Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy CENTRALOW what's up Here's edition listener,
Speaker 1: It's Roy Wood Jr. Correspondent for The Daily Show. You're
Speaker 1: about to hear an episode of one of our original
Speaker 1: Daily Show podcasts, Beyond the Scenes. It's the show where
Speaker 1: we dive deeper into segments and topics that originally aired
Speaker 1: on The Daily Show and we chat with the show's writers, producers,
Speaker 1: and experts. This week, we're talking about the history of
Speaker 1: drag and why conservatives are outraged by kids exposure to
Speaker 1: drag shows. This episode features Bob the Drag Queen, Professor
Speaker 1: of Journalism, Channing Joseph, and Arthur Frank DeCaro. We chat
Speaker 1: about black and quar trailblazers, the legacy of drag activism,
Speaker 1: and Bob even gave me a drag queen name. Yes me, Roy,
Speaker 1: I got a drag queen name now whenever I start
Speaker 1: my career in drag. We hope you enjoy it and
Speaker 1: if you like the show, check out the Beyond the
Speaker 1: Scenes podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, welcome to
Speaker 1: Beyond the Scenes. The podcast. It goes deeper into segments
Speaker 1: and topics that originally aired on the Daily Show. This
Speaker 1: is what you gotta think of this podcast. As if
Speaker 1: the Daily Show is tomato soup, then this podcast is
Speaker 1: all the toppings you add to make the soup even
Speaker 1: more warm and delicious. With the croutons and the crackers
Speaker 1: and the grilled cheese you eat with the tomato soup. See,
Speaker 1: now you're all cozy and you got the perfect ratio
Speaker 1: of liquid and carbs. That's what this podcast is. I'm
Speaker 1: Roy withood Ringer today. We're crackers, Bob the drack Queen,
Speaker 1: we are we weat crackers. Can we be whole? Green?
Speaker 1: Let me let me be, Let me be a uh
Speaker 1: one of the rye. What's the dark bread? Let me be?
Speaker 1: Let me be a pumper nickel cracker aside a nickel.
Speaker 1: That is the voice of our guests, Bob the Drag Queen,
Speaker 1: and I'm Roy with Junior Today we're talking about a
Speaker 1: segment on the show but corresponding Dulce Sloan, where she
Speaker 1: talked about the history of drag and the rise in
Speaker 1: protests and threats directed at drag events and the number
Speaker 1: of bills introduced by Republican lawmakers seeking to prevent children
Speaker 1: from attending drag shows. Let's get a quick clip. Hello friends.
Speaker 1: If you know me, you know that I love me
Speaker 1: some drag. It's like sports, but for people who don't
Speaker 1: want to deal with any balls, if you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But recently conservative stuff but acting like drag,
Speaker 1: some brand new thing that liberals dreamed up to tie
Speaker 1: your kids in a glitter devil. Now, while eighteenth century
Speaker 1: England gave us drag queens, nineteenth century America gave us
Speaker 1: drag balls. It's the only time queens colonize the country
Speaker 1: and made it better. One of the most famous drag
Speaker 1: performers at that time was a former enslaved African named
Speaker 1: William Dorsey, the Queen Swan. Dorsey's slaved so hard he
Speaker 1: went on to become a pioneer of modern ballroom culture.
Speaker 1: America's drag balls brought the culture to the next level
Speaker 1: and Harlem. They became so popular that men and women
Speaker 1: would come from all over to present their looks to
Speaker 1: a panel of judges pageant style. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: something comforting and knowing that even hundreds of years ago,
Speaker 1: people were telling someone to their face that they were
Speaker 1: a messy bitch whose outfit is drash. The circle of life.
Speaker 1: Later on in the show. I'll be joined by some
Speaker 1: additional guests who are gonna help me dive into the
Speaker 1: history of drag. But first, my fellow Papa Nickel is
Speaker 1: on the microphone with me to Jacob, please oh RuPaul's
Speaker 1: Drag Race. Season eight winner hosted the podcast Sibling Rivalry
Speaker 1: and star of HBO's We're Here, which just launched his
Speaker 1: third season. Boby Drag Queen, Welcome to Beyond the Scenes.
Speaker 1: How do you do? I'm well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for asking, thank you for having me, and and I'm
Speaker 1: really proud to know you know. Yeah, we we have
Speaker 1: our third season of We're Here, our Emmy Award winning
Speaker 1: television show. We're hearing, very very proud of it. What
Speaker 1: I appreciate about that television program is that you don't
Speaker 1: just tell the story of this world strictly from liberal unclaves,
Speaker 1: as they like to say. I flipped past one day
Speaker 1: and y'all was in Jackson, Mississippi. I got, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Jackson pulling up in the south South. That's the south side.
Speaker 1: There's cheese grid south. Oh yeah, in place where they
Speaker 1: call what they call what they call it Mississippi. We
Speaker 1: was in Mississippi, Honey, and Mississippi just like a drag
Speaker 1: queen on it. What would a Mississippi Missippi if you
Speaker 1: could as as Laman as you can For our listeners
Speaker 1: who don't know, explain exactly what drag is. This is
Speaker 1: how idifying drag dragons blurring the gender line while creating art.
Speaker 1: Not all drag queens do numbers. Not all drag queens dance,
Speaker 1: not all drag queens scene. Some drag queens do comedy.
Speaker 1: I know a drag queen and Linda Simpson who takes photographs,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like if you people who
Speaker 1: there are people do dragon. Their whole thing is just
Speaker 1: going to the club and just being pretty and sitting
Speaker 1: there and hanging out and partying. There are people who
Speaker 1: go up there and they do I'm ana stand up comedian,
Speaker 1: so you know when I do it me Bianca del Rio, Um,
Speaker 1: we do stand up comedy, when we do a Flame
Speaker 1: Monroe comedy, when we do our drags. And some drag artists, um,
Speaker 1: you know are our women, and some are men, and
Speaker 1: some are binaries. Some are says women, some are trans women. Um,
Speaker 1: some are says men, some are trans men, some are
Speaker 1: gay men. There are some straight men out there doing drag.
Speaker 1: I love everyone. Actually, I don't know that they never
Speaker 1: heard of a straight drag queen while watching all the
Speaker 1: Tyler Perry movies. I'm like, okay, sure, sure, you never
Speaker 1: heard a straight drag queen. Okay, got it. Let's let's
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning for you, just in terms
Speaker 1: of your introduction into the world a drag Like, what
Speaker 1: were some of your experiences like early on, like early
Speaker 1: and take me back, bob drag queen one point. Oh what,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even drag queen, You just bob potentially drag
Speaker 1: queen to be So, when I was young, my mom
Speaker 1: used to actually own a drag bar. My mom owned
Speaker 1: drag bar and Columbus Georgia called Sensations. If you are
Speaker 1: a gen xer or a boomer who was gay in
Speaker 1: the Columbus Georgia area and the nineties, you probably went
Speaker 1: to Sensations and you probably went to my mom's drag club.
Speaker 1: And that's why I first heard of, and you know,
Speaker 1: encountered the species known as drag queens. When you first
Speaker 1: started drifting into the world of drag yourself, did you
Speaker 1: have representation, did you have role models? Were there other examples,
Speaker 1: or were you navigating this world on your own and
Speaker 1: a complete folk. So when I started drag, it was
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, thousand and nine, and I was
Speaker 1: in New York City. I was twenty two, twenty three
Speaker 1: years old, and you know, I was really kind of
Speaker 1: just basing it off of what I see because RuPaul's
Speaker 1: Drag Rasa just started on TV. Now I knew drag
Speaker 1: from RuPaul and Huang Fu and Pursiloquated the Desert, and
Speaker 1: you know movies like that, Ruby, Ruby Hart. Is it
Speaker 1: to being rams movie? Oh, Holiday Heart, Holiday Heart, Holiday Heart.
Speaker 1: But then by this time it was something called repost
Speaker 1: drag race. It was less characters of drag and more
Speaker 1: like actual drag queens. And I thought it was just
Speaker 1: so interested. I was like so impressed. So then I
Speaker 1: went out and I got myself some makeup, and I
Speaker 1: went to the local club in called Lavish Lounge. He
Speaker 1: used to be in. Queens also doesn't exist. As we
Speaker 1: keep talking, most of the clubs, I'm gonna mention, especially
Speaker 1: after the pandemic, a lot of them just don't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: So they're only in the minds of people who were
Speaker 1: in these spaces. But it was lavish lounge in the
Speaker 1: Story of Queens. And I remember going and seeing these
Speaker 1: queens and meeting I remember the queen I met for
Speaker 1: the first time ever. Her name was Blackie Oh. Was
Speaker 1: her name? Shout out to Blackie Oh. I think it
Speaker 1: is still working in these streets, like Jackie o' nassas
Speaker 1: name was her name was? Her name was Blackie o' nasty.
