Perched on tall heels, wigs in place and elaborate makeup, they are increasingly present in our media and cultural landscape: they are drag queens, artists who perform femininity from cabarets to bingos to floats from the Pride March… And now on the small screen with the arrival on Francetv Slash of Drag Race France, the French-speaking franchise of American reality TV. We would tend to think that drag is a new art, boosted by American culture. Quite the contrary: this is what Arnaud Alessandrin, gender sociologist at the University of Bordeaux, explained to us.
First of all, a little exercise in definition: what is drag?
There is no universal definition of what drag is. However, we can define three categories: on the one hand, an artistic and scenic practice of gender transformation, which can be found in the theater, in cabarets, on television. On the other hand, it is a subversive political practice of deconstructing gender norms, which can be found in associations, social movements, or militant artistic supports. Finally, it is a festive medium that is sometimes found in festivals, nightclubs, and today in entertainment American style with RuPaul’s Drag Race.
What are the origins of drag? Do we know when this art was invented?
We can find several sources of drag: already, in the Shakespearean theater, where women were not accepted on stage. Men therefore played the roles of women, and some believe that the expression “Dressed like A Girl” (dressed as a girl) gave the word drag.
A second source of drag is the French and German transformist cabarets of the early 20th century. What needs to be clarified is that transformism and drag have nothing to do: transformist artists tend to mimic celebrities, such as Chez Michou.
Finally, a third source of drag is the movements against LGBTphobia and against HIV in the 1990s. For example, we find the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who criticize and caricature gender norms and parody religious standards.
In the mid-1990s, there was an explosion of drag figures and their visibility with films Paris is Burning Where Priscilla, Madwoman of the Desert. The world discovered the drag figure, and for several years, we had an explosion of this aesthetic marked by flash colors or glittery platform boots. And of course, RuPaul’s growing stardom on the New York scene.
However, in France, one has the feeling that there was a parenthesis without drag visibility from the 1990s until ten years ago…
Each country has its specificities, linked to its political and social history. While RuPaul walks in the United States, on television and in song, we are witnessing a disappearance of the drag figure. This can perhaps be explained by the inclusion on the political agenda of questions around the PACS, then Marriage for All…
But that goes back to the early 2000s with the creation of clubs, communities (houses), collectives. Also because between 2000 and 2020 there has been a lot of recognition and subversive artistic proposals. In fact, we are witnessing a resurgence of drag figures and practices with some specific characteristics: a wider audience, partly thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race, but also meetings with the general public; more drag performers, not just gay men; and finally drag figures which become more complex, which create their own genre. In addition, we are witnessing a singular movement: until then, drag was based in Paris. The cultural movement has spread throughout France.
Do you think that the democratization of drag, especially now that it has its place on public television, will lead to an amplification of this art?
In popularization, there is an ambivalence: on the one hand, it brings greater visibility and professionalization. This means that the drag will be able to live from their art, by being more and more known.
But on the other side, we may be witnessing a distorted movement, an appropriation of drag by capitalist, depoliticized elements, who are moving away from the drag culture which is that of claiming, of the fight against stigmatization and discrimination. Unfortunately, we never have one without the other, popularity without the fear of being taken over.