Asians get enraged by "Yellowface." They want old Charlie Chan movies to be banned from TV re-run. They don't want Asians portrayed by anyone who isn't Asian.
Indians are enraged by "Redface." Not to the point where they can get the "Washington Redskins" to change their name, because their owner is a stubborn, greedy, obnoxious white man. But they did get the logo for the "Cleveland Indians" removed. They very nearly got Johnny Depp kicked off that Lone Ranger retred, but he convinced everyone he had slightly more Indian blood in him than Elizabeth Warren.
Blacks, of course, have successfully hounded almost all "blackface" movie scenes to the cutting room floor, and thwarted the campaigns of any elderly politician who happened to appear in a minstrel show or goof around on Halloween decades ago. Even Ted Danson was excoriated for doing blackface at a roast for his girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg. She didn't mind. The PC world did, and so did a lot of other black performers.
The LGBTetc.etc.etc. bunch? They have pressured actresses to turn down any transgender roles. If you are NOT an actual transgender woman, then you can't play one. At one time (see: "Second Serve: The Renee Richards Story" among others) the trans community was delighted that ANY movie was being made that addressed their issues. Now they are powerful to dictate, and be just as bullying as any group that gets power.
The point all these groups are making is DIGNITY. Do not make fun of a group that is still not fully accepted socially or financially. Especially don't make fun of groups that have been denied housing, fired from jobs, or taken out and killed for what they are. And that includes women, who are still shouting about not enough female politicians in congress, not enough equal pay, and not enough punishment for the rapes and murders committed against them.
So what IS this?
There is NO excuse, NONE, for this kind of garish, insulting Drag. NONE. No excuse.
This is in the same kind of bad taste as the now-banned Cleveland Indians caricature mascot.
Somehow, the Cleveland Indians realized that it was not a catastrophe to dump an ugly, demeaning, grotesque portrait of a Native American. They decided it might be a good idea to show some sensitivity to the stereotype of the big nosed Indian who looks like he dines on white settler flesh. It seems they have now approved and started to market a cuddly new mascot named SLIDER:
Drag? It's one thing thing for a true "drag artist" to mimic Bette Davis, Judy Garland or Bette Midler, the way Charles Pierce, Jim Bailey and Craig Russell did. The female impersonators (who didn't particularly like the term "drag queen") were simply doing their comic impressions of famous women and their distinctive personalities.
What's behind DRAG? Creating grotesque and ludicrous stereotypes. Almost all the DRAG acts deliberately "sashay" around the stage, most in clownishly vulgar make-up, idiotic wigs and costumes.
As for the ones who try to actually look like overdone women, and would point out that RuPaul is no less vulgar than Cher, let's remember how the "anti-Blackface" mob not only showed pictures of Ted Danson who was doing parody, but Billy Crystal, who was trying to do as accurate a Sammy Davis Jr. as he could, and do it with fondness.
Where is the fondness or respect in Drag? Nowhere.
It seems that the main reason women don't shout their opposition to drag as loudly as trans-women do to women playing them in films, is "it's flattering." Got that? Men are giving up "power" by dressing in drag. That's the logic.
No, they aren't giving up power, they are mocking women. How stupid do women have to be NOT to get that? Doesn't it only reinforce the stereotype of STUPID WOMEN when there are drag acts that involve nothing more than a man prancing around the stage acting like a stereotypical woman who is concerned about nothing other than vanity, glamor, her make-up, and how to make the most of her falsies?
Some drag queens are SINCERE about showing how glamorous and bold women can be?
AL JOLSON was damn SINCERE about singing "Mammy" and "Old Black Joe" and showing the pathos and suffering of slaves in the South. Today his records are ignored and nobody is saying he is, or even WAS, "The Greatest Entertainer of All Time." If Al Jolson is truly dead and buried, despite his talent and his sincerity, then DRAG should be dead and buried, too.
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