an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 4, October 2007, ISSN
1552-5112
The Music of Kings and Bio
Since its beginnings, conventional Western philosophy
has placed crude limitations on the way we think about ourselves suggesting
that who we are can be reduced to simple dichotomies based on differentiating bodies.
Gender identity has suffered from bodily inscription allowing us to think of
ourselves only as man or woman, and thus, behave accordingly. The social and
political significance of being either man or woman becomes even more
repressive when the two states of being become a binary dualism positioning the
woman as a negative but necessary precondition for man. Binary dualisms are
unrealistic ways of conceiving and naming human behaviour, yet they continue to
pervade modern discussions of identity.
This examination draws on a postmodern concept of
identity which reconfigures the individual as an embodied subject that is part
of and informed by the discursive conditions and practices of society, as
opposed to one that is biologically determined. Identity is highly complex,
ever shifting and multifariously informed and cannot be fixed to, or in many
cases, adequately described by words such as masculine or feminine,
heterosexual or homosexual. These words continue to shape hegemonic discourse
regarding gender and sexuality, and limit the subject’s capacity to understand
and identify with feelings, bodies and actions that are not easily named or
described within a binary system. In an
attempt to fill the discursive gaps, our understanding of self becomes more
fully informed and regulated by what Michael Foucault refers to as technologies
of the self. According to Foucault, technologies of the self:
permit individuals to effect by their own means, or
with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and
souls, thoughts conduct, and ways of being, so as to transform themselves in
order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection and
immortality. (2003, p. 146)
Technologies of the self assist us in clarifying who
we are to ourselves and who we are in relation to the constitutions of power
and truth established by disciplinary and discursive institutional practices.
In summarising Foucault, Judith Peraino states that technologies of the self
are:
…fundamentally ascetic in that they entail ‘an
exercise of the self on the self,’ and they are fundamentally ethical in that
they take into account positive or negative feedback accorded by the moral
codes or acceptable ranges of conduct produced in the given matrix of truth and
power. (2003, p. 435)
From this perspective, understanding who we are
becomes a complex procedure of doing, being, analysing and synthesising. The
self is not essential, and has to be actively created and negotiated according
to social and individual truths, thus Foucault suggests that life itself could
be considered a developing work of art (Rainbow, 1984). Because the self is not
something that is given to us in a whole or static form, the concept of life as
art lends itself to theorising sexual practice outside of a scientific
discourse. The recent epistemic shift from essentialist notions of selfhood and
identity to a constructive understanding results in the loss of a fixed and
timeless self, thus producing a selfhood of vast possibility and uncertainty.
The queer subject embodies Foucault’s theory as a fluid and dynamic identity in
the process of creating itself, much like the fluidity and temporality
facilitated by musical practice.
The bodies and behaviours of queer identified people
differ from what the constitutions of truth and power posit to be normal. In this exploration of the music of kings and
bio queens, musical performance is understood as a technique that allows queers
to differentially regulate their bodies, thoughts and behaviours, when
appropriate and meaningful discourse is lacking. While popular discourse fails
to provide us with words to articulate the true complexities of the self, I
offer in its place music as a non-literal signifier and as a space in which
identity can be realised and performed.
Music can be an exercise in creating a happy and
ideal self, negotiating the margins of acceptable behaviour and blurring them.
Theodor Adorno said that “music provokes individuals to question their
subjectivity, their social identity in relation to ideological superstructures”
(Adorno cited in Peraino, 2006, p. 3). David Hargreaves, Dorothy Miell &
Raymond MacDonald are authoritative voices on the relationship between music
and identity and they agree that music is instrumental in producing and
monitoring our understanding of self and our social relationships. They
suggest:
…music can be used increasingly as a means by which
we formulate and express our individual identities. We use it not only to
regulate our own everyday moods and behaviours, but also to present ourselves
to others in the way we prefer. (2002, p. 1)
Music effectively mediates identity and provides a
space for one to negotiate their identity in relation to social power
structures, and music is especially important in doing this when social
discourse fails. Thus, I propose that music and musical performance can constitute
a technology of queer identity.