Speaker 1: It was her name actually, And I started going out.
Speaker 1: So it was a little bit of like what I
Speaker 1: saw on the internet. You know, there was no Instagram.
Speaker 1: Instagram hadn't even it hadn't even been an Instagram yet.
Speaker 1: There was no Instagram, there was no There was those
Speaker 1: Facebook and the clubs and I would go to and
Speaker 1: what I saw on a post drag race um. So
Speaker 1: I was there. There was definitely some representation, but it
Speaker 1: was it was not as easy to find it today,
Speaker 1: like it's so easy to find drag queens today. You
Speaker 1: can't throw a rock without hitting a hitting a wig.
Speaker 1: You know, you come from the South, you come from Columbus,
Speaker 1: Gelgia all the way up to New York. How much
Speaker 1: of a culture shift was that? Was it welcome? Because
Speaker 1: because like growing up in the South, like how did
Speaker 1: the South shape your views on gender roles? And like
Speaker 1: this drag hilped blurred gender lines and challenge strict gender norms,
Speaker 1: like like, talk to me a little bit about the
Speaker 1: empowerment of it versus where you were, what it was
Speaker 1: thought of where you were versus where you went as
Speaker 1: a twenty two year old, it was way more open.
Speaker 1: So when I was a kid and I grew up
Speaker 1: in the South, so I did get a lot of
Speaker 1: gender roles and gender norms place on me. What it
Speaker 1: means to be a man. A lot of my raising
Speaker 1: is that, is that a focusing on what it meant
Speaker 1: to be an adult. I was often told AD meant
Speaker 1: to be a man, like as if there was this
Speaker 1: really specific, unique set of rules that men had to
Speaker 1: follow that women didn't have to follow, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: Women have to do this and men can't do that,
Speaker 1: and I I kept bucking against it. I never wanted
Speaker 1: to take about those rules. I wanted. I always wanted
Speaker 1: to like go against that and do something slightly different
Speaker 1: and challenge. And that wasn't it wasn't just like I want.
Speaker 1: It was just like I just didn't feel comfortable with
Speaker 1: the idea that I had to do certain things just
Speaker 1: because of what's between my legs and what I was
Speaker 1: born with. So now it's like, so now I literally
Speaker 1: have to do this, you know what I mean? And
Speaker 1: as a black man, I already have that societal expectation
Speaker 1: on me. You know, as a black person, you have
Speaker 1: to act a certain way, you can't do certain things.
Speaker 1: I was also giving a lot of respectability politics as
Speaker 1: a young black person. You know, a lot of us
Speaker 1: were taught like, you can't act certain ways in front
Speaker 1: of white people. That was like ingrained in me. So
Speaker 1: when I got to New York City, I was able
Speaker 1: to release all of that and and just do what
Speaker 1: felt comfortable to me. I guess the cool thing about
Speaker 1: it is when you're in New York, you're amongst your peers,
Speaker 1: and you have this degree, you have a support network
Speaker 1: if nothing else. Talk just a little bit about that
Speaker 1: part of it, because it is not it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: always the safest occupation. If we're just gonna be one
Speaker 1: hundred about it, talk to me a little bit about
Speaker 1: first learning that part of the game, and you know,
Speaker 1: who were the people or just how was the ecosystem
Speaker 1: in New York at the time. That you were coming
Speaker 1: up to start developing those types of you know, protections.
Speaker 1: So when I started going out to the clubs, I
Speaker 1: met just some of the like I mean talk about
Speaker 1: like walking into a bar or a club or a
Speaker 1: place in general and meeting people, You're like, wow, these
Speaker 1: are really my people. Like I actually found my people.
Speaker 1: You know, I started doing drag with Peppermint, Frosty, all
Speaker 1: these names are gonna sound so funny to you all,
Speaker 1: but to me, they're like, oh friends, Peppermint, Fostylos, Frosty, Flags,
Speaker 1: Honey Lebronx, Ray Scandale de la Vertica, Blackie, o' Nasty, Chandelier,
Speaker 1: Um Shaquida. These are all the people that I you know,
Speaker 1: Pixie Legendary, keep going. These are all the people that
Speaker 1: I was doing drag with, and and and and we
Speaker 1: even had like networks to help each other get to
Speaker 1: our gigs on time and safely. You know, there'll be
Speaker 1: times where, if you know, taking a car in New
Speaker 1: York City is very expensive. This is even before Uber's
Speaker 1: first of all, getting an uber, getting a car as
Speaker 1: a drag queen, sometimes it's impossible as a black drag queen.
Speaker 1: Forget about it. Then they're never gonna stop for you,
Speaker 1: so you have to take the train down. So if
Speaker 1: I live in the Heights, I'll stop by Harlem on
Speaker 1: the way to pick up my friend Keijia Car because
Speaker 1: keija Car doesn't want to write the tramp by herself either,
Speaker 1: So I stop off at Keijia's cars stop, I grab
Speaker 1: Keijia and we go down. Then we stop at you know,
Speaker 1: maybe Frosty stop to grab her so we can get
Speaker 1: to the bar and Chelsea safely. So we're all like
Speaker 1: in a group together and not traveling alone. And you
Speaker 1: have to factor that into your travel time on a
Speaker 1: regular basis because the oyls, Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean the uber really changed the game because we're
Speaker 1: able to call cars and if you if you had
Speaker 1: a good night, remain money. If you didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of if you didn't make any money that night,
Speaker 1: you can't afford the uber and you have to take
Speaker 1: the train home anyway. But yeah, traveling, traveling in large
Speaker 1: groups is very I was a great way to keep safe.
Speaker 1: Going back to that this idea that just to live
Speaker 1: your life, you all had to literally schedule what times
Speaker 1: you congregated on the train, so you could travel in numbers,
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about drags history and activism and
Speaker 1: speaking out on a lot of the bullshit that's out
Speaker 1: there in the industry. Have you been able to use
Speaker 1: drag as a vehicle for political activism as well? Early
Speaker 1: in my drag I was doing a lot of political
Speaker 1: political activism. I started a group called Drag Queen Weddings
Speaker 1: for Equality with my friends. We would go to Times
Speaker 1: Square and we would do these uh, these weddings, these
Speaker 1: wedding demonstrations where two drag queens would get married by
Speaker 1: a drag queen pastor and we would hand out wedding invites,
Speaker 1: and the wedding invites would have all this information on
Speaker 1: the back about injustices to the queer community. And then
Speaker 1: we would do these these demonstrations where where we would
Speaker 1: shout out more things and give people calls to action
Speaker 1: and how they can you know, who they can call,
Speaker 1: who they can talk to, how they can make a change.
Speaker 1: There was also some some early arrest in my um
Speaker 1: in my drag career, getting getting arrested in full drag
Speaker 1: from activism. I was one of those one of those
Speaker 1: activists you know, and and and and that's certainly that
Speaker 1: it did not start with me. I mean if even
Speaker 1: even back to the Compton Cafeteria riots, you know, drag queens,
Speaker 1: drag artists, gender benders, um have been bucking against the
Speaker 1: system to create change for people, not just for gay men,
Speaker 1: but for and not just for queer people, but for
Speaker 1: black people, for reproductive rights, uh, immigration rights, even environmental right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know queens where her you know, saving
Speaker 1: the wells, you know, like drag queens if there is
Speaker 1: a if there is a somewhere to put our nose
Speaker 1: in something, but we will put our contour nose in
Speaker 1: your business, Honey. To the break, I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about how the added television exposure
Speaker 1: about the world of drag, what the pros and cons
Speaker 1: are from shows like RuPaul's Drag Race and your show.
