
drag queens, with their racial, gendered and sexual differences, as
a means of liberation available to those laboring under the burden
of normativity. Their presence releases these rural folk
particularly the women, from their stilted, unsatisfying lives and
facilitates a new sense of empowerment. I question this structure,
which allows a small, almost exclusively white and indicatively
heterosexual community to actualize itself through contact with and
eventual separation from the sexual and racial others. Thus, I ask,
just how new are the identities offered? And, what or who must be
sacrificed to facilitate this vision?
[6] To answer these questions, I connect both the style and
substance of the film to the culture and place of its production.
In so doing, I shed light on the ways this film contributes to
ongoing discussions that give meaning to racial, sexual and gender
identities and indicate how these meanings are connected to
structures of power. It is my contention that To Wong Foo utilizes
traditions established in blackface minstrelsy to create the
illusion that "race," "sexuality" and "identity" are terms that
exist outside of power. To Wong Foo manages this by presenting
these terms in a manner which asserts that racial and sexual
prejudice no longer exist, a move that casts identity as little more
than a matter of personal style. Ironically, however, it
simultaneously posits that people of color need to be overseen by
white people, and that homosexuality is only acceptable when it is
devoid of any same-sex sexual contact. I will further show
demonstrate that this film’s claim that queers and people of color
have lives that are more fun and full than those who follow
heteronormative directives, and that this claim is utilized to
justify white heterosexuals' feelings of resentment towards queers
and people of color who are presented as having this social
advantage (when I discuss a general group of people whose identities
are not heterosexual, I prefer the use of the term queer. This
choice rests in my understanding that the term queer reflects a
range of social identities that are outside the heteronormative
without limiting these identities to rigid definitional structures
that tend to support their subordination). Finally, I illustrate
the ways this narrative serves as a distorted call to women's
liberation, one that offers people of color and queers as vehicles
through which women—and in this text, all women are white and
heterosexual—can self-actualize.
[7] My analysis highlights the way articulations of identity are
always statements of relation, and as such, structures that impact
ideas of coalition. Through my reading of To Wong Foo I show the
stakes that articulations of identity have in shaping ideas of
interests and establishing visions of power. In identifying the
effects from this coalition/identity arrangement, I offer new
insight into why and how formations of identity matter. My ideas
are informed by Slavoj Žižek's vision of social control, which
understands that the terms of identity construct social roles for
groups of people. Žižek writes:
The stake of social-ideological fantasy is to construct a vision
of society which does exist, a society which is not split by an
antagonistic division, a society in which the relation between its
parts is organic, complementary. The clearest case is, of course,
the corporatist vision of Society as an organic Whole, a social
Body in which the different classes are like extremities, members
each contributing to the Whole according to its function…(126).
Using Žižek 's formula, I illustrate how the film's corporatist
vision obscures the actual interests that differentiated socially
disadvantaged groups have in one another—in effect, disallowing one
hand the ability to wash the other for any reason other than to
clean the national body. I approach Žižek 's image of a
social-ideological fantasy as a model of regressive coalition. This
move breaks with a dominant trend in understanding coalitions as
relationships that have specific aims and are self-consciously
negotiated by particular social agents. I propose this shift
because I believe that the dominant vision of coalition strengthens
ideas of individualism, focusing on personal choice to an extent
that can obscure systemic positioning and deny the degree to which
groups of people already exist in an imbricated system that
establishes relationships among people. Seeing social organizations
of identity systems as establishing terms for coalition, I am not
denying the possibility of choice or self-conscious renegotiation.
Rather, I am claiming a particular starting point from which such
choices and renegotiations must begin. In analyzing the text, I
will show how To Wong Foo offers a Whole social Body where people of
color and homosexuals are relegated to performing unappealing
physiological functions for the benefit of a singularized corporal
unit. These roles, specifically the ways they are interrelated,
must be understood if the hegemonic national body is ever going to
be changed.
[8] Žižek also presents the idea that a social Whole finds cohesion
by introducing dangerous others who are positioned as foreign to the
social body (126). In my analysis of the text, I show that To Wong
Foo offers a version of this model, though here the "dangerous"
others have been trained to regulate one another and, in so doing,
show their deference to the social Whole. Thus, the dangers offered
in the text provide an object lesson in assimilation, even as they
illustrate that some identities are not fully assimilable. To
explicate my contention, I will trace To Wong Foo's connection to
blackface minstrelsy.
Passing For Queer and Racing Toward Whiteness
[9] To Wong Foo references the blackface minstrel tradition in two
ways. First, it utilizes what I call queerface, where
heteronormativity is secured and queer voices are silenced through
the performance of homosexuality by people who act out a vision of
homosexuality while simultaneously identifying themselves as
heterosexual. The forays into queerface are established through the
handling of Patrick Swayze's and Wesley Snipes' characters and
personas. My claim of queerface does not come from or lead to a
politics that says only gay people can play gay characters. In
this, queerface is like blackface, which could be performed by black
actors, a possibility displayed in Spike Lee's Bamboozled (2000).
Rather it focuses attention on the structure of narratives in which
gay characters operate. Queerface involves representing gay/lesbian
sexual identity as a playful performance that supports
heteronormative ideals.
[10] The terms of queerface and blackface differ, as the terms of
knowledge regarding sexual and racial identities differ, and because
racial and sexual social identities carry distinct material
consequences. Still, there are important parallels between the two
forms. As noted earlier, the mid-1990s were a time of new social
possibility for sexual politics. I argue that To Wong Foo was
produced in reaction to the new social opportunities the 1990s
brought to homosexuals. In The Wages of Whiteness, David Roediger
notes, "Blackface literally stepped in as a popular entertainment
craze at the very moment that genuinely black performers and
celebrations were driven out" (104). Certainly, homosexual
performers have been and continue to be a part of the United States'
entertainment scene. It is equally certain, however, that the
public sexuality of homosexual entertainers has been heavily
controlled (Signorile, Ehrenstein). I maintain that with its
insistence on the masculine heterosexuality of its two known stars,
To Wong Foo participates in the blackface tradition of erasure, and
that this erasure was a response to the new visibility of gays and
lesbians. Roediger has further written that blacking up "usually
involved a conscious declaration of whiteness and white supremacy,
even as it identified celebration and popular justice with adopting
a racial disguise" (104). Queering up has a similar effect of
solidifying heterosexual superiority. This solidification smoothes
over the threats posed by the new visibility of gays and lesbians.