Queer is not a homosexual signifier; queer broadly
accommodates all non-normative behaviour which does not comfortably replicate
socially acceptable practices, two of which are gender and sexuality. Queer
theory draws heavily on the work of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity
which suggests that gender and sexuality are a performance; in other words,
“identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said
to be its results” (Butler, 1990, p. 25).
The problem
with queer theory is that it is somewhat ideological. While queer theory
validates and encourages the blurring of imaginary sociocultural boundaries,
not all people understand such boundaries as imagined and porous. For example,
a biological male dressing as a female (and therefore confusing normative
gender identity) who is seen in public courting a female (and therefore
confusing normative sexual identity) is at risk of persecution for the
disruption they cause to the heteronormative sex/gender paradigm. The threat of
physical violence is real and is a direct protest against the conceptual flexibility
of identity as performance. For
hegemonic bodies to accept and understand the queer subject and freely allow
the performance of queer identity, they must consequently acknowledge that
hegemonic notions of identity, which may currently appear “stable”, are by no
means fixed or essential and therefore untrue. Using heteronormative logic,
society perhaps, allows the ‘gay’ male to act feminine because his abnormality
normalises the heterosexual male acting masculine, while the lesbian female is
allowed to act ‘butch’ because she too, normalises society’s understanding of
the heterosexual, feminine female.
Noticeable imbalances in the sex/gender paradigm
destabilise heteronormativity and negatively brand the queer subject as
abnormal. In an attempt to dilute this negative branding, music has at times
been the pursuit of the socially disenfranchised and abandoned. Sophie Fuller
and Lloyd Whitesell argue that historically “music [has] provided the
accompaniment for confrontations between disparate conventions of social
propriety in general, and in particular, for encounters between diverse
idiolects of sexual identity” (2002, p. 12). Music can be a powerful social
agent, it can soothe our discomfort with subject matter that disrupts social
norms. Music has often been a refuge for queers, a space in which queer bodies
can tolerably skew the margins of acceptable identity under the guise of
frivolity and entertainment—a kind of musical closet. Wayne Koestenbaum agrees
that:
Forbidden sexualities stay vague because they fear
detection and punishment. Historically, music has been defined as mystery and
miasma, and implicitness rather than an explicitness, and so we have hid inside
music; in music we can come out without coming out, we can reveal without
saying a word. (1993, p. 189-190)
The art of drag is a prime example, arising from the
traditions of minstrelsy, burlesque, variety and vaudeville as each craft
valued the art of parody, allowing for insightful social commentary, cleverly
masked by the jocular nature of entertainment. Contemporary drag queen
performances emphasise the artifice and thus the performative nature of
femininity while queering mainstream pop songs such as Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will
Survive” and Abba’s “Dancing Queen”. The drag queen has become a stable and
acceptable performer of queer identity within the Australian cultural psyche
reflected in Australia’s embrace of films such as Priscilla Queen of the Desert
and our love affair with transvestite entertainer Dame Edna Everage, to name a
few of many examples. The perception of drag performance in
‘imitation’ is at the heart of the heterosexual
project and its gender binarisms, that drag is not a secondary imitation that
presupposes a prior or original gender, but that hegemonic heterosexuality is
itself a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealizations. (1993,
p. 125)
Thirteen years after
Drag kings are biological females, or female
identified individuals who consciously perform masculinity, while bio queens
are biological females, or female identified individuals who consciously
perform hyper femininity. The term ‘bio queen’ has developed from the
previously contested term ‘bio faux queen’—an abbreviation of biologically faux
drag queen. The international drag king and queen community cautioned the term
bio faux queen, identifying instead as bio queens, because it is felt that by
naming this behaviour as faux we are suggesting that it is an imitation of
true, authentic, natural and superior behaviour, and thus the lesser of a binary
dualism. Some transsexuals still regard the prefix ‘bio’ as problematic and
prefer ‘fem drag queen’, however by using the word bio the international drag
community hoped that they could challenge and expand upon notions of biology
(Eve, Kentucky Fried Woman, Tristan Taormino & Venus Envy, 2004). Until
recently, the women who do drag have had to fight for recognition within
serious academic scholarship. Very little scholarly or popular criticism of
drag kings existed before the late 1990s and as Devitt notes “the kind of work
that femme drag queens are doing has yet to be seriously considered (2006, p.