Speaker 1: We're here, this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back, Bob.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about the television shows that
Speaker 1: have stepped into the mainstream. Now. You know, you have
Speaker 1: a show like RuPaul's Drag Race, which I'll say this
Speaker 1: and this is and I speak as an alum of
Speaker 1: last Comic Standing third place twenty ten, checked the Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: I feel like adding a competition element to anything makes
Speaker 1: people more likely to watch it. It makes people more
Speaker 1: open to immersing themselves in worlds that they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: care about, simply because you're seeing people who are trying
Speaker 1: to be the best at it. So like I feel
Speaker 1: like RuPaul's Drag Race nailed that coming off the heels
Speaker 1: of Top Model essentially, which I feel like it was
Speaker 1: kind of a precursor. I'm not gonna say that the
Speaker 1: two are necessarily connected, but there RuPaul has acknowledged that
Speaker 1: drag Race is inspired in part by a Top Model,
Speaker 1: and I think you're absolutely right at mean, like even
Speaker 1: so like Nowaday, you would never watch someone poorly bick
Speaker 1: a cake, but when you put when they're competing and
Speaker 1: you have someone hilarious like Nicole Buyer doing it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna watch people fuck up cakes. I would love
Speaker 1: love to see that. Also, I want to quickly say
Speaker 1: to you, are you reminded me? Beyond the Scenes is
Speaker 1: a great drag name beyonda? Oh miss beyond the scenes.
Speaker 1: Oh I love her, honey, give it it's beyond the scenes,
Speaker 1: yonda And then lift up the lift up the back
Speaker 1: skirt of some ship to see beyond the scenes, but
Speaker 1: no a show like RuPaul's Drag Race or even We're Here, Like,
Speaker 1: I feel like they've all helped pushed drag into the mainstream,
Speaker 1: and you showcase a different lens of quick like We're
Speaker 1: Here is different from drag Racing, that it's about the nuance,
Speaker 1: it's about the emotion. These are reality shows and we
Speaker 1: haven't even gotten into script of stuff like Poles or
Speaker 1: like It's like, what what do you think that those
Speaker 1: shows helped do to change the perception of queerness in America?
Speaker 1: So you know the drag Race fan base, you think
Speaker 1: it's just a bunch of gay people watching drag Race,
Speaker 1: but it's actually not all gay people. A lot of
Speaker 1: straight people watch drag Race. Then what it ends up happening.
Speaker 1: You have a lot of allies watching drag Race, and
Speaker 1: drag Race has been on the air for a six
Speaker 1: fifteen seasons, sixteen seasons now, So what happens is these
Speaker 1: kids who are watching drag Race and they were young,
Speaker 1: are now allies adults who have children, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. They're now full on adults who have children
Speaker 1: who will also be allies. It's not like what I
Speaker 1: told one of my friends. One of my friends, just
Speaker 1: like a white content creator, was like, who couldn't understand
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty why what was so important to say
Speaker 1: black lives matter as a white person, Like why is
Speaker 1: so important? Like why why can't I just do my
Speaker 1: thing and not say this. I was like, you don't
Speaker 1: have to say it. Let you don't have it, but
Speaker 1: I will say this if you do say it. Once
Speaker 1: you say black lives matter, because because you matter to
Speaker 1: so many little white girls, because you matter to them,
Speaker 1: then they hear you say black lives matter. Now black
Speaker 1: lives matter to them. Now we have a black lives
Speaker 1: matter supporter in the house of a Karen or a
Speaker 1: cop who might end up hurting a black person or
Speaker 1: doing something like that. So you're basically just spreading the word,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And I think that, and
Speaker 1: I think that's the situation that we're in right We're
Speaker 1: in right now. That's how drag race has changed the
Speaker 1: world of understanding queer people. In my opinion, it also
Speaker 1: shows like Pose Queer for the Straight Guy with Paul's
Speaker 1: drag Race legendary transformation. There's so many shows like this
Speaker 1: that put queer people in front of people who are
Speaker 1: potential allies, and let them see that we're not out
Speaker 1: in these streets doing something and the weird and nefarious
Speaker 1: stuff that they think we're trying to do. We're just
Speaker 1: living our lives. People took you because didn't get turned
Speaker 1: into one of them in the Bible. You know, I
Speaker 1: would tell folks I was straight, and then I took
Speaker 1: the vaccine and now look at me, and then then
Speaker 1: I got a booster. Now I'm non binary. So watch
Speaker 1: out for that visor. It'll get you good, Like the
Speaker 1: intersection of anti vax in homophobia. I'm not even sure
Speaker 1: if I'm supposed to laugh? Am I allowed to laugh
Speaker 1: at the out? You sure I'm gonna laugh later? You
Speaker 1: didn't get me a camera. So that's the positive benefits
Speaker 1: of the show. Let's flip it to the negative side,
Speaker 1: because you know, a lot of groups, a lot of
Speaker 1: organizations try to uc shows to springboard and justify their
Speaker 1: hatred inscrib has. The exposure from these shows also opened
Speaker 1: it up more to hatred and discrimination for viewers, you know,
Speaker 1: like I know, like like just talk to me about
Speaker 1: we're here, Like what's that like? Just being out on
Speaker 1: set shooting? Because if I am a daily show correspondent
Speaker 1: at something where like I was at a pro gun
Speaker 1: rally and they was not fucking with your boy. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine. I can imagine. So what's that like when
Speaker 1: you're out in places like Jackson, Mississippi? Yeah, in full
Speaker 1: d with cameras, Like, what type of pushback if you
Speaker 1: faced with this show? I think they really what people
Speaker 1: don't appreciate appreciate is um, the reason why Jordan Clapper
Speaker 1: can go into these spaces is because they don't know
Speaker 1: that he is not one of them until he exposes himself.
Speaker 1: But when you but you know, but when Roy walks
Speaker 1: into this boys, when Roy would they were like, we
Speaker 1: now we know, we know you ain't one of us.
Speaker 1: You need to have a camera, a camera and you black? No,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. But they'll go up to Jordan Clapper because
Speaker 1: he's white, and he's tall and and and and and
Speaker 1: you know, and women love a tall white man. They
Speaker 1: will go up to that. They'll go up and tell
Speaker 1: them their whole life story. Do they realize that he's
Speaker 1: and he's like before and I'm happy go do that shit, Clipper.
Speaker 1: We happily every time they haven't meet me like we
Speaker 1: think clippers should go go do that one whenever I'm
Speaker 1: on the streets, like I just had an instance in Jackson, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: that is on the second episode of season three. If
Speaker 1: we're here, where I'm I'm just I'm just walking down
Speaker 1: the street like I'm I'm not even in drag, I'm
Speaker 1: just walking on the street looking and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they're like, oh, they're well, there's one of them.
Speaker 1: They're queers. So they started yelling at me from across
Speaker 1: the street just for walking around, like they're throwing completely
Speaker 1: based and accusations at me. Um and they but this
Speaker 1: sounds like a loane. This sounds like it because it
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like these are just one or two syllable
Speaker 1: slurs you're saying. It was spitting whole phrases at well, no,
Speaker 1: they were saying stuff like that. They didn't call me
Speaker 1: a fag at per se. But what they did do
Speaker 1: they called me a They called me a pedophile, they
Speaker 1: called me a pervert, they called me a creep. All
Speaker 1: by the way, all I was doing was just standing
Speaker 1: on the street corner. I mean I was holding a
Speaker 1: purse something. I was gay, But I was just standing
Speaker 1: on the street corner holding a purse. And from that,
Speaker 1: from that, from seeing that they ascertained, they came to
Speaker 1: the inclusion I was a pedophile, a pervert. I was
Speaker 1: up to no good. I wanted their kids. And I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm literally just on the I was actually
Speaker 1: at the time, I was we had just finished filming
Speaker 1: and they haven't put the cameras down yet because they
Speaker 1: always linger around a little bit. I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna gets my ice cream run on street. I want
Speaker 1: to get ice cream. I was literally just looking for
Speaker 1: ice cream. And then I got like, you know, verbally
Speaker 1: assaulted by these by these guys. So I go up
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm gonna talk to him. I'm
Speaker 1: gona actually give you guys little I'm gonna talk and
Speaker 1: see what's going on. And of course they didn't want to.
Speaker 1: They don't really want to talk. They just wanted to
Speaker 1: sling their bit ral at me um and call me names.
Speaker 1: But but I was interesting. It was maybe like two
Speaker 1: or three of them, but the interesting about them, and
Speaker 1: they actually weren't. It's not like they were being supportive.
Speaker 1: Even in Jackson. Even the folks in Jackson were like,
Speaker 1: can you what what is wrong with y'all? Like we're not.