Within the text of To Wong Foo, the terms of justice become the
solidification and consolidation of the heteronormative couple,
represented by the union of the characters Bobbie Lee and Bobby Ray
(to be discussed later in the essay), and the return of pleasure to
the white heteronormative women of the small town where the trio is
stranded.
[11] Before I go on to explain the second tie to minstrelsy, I would
like to emphasize a critical difference between queerface and
blackface. David Roediger and Eric Lott both discuss how blackface
provided an opportunity for white people to "act black" (Roediger
105, Lott 4). While queerface allows people to act queer, the
difference in the epistemological structures of race and sexuality
places a unique limit on these actions. Though social theorists
have deftly illustrated that race is a social construction, racial
identities are still dominantly marked by skin color. The identity
that blackface enacts is signaled by color, which blackface
performers apply and remove with aplomb (Roediger, 116-118, Rogin
103-112). Sexual identities differ from racial identities in that
they are predominantly understood to be the product of a person's
actions. This means that heterosexual identity is something highly
tenuous. For their own heterosexual security, actors performing
queerface must avoid the one action—sexual contact between persons
of the same gender—that currently defines homosexuality. I do not
want to indicate here that sexual identity is determined simply on
the basis of sexual actions. I subscribe to Eve Sedgwick's fifth
axiom regarding sexuality that states, "The historical search for a
Great Paradigm Shift may obscure the present conditions of sexual
identity" (44). Thus, I understand that there are many systems
simultaneously at play which define sexuality identity in a complex
and even contradictory manner. Nevertheless, I also maintain that
the dominant model of sexual identification currently revolves
around sexual object choice and that sexual identity is solidified
through the act of having sex. This distinction is important
because it illustrates the porous boundaries that exist between
sexual identities, how gender and sexual identities are distinctly
interrelated, as well as the ways constructions of racial and sexual
schemas create distinct spaces of both play and concern. Queerface
cannot act out the central distinguishing feature of homosexual
identity because heterosexuality cannot be secured in the same
manner that whiteness can be secured. Thus, queerface is marked by
a careful avoidance of enacting same sex sexual contact, lest a
performer risk damaging his/her claim to masquerade. Roediger
discusses the ways "blacking up served to emphasize that those on
stage were really white and that whiteness really mattered" (117).
Queerface makes a similar attempt, but it is constrained by the
awareness that if those in queerface act so queer as to participate
in same sex sexual contact, they cease to be performing queerness,
and become queer.
[12] In addition to its use of queerface, To Wong Foo plays on
traditions of minstrelsy in a second way by modeling a form of
racial inclusion that I call whiteface. In this schema, people of
color are encouraged to participate in the social body on the
condition that they attempt to adopt the ways of whiteness. I say
"attempt" here because it is critical to this formulation that the
connections between people of color and pre-industrial pleasure,
connections that justified imperialism and essentialized racism, are
not, and can never be, broken (Roediger 103 and 118). Whiteface
represents a neoliberal multicultural twist on blackface traditions.
While blackface allowed whites the chance to "act black," it
coincided with movements that forcefully denied blacks that right to
act out their projection of whiteness, an "act" that was often
accompanied by social rewards (Roediger 125). In a whiteface
system, people of color are encouraged, not mocked, for their
attempts to act white. This creates an image of social opportunity.
This is only an image, however, because nothing has been done to
disrupt the aforementioned ideologies that casts people of color as
a libidinal, pleasure-driven group who can never fully embody
whiteness. Hence, whiteface encourages people of color to "act
white," while simultaneously illustrating the structural necessity
for people of color to be under white supervision and casting the
failure of people of color as a reflection of personal limits.
[13] Queerface and whiteface work together in critical ways. In
Time Passages, George Lipsitz explains that blackface shows
presented blacks as people who violated everything "considered
precious but contested by white society" (65). Presenting a
narrative of queerface and whiteface, To Wong Foo establishes that
these contested zones, which Lipsitz exemplifies as the family and
the work ethic, are recognized and respected by the non-normative
characters. All characters in whiteface show are made to show a
reverence for white heteronormative social institutions. These
social institutions are sites that crystallize and organize many of
the battles around non-heteronormative sexual identity, a truth
current debates about the right to marry make explicit. Because of
this, whiteface will always be in conflict with queer identity.
Teaming whiteface with queerface, the film is able to present a
social model that places both race and sexuality within a neoliberal
frame. This creates a false image of justice within a text that
recuperates old prejudices.
Who's Wong Foo, and What Am I Thanking Him For?
[14] Having laid out this framework, let me turn to the text of To
Wong Foo to examine these practices in action. The film's title
offers insight that can help begin to clarify the social dynamics of
whiteface as they motor the narrative. The words To Wong Foo,
Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar are inscribed on a photograph
that Vida encounters early in the film. Vida finds the photograph
right after the trio has decided to take their cross-country drive.
There is a cacophony of background noise, through which Noxeema's
voice emerges saying, "I don't know if you've seen this America
place, but it does not respond kindly to our kind of people," as a
third-person camera shows Vida preparing to look at herself in her
compact mirror. The real life actress/pin-up girl Julie Newmar and
Vida are then cinematically merged, as a first-person camera shows
Vida looking into her mirror to see not herself, but the photograph
of Newmar. Upon spotting the photograph, Vida interrupts Noxeema
and demands, "No one say anything frivolous for the next few
moments." This line is timed to cast Noxeema's comments about the
heterosexism, racism, and gender rigidity of the U.S. as frivolous.
