Sex In The Public Square - movies - Comments

Is Hairspray gay?

Elizabeth Abele — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:39:49 -0700

This in some ways comes down to the question of whether camp is always/only gay. John Waters is an openly gay director, who problematizes the corniness of his movies partially through stunt casting -- the porn actress Traci Lord, Patti Hearst, and Divine -- who was a regular member of Waters' troupe, not just appearing in Hairspray.

Does Divine as a performer fall more into the tradition of drag queens or as a performer of the British tradition of the "dame role"? In British children's theatre, roles like the wicked stepmother and ugly stepsisters were played by large, generally unattractive men for comic effect. Since the role of Edna was written as a "dame" role, it is appropriate that it be played by a large man -- but I am not sure the offstage sexuality of the performer is important. Many landmark gay films have featured straight male actors playing gay characters, while deliberately discussing their wives and children in interviews.

I'd argue that Harvey Fierstein was asked to play Edna less because he was gay than because of his association with cross-dressed performance AND his position in legitimate theater. He moved from working as a drag queen, to writing and performing the award-winning Torch Song Trilogy and then writing the book for La Cage. He followed up his performance as Edna by playing the patriarch Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Harvey Fierstein was replaced in Hairspray by Michael McKean.

John Travolta had perfomed in a dress previously on SNL on Coffee Talk -- a show hosted by Mike Meyers, dressed as a NY matron. This character by Travolta was more arguably gay than Edna -- he was playing a character who was born a man who had changed his name to Barbara Streisand. He was very funny yet subtle. As a Catholic, I think that it is unfair to assume that a person has particular views about sexuality just because their religion does -- or to expect them to publicly denounce aspects of their religion, particularly if they feel that their faith is already under attack.

John Waters is probably making more money now than he ever did during his film career. As a fan of Hairspray, I think the mainstreaming and commercializing of Waters' camp vision is an interesting question -- of which Travolta's casting is only a small blip. I'd make a stronger argument that Michelle Pfeiffer is even more out-of-place filling in for Traci Lord. Courtney Love should be playing that role.

Hairspray as a straight film

Elizabeth — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 09:22:34 -0700

Today's NYT has a long feature about John Travolta's choice to play Edna in the new remake of Hairspray. It's interesting for a copule of reasons. First of all, it makes the claim that the casting of a man to play Edna has nothing to do with drag, or even to do with a man playing a man trying to pass as a woman (Mrs. Doubtfire-style) but everything to do with the physical appearance of the Edna character:

Edna is something much rarer: a female character whose DNA, as the stage director Jack O’Brien put it, requires that she be played by a male — the cosmic opposite of Peter Pan.

In fact, Travolta explicitly states that his interest in playing Edna is akin to his interest in playing Bill Clinton in Primary Colors -- that is -- in "becoming" the character so convincingly that he "disappears" into the role.

“Playing a woman attracted me,” Mr. Travolta said. “Playing a drag queen did not. The vaudeville idea of a man in a dress is a joke that works better onstage than it does on film, and I didn’t want any winking or camping. I didn’t want it to be ‘John Travolta plays Edna.’ That’s not interesting. It had to be something I could go all the way with, disappear in, like I did in the Bill Clinton role in ‘Primary Colors’ or in ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ ”

In other words, Travolta is playing Edna as a straight woman, and his goal for the length of the film is to be perceived as that straight woman, not as a man playing a straight woman, and not as a drag queen.

Second, it argues that Travolta-the-man is not at all homophobic, regardless what his faith would tell him about homosexuality.

Whatever Scientology teaches, he never raised the subject on the set. (“Is there such a thing as a Reform Scientologist?” Mr. Shankman asked.) And whatever the contours of his personal life, they didn’t keep him from embracing his inner — and outer — Edna. As Mr. Waters said, “He’s in a dress singing a love song to his husband, so what’s anyone complaining about?”

This raises a question that I thnk would be interesting to discuss in a forum here, or somewhere, given how often it comes up in how many different contexts. Namely: How should we understand the connection between the tenets of a person's religion, and that person's individual orientation toward the world?

Is Hairspray a "gay film"?

Elizabeth — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:08:53 -0700

Okay, so now I'm wondering: I must be the only person who writes about sexuality who has never seen Hairspray. But I was just talking to a theater friend who said, "you know, actually, the character that Travolta plays was written to be a straight woman in an nuclear family. It just happens that she was initially played by Divine. Really it's a film about integration and racism, though a campy one, and about a fat girl who wants to dance."

So here's my question, being ignorant of theater and film as I am: Was Hairspray initially written with gay culture and gay characters in mind? Was Divine cast mainly because she could play a straight woman and a straight man? Or was the casting of Divine intended to parody straight men and women? Is it possible that this current film adaptation is trying to resist the gay-culture adoption of the film?

I'd love to see an extended discussion of the original "intent" of Hairspray, its evolution as a piece of theater and film, and how the current film adaptation fits into its history and its development.

And really, I'm raising these questions because I'm quite curious and know very little!