Speaker 1: They're like, everybody in Jackson ain't doing this. This is them,
Speaker 1: We're good country folk. Like yeah, like this has it
Speaker 1: gotten beyond that? Has it been any like type of
Speaker 1: death threats or threats of violence we have had, we
Speaker 1: haven't had. We've had threats of violence for sure on
Speaker 1: our show, and luckily we do have security detail everywhere
Speaker 1: we go. You'll find out an episode one, we were
Speaker 1: going to have a reading of this book Changel and
Speaker 1: my dragons are going to read some books of these kids.
Speaker 1: And then they decided that they didn't want that to happen,
Speaker 1: so they called and threatened to They didn't threaten to
Speaker 1: shoot the place up, but they said, if you allow
Speaker 1: this to happen, and we will show up and we
Speaker 1: carry and we'll cause a scene. So it was like
Speaker 1: kind of like veiled like that. That was like we're
Speaker 1: not saying, we're not saying we're gonna kill you, but
Speaker 1: we're saying that we have guns, we carry and we'll
Speaker 1: be there. So basically they threatened to do what actually
Speaker 1: happened for real in Columbus, Ohio, when there was a
Speaker 1: drag show and a bunch of right wingers showed up
Speaker 1: open carrying to intimidate people from ever coming to the show,
Speaker 1: and the show ultimately was canceled. Yeah, and it happened
Speaker 1: again recently. A couple of days ago, some people showed
Speaker 1: up to a drag event with guns and weapons, which
Speaker 1: is so I never thought, like, my adulthood is mostly
Speaker 1: in New York City, so being around people who were like,
Speaker 1: because New Yorkers like, I've walked the streets in full
Speaker 1: drag for practically every hour of the day. I've done
Speaker 1: something at brunch, I've done something that I've gone home
Speaker 1: at three six am. I've done the whole gamut. And
Speaker 1: New Yorkers don't give a fuck. They don't care about you.
Speaker 1: They're not looking at you, they're not trying to find
Speaker 1: out what they do. Want to go to their plays
Speaker 1: and get back. These people are going out of their way,
Speaker 1: They're driving miles and miles and miles to do what
Speaker 1: I guess they think is right. So then to that point,
Speaker 1: then let's talk about how politicians have been able to
Speaker 1: levy that vitriol and try and turn it into votes
Speaker 1: and legislation and all of this nonsense. Like we've we've
Speaker 1: seen a wave of anti trans bills across the country,
Speaker 1: and now Republican lawmakers in several states are trying to
Speaker 1: propose legislation to ban miners from even showing up to
Speaker 1: the drag shows. Like all that reading to the kids,
Speaker 1: that would be you would literally go to jail for that.
Speaker 1: What do you think is the motivation behind those types
Speaker 1: of bills? And like why now? Why now? All of
Speaker 1: a sudden does there seem to be an uptick in
Speaker 1: this type of legislation from the right trying to get
Speaker 1: children banned from drag shows? Is it is just a
Speaker 1: sneaky ploy in my opinion, from right wing conservatives to
Speaker 1: make it seem like all drag queens want kids at
Speaker 1: their shows. Most of us don't want your kids at
Speaker 1: your show. Does your can't have a dollar and you
Speaker 1: can't have money at the tip, We don't want your
Speaker 1: kid at our show. There are some people who want
Speaker 1: to read, who want to read to kids, but most
Speaker 1: drag queens are not making I'm gonna like I don't
Speaker 1: make any content for children. I don't, I don't. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like stand up comedy. Most stand up comedians
Speaker 1: don't want kids at their shows. Now, there are some
Speaker 1: comedians who make comedy that will be suitable for children. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are some comedians who make and it is a
Speaker 1: very small It is a tiny group of comedians. Brian Reagan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like three niggas out there making making comedy for kids.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. But the truth is most
Speaker 1: comedians don't want to look down and see a kid
Speaker 1: at their show, and most rectly the same way. But
Speaker 1: when you are um, but then when we interviews, now,
Speaker 1: even even though I don't want kids at my show,
Speaker 1: I now have to defend white kids should be allowed
Speaker 1: at drag shows, even though I don't want d even
Speaker 1: though I don't want kids in my show. This is crazy.
Speaker 1: This is It's such a sneaky little tactic that they use.
Speaker 1: So now I'm defending something that I don't even want.
Speaker 1: But I think there are some drag artists who are
Speaker 1: completely appropriate for children. I'm not one of them. That's
Speaker 1: why I don't have kids at my shows. Okay, so
Speaker 1: then if the kid angle is to smoke screen, what
Speaker 1: do you think is the real reasons for the legislation? Transphobia,
Speaker 1: transphobia and misogyny, and trans misogyny, it is all just
Speaker 1: thinly veiled homophobia. A transphobia and attempts to push trans
Speaker 1: people into non existence. First, they don't want trans people
Speaker 1: in the bathrooms, So now now you can't use bathroom
Speaker 1: unless you're at home. You have to wait to you
Speaker 1: go home to use the bathroom, which is bullshit. We've
Speaker 1: all had to rush to use the bathroom somewhere, running
Speaker 1: to some use the bathroom real quick. And then they say, well,
Speaker 1: you can't mention any of it at school if you're
Speaker 1: if you're trans at school, you better be hiding. So
Speaker 1: now if you're a teacher, if you're a student, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're a principal, if you're a janitor, you
Speaker 1: cannot mention that you're trans or even that you know
Speaker 1: trans people because the things like they don't say gay bill,
Speaker 1: and now they don't want you to be able to
Speaker 1: be to work anywhere. They're trying to just push you
Speaker 1: back into hiding in a close because they because they
Speaker 1: don't want to see you in public at all. And
Speaker 1: it starts with the bathroom. They put you out of
Speaker 1: the classroom, they push you out of this, they push
Speaker 1: you out of that, they push you out of that,
Speaker 1: and they by the time they push you out of
Speaker 1: all these places in spaces you are just existing in
Speaker 1: your home so they don't have to see you. The
Speaker 1: right also now this whole idea about the grooming part
Speaker 1: of it, A lot of these bills are around, Like
Speaker 1: originally it was the bathroom. They're gonna try and get
Speaker 1: you in the bathroom. Oh that didn't work, okay? Were
Speaker 1: they trying to turn your kids to know one of them?
Speaker 1: Let me se right now, the most the most dangerous
Speaker 1: thing that can happen at a drag show is a
Speaker 1: conservative might show up with a gun and kill someone.
Speaker 1: It's not the drag queens. It's not the people coming
Speaker 1: to see the drag queen. The dangerous, most danger thing
Speaker 1: at a gay bar is that a conservative might show
Speaker 1: up with a gun and fucking kill you. It's needless
Speaker 1: to say this type of rhetoric from the politicians, from
Speaker 1: from the right wing incites a degree of violence against
Speaker 1: this community. Like even just this year, I think I
Speaker 1: get the stats right as over one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: protests and significant threats and forty seven states so far
Speaker 1: this year just against LGBTQ and drag events this year.
Speaker 1: What is the response to that from the drag community,
Speaker 1: is it just security, Like, what can you do to
Speaker 1: continue to foster a safe environment where people can be themselves? Well,
Speaker 1: I think that you know when when when things happen
Speaker 1: like what what like what happened in this recent shooting
Speaker 1: in this in the in the gay club recently, and
Speaker 1: in the walmart Colorado Springs, the Colorado Springs and in
Speaker 1: that walmart. They call them the shooting, but they don't
Speaker 1: call them terrorists. Don't know why they never get they did,
Speaker 1: never get labeled as terrorists. It is terror, it's domestic
Speaker 1: terror is an attempt to scare you out of leaving
Speaker 1: your home again. Remember the whole goals to get you
Speaker 1: to stay away so they never have to see you.
Speaker 1: You can't even go hang out in spots, spaces that
Speaker 1: are just for you. Now, they want you to just
Speaker 1: hang out just in your home, go away, never be
Speaker 1: seen out in public ever anywhere. And the guy who
Speaker 1: did the shoot in Colorado Springs, you know, his dad
Speaker 1: came forward and is saying stuff like I'm just so
Speaker 1: glad to find that he's not gay. When I heard
Speaker 1: he was in a gate club, I was just met that.