Vida continues, "Miss Julie Newmar has been watching over this
entire conversation, and look at her vintage Miss Julie. She is the
perfect, the ultimate, ahh, try to describe her and not use the word
statuesque. Oh Miss Julie, you are statuesque, and you were the
only Catwoman." This monologue and the construction of the scene
establish Julie Newmar's link to Vida. But, the adoption of the
photo's inscription as the film's title establishes Newmar's
importance to the film as a whole. In so doing, the text indicates
a structure of whiteface; it speaks over the voices of people of
color and gives undue authority to white ones. The film makes it
clear that only Vida cares for Newmar. Upon reading the
photograph's inscription, Chi Chi only shows interest in the person
whose name marks him out as a person of color, and simply asks, "Who
was Wong Foo?" Noxeema, meanwhile pointedly displays her
inattention throughout Vida's monologue, and when it finally closes
she comments, "I've had enough of this conversation. I'm hungry."
The movie's title places Vida's view in a position that obstructs
both Noxeema's and Chi Chi's, exemplifying a pattern of prioritizing
and privileging Vida's white perspective.
[15] My focus on Vida's perspective as the white perspective might
seem an imposition, but the choice of Newmar as an imposed idol
bolsters my insistence on the centrality of race. In her initial
discussion of Julie Newmar, Vida claims that Newmar is "the only
real Catwoman." This reference to Newmar's role on the television
series "Batman" merits attention, as the other Catwoman—the Catwoman
who does not measure up—is a black woman, Eartha Kitt. It is
generally believed that Newmar was replaced by Kitt in an effort to
protect an image of white purity. Eartha Kitt was brought into the
series in 1967, the same year the character Batgirl was introduced.
Catwoman’s now black body clearly delineated her as an undesirable
mate for Batman and served as a stark contrast to the pure, good
hearted, white character of Batgirl (Catwoman homepage). Newmar's
Catwoman maintained a relationship with Batman that was laced with
sexual innuendo. Batgirl, introduced as a positive dating option,
might not have been able to compete with Newmar's established sexual
tension. Kitt's blackness was employed to foreclose the possibility
of Catwoman and Batman's sexual relationship. Thus, what might
appear as a progressive integrationist casting decision can be
understood as something that upheld, rather than undermined, a rigid
racial order. Affirming Newmar's status as "the only Catwoman,"
Vida questions any sacrifice whiteness is asked to make, even those,
as in the case of Newmar's Catwoman role, that serves whiteness
itself.
[16] The importance of race is also reflected in the handling of the
character Wong Foo, who is introduced, fore grounded, and erased, in
a structure that mirrors the handling of all racial others in the
film. Though having his name in the title gives him a certain
omnipresence, Chi Chi's question, "Who was Wong Foo?" is never
answered. According to the logic of the film, the only thing that
matters is that he was thanked by Newmar. Wong Foo stands as an
absent mark of the presence of color. Further, this film indicates
that 'absent presence' is the best way color can look, as Wong Foo's
invisible hand has the ability to supercede the actions of the
active characters of color in the film. For instance, when the trio
first realizes that their car is broken and that they are stranded,
Vida turns to her portrait of Newmar and prays for a ride. She
begins, "Oh Dear and oft thanked Wong Foo…." While Vida prays, Chi
Chi, walks along the road and flags down a car. When Chi Chi
returns with a ride, the camera shows Vida's hand as it grabs for
the portrait of Newmar and Vida says in a voiceover, "Oh, thank you
Wong Foo." To Chi Chi, Vida says nothing.
Vida: What Kind of Life Is She Offering?
[17] Throughout the film, the white Vida is given the role of leader
and mentor, thereby assuring that the opportunities for a
progressive vision that this gay-themed, interracial buddy movie
might have offered turn regressive. Power is localized in the
character that, as I have already indicated in my discussion of her
relationship to Newmar, establishes and supports the primacy of
white heteronormativity. Examining Vida's control over Noxeema and
Chi Chi, one can establish several ways that Vida serves as a marker
for whiteface.
[18] Vida's power is clarified by small acts. Driving across the
country, only Vida is allowed behind the wheel. Vida's personal
choices, like "I think tomorrow I'll wear a say something hat," a
line she whispers to herself in the mirror, turn into mandates: "I
think tomorrow is a say something hat day," a declarations she makes
to Noxeema and Chi Chi. Vida's ability to make choices and
institute codes of behavior illustrates and materializes her status
as the arbiter of appropriate behavior and the judge of the other
two.
[19] Nowhere is Vida's role imbued with more power to make or break
someone than in her relationship with Chi Chi. It is Vida's idea to
offer Chi Chi the benefits of her knowledge and Noxeema's
overseeing. I use overseer here in a self-conscious attempt to link
this narrative to racist systems that came before it. This
categorization also indicates the complexity of a racial system.
Noxeema's role as an overseer does not contradict my claim that
whiteface requires that people of color submit to perpetual
supervision by whites; Noxeema, as I will discuss momentarily, is
always ultimately under Vida's control. If there were any doubts as
to the importance of racial status in the division of these roles,
they are disbanded through repeated direct references to racial
identity. When Vida makes her magnanimous offer to teach Chi Chi
the ways of the drag queen, she also makes derogatory references to
Chi Chi's racial status:
Yes, you will start off a mere boy in a dress, but by the time we
are done with this crusade your Auntie Vida and Auntie Noxie will
give you the outrageous outlook and indomitable spirit that it
will take to make you a full fledged drag queen. So now, I want
you to turn your sway back little self around on those Robert Clay
knock offs, and get back into the car.
