Contents
Contents 1
Introduction 4
Background 4
Methodology 6
Data Analysis 10
The Path to Be Taken 11
Chapter 1: Drag as Creative Expression 13
Introduction: What Is Drag? 13
Types of Drag 15
Performing Career and Lifespan 19
Foundations of Drag as an Art Form: Naming 29
Foundations of Drag as an Art Form: Music 30
Foundations of Drag as an Art Form: “The Face” 32
Conclusion 34
Chapter 2: Institutions in the Halifax Drag Community 35
Is There a Drag Community? 35
Institutions of the Drag Community 37
ISCANS 39
Bars and Drag in Halifax: Clientele and Venue 47
Bars and Drag in Halifax: Venue and Performance 58
Bars and Drag in Halifax: Divisions between Downtown/Uptown Queens 59
Fundraising: A Call to Action 63
Value of Fundraising for a Performer’s Career 67
Conclusion 69
Chapter 3: Interpersonal Relationships in the Drag Community 70
Gossip and Communication 70
Generation Gap 76
Kinship: Families of Origin 79
Kinship: Drag Families 82
Drug and Alcohol Consumption 87
Conclusion 91
Chapter 4: Diversity in the Halifax Drag Community 93
Performance of Gender — On Stage 93
Femiphobia 104
Drag Kings’ Experience 110
Relationships between Drag Queens/Kings and Heterosexuals by Gender 117
Race and Ethnicity 120
Class and Drag 121
Conclusion 125
Chapter 5: Drag in the Halifax Regional Municipality 127
Region and Drag 127
Halifax as Urban Space and Its Relationship to Drag as Expression of Sexuality 132
Halifax and Other Urban Centers: A Comparative Assessment 141
Conclusion 150
Conclusion 152
Appendix A 155
Questions and Topics Used in the Interview Questionnaire 155
Works Cited 158
Introduction 1
Background 1
Methodology 3
Data Analysis 7
The Path to Be Taken 8
Chapter 1: Drag as Creative Expression 10
Introduction: What Is Drag? 10
Types of Drag 12
Performing Career and Lifespan 16
Foundations of Drag as an Art Form: Naming 26
Foundations of Drag as an Art Form: Music 27
Foundations of Drag as an Art Form: “The Face” 29
Conclusion 31
Chapter 2: Institutions in the Halifax Drag Community 32
Is There a Drag Community? 32
Institutions of the Drag Community 34
ISCANS 36
Bars and Drag in Halifax: Clientele and Venue 44
Bars and Drag in Halifax: Venue and Performance 55
Bars and Drag in Halifax: Divisions between Downtown/Uptown Queens 56
Fundraising: A Call to Action 60
Value of Fundraising for a Performer’s Career 64
Conclusion 66
Chapter 3: Interpersonal Relationships in the Drag Community 67
Gossip and Communication 67
Generation Gap 73
Kinship: Families of Origin 76
Kinship: Drag Families 78
Drug and Alcohol Consumption 84
Conclusion 88
Chapter 4: Diversity in the Halifax Drag Community 90
Performance of Gender — On Stage 90
Femiphobia 101
Drag Kings’ Experience 107
Relationships between Drag Queens/Kings and Heterosexuals by Gender 114
Race and Ethnicity 117
Class and Drag 118
Conclusion 122
Chapter 5: Drag in the Halifax Regional Municipality 124
Region and Drag 124
Halifax as Urban Space and Its Relationship to Drag as Expression of Sexuality 129
Halifax and Other Urban Centers: A Comparative Assessment 138
Conclusion 148
Appendix A 151
Questions and Topics Used in the Interview Questionnaire 151
Works Cited 153
Introduction Background
This thesis explores the intersections of drag as a creative art form with expressed norms, behaviours and structures of a community. The interest of this work for scholars in Atlantic Canada studies, regional studies, cultural studies, and sociology, is the synthesis of these forms of culture. Drag combines two forms of identity: as creative expression, it is a gender bending performance art; socially, it signifies one form of gay and lesbian identity.
Drag’s subversion of essentialist notions of sexuality and gender can be one form of cultural expression (there are others, such as folklore, feminist folklore, and political comedy) that challenges hegemonic representations of Atlantic Canada. The art of drag, with its sometimes rough expression of sexuality, its graphic representations of the human body and its challenge to the binary conception of gender, provides an oppositional form of expression. It can encourage people to re-consider as individuals and as a collective society, what being Atlantic Canadian means. This thesis will bring into consideration and discussion what drag is, what the drag community is, and how this community relates to the larger subculture known as the gay and lesbian community.
To date, what has been researched on drag queens has primarily located drag in a cultural and theoretical viewpoint, rather than focussing on the norms and behaviours of drag performers. Judith Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex locates drag within the notion of performativity of gender wherein “...Acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal the organizing principle of identity as a cause” (173). Butler treats the drag queen as a theoretical category to be conceptualized, rather than a human individual who exists within the “social.” In Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, Marjorie Garber subsumes the drag queen in the category of cross-dresser and transvestite, then further submerges her into the literary realm.
This thesis incorporates a variety of theoretical perspectives on the study of drag. In 1972, Esther Newton published the first study dealing with drag communities. Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, based on Newton’s research in the late 1960s, was a revealing look into the world of drag queens. From the highs of performing, to the limitations created by legal and social repression, Newton reveals an important aspect of drag (and gay) life that existed in what historian John D’Emilio in Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University has described as an environment of social and legal repression. Prior to the Stonewall riots in the United States and decriminalization of sodomy in Canada in 1969, Newton argues that the drag queen community existed in a culture of secrecy. D’Emilio describes this secrecy as necessary; since the prevailing sanctions on gender and sexual deviance in 1950s America were both legal (imprisonment) and social (stigma, loss of work, family, housing). Newton’s study did not present psychologically well-adjusted persons; most of the participants she discussed had transient and vulnerable lives. Since she conducted her research thirty-five to forty years ago, there is a historicity to the study that limits its contemporary usefulness. However, Newton’s methodology of qualitative interviewing and field observation is sound. In the late 1990s Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor studied drag queens in the community of Key West. Entitled Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret, their work was the first significant study of drag to be conducted since Newton. Rupp and Taylor reveal the full aspect of social life for drag queens in Key West; they examine the artistic performances of drag, interrogate tensions and relationships within the community of drag queens, as well as with gay men, lesbians and heterosexuals, and discuss the relationship of the geography of Key West to the existence of a drag community. Rupp and Taylor review the structure, systems and practices of the Key West drag community and locate drag as a form of performance that challenges binaries of gender and sex. Little or no study of drag communities in Canada has been undertaken so far. This study, therefore, is the start of the development of a literature on drag in Canada, and in it concepts of drag as oppositional will be applied to drag in Atlantic Canada.
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