Speaker 1: I thought he's gonna be gay. It's like, you're not
Speaker 1: worthy that your son killed five people allegedly. You're mat
Speaker 1: that he might have been gay in the process. Like baby,
Speaker 1: get your get your priorities together. And you know, drag
Speaker 1: artists are not going anywhere. So I hate to break
Speaker 1: the news, see Mary, but drag has been around for
Speaker 1: a very long time before anyone who's alive now has
Speaker 1: been breathing. Drag has been around for a very very
Speaker 1: very long time. Gender binding has been around for a
Speaker 1: very long time. Trans people have been around for a
Speaker 1: very very long time. And and we're not going anywhere
Speaker 1: anytime soon. You have given us more than enough of
Speaker 1: your time. The show is We're here. You can see
Speaker 1: that on HBO HBO Max, Bob the Drag Queen, thank
Speaker 1: you for going beyond the scenes with us my pleasure,
Speaker 1: and please check out Roy and his new drag queer
Speaker 1: and his new drag name Beyond the Scenes. After the break,
Speaker 1: I'll be joined by guest channing Joseph and Frank Decarro,
Speaker 1: who will give us some insight into the origins and
Speaker 1: history of drag. We'll be right back. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Beyond the Scenes now. I just chatted with Bob the
Speaker 1: Drag Queen about his personal journey and the importance of
Speaker 1: representation on screen and all of the attacks that conservatives
Speaker 1: have on drag and that entire culture. But now let's
Speaker 1: talk about the long history of drag. I'm joined now
Speaker 1: by two guests who are gonna help break this down
Speaker 1: for us. First, I'm joined by journalists and professor of
Speaker 1: journalism at Princeton University Channing. Joseph Channing. Welcome to the show,
Speaker 1: to be here, Roy, thanks for having me. Might add Chinning.
Speaker 1: Your head phones are stunning. Thank you. I'm also joined
Speaker 1: by the author of drag Combing through the Big Wigs
Speaker 1: of show Business, Frank Decarro. Frank, how you doing. Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us as well. Thank you for having it.
Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure to be here. Now this question
Speaker 1: is for both of you, but Frank, I'll throw it
Speaker 1: to you first. Give us an overview of the origins
Speaker 1: of drag and just where the term drag comes from.
Speaker 1: Let's just start with the basics. Well, a lot of
Speaker 1: times they say that the word drag comes from a
Speaker 1: woman's clothes dragging on the ground. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I believe that, and hopefully chanting as a better perspective
Speaker 1: on that, but I will say that as long as
Speaker 1: a guy has been on the stage, and as long
Speaker 1: as being on the stage or being in public has
Speaker 1: been popular entertainment and drawn a crowd, somebody has been
Speaker 1: cross dressing. To use the oldest posible term you can
Speaker 1: think of for that, Shakespearean tradition has men playing female
Speaker 1: rose Kabuki tradition has that. The English pantomimes which still
Speaker 1: exist today every holiday season has the pantomime dame in it.
Speaker 1: There's always was someone dressing, either a man dressing as
Speaker 1: a woman or a woman dressing as a man when
Speaker 1: we were thinking in the most binary of terms, but
Speaker 1: that's always been a part of entertainment. And the drag queen,
Speaker 1: let's say that the sort of multimedia drag queen has
Speaker 1: existed at least since the early twentieth century, and perhaps
Speaker 1: even before. There's evidence now that the first drag queen
Speaker 1: may have been a freed and slave person. So, and
Speaker 1: that's a whole other thing that we're all looking at
Speaker 1: now and wondering more about. But there was a guy
Speaker 1: in the early in the teens, that nineteen twelve who
Speaker 1: got his own Broadway theater named after him, and he
Speaker 1: was one of the highest paid entertainers in show business
Speaker 1: named Julian Elton, and everyone kind of looks at Julian
Speaker 1: Elton's just sort of the grandmother of the mall because
Speaker 1: she was kind of the rude Paul of nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: She had a magazine to give women tips on how
Speaker 1: to look beautiful. She was in movies playing you know,
Speaker 1: a spy who goes behind enemy lines dressed as a woman.
Speaker 1: She was on Broadway doing the singing her own songs
Speaker 1: in drag and uh and was hugely popular and U
Speaker 1: So anyone that says drag is sort of a new
Speaker 1: phenomenon is really speaking in untruth. There's a popular meme
Speaker 1: going around now that says, if you know that, you've
Speaker 1: always been entertained by drag, And then they show of
Speaker 1: course Tutsie and bosom buddies and some like an hot
Speaker 1: every movie that we've ever seen in the twentieth century
Speaker 1: with dragon it and so like you can't say, oh
Speaker 1: my god, these drag queens are so dangerous when you've
Speaker 1: been laughing at them for one hundred and years plus.
Speaker 1: Channing feeling some of the gaps there like that old
Speaker 1: school since because you know, I know, there was also
Speaker 1: a time where women weren't allowed to Could you believe
Speaker 1: that women wasn't allowed at a time to do a
Speaker 1: thing and men had to take on the roles of
Speaker 1: women in theater because we just we don't know where
Speaker 1: to find any women actors. I guess I'll put on
Speaker 1: some lipstick. Absolutely. So one of the things that most
Speaker 1: people don't realize is that the way we use the
Speaker 1: term drag today is very loose. We're thinking, as Frank
Speaker 1: pointed out, in binary terms, a man dressing as a woman,
Speaker 1: woman dressing as a man, and it's sort of applied indiscriminately.
Speaker 1: Whether we're talking about, as Frank pointed out, Shakespearean theater
Speaker 1: or kabuki, we're talking we're calling it drag when those
Speaker 1: are actually stoparate traditions, and it's important, I think, to
Speaker 1: specify the specific differences between those cultural cultural traditions. There's
Speaker 1: actually an American tradition of drag which does go back
Speaker 1: to the culture of African Americans formerly enslaved African Americans
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC, UM in the eighteen eighties UM, and
Speaker 1: from that point to today we can we can trace
Speaker 1: the origin of the ballroom culture and vogueing um an
Speaker 1: all the way to RuPaul's Drag Race. It's sort of
Speaker 1: has maintained the same basic format in terms of basically
Speaker 1: a competition where where where black people meet and celebrate, um,
Speaker 1: celebrate each other and compete for the prize. But back then,
Speaker 1: the first drag Queen was named William Dorsey Swan, and
Speaker 1: the culture of DC after the Civil War there was
Speaker 1: this there was this tradition of celebrating freedom. Of course,
Speaker 1: you're you're now free, you no longer enslaved, celebrate your
Speaker 1: fur up. Yeah, yeah, and absolutely, and in that in
Speaker 1: that period of time, one of the big ways that
Speaker 1: celebrated was to us to have a parade called Emancipation Day,
Speaker 1: the Emancipation Day in DC, there were these beautiful women
Speaker 1: who would who would essentially wear these usually flower covered
Speaker 1: dresses or um or crowns, and they'd be part of
Speaker 1: the parade. They'd represent the embodiment, the personification of liberty
Speaker 1: for black people, and they were called queens. The first
Speaker 1: drag queen, William Dorsey Swan, actually dubbs himself the first
Speaker 1: drag Queen because the balls were already being called drag
Speaker 1: drag balls or drag parties or drag dances or just drags,
Speaker 1: but he decided to say, I am the queen of
Speaker 1: this ball. So actually adopting the term queen is a
Speaker 1: way of connecting m the sort of celebration of queerness
Speaker 1: with emancipation from enslavement. It's actually there's always been this
Speaker 1: connections in the United States context between African American emancipation
Speaker 1: and drag, which is not something that people talk about. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's something that I like to point out because
Speaker 1: as we know, so this is day there's all there's
Speaker 1: there's lots of discussion about drag, queens misappropriating or arrogating
Speaker 1: to themselves, you know, various aspects of black culture or
Speaker 1: black women's expression. And actually that's that's been that's been
Speaker 1: dating back over one hundred years. You've cracked a can
Speaker 1: on something that I want to that I want to
Speaker 1: go back to for a second, because I want to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the common misconceptions and stereotypes about
Speaker 1: drag that you wish layman like myself were a little
Speaker 1: more informed on. And Frank, I want to get your
Speaker 1: answer in this as well. But first let's go back
Speaker 1: to the distinction between cross dressing and drag. I'm from Alabama,
Speaker 1: and I work on the side of town that was
Speaker 1: the more free, willing side of Birmingham called five Points South,
Speaker 1: and that was my first introduction as a teenager, and
Speaker 1: to every other culture from skate culture to gay culture,
Speaker 1: to tattoos and nose. So everybody was just called a
Speaker 1: cross dresser. This is Birmingham in the eighties. There was
Speaker 1: not the level of specificity and understanding that we have now.