As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that Vida's lessons in drag
involve teaching Chi Chi to accept her social position as a racially
derided subject, a "sway back," and to teach her how such a subject
might make herself more palatable within a system that values and
rewards attempts to emulate whiteness.
[20] The extent to which Vida's schooling involves instructions in
whiteface and queerface is clarified in one of the film's final
scenes. Each member of the trio is given a chance to explain how
she will change herself as a result of their adventures. Chi Chi,
who appears throughout the film with her face caked in a foundation
that is markedly lighter than her skin coloring, vows to "try and
find a foundation that's a little closer to my actual skin color."
I contend that Chi Chi's initial make-up choice illustrates both her
desire for white status and her "confusion" that whiteness was
simply a color that could be applied with a brush. Vida instructs
Chi Chi in the need to internalize the lessons and mores of
whiteness; Vida teaches her that whiteness must be won through a
continual pledge to uphold and prioritize its heteronormative
values. Thus, to fulfill her desire of accessing whiteness and the
title of drag queen, Chi Chi must forgo her claims to homosexual
desires, an act that proves her deference to Vida, whiteness, and
heteronormativity. In the narrative, this self-avowal crystallizes
in her need to give up a boyfriend to a "true" woman, a deserving
woman, a biological woman, a white woman. With this act, Chi Chi
shows that she recognizes the sanctity of the heteronormative
family, that institution "considered precious but contested by white
society" (Lipsitz 65). Having internalized these lessons, Chi Chi
can claim her role not just as a drag queen, but, as we see in the
film’s final sequence, as "Drag Queen of America," crowned by Julie
Newmar herself.
[21] Noxeema, who is named after a thick white face wash, a clear
evocation of whiteface, is also dependent on Vida. Early in the
narrative it is established that Noxeema's privileged position as a
drag queen, her ability to win the pageant title—in fact, all the
rights and powers she can claim—came to her through the tutelage and
attention of Vida. Noxeema's status as Vida's Pygmalion is
clarified in an early speech in which Vida tries to convince Noxeema
that it is her duty to take in Chi Chi. This scene is shot with
Noxeema sitting in front of a vanity table looking into a mirror.
The camera shows the audience Noxeema's reactions through her mirror
image, which she studies along with us. The construction of this
scene visually reinforces the verbal information that Noxeema's
image is an object of concern and that Vida's words help Noxeema to
see herself more clearly. This scene is also noteworthy because it
establishes a technique for casting racism as a problem among people
who are not white that can be overcome by the powers of whiteness.
Noxeema: You and your causes! Look, that child is Latin. You
don't want to get mixed up in all that Latin mess. She might turn
out to be a Sandinista or something.
Vida: Noxeema Jackson! I have to admit that I am shocked and just
a little bit saddened by you. I mean you of all people. Hon, I
remember the first time I laid eyes on a certain ebony enchantress
in the rough, and how through styling and the occasional make up
tip I helped her look a little bit less like Moms Mabley. And who
would think that ebony enchantress would one day share a title
with moi.
Noxeema's anti-Latino remarks might draw attention to racism among
people of color, a critical issue that requires serious attention.
However, the text as a whole illustrates that this attention cannot
effectively be paid in an atmosphere where whiteness is given so
much credit and authority. As it is, Noxeema's racist rejection of
Chi Chi lends credence to the idea that racism, when it is a
problem, is a problem created by people of color.
[22] The authority and control whiteness holds is also clarified in
this dialogue through Vida's citation of the fundamental role she
played in shaping Noxeema. The fact that Vida compares Noxeema to
Moms Mabley, an actress who got her start in the Chitlins Circuit, a
bastion of blackface minstrelsy, is particularly interesting.
Though Mabley's legendary status allowed her to break through to
some television and movie work later in her career, she was renowned
for her Negro vaudeville circuit stage persona who "wore a baggy
house dress and sported a toothless grin" (Violante). The minstrel
circuit has been shown to reflect more of the white imagination as
it strived to consolidate and maintain racial control over any
"real" black characters (Lott). Though Vida sees Noxeema as a
character that she made look less like Mabley, there is no reason to
believe that Noxeema's current image is a radical break from the
oppressive, racially limiting structures of which Mabley was a
part—especially as this "new" image was authored by the white Vida
and requires that Vida maintain a critical eye on Noxeema to assure
she not slipping back to her "natural" ways.
[23] Accepting Vida's authority, Noxeema accesses the film's rigid
and limited vision of queenliness. But this access can only be
maintained through a continual performance of whiteface. Thus,
Noxeema can and must offer appropriate support to Vida's
proclamations. When she does not, she is chastised and made to see
the error in her ways. In such moments, some means of drawing
direct attention to racial difference is usually enlisted. For
instance, when Noxeema protests Vida's idea to include Chi Chi on
their adventure, she says, "I ain't driving you no more Miss Daisy."
The larger narrative of the film establishes that the only reason
Noxeema is not driving is because Vida will not let her behind the
wheel. Most critically to my argument addressing the limits of
whiteface inclusion, the film uses Noxeema to illustrate why the
social vision, which offers hope to marked others through
re-socialization and promises power through the adoption of social
mores of whiteness, never presents a moment when the instruction and
supervision end.
A Queer Vision of Gay Life
[24] Having focused on the ways whiteface operates in this text, I
will now turn to a fuller consideration of queerface. Film
historian Vito Russo maintains, "Homosexuality when it is visible is
antisocial. The only condition under which homosexuality has ever
been socially acceptable has been on the occasion of its voluntary
invisibility…." (44). I maintain that To Wong Foo presents a sexual
identity that is both visible and socially acceptable because it is
fundamentally not homosexuality, but rather, queerface. To Wong
Foo's queerface distortion is achieved through its avoidance of
homosexuality on many levels: it does not offer any same-sex romance
or sexual displays; it uses stars renowned for their heterosexuality
and their masculinity; and it denies homophobia and heterosexism as
factors that impact the lives of queer people.
