I would remark that some forms of straight, heterosexual male mainstream drag also have been used, historically, to mock and degrade femininity and women in general--and/or, more pragmatically, simply to avoid hiring women in acting roles, particularly in comedic roles, because, well, "women just aren't funny." Man in dress=automatically funny. Why hire a female comedian, and break up the all boys group (or, as the case is usually, hire more than one token female) when you can get that extra laff from a dude or two in a dress?
(& Drag kings? Again, well, still not so automatically funny, harder to discern and define in our culture, nor necessarily immediately seen as particularly calling into question masculinity or femininity, although it can do so.)
Comedy being what it is, and gender being what(ever) it is, sometimes the more conservative & mainstream forms of drag comedy seem to have additionally, and I think secondarily (although I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise), to have had the effect of opening up masculinity to scrutiny. But that doesn't remove, entirely, the historical power dynamic that makes "man in dress=funny," and sometimes a way of reinforcing "proper" gender roles. And I wonder if it is partly because, well, it's still pretty easy to trivialize, mock, & ignore women's being angered by any of this.
I guess I'm skeptical that gender is so free of historical baggage.
On the question of whether black face has ever been used to question whiteness, I can only think of one real example and possibly a second: 1) When Spike Lee used blackface in "Bamboozled" it was a way of calling whiteness into question, arguably, but that's a pretty specific case, I realize. The possible 2) The photography project in "Colors" magazine, where, as Jabari Asim explains(in the Washington Post),
the editors used digital tricks to paint Arnold Schwarzenegger brown, Spike Lee white, as part of a package of celebrity makeovers. The issue, while puckishly designed, also asked serious, provocative questions: "What is the difference between black, white and in between? We know everyone's blood looks the same. But what about hair, eyes, noses and earwax? Why do people have painful surgery to look more 'white'?"
Most other attempts at using "blackface" have failed entirely to work to question the history of blackface, as I think Asim's article pretty astutely suggests. I think the histories of gender and racial oppression are intertwined in very complex ways and yet still have distinct dynamics that I'm not sure I completely understand. But direct comparisons are obviously problematic. |
