samedi, février 02, 2008

How not to do drag

That should have been the title of the Channel 4 doco (in Spanish television) last Friday night. The programme, shown weekly, usually deals with different aspects of life in Spain, and mostly with those in the margings of society (gypsies, drug addicts, et al), although it has also touched more frivolous themes such as people with special talents or houses of the rich.

Well, more to the point, and I guess linking with the Carnaval taking place this weekend, Callejeros (that is the name of the programme) did a special report on drag queens of old, c'est a dire those that did drag when officially drag only happened outside of Spain.

One can only imagine how difficult life must have been for these people, not just for being messed up in the head, but also facing the rejection of society around them in a time when it was rare to travel to a neighbouring town...

The surprising thing is that, all of the chosen ones being, and I say this in the kindest way possible, messed up in the head, almost all of them had a fantastically optimistic and happy outlook in life.


Some were worried about their tits, painstakingly grown through the use of hormones over a number of decades, and not a quick fix inflicted by a surgeon's knife. Some talked in a very comical way about their insatiable craving of cock whilst showing on national television the instruments used in the many lonely nights...

It was also possible to catch a glance of a drag gone bad, an angry lump of fatty tissue that bitterly critizised her 'friend' for hogging the limelight, I must imagine, to her detriment... Reporteros chose, however, not to show too much of this, it was clearly a night of daze and spectacle and no place to show a non-Disney version of Shrek.

One thing that caught my atention was that whenever the cameras were kindly invited inside the dwellings of these lesser stars of cabaret, they always seemed to find, sometimes tucked away among other pictures, some other times presiding the room, an image of the Virgin Mary. I do not understand the relation between drag queens and the Virgin, unless it is a very subliminal one. Another matter would be to try to ignore the relationship between the Church and sodomy, but more on that some other day.

Later the same night, the national television treated us all to the broadcasting of the "Drag queen of the Carnivals 2008" peagant from Las Palmas de Gran Canarias. Suffice to say that even La Terremoto de Alcorcon found it embarrassing to be associated to such an event, and promptly dissapeared after the first two performances, to give a idea of the magnitude of the disaster.


If the performances weren't bad enough (in no little measure due to the terrible, terrible choice of music in each and every performance), the presenter of the gala did the worst possible job, repeating the same tired old jokes throughout the evening, patently due to the amount of alcohol and coke running through his veins at the time.

So, the title of this entry, how not to do drag, does not refer in fact to those old queens that still dress up to go shopping despite being well past their best, and whose effort might not always be reflected in the end result, but to those young princesess that rely so heavily on reinforced platform boots and flashing lights to compensate for their lack of talent, allure, pose... or right attitude.

It is not admiration, but in a way I really look up to those who, despite being overtly mad, despite rejection, and despite everything else, still look forward to the next opportunity to put a wig on and kick their heels up. And no amount of white powder can give you that.

(See an extract of Callejeros here: http://www.cuatro.com/videos/index.html?xref=20080130ctoultpro_1.Ves&view=baja)

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