[25] The film played on the known heteronormative star power of its
two leading men. One of the film trailers shows Snipes working over
a punching bag while a voice-over intoned, "He's been a killer and a
commando." Swayze is then shown throwing martial arts kicks while
the voice over says, "He's been a heartthrob and hero." The two are
then introduced as facing their next challenge—drag (Dragsters).
But the PR people weren't the only ones emphasizing the
heterosexuality of the two stars. When discussing his decision to
play Vida with Entertainment Weekly, Swayze exclaimed, "I don't have
anything to prove…I am as heterosexual as a bull moose. That is
what made me so comfortable as Vida" (Daly). Swayze made similar
claims in an interview with The Advocate, a gay and lesbian
magazine: "(E)verybody knows that I am seriously, terminally
heterosexual" (Busch). This heterosexuality embodied so seriously
and terminally in both Swayze and Snipes is a critical player in the
film. Heterosexuality actually facilitates this queerface
performance, or, as Swayze speaks this logic in his statement to
Entertainment Weekly, clarity regarding heterosexuality made him "so
comfortable as Vida." This comfort is a result of the character
which, I maintain, was not so much a homosexual, as a heterosexist
social fantasy. Swayze's and Snipe's "real" identities, and this
"real" includes their public personas and movie histories, are, in
fact, central players in this film's narrative. As one reviewer
notes, "There's never a moment in this film when the audience isn't
absolutely reassured that, should things get really bad, Patrick
Swayze and Wesley Snipes will tear off those silly dresses and kick
some serious ass" (Uricchio). In fact, in the film's moment of
pivotal crisis, Swayze does just this. Cast with such proven
heteronormative stars, the audience can be certain that the film
represents play, not identity. This is a formula that Esther Newton
took note of in her pioneering study of female impersonators, Mother
Camp, where she notes that "known legitimate performers sometimes do
drag in the movies and on TV but are not thought of as drag
queens"(5 n13). What Newton is pointing to is a formula borrowed
from blackface, used here to signal a foray into queerface.
[26] Cross-dressing is also a tactic used in blackface minstrelsy.
Though cross-dressing plays with heteronormative assumptions, it
appears to me to be most directly aimed at solidifying racist gender
assumptions. The imbrication of gender and race, and the extent to
which minstrelsy solidified white power by articulating black gender
as transgression, shows how black people have been cast outside
heteronormativity—and demonstrates the critical interdependency of
race, gender, and sexuality (Roediger 121-2, Sommerville 39-76).
[27] Though Snipes and Swayze's characters verbally claim
homosexuality as one of their definitional characteristics, no signs
of homosexual desire are manifested in these two lead characters.
Part of this issue lies in the film's conflation of sexual and
gender identity categories. The film's director, Beeban Kidron, has
been quoted as speculating, "by the end of the film I would guess
that about 80% of the audience have stopped wondering whether
they're men or women. They're just characters, and that's the
strength of the film" (Milvy). But the gender of the characters, at
least the gender of Snipes and Swayze's characters, is never in
question. Though they spend almost the entire film in drag passing
as women, the film's opening sequence presents Swayze and Snipes
transforming themselves into Vida and Noxeema. This opening confirms
the reality behind the facade and assures the audience that they are
viewing the stars they know and trust. I maintain that the strength
of the characters is not their ability to evade the question of
their "true" gender identities, but their ability to secure it and,
in turn, to secure their heterosexual identities. In her article,
"Kind of A Drag: Gender, Race, and Ambivalence in The Birdcage and
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," Mary Kirk offers
an interesting analysis of the characters' status as "passing."
Kirk draws on Leslie Fienberg's claim that passing involves danger
and hiding (172). This analysis makes sense within the confines of
the film, but what I am pointing to here involves another layer of
analysis that considers the film's audience who never views either
Swayze or Snipes as passing. Hence, the audience has every reason
to feel sure of their safety.
[28] Kidron's substitution of gender for sexuality is troubling and
needs more attention, however. It is not that Kidron is unaware of
the various forms of sexual and gendered identity; after all, this
taxonomy is covered in the script. In explaining to Chi Chi
(ironically, the only protagonist who is denied the on-screen
make-over which would secure the actor’s male identity, as well as
the only protagonist who makes explicit references to sexual
involvements with men), why she is merely a boy in a dress, Noxeema
says:
When a straight man puts on a dress and gets his sexual kicks he
is a transvestite. When a man is a woman trapped in a man's body
and he gets the surgery, he is a transsexual. When a gay man has
way too much fashion sense for one gender, he is a drag queen.
And, when a little Latin boy puts on a dress, he is simply a boy
in a dress.
Kidron's aforementioned quote only makes sense in a culture that
regularly conflates transgendered persons and homosexuals, and in a
film where the lines quoted above are the only clarifying references
to Noxeema and Vida's sexuality. Tremendous border wars are waged
among gay/lesbian and transgendered communities (Hale, Califia).
Claiming a clear position within these fights, Noxeema and Vida are
drag queens and, as such, gay men. Failing to reflect the borders
with any specificity, however, this movie panders to social
ignorance and promotes the conflation of transgendered and
homosexual identities.
[29] It is plausible that drag facilitates such confused reading.
