Among its 2,000 annual performances, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts staged a drag-themed show last year, “Dragtastic Dress-up.” President Trump seized on the show to justify a hostile takeover of the center, vowing on social media, “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA — ONLY THE BEST.”
Demonizing drag stigmatizes LGBTQ people and may further incite hate groups, who in recent years have mounted protests, threats and violent actions against drag events. It is important to set the record straight on drag shows, which are embedded in mainstream American culture.
The first drag queen may have been a former slave named William Dorsey Swann, who staged drag balls in the late 19th century. Drag balls flourished in the early 20th century during the Harlem Renaissance. Today, drag is popular entertainment, from the movie “A Star Is Born,” with the great performance by the drag queen Shangela, to “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” a reality TV show entering its 17th season, in which drag queens compete for cash. Four of the funniest movie comedies ever made — “Some Like It Hot” (1959), “Tootsie” (1982), “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993) and “The Bird Cage” (1996) — feature hilarious performances by male actors pretending to be women.
“The Bird Cage” brilliantly satirizes right-wing homophobic politicians. Nathan Lane plays Albert, a flamboyant drag queen in Miami. Albert has to pretend to be a straight mother with conservative views for the sake of his and his partner’s (Robin Williams) son, a straight man who is engaged to the daughter of the right-wing Senator Keeley (Gene Hackman). When the future in-laws have dinner together, Keeley expresses vehement opposition to gays serving in the military. “You know, I used to feel that way too,” replies Albert, staying in his own conservative character but clearly miffed as a gay man, “until I found out that Alexander the Great was a f–. Talk about gays in the military!”
Opposition to drag shows has risen and fallen with the tide of the culture wars. In 2023, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, under pressure from Republicans in Congress, cancelled drag shows at U.S. military bases, even though they were mostly funded privately. But that hasn’t always been the American military’s attitude.
Soon after Pearl Harbor, the armed forces, recognizing that entertaining soldiers at home and abroad was necessary for morale, encouraged drag shows by male soldiers because, at least initially, women were not serving where many GIs were fighting. The Army provided “Blueprint Specials” for staging drag shows, which included dressmaking patterns and “girly” show choreography. But even after American servicewomen shipped out overseas, the drag shows continued, with the women teaching the men how to put on makeup.
Allied prisoners in German prison camps, which held tens of thousands of U.S. airmen who had been shot out of the skies, kept up their morale by performing drag shows. In the South Pacific, the drag show costumes of American servicemen included semaphore flags, mop heads, coconut shells and various tropical fruits. A drag show, “This Is the Army,” began as a Broadway musical to raise money for the war effort and later became a movie starring an actor named Ronald Reagan who, it’s safe to say, would have disputed that he was an anti-American propagandist.
Drag is a good morale booster today, especially if you are disheartened watching Trump wreck the world order that American GIs in World War II paid such a dear price to bequeath to us. So, watch “The Bird Cage” where (spoiler alert) Senator Keeley ends up as a drag performer.
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”
