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| Orlando and Rosalind in Curmie’s As You Like It |
The Republican-dominated Senate would have us believe that folks like Robert Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, and Kristi Noem are anywhere near qualified for the leadership positions to which they were confirmed. At least the first three are outright threats to the nation and its citizens; Curmie was holding out hope that Hegseth would be merely incompetent, but it isn’t looking that way. Noem is a vicious and self-righteous fool; that makes her look pretty good by comparison to the rest of that lot.
And 217 of the 218 House Republicans just voted for a budget resolution that would strip billions from necessary
social programs that benefit the most vulnerable among us to clear the way for
a tax cut for billionaires… and add trillions (yes, trillions) of
dollars to the national debt. So much
for these assholes’ claims of fiscal responsibility.
But with all due disrespect for the GOP quislings in Washington, the greatest example of legislative malfeasance just might be Iowa House Study Bill 158. It’s currently been reported out of
subcommittee with a recommendation to approve.
This totally wackadoodle legislation would criminalize “drag
shows” (Curmie will explain the scare quotes in a moment) that allow minors to
attend. Venues would be fined $10,000
per minor in attendance; adults who bring a minor (anyone under 18) to such an
event would be guilty of a class D felony (!), subject to “confinement for no more
than five years and a fine of at least $1,025 but not more than $10,245.” Oh, and parents or legal guardians can sue
the venue for up to $50,000 plus legal fees for each offense.
Holy Dionysus, where to begin? Curmie doesn’t attract a stupid or ignorant
readership, so we’ll mention the obvious bigotry only in passing. There is, of course, no rational reason to
keep children out of drag shows simply because they are drag shows. Some such performances may be unsuitable for
other reasons, but it’s because of what can loosely be called “adult content”—language,
actual sexuality, etc.—not the fact that a biological male (or someone who was once
a biological male) is dressed as a woman, or vice versa. “Drag queen story hours” never hurt anyone. No, never.
So let’s move on. The
definition of “drag show” in this proposed legislation is a performance in
which the following is true:
The main aspect of the performance is a performer who exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth through the use of clothing, makeup, accessories, or other gender signifiers.
The performer sings, lip-syncs, dances, reads, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment, whether or not performed for payment.
Needless to say, there are a lot, and Curmie does mean a
lot, of theatrical and quasi-theatrical forms that fit that definition but aren’t
drag. The first one to come to mind is
British pantomime—you know, Gentle Reader, that entertainment form that hundreds
of thousands of British parents take their kids to every Christmas season? The Dame, the comic older female character,
is always played by a man. And if there’s
a juvenile male lead (as in, say, a version of Jack and the Beanstalk), that
role will go to an attractive young woman.
One of Curmie’s friends is one of the UK’s leading
Dames. He writes and performs in pantos
not infrequently, but he also does solo work written specifically with children
in mind. He preaches that it’s okay to
be different—sort of the kind of message that got actress Julianne Moore in trouble with the censorial asshats Trump administration for her
children’s book Freckleface Strawberry.
I’ve seen my friend in a panto and in a solo show live, as
well as a few performances online (it’s a long commute from Texas to England). He’s very good at his job. He’s empathetic and nurturing. And I will positively go to war against anyone
who says he’s doing anything but a positive service to the children who see his
shows.
But it’s not just panto, of course. Many traditional Asian forms feature men
playing women. Ask virtually anyone to
name a star of Chinese opera, and if they can think of anyone, it’s more than
likely to be Mei Langfan, who was best exclusively known for—well,
you’re ahead of me again, Gentle Reader—yes, playing the leading female role.
Similarly, many Japanese Nō and Kabuki companies still employ
traditional all-male casting; the onnagata (a male Kabuki actor specializing
in female roles) is very much still a thing. But wait… wouldn’t that mean that the Iowa
bill isn’t merely homo- and trans-phobic, but also racist? Well, it kinda seems that way.
Of course, there are plenty of Western examples, too. The most notable of these is probably
Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Curmie
acted in it once and directed it once (that’s a photo from the latter at the
top of the page). There is no question
that the play is very much about an actor playing a character not of the same
sex. What’s particularly interesting here
is that there is no way to avoid that issue.