Though it has been hailed as a site of radical destabilizing
potential, drag is an ambivalent medium. Judith Butler notes in
Bodies That Matter, "there is no necessary relation between drag and
subversion" (125). Evidence of this is clear in To Wong Foo. It is
my contention that the problem lies not with drag itself, but with
To Wong Foo's vision of drag. This vision upholds the hegemonic
system of sexual and racial order by obscuring current
epistemological structures controlling homosexuality as they relate
to visibility. This is particularly evident in the way the film
conflates homosexuality and drag. After all, while all drag queens
are homosexuals, not all homosexuals are drag queens. Again I turn
to Esther Newton, who explains:
Homosexuality consists of sex-role deviation made up of two
related but distinct parts, 'wrong' sexual object choices and
'wrong' sex-role presentation of self. The first deviation is
shared by all homosexuals, but it can be hidden best. The second
deviation logically (in this culture) corresponds with the first,
which it symbolizes. But it cannot be hidden, and it actually
compounds the stigma. (104)
Newton's account was written in 1972, at a time when the desire to
"hide" homosexuality was relatively unquestioned, but this does not
undermine the importance of her insight. Eve Sedgwick's
Epistemology of the Closet has shown how critical the connections
between sexuality and visibility are to our current cultural
understanding of concepts like truth and innocence, and, in fact,
all of the terms that hold the modern social order in place. By
offering homosexuals who are clearly marked, To Wong Foo presents a
vision of homosexuality that is freed from the dynamics of the
closet. This structures a false vision of equality by denying the
current systems that control sexuality. So constructed, To Wong Foo
cannot represent the impact that sexuality structures have on
people's lives.
[30] Given its use of stereotypical views that conflate gender and
sexuality to mark out sexual others, it might seem ironic that the
film also presents material mocking people who identify homosexuals
according to heterosexist stereotypes. Yet the film's
representation of the overtly racist and homophobic Sheriff Dullard,
a man respected by no one, is critical to the text's neoliberal
fantasy. With Sheriff Dullard, the film creates a sense of
assurance among the audience that such prejudices are no longer
tolerated. This bolsters the image that we live in a
difference-blind society. Furthermore, by making a sheriff an
object of scorn and contempt, the film critically obscures the
relationships between racism, heterosexism, and state power.
[31] Dullard, the police officer knocked unconscious by Vida after
his sexual aggression causes him to discover her "true" gender, is
presented as a compromised authority figure from the moment he is
first introduced. Officer Dullard is saddled with his ignoble name
due to a misprint on his badge. So cast, the audience understands
that his choice to look for the trio in the locations he has noted
on his list "places for Homos"—flower shops, ballet school, flight
attendant lounges, restaurants for brunch, and antique
stores—represents the limited, stereotyped and laughable work of a
dull mind. The progressive image that this attack on Dullard
creates, and the logic that homosexuals might be anywhere and act in
any way, is undercut by the fact that the film only presents
stereotyped, visibly marked homosexuals. After all, the film's
ability to mock Dullard is secured, in part, because it presents
homosexuals as a clearly marked group. This visibility is required
if homosexuals are ever going to accede to a neoliberal process of
inclusion that follows the patterns of whiteface. After all,
whiteface only works because color is understood to provide a clear
and permanent mark that indicates those who need constant control.
If homosexuals are going to be included in the social body in terms
that align with the terms of whiteface, homosexuals will also need a
visible mark. Otherwise homosexuals, a group whose status allows
them only supervised participation, might achieve full social
inclusion, and heterosexual privilege would be lost. Yet, the
current structure of sexual identity formation does not offer a
universal, visible mark for homosexuals. It is only To Wong Foo's
conflation of gender and sexuality that provides this sign. This
conflation results in a film that obfuscates the workings of power
and privilege as they relate to sexual identity formations.
[32] To sustain its revised image of gay liberation, To Wong Foo
must repackage moments of danger. The film's narrative masks and
minimizes the risks one encounters living in a body marked as
"other" by systems of racial and sexual prejudice. This mockery of
racism and heterosexism undermines claims to victimization or
demands for protection that members of these groups might request.
The movie offers a world where social persecution is erased. As one
reviewer notes, "This movie has its own fantasy credo: that
heterosexuals are the real objects of pity and scorn" (Corliss).
[33] With a character like Dullard, To Wong Foo makes a mockery of
the idea that society is racist or heterosexist. Though there are
moments throughout the film where Vida and Noxeema fear an
oppressive social structure, the narrative always exposes their
fears as unnecessary. This dynamic is exemplified in the scene
where Noxeema and Vida are reluctant to register in a roadside
hotel. Noxeema explains, "People are going to be cruel to us. It
could turn violent." Chi Chi refuses to follow this logic and
storms toward the hotel declaring, "If you live second class you'll
be second rate your whole life." Denying the potential of risk, Chi
Chi enters the hotel only to find tremendous warmth and acceptance.
In a bow to the reasonableness of Noxeema and Vida's social fears,
the film includes an explanation for Chi Chi's warm reception: the
drag queens are mistaken for members of a women's basketball league
that is holding its annual convention at the hotel. Vida turns this
experience’s fear and the general threat of social prejudice into a
lesson in the neoliberal need to "ignore adversity." This credo,
which supports the belief that the constraints non-hegemonic groups
face are constraints of their own making, is uttered by Vida when
she explains why Chi Chi's actions in this scene have drawn her one
step closer to becoming a drag queen.
Women, Whiteface, and Playing Queer: The Limits of the Rules of the
Game
[34] While blackface minstrelsy projected a mythic image of the
Black South that stood "against the deadening aspects of progress,"
the whiteface and queerface of To Wong Foo strive to revitalize the
deadened space of Middle America by introducing tamed versions of
the social movements of the 1960s and 70s (Roediger 120).
Specifically, the characters in queerface and whiteface show women
how to self-actualize through a distorted form of second wave
feminism. This feminism is acceptable precisely because it is
structured around the safeguards that queerface and whiteface put in
place. It is ironic that, while much feminist scholarship works to
redress the race, class, and sexuality based exclusions of the
second wave feminist movement, To Wong Foo promotes a vision of
feminism that capitalizes on these very exclusions. To Wong Foo's
"feminism" revitalizes the image of the lady to create a "new" space
for white heterosexual women in the United States by securing limits
on the space for queers and people of color.