Speaker 1: So let's just start with cross dressing and drag and
Speaker 1: what the differences are there, and then what are some
Speaker 1: of the other misconceptions you think people get wrong about
Speaker 1: the culture. I think cross dressing it has been a
Speaker 1: pejorative term, but it is a descriptive term, and it
Speaker 1: describes a sort of conception of a man picking on
Speaker 1: a woman's a woman's appearance, and it actually applies to
Speaker 1: different kinds of cross dressing. It applies to African traditions
Speaker 1: and kabuki and Shakespearean theater. All those really could be
Speaker 1: described as cross dressing, whereas drag is more at least now,
Speaker 1: it's more of a celebration of um gender expression, and
Speaker 1: I think breaking out of gender roles, right. I think
Speaker 1: if you look at for example, Shakespearean theater. For whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they didn't have women for throws. It wasn't about It
Speaker 1: wasn't a decision based on self expression or a desire
Speaker 1: to explore explore your gender, explore ways of how you
Speaker 1: want to see yourself right or how you see yourself. Um,
Speaker 1: it was it was more sort of there were other
Speaker 1: reasons why men were dressing is wearing dresses and so on,
Speaker 1: where it's dragon is more of a celebration, okaya, Like
Speaker 1: Martin Lawrence dressing up was not Martin to be fined
Speaker 1: with his own gender and expression. It was just now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put on a wig and some lipstick and
Speaker 1: crack some jokes. At least not as far as we know.
Speaker 1: But you know, before that, there was someone like Flip Wilson.
Speaker 1: And while it was done, you know, in prime time
Speaker 1: Flip Wilson for people who don't know, he was the
Speaker 1: first African American comedian performer to have his own variety
Speaker 1: show that was a hit. I mean, there were others
Speaker 1: who had who had done specials and who had done
Speaker 1: short things, but Flip was on for like four years.
Speaker 1: And his drag Yeah, he was friendly and a storyteller,
Speaker 1: but he was he would do this character named Geraldine
Speaker 1: Jones who had a boyfriend named Killer, but that never
Speaker 1: stopped her from flirting with every man from and I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding Bill Cosby to O. J. Simpson to Bing Crosby. Okay,
Speaker 1: he was hugely popular. But what he did that was
Speaker 1: so different from Channa name was he played a character
Speaker 1: who believed she was beautiful and kind of was sexy
Speaker 1: and was sort of a feminist character. And people flipped
Speaker 1: out over that in terms of day liked it, but
Speaker 1: also because it really was different. She wore Pucci print dresses,
Speaker 1: she had great gams, she she was kind of the
Speaker 1: person who influenced Ru Paul in many ways. And Ru
Speaker 1: admits that who's my age? And so you know, I
Speaker 1: mean it was you know, she was watching the same
Speaker 1: TV I was watching and flip kind of in was
Speaker 1: the introduction to drag for a lot of people. What's
Speaker 1: different and what's important about him, and it goes to
Speaker 1: the misconceptions about drag is he was not making fun
Speaker 1: of women at all. And I think that some people
Speaker 1: want to say that, oh, Drag is misogynist, and some
Speaker 1: of it when it's played like look how ugly I
Speaker 1: am and every comedian is guilty of doing that at
Speaker 1: ow point, but he A lot of drag comes out
Speaker 1: of an appreciation for female tropes and for female characteristics,
Speaker 1: but then it exaggerates them to Jessica Rabbit proportions. You know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's if nobody really looks No woman really
Speaker 1: looks like Bianca Dela Rio unless she's in Drag two,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's like and now chanting as
Speaker 1: you know, you can be assist gender woman, you can
Speaker 1: be assist gender, you can be any, you can come
Speaker 1: out of the womb whatever. But if you've got too
Speaker 1: much fabulous, you can be a drag queen now. And
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter what you're plumbing looks like, and
Speaker 1: thank Heaven, as long as when that light goes on
Speaker 1: you're funny and glamorous. It doesn't matter what your looks like.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of an exciting thing. I think. I
Speaker 1: think that's fabulous. And I agree with with frank Um that,
Speaker 1: you know, performance performers like like Flip Bolson were really important,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, looking at looking at that
Speaker 1: aspect of a drag like the performer of aspect, it
Speaker 1: hasn't always been performance for like a public audience. That's
Speaker 1: one point which I'll get to. But the the the
Speaker 1: important point I think is performers performs is like gerallyne Jones.
Speaker 1: They were important because, um, I think they were part
Speaker 1: of you know, at least for a couple of decades
Speaker 1: of beginning of the twentieth century, when drag balls, um
Speaker 1: sort of became more open to the public. They were
Speaker 1: a way of showing, I think, straight to gender people,
Speaker 1: how fabulous you could be, uh, you know, how fabulous
Speaker 1: a man could be wearing heels and wearing a wig
Speaker 1: and so on. Um that it it wasn't purely about comedy,
Speaker 1: was also about showing confidence and um, showing sort of
Speaker 1: just bending a little bit the the expectations of gender roles.
Speaker 1: And now I think, you know, they're completely bent, which
Speaker 1: I think is a positive thing. Um but but but
Speaker 1: but I think you know, when when if you look back,
Speaker 1: for example, of the nineteenth century, balls of balls from
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, those were secret events. Those were people
Speaker 1: getting together in each other's houses, putting on a show
Speaker 1: for each other. It was the community thing. It only
Speaker 1: really became sort of a thing that the general public
Speaker 1: was allowed into in the in the twenties or so,
Speaker 1: and at that point, um, people were really you know,
Speaker 1: people were interested to see that there were thousands of
Speaker 1: people would gather to see drag balls because they were
Speaker 1: such hunger for it. And I guess, you know, it's
Speaker 1: still the same way. People are hungry to see how
Speaker 1: gender can be reinterpreted and expressed in different ways that
Speaker 1: that they have been taught were wrong or immoral and
Speaker 1: so on. I certainly was taught that. I think that's
Speaker 1: what gets to why people love drag is through the artifice,
Speaker 1: you get to this tremendous truth about humanity and you all.
Speaker 1: But it's also incredibly entertaining. It's not like a lesson
Speaker 1: in gender studies. It's it's sort of already is, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of talk about the spoonful of shirtar that
Speaker 1: makes the medicine go down. It's really entertaining, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we're not all uh, you know, there is.
Speaker 1: It's showing you the spectrum of gender in a way
Speaker 1: and and you're you know, but in a safe way.
Speaker 1: And not only was were drag balls a safe space,
Speaker 1: but you had people like Milton Burl, who was the
Speaker 1: fought you know, he's mister Television. When they turned the
Speaker 1: TV's on, he was the guy that got people buy
Speaker 1: TV and he did drag almost every week, and he said,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, he went as a kid, I'd sneak into
Speaker 1: the drag balls. And so you're sort of like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, So you're twelve or fifteen and you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're sneaking into drag balls, you know, and typically you know, stealing,
Speaker 1: you know, as as so much entertainment is. That's sort
Speaker 1: of like, oh good, I'll get the gig because I'm
Speaker 1: the white guy. But but I'll go learn everything you
Speaker 1: know from the from the black performers, as so many
Speaker 1: people do and did. So when you talk about researching
Speaker 1: for your book and channing, you low key being very
Speaker 1: humble because I know a lot of that Swan research
Speaker 1: that we even know now in the zeitgeist is because
Speaker 1: you went to digging and all the truth about that
Speaker 1: person loves that about ten fifteen years ago you went digging.
Speaker 1: So both of you are very verse in the history
Speaker 1: of drag. But in your research of the history of
Speaker 1: this culture, how does the black and LGBTQ plus community
Speaker 1: fit into that history? I know we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about DC, but give me some other ways where
Speaker 1: they fit into that culture or if there's been erasure. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that one of the one important thing to
Speaker 1: point out is you know, and just to pick it
Speaker 1: back from off of what Frank was saying, drag balls
Speaker 1: have been a safe place for lots of people to
Speaker 1: express themselves and to be seen and to and to
Speaker 1: meet each other and to make connections and so on.