In the original, all-male production, we had a male actor playing a
female character (Rosalind) playing a male character (Ganymede) playing a
female character (Rosalind, again). But
whoever plays Rosalind, that actor is going to take on the identity of someone
of a different sex; it just a matter of which scenes.
Curmie used to live in Iowa.
Imagine if you will, Gentle Reader, if Curmie had directed a production
of that play with a special afternoon performance for local high schools. This kind of thing happens all the time. (We didn’t have such an audience when I did As
You Like It in Texas, but we did for Macbeth.) In this scenario, assuming a good attendance,
the college and Curmie would each be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and both Curmie and every high school teacher who brought kids would
have been charged with a felony.
Ah, you say, but no rational person would consider As You
Like It a drag show even though it fits the description in the proposed
legislation. Well, no rational person
would introduce a bill this fundamentally stupid, but here we are. And I’m not ready to trust that Deputy
Dunderhead, D.A. Doofus, and Judge Jackass aren’t more interested in parading
their pseudo-morality than in exercising reason.
There are other examples, too, of course. Arguably the greatest Spanish play of the 17th
century, Life Is a Dream, and the greatest Italian play of the 18th
century, The Servant of Two Masters, both rely on cross-dressing. Is that “the main aspect of the performance”? Well, it’s a main aspect of the
performance, for sure. And of course the
multiple-Tony-winning musical Some Like It Hot is pretty much about
the cross-dressing.
Curmie can’t think of a show he did in Iowa that would have
caused problems, but he may well be forgetting something. Beloved Spouse directed at a local high school
there, and didn’t have enough boys audition for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor
Dreamcoat, so she cast a couple of girls as “brothers.” She probably would have been okay, though, as
that wasn’t central to the production.
Similarly, when Curmie has occasionally cast women in roles
originally played by men, he’s changed the character to female. He did strap a fake beard on an actress to play
a small part in Woyzeck, and had obviously fake mustaches drawn onto
both men and women appearing as the fireman chorus in (Biedermann and) The
Firebugs, but complaining about that would be a stretch even for Deputy Dunderhead.
But Curmie has directed not just As You Like It and The
Servant of Two Masters, but also The Breasts of Tiresias, in which
the female lead decides to become a man (and does, beard and all), while her
husband starts wearing a housedress and gives birth to tens of thousands of
babies overnight. (“Willpower!”) Yeah, that one might rattle a few cages. We didn’t have a lot of kids in the house,
but those who came (and their parents) seemed to enjoy it.
There are also, of course, some productions (as opposed to the requirements of a play) which might raise the ire of the censorial set. When Curmie and Beloved Spouse honeymooned in London many years ago, one of the highlights of the adventure was seeing Sir Peter Hall’s brilliant production of Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy.
Publicity for the show emphasized the fact that the performance would be historically accurate in the sense that it would feature an all-male cast. Thus, Clytemnestra, Cassandra, Electra, and the specifically female choruses of both The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides were all played by men. Is that “the main aspect of the performance”? Well, it’s the one that got highlighted in promotional materials…
We can, of course, add to this list any performance by a
trans person. Curmie can easily imagine
a performance art piece by a former student describing his experience as an
actress and the various psychological and physical forms of transitioning.
It would be, no doubt, a valuable service to those of us who have never
experienced similar urges and especially, of course, to adolescents
experiencing them right now. Nope, can’t
have that.
Which leaves us with the final term of the title of this
essay: hypocrisy. According to the
sanctimonious right, it is reasonable to home school your kids even if you lack
either the education or intelligence to do so.
It’s fine to deny them immunizations which would make them and indeed
the entire population more impervious to diseases like polio, measles, mumps,
etc. You can make them go to your
church. What you do with your children
is your business.
Well, it’s your business unless you decide to take them to a
drag show. Then, it’s a felony. Your kids can attend an R-rated movie if you
accompany them. But if you accompany
them to a drag show, even a drag queen story hour, perhaps even to a classic
play, you’ll be arrested.
Whoever thought this bill was a good idea is a clown. Unfortunately, Curmie is developing a case of
coulrophobia. Perhaps you should, too,
Gentle Reader.
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