[35] In the town in which the drag queens are stranded, it seems
that men have victimized all the women. The drag queens stay with
Carol Ann, whose husband is physically abusive, but this violence is
merely the tip of the iceberg. A local woman, who informs the trio
about the various townswomen's troubles, notes of one woman, "Oh,
her daddy used to call her baby ugly. She took to the bottle just
as soon as she could swallow." Another woman, Clara, has gone deaf
and dumb since her husband left her. So goes the lives of the
pre-feminist townsfolk. These broken and abused women lack a sense
of female community and the feminine empowerment that such a
community might produce. Vida and Noxeema show the women the
importance of female bonding by offering them "a day with the
girls." As the day unfolds, the viewer sees that the empowerment
these queens offer is focused entirely on the commercial and
superficial. "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" has a clear
antecedent here. With the help of the drag queens, the local women
get new clothes and new hairdos. This, we are led to believe, gives
them new senses of self.
[36] The tension between feminism and a social order that promotes
whiteface and queerface can be felt in the centrality of the image
of the lady. What the drag queens package as feminism is, in fact,
actually a solidification of traditional gendered, racial and sexual
roles that claim to serve women by revitalizing ideas of gentlemanly
manners. This is clarified in a scene where Noxeema confronts the
town hoodlum, Tommy. Tommy makes rude catcalls at the women.
Noxeema intervenes, demanding that he apologize to the "ladies."
When Tommy refuses, Noxeema grabs him by the testicles and teaches
him a more precise lesson in manners: "Now Tommy, when you encounter
such gorgeous ladies the correct way to greet them is to say 'good
afternoon ladies.'" Though Tommy is a violent character who was
seen earlier with his gang of thugs encircling Chi Chi in a manner
that implied their intention to gang rape her, Noxeema shows no fear
of him. The appropriateness of Noxeema's actions are confirmed when
Tommy appears next. While the women pose in the streets of their
town showing off their new clothes, Tommy simply steps forward, and
in his new role of a gentleman, offers up a "good afternoon." The
film's feminism seems to imply that what women really need is to be
treated like ladies. This lesson reinforces traditional gender
roles and evades any questions that might connect the earlier scene
of sexual intimidation to the type of manners women need to be
shown.
[37] Whiteface and queerface authority is ultimately celebrated in
this film for its ability to assist Carol Ann, a woman whose abusive
husband, Virgil, would not even permit her to participate in a
celebration of women's community as limited as the drag queen's day
with the girls. Clearly, Virgil needs an advanced tutorial in
gentlemanly manners. This intervention is timed to resolve not just
the problems of Carol Ann, but, importantly, to address a crisis in
the authority of whiteface and queerface that has erupted between
Vida and Chi Chi. This timing clarifies the ways Vida's "feminism"
is tied to the dictates of whiteface and queerface.
[38] When things explode between Carol Ann and Virgil, Vida is
locked into her own fight with Chi Chi. Vida and Chi Chi's fight
centers around the issue of white heteronormative authority. It
crystallizes in tensions over whether or not Chi Chi will give up
her local boyfriend, Bobby Ray. It seems that Chi Chi desires to be
queer, rather than in queerface. This has led her to reject the
mores of whiteface. The fight begins when Vida tells Chi Chi to
give up Bobby Ray. When Chi Chi protests claiming, "We got a lot in
common," Noxeema clarifies that the problem relates to Chi Chi's
gender and sexuality: "Oh yes, for starters the same business in
between your legs." Still, Chi Chi challenges Vida's right to
control her, a direct affront to whiteface. Vida maintains her
whiteface authority by calling upon the heterosexist logic of
queerface, asserting the impossibility that Bobby Ray could love a
man in a speech that also highlights the need to defer to the
romantic claims of heterosexuality. She says, "You are deceiving
that child. That boy does not know which end is up, and you know
for a fact that Miss Bobby Lee (Carol Ann's daughter) is in love
with him….There are human rules by which we operate sweetheart."
This last line is noteworthy because it engages debates about
homosexuality that have long centered on if, or how, homosexuality
aligns with laws of nature. In claiming that Chi Chi must forego
Bobby Ray because her relationship with him violates the "human
rules by which we operate," Vida aligns homosexuality with the
unnatural and the perverse.
[39] Chi Chi challenges the legitimacy of Vida's right to control by
drawing attention to the limits of whiteface. Chi Chi overtly
rejects Vida's system which grants white people authority: "You know
I am just so sick and tired of this freakizoid white lady telling
the black lady and Latin lady which way is up, down and under
because she is vanilla white superior." Vida and Chi Chi trade
insults that highlight their racial, gender and sexual status: Vida
is a "gringa with a pinga" while Chi Chi is a "Puta Spanish fly."
Chi Chi, making her strongest challenge, proposes that Vida, who
demands the right to control others, is the selfish one. To call
Vida selfish is to deny the fundamental ideology of neoliberalism
and to challenge white heteronormative hegemony that masks its
demand for control as benevolence. As this charge is issued, the
noise of Carol Ann being beaten up by her husband interrupts. This
sound is a call for help that vindicates Vida's whiteface/queerface
benevolence. Vida understands she has to help. This help is a
matter of social contract and trust that has nothing to do with
selfish self-interest or the consolidation of white heteronormative
power. Carol Ann's trouble with her husband provides the perfect
venue for white heteronormative authority to be reinstated. After
all, the attack presents a plausible case for the need of
assistance, and racist hetero-patriarchy's willingness to get
involved can be cast as a mark of a well-mannered community rather
than power.
[40] The final conflict scene in the movie completes the resolution,
thoroughly redeeming the authority of whiteface and celebrating
queerface. This scene, filmed to evoke a western showdown, begins
with Sheriff Dullard riding into town, his squad car kicking up dust
on the otherwise deserted unpaved road. Full of bravado, Dullard
leans out the window and shouts into a bullhorn, "I got your town
surrounded, there's no escape. I want those drag queens to come out
here. If they just come out with their hands up, no one will get
hurt." The film cuts between reaction-shots of the now happy
residents, many of whom appear in normalized heterosexual couples
that have been brought together by the drag queens, and images of
Dullard who appears in various locations around town. A lone veiled
figure exits the house where the drag queens have been staying and
begins to walk down the deserted street toward the sheriff. When
the figures are positioned face to face, the veiled figure, whom we
have been led to believe is Vida, reveals herself to be Carol Ann.