Speaker 1: But they've also been really dangerous for a lot of
Speaker 1: folks too. Um, you know, over and over again throughout history,
Speaker 1: in particularly mean certainly in the early twentieth century and
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, drag balls were constantly um are
Speaker 1: veiled and rated by the police, and people were thrown
Speaker 1: in jail, oftentimes on really trumped up charges or or
Speaker 1: just no charges. We just thought, we just think you're
Speaker 1: a suspicious person. We're going to throw him in jail
Speaker 1: because you're you're a man wearing a dress. Um. So
Speaker 1: it's the the safety part is also the other side
Speaker 1: of it is that it's been a really dangerous thing.
Speaker 1: People have people have felt a need to express themselves
Speaker 1: in this particular way, and um, the authorities have always
Speaker 1: looked at it as a sort of dangerous thing. And
Speaker 1: in the in Swan's era, one time he was arrested
Speaker 1: and thrown in jail, and the prosecutor you know, sort
Speaker 1: of admitted in the prosecution documents of the prosecutor admitted, well,
Speaker 1: typically we wouldn't we wouldn't send send send Swan to
Speaker 1: you know, prison for what we what we charged him with,
Speaker 1: which was keeping at disorderly house, which is something that
Speaker 1: usually something to do with prostitute yea sex work. But
Speaker 1: he said, we're trying to keep him off the streets
Speaker 1: because of his quote evil example to the community. And
Speaker 1: um and it essentially says, you know, because because he
Speaker 1: is involved with with uh sex with other men. So
Speaker 1: the authorities looked at Swans drag balls. This is Swan,
Speaker 1: the queen of drag, Swans drag balls, as as as
Speaker 1: something that people found so alluring that they want to copy,
Speaker 1: because that's why he was an evil an evil example
Speaker 1: to the community. Um, the community which you're gonna politic
Speaker 1: community and and and that is exactly what we're seeing
Speaker 1: today with with with many many politicians and other and
Speaker 1: other other folks you know, protesting drag drag drag brunches
Speaker 1: in drag, story time and UM protesting UM, you know,
Speaker 1: discussions of being trans in schools. Uh. And it's it's
Speaker 1: a similar kind of it's you know, it's it's it
Speaker 1: is the same kind of you know, policing literally policing
Speaker 1: UM and also culturally policing the ways that we express
Speaker 1: ourselves and who we are. If you don't fit into
Speaker 1: those roles, it's considered dangerous and and we're and the
Speaker 1: straight sets people are so really scared that that their
Speaker 1: kids are going to be queer like us. So then
Speaker 1: when we talk about that activism and that resistance culture
Speaker 1: within this community, Frank, let's go back fifty years ago
Speaker 1: to Stonewall in New York City and talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that as being a bit of a pivot
Speaker 1: point in terms of drag becoming a little more mainstream
Speaker 1: or a little more in the face of people, because
Speaker 1: it merged perfectly with the emergence of disco music as well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, exactly. Well it's interesting to me because I'm
Speaker 1: calling about disco gay. I'm just saying that you can
Speaker 1: dance to that shit no matter what you're inventation is
Speaker 1: some good ass music. Keep going, Frank, no, I was.
Speaker 1: You can say, my next book is about the history
Speaker 1: of disco, So yes, it was, but it's it'll be
Speaker 1: my take on it, you know. And then and then Channing,
Speaker 1: you do the actual study of the stuff. I'll do
Speaker 1: the here's the buffet of the glitter, and then you
Speaker 1: serve the entree of the meat potatoes at Shoeman. No oh, no,
Speaker 1: I just make the dessert. Yes, you could do anything
Speaker 1: you want. Um. I was gonna say that the Stonewall
Speaker 1: for people who don't. I mean, more people know now
Speaker 1: than used to, but there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who still go what is that? Stone Wall was the
Speaker 1: turning point at the beginning of the gay rights movement
Speaker 1: in America? Uh And there were things before that, the
Speaker 1: Black cat and and Compton's Cafeteria out in California. But
Speaker 1: Stonewall is the moment in nineteen sixty nine where gays
Speaker 1: fall back. And despite what's a mainstream move these will
Speaker 1: tell you it was not the cute little white kid
Speaker 1: from the Midwest who was throwing bricks. It was trans
Speaker 1: people who didn't even call themselves that that. They call
Speaker 1: themselves transvestites and activists, not even trans people really. But
Speaker 1: there's people like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and that
Speaker 1: Stormy Delarvae that was I was like Channing helped me
Speaker 1: at least the drag King who was of all Stormy Delarbry,
Speaker 1: they were the ones who were doing it. And honestly,
Speaker 1: with any movement, the people who have the least and
Speaker 1: the most to lose at the same time are the
Speaker 1: ones who are the bravest, the ones who don't fit
Speaker 1: in the closet and also are like, I'm not going
Speaker 1: in there. I've seen with how dark it is in
Speaker 1: the closet. It stinks. I'm not going to be in there.
Speaker 1: But the ones who really, you know, who can't hide,
Speaker 1: often tend to be the people who wouldn't hide even
Speaker 1: if they could. They tend to that personality type of
Speaker 1: oh no, I'm not taking I'm not a second classicizen.
Speaker 1: Look at me, I'm fabulous, you know, and they're they're
Speaker 1: wearing their their look on the street. Those are the
Speaker 1: ones who often are the bravest and the toughs. And
Speaker 1: that's why when some of you know, with what's going on,
Speaker 1: nigger sort of like, I won't pick on the drag
Speaker 1: queen if I were you, you know, that's that's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like if you're gonna go, you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't heckle the insult comic. You know. It's it's
Speaker 1: sort of they'll they'll shooshkabob you. You know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of it's like you think you're picking on the weak one,
Speaker 1: but it's like they could outrun you. They can outrun
Speaker 1: you in platform meals, you know, and and and then
Speaker 1: take one off and beat the crap out of you
Speaker 1: with it. You know, these are tough people, and yet
Speaker 1: they look so glamorous and so beautiful while they're doing it.
Speaker 1: But um, I think that that was what happened at Stonewall,
Speaker 1: was the ones throwing the bricks at first were and
Speaker 1: and then forming a kick line. Is that? And I'm
Speaker 1: going to use the word gay the way I like
Speaker 1: to use it, as if it's a great thing, the
Speaker 1: greatest thing you could say, what's the gays? They formed
Speaker 1: a kick line in the streets, so they're doing a
Speaker 1: rockhead number against the police. That is the gayest thing
Speaker 1: you can possibly do. And yet it's sort of like
Speaker 1: the number it's not only gorgeous legs, that's like twenty
Speaker 1: middle fingers you know. I mean, it's just it is
Speaker 1: the ultimate. It's like, oh, you want us to be
Speaker 1: gay a brick the police would have rather a brick
Speaker 1: be thrown at, because how do you react to that
Speaker 1: if you're sort of like, oh, yeah, you're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna get arrested. But well if I go on, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna at least look good doing it. And then you
Speaker 1: start a kick line that that to me is the gayest,
Speaker 1: most powerful thing. It's sort of like, oh, I'll show you.
Speaker 1: And that's why I mean, drag today is leading the
Speaker 1: cultural conversation, but I honestly the Republicans want to shut
Speaker 1: it down, and the proud poises are like, you know
Speaker 1: who you're taking on. It's like these these people do
Speaker 1: these are not mincing f words, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: you know they're they're these queens are kick your eye,
Speaker 1: they'll clean your clock, you know, I mean they know
Speaker 1: how to do it because they've been threatened from the
Speaker 1: moment they came out of the closet or emerged from
Speaker 1: the womb. Perhaps, so when we talk about the middle
Speaker 1: fingers to the authorities then versus the middle fingers to
Speaker 1: politicians now and a lot of the policies that have
Speaker 1: starting to be passed to suppress this type of culture.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're gonna be able to legislate out
Speaker 1: anything that has real influence on society. Talk to me
Speaker 1: a little bit, and Channing, I'll start with you. Talk
Speaker 1: to me a little bit about the influence that drag
Speaker 1: has had on beauty and fashion. I already talked to
Speaker 1: Bob about television, but let's talk about pop culture and
Speaker 1: just general beauty and fashion and the way drag is
Speaker 1: influenced that even music Hill. You know, the first thought
Speaker 1: that I had when you asked the question is Beyonce,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, and her latest album Renaissance. There
Speaker 1: are many references to balls and to you know, the
Speaker 1: category is and tends across the board. And if you're
Speaker 1: listening to the lyrics of the songs like like Alien
Speaker 1: Superstar and like Heated UM and so it sort of
Speaker 1: shows that like an artist at that at that level
Speaker 1: is engaging with with drag. We've drag culture, history of
Speaker 1: drag culture and as well as UM. I think I
Speaker 1: think drag as a as a influence on beauty has
Speaker 1: just made it more okay to experiment with you know,
Speaker 1: makeup with with different forms of attire um for all people. Right,
Speaker 1: it's made it okay for men to be a little
Speaker 1: more from fam and more fabulous, and it's made it
Speaker 1: okay for women to be much more fabulous if they want. Um.
