Read it for the Pictures II

Halberstam, Judith and Del LaGrace Volcano. The Drag King Book. London and New York: Serpent's Tail, 1999.

This is a beautiful book, and I'm actually quite a fan of Judith Halberstam's work, but I found the book somewhat disappointing nonetheless. The book contains photograhps of drag kings primarily from London, San Francisco, and New York by Del LaGrace Volcano. The images are beautiful and artistic, and my only complaint about them is the fact that Del himself appears in a disproportionate number of them. For a collection of artwork, however, that seems quite acceptable and I very much enjoyed and appreciated all of the images. The text, however, I found irritating. It lacked any kind of scholarship and in certain places read like a personal rant about what Halberstam finds interesting and attractive about drag kings. She wanted to focus on the experiences of people who perform as drag kings and live as bucth women or transgendered men in their daily lives, but rather than narrowing the topic of the text to that subject, she threw out various ideas and opinions on several drag-king-adjacent topics.

The book was written at the height of lesbian chic and popular media fascination with drag kings, and as such it deals a lot with the contemporary (1996-1997) drag club scene, particularly in London and New York. It does not, however, do anything resembling a thorough history or anthropology of its subject, it merely touches on various relevent ideas. It seems to be written more for a popular audience than a scholarly one, so the lack of research or references is perhaps understandable as part of the project. Halberstam fully acknowledges her biased interest in studying drag king culture as a partipant, and a few photographs of her feature prominently in the book. The book, however makes gestures toward a history of drag kings, however, that it fails to properly document or support, mentioning early drag kings but not giving details. Similarly, Halberstam does description and analysis of various drag performances and even some of the photographs in the book, but the book is not layed out in such a way that the photographs accompany the relevant text. This project is more of a work of collaboration and friendship between Jack (Halberstam) and Del, and less of a book notable for its text.

The portion of the book I found most irritating was the "interviews" with drag kings such as Mo B. Dick (Maureen Fischer). Halberstam particularly spent much of the interview forwarding her own interests and ideas, often seeming to lecture her interview subjects on her own gender theories. I can't help but feel that there's some kind of weird misogyny in Halberstam's insistence on 'realness' as opposed to "femme pretenders" who remind the audience of the femininity of the body beneath the male drag. She does, however, touch on a wide range of issues, including the racial and class ramifications of performances of masculinity. She draws attention to the fact that lesbian clubs are stil in many ways racially segregated and that queer clubs in general are often gender segregated; there are few clubs where gay men, lesbians, and transfolks mix and mingle regularly. Halberstam claims that when they do, a significant portion of the crowd is also in drag.

The major successes of the book are in the images; it is a beautiful photography collection and it is worth the price if only for that. It also touches on several important issues relating to drag and transgender performances and identities, which are important to bring up even if they don't get the thoroughness they deserve. And the book probably did serve its purpose; it made me want to go see a drag show. Too bad I'll be in LA by the time this one rolls around!