Carol Ann claims Vida's identity. Dullard protests, but Carol Ann's
authority is supported by the revitalized townsfolk who have left
their doorways to gather around her. Every member of the town,
beginning with the formally mute Clara, proclaims his/her
identification as a drag queen. The confused and angered Dullard
retreats in the face of the accepting crowd. This formula of
acceptance, allowing a hegemonically empowered group first to assume
the status of a disadvantaged social other and then to replace them
all together, must be recognized as flawed.
[41] Because the vision of women's politics, like the vision of race
and sexuality, is one that does not radically challenge the
hegemonic order, the "feminism" To Wong Foo presents is doomed to be
limited and dated. As I have indicated, when the film does make a
feminist intervention it focuses on feminist issues that, by the
time of this film's release, have become unthreatening. For
instance, there is a general social consensus that husbands do not
have the right to beat their wives. The nature of the trio's
intervention in the town's gender mores and the place this leaves
the racial and sexual others is exemplified in the scene where Bobby
Lee, Carol Ann's daughter, finally actualizes her love for the man
Chi Chi leaves behind in accordance with Vida's demand. Having been
made over and trained in feminine charm by the drag queens, Bobby
Lee is left in the center of the unpaved town square to claim her
man. Though major infrastructural changes, like pavement, have not
been made, the look of the town has changed as a result of the drag
queens' influence. The most apparent change is that the café has
erected a backlit wall of tissue paper, red cut-out hearts, and
Christmas lights, which serves as a backdrop for Bobby Lee's
romantic scene. This backdrop echoes a filmic version of high
school dances and gives the town a surreal feeling.
[42] The prom theme is pushed further when Bobby Ray, the man in
question, asks Bobby Lee to dance to music that has no diagetic
origin. The camera cuts from the heteronormative white couple now
shown dancing, and focuses on Jimmy Joe, the town's only African
American resident, who is shown approaching Beatrice, to whom he
addresses, "Miss Beatrice, I've waited twenty-three years to ask you
this. May I have this dance?" Thus, it emerges that the presence
of the drag queens has broken through a significant racial barrier,
opening up a space for interracial dating. Though perhaps not a
major breakthrough in this current age, even this transgression is
contained by the dictates of queerface and whiteface. This is made
clear by Jimmy Joe's deference—he waited twenty three years!—a clear
sign that he respects white authority and is prepared to engage in
his own whiteface performance. What's more, Jimmy Joe is
Beatrice's, or Miss Beatrice's, employee. Thus, the power relations
between the white Beatrice and the black Jimmy Joe are structurally
secured. If the structural limits of Jimmy Joe and Beatrice's
relationship are not enough to cast doubt on the progressive
possibilities of their union, then Beatrice's casting of Jimmy Joe,
when he is first introduced into the text, surely must. In a
vernacular that seems to be lifted out of the 1950s, Beatrice
recites, "He is the nicest colored man you'd ever wanna meet."
[43] Jimmy Joe and Beatrice take to the square, in an overhead shot
that shows white intra-racial heterosexual couples entering from
every other direction. When the frame fills with about a dozen
dancing couples, the camera pans up to show the trio of drag queens
who are stationed safely outside the scene on an attic porch. Vida
claims the actualization of the town below and revels in the use of
her status as an "other" saying, "You know pumpkins, sometimes it
just takes a fairy."
Reworking the Unified Body: Another Vision of Coalition
[44] To Wong Foo offers a social vision of order that is deeply
flawed. While it links the social interest in race to the social
interest in sexuality and gender, it does so in a way that
substantiates white and heterosexual privilege, thereby offering
only the most superficial understanding of women, homosexuals and
people of color. Vito Russo maintains, "Most gay people would like
to forget the reasons why they have always been considered outsiders
and simply start afresh, but that is not only impossible, it is
damaging" (189). To Wong Foo tries to offer such a fresh start, and
in this article I have worked to show why this is a danger.
However, I maintain that the danger of the film does not rest
principally in its representation of homosexuality but rather in the
relationships between race, sexuality and gender that To Wong Foo
presents. For, not only does To Wong Foo offer a vision of
homosexuality that is "unreasonable, contradictory, and destructive"
to gay life, it understands connections between racial and sexual
formations in manners that structurally limit the lives of people of
color and homosexuals, while simultaneously retrenching gender
conservatism (Russo 189).
[45] In his book, One More River To Cross: Black and Gay in America,
Keith Boykin explains, "When all else fails, the forces of the
status quo attempt to divide oppressed groups against each other,
and blacks and gays have become the perfect pawns in this plot"
(246). To succeed in a truly liberatory politics, we must find a
way to explore the material effects that structures of racial and
sexual identity formation have on one another. Films like To Wong
Foo serve to support a hegemonic order that uses racial prejudice to
support heterosexism and vice versa. This system leaves those
outside of the heteronormative order, whether queer, colored,
non-gender normative, or any combination of the three, no space from
which they might counter the logics of neoliberalism and no space
from which they can build a liberatory coalition.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Lisa Disch, Dave Roediger, and Joyce Mariano
for reviewing drafts of this essay and helping me develop these
ideas. I would also like to thank the Harold Leonard Memorial
Fellowship in film studies for providing me funding that enabled me
to complete this essay.
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Contributor's Note:
Kathryn Kane got her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University
of Minnesota in 2003. She is currently a Visiting Assistant
Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at DePaul University. Her
current project explores relationships between lesbian and
transgendered community arts programs.
Copyright ©2005
Ann Kibbey.
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