Speaker 1: It's dragged. The reason why I have like we were
Speaker 1: an avocado mask at night some nights? When is that
Speaker 1: the reason the word exfoliate? You could probably you probably
Speaker 1: do a thesis drawing the line. But those when RuPaul
Speaker 1: got the mac Cosmetics gig in the in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: that was shocking to a lot of people. A lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff was shocking back and now it takes
Speaker 1: a lot to shock anybody. But back in the day
Speaker 1: when RuPaul is suddenly like, oh wait, look you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the spokesmodel for Viva Glawn and
Speaker 1: she looked gorgeous. You know, the drag bus has left.
Speaker 1: You just gotta get on it to stand in the
Speaker 1: way or try to fight it will ultimately be unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: And it's also shortsighted because it's started. Do you you
Speaker 1: really The upsetting thing to me when people protest drag
Speaker 1: meed story hour, it's like so that those little kids
Speaker 1: that feel different for whatever reason, and like Sparkle, whether
Speaker 1: whatever their gender, they don't get the same treat They
Speaker 1: don't get to be happy, they don't get to see
Speaker 1: someone in a book. They don't. You know, it's very
Speaker 1: upsetting to me to see lives being threatened, drag lives
Speaker 1: and gay lives, queer lives being threatened when it's preposterous.
Speaker 1: You know, if drag means are groomers, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: they're not groomers. They're hairstylists, they're makeup artists, they're not
Speaker 1: they're not groomers in the in the pedophile sense. They're
Speaker 1: groomers and that that your nails will look fabulous by
Speaker 1: the end of it, you know, I mean, get stupid.
Speaker 1: It's just a dumb argument to say they're groomers. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's why people do drag. It's like, no, that's
Speaker 1: why clowns become clowns and locate across base and then
Speaker 1: eat you or whatever. Clowns do. You know, it's those
Speaker 1: are two different people to different people. I think queer
Speaker 1: folks are still a minority, but we're just a powerful,
Speaker 1: influential minority because of because of how badass we are. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I always always say in ninety sixty nine
Speaker 1: was still won't happen. It was sort of a surprise
Speaker 1: the people that suddenly the queer folks could fight back.
Speaker 1: And the reality is there there was all kinds of unseen,
Speaker 1: invisible work that had to get done to build a
Speaker 1: community that felt confident enough to fight back. So there
Speaker 1: were decades of work behind behind that decision to fight
Speaker 1: back on that day. And now we've had another fifty
Speaker 1: years of organizing to the point where we're like, there's
Speaker 1: no way we're not We're not going to get back
Speaker 1: at the closet. We're not going to go back backwards. So, yes,
Speaker 1: they're protesting, but we're not only a cultural force. We're
Speaker 1: just too I think, too powerful to organize a community.
Speaker 1: Now it doesn't make sense, it's it's irrational to to
Speaker 1: go against us. Oh what do you all think the
Speaker 1: future of drag? Where does this go? Because at this
Speaker 1: small bald, this pebble was rolling down the heel and
Speaker 1: now it's a big boulder. Where does this go next?
Speaker 1: How soon to the drag president is one of masking.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a great one. Um. When we have to
Speaker 1: give Ruddy. Do we have to give Rudy Giuliani credit
Speaker 1: for dressing in drag as Rudia? I hope not. I
Speaker 1: don't because he was an ugly dragqueen. That was an
Speaker 1: ugly drag queen from everywhere. Yeah, it's hard to get
Speaker 1: mascara out of here, but he managed to do it.
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna look like, uh, just just this
Speaker 1: amazing buffet of talent. I think that it's gonna come
Speaker 1: down to how good are you at it? Not what
Speaker 1: you know, whether you're dressed as a man or a woman,
Speaker 1: or a horror icon where you're covered in blood or
Speaker 1: you're covered in sequence. I think it can be anything.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, it's drag kids who are so cool
Speaker 1: with themselves at eight or ten that they're they're they're
Speaker 1: dressing in drag and performing. Not just oh mommy, I
Speaker 1: feel different, but they're really like, oh, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be fearsome, go do this. And you know the thing
Speaker 1: that the moment in my life when I realized stuff
Speaker 1: was changing was when I was speaking to a group
Speaker 1: of young people and I said, well, I came out
Speaker 1: when I was sixteen in nineteen seventy eight, and the
Speaker 1: kids said why did you wait so long? And I
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, things have really
Speaker 1: chased sixteen. I was like in the advanced placement program
Speaker 1: for K and it was late seventies. It was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you know you you're gay or forever? Of
Speaker 1: course I'm a gay, you know. And I think the
Speaker 1: future of drag is is going to be gorgeous and
Speaker 1: fabulous and diverse. That's one of the best things about
Speaker 1: Drag two. I didn't say this before. You know, people
Speaker 1: are always saying we have to in entertainment, we have
Speaker 1: to strive for diversity. With drag, all you have to
Speaker 1: do is tell the truth. If you do, you know,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's that way with everything, but if you
Speaker 1: just show who was doing cool stuff, you don't have
Speaker 1: to go looking for diversity because it's all there in
Speaker 1: your face. It's it's gorgeous, it's like something everybody was
Speaker 1: participating it in their own wonderful way, so it's not
Speaker 1: forced in any way. Just get out there and tell
Speaker 1: the truth and you'll have people of every background and
Speaker 1: color and creed and type. You know, Jenny, what does
Speaker 1: it look like to you? I think um drag is
Speaker 1: a huge factor in um what will become a complete
Speaker 1: transformation of how we think about sex and gender in
Speaker 1: the future, how we talk about sex and gender, how
Speaker 1: we think about it will has already completely changed, right,
Speaker 1: but in the future it will be so core to
Speaker 1: who we are to talk about diversity of being an
Speaker 1: onn binary or trans, or the diversity of gender expression
Speaker 1: all those. You know, we'll have new words because the
Speaker 1: words always change, right I think, but it will be
Speaker 1: completely transformed. One of the things I think that most
Speaker 1: people sort of don't think about our realize is like,
Speaker 1: it's not just that thing. You used to be old
Speaker 1: words and now we have cool words. Like in Swan's time,
Speaker 1: it was you know, you were a queen or you weren't.
Speaker 1: It was about what you were actually was about whether
Speaker 1: you were participating in balls or not, whether you were
Speaker 1: winning the balls, whether you were a queen, and then
Speaker 1: later you were you know, other scholars talk about like
Speaker 1: whether you were a fairy or a pansy. And then
Speaker 1: sort of after World War Two it became this homosexual
Speaker 1: heterosexual slicing. And now we're you know, now we're much
Speaker 1: more diverse in terms of being panned or fluid, and
Speaker 1: everybody's sort of becoming more exactly you know in binary, transgender, queer,
Speaker 1: gender fluid. We have so many more options, and I
Speaker 1: think in the future we will either have many more
Speaker 1: options than that or will just be so part of
Speaker 1: who we are that it becomes irrelevant in this sort
Speaker 1: of way. And it's it's important, I think, just to
Speaker 1: realize that we're strong enough to get through this and
Speaker 1: we will and no matter what they do, all of
Speaker 1: the way we think about about our our gender and
Speaker 1: our and our sexuality will will completely transform. Well. I
Speaker 1: hope that the future drag does not include more of
Speaker 1: the ignorance and laws and hatred that your community has
Speaker 1: been dealing with. The two of you are on the
Speaker 1: spearhead educating dumb motherfucker's on what the right things are
Speaker 1: and how to be more knowledgeable citizens. I thank you Channing,
Speaker 1: I thank you Frank, and also shout out to Bob
Speaker 1: for coming on earlier. That's all the time we have
Speaker 1: for today. Play my theme music. Explore more shows from
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