37). Devitt, who earlier this year published a seminal discussion on the fem
drag queen, goes on further to suggest that the bio queen is extremely important
in articulating the nature of gender as performative because she does not rely
upon the displacement of the imagined “authentic” gender and gender as it is
being performed on stage (2006). This particular style of drag is predominantly
affiliated with lesbian sexuality, thus it is often assumed that drag kings and
bio queens sexually identify as lesbian, but this is not always the case. Such
assumptions place unnecessary limitations on the fluidity of queer sexuality,
so for the purpose of this exploration, sexual identity and gender performance
of the king and bio queen is best understood collectively as queer, in that it
disrupts the normative (i.e. heterosexual) project.
A
case study of Kings and Bio
Performing as a drag king or bio queen is not widely
accepted as mainstream entertainment and still struggles to find acceptance
within gay and lesbian communities, as was noted recently in an interview with
Brisbane drag king performer Dita Brook:
A lot of hardcore dykes who are anti-men don’t know
how to take us because they think we want to be men and yet we are women who
are very, very out and in touch with our own sexuality. We’re portraying men
funnily or affectionately—we don’t take the piss out of guys, we’re embracing a
part of the world and having fun with it and some of the audience members don’t
know what to do with it, it’s too uncomfortable for them. (personal
communication, November 29, 2005)
In November 2005 I interviewed six members of a
From being on stage it now overlaps into our real
lives, it gives you the space or the freedom to express yourself in any way you
want…it helps you stand on your own two feet and be more confident with who you
really want to be. You don’t have to fit into a pigeon hole of any sort, you
don’t have to conform to society. (personal communication, November 29, 2005)
On stage, each Twang Gang member performs a unique
character identity, named and nurtured throughout one’s career. Dita performs
mostly as drag king Rock Hard and occasionally as bio queen Mitzee Burger,
while Mary performs in some routines as Tricky (a parodic masculine drag king)
and then in others as Boom Bang (a super fem bio queen). The Twang Gang have a
playful, almost celebratory, air to their performances maintaining that
entertainment and community engagement is an integral part of their show.
However, this does not dilute their subversive potential, as their aesthetic is
emphatically queer; an aesthetic they achieve and maintain by invoking their
capacity for gender trouble and a pert camp sensibility.
The Twang Gang trouble gender and question the
performance of lesbian sexual identity in two highly powerful ways. Firstly, by
being female and performing masculinity and secondly by being female and also
performing femininity, thus demonstrating that gender itself is performative
and not limited by or attached to the body.
As Devitt notes: “Performing and parodying the gender they are assumed
to have allows fem drag queens to critique the connection between biology or
body and gender or performance in ways not available to conventional drag
queens” (Devitt, 2006, p. 37). At the
same time, they explore the multiple manifestations of lesbian sexual identity
and desire by demonstrating that lesbian sexuality does not necessarily imply a
gender crossing to the butch or masculine, but rather allows one to freely
assume multiple and conflicting behaviours thus deconstructing the presumed
mutual exclusivity of gender performance and sexual identity. In regards to her
performance as Tricky, Mary says that, “for me it’s not about pretending I have
a dick, it’s got nothing to do with that. It’s interesting…it’s really
empowering, it feels fantastic and it’s such a release…when you’re on stage its
another world, it’s my world” (personal communication, November 29, 2005).
The musical style and stylistic choices of the Twang
Gang contribute to the troubling of gender usually enacted by the body.
Referring again to the binary organisation of Western thought, rock music in
particular is situated in the masculine sphere while dancing and by extension
dance clubs and disco music is thought to be a feminine pursuit (Dibben, 2002,
p. 124). When asked specifically about the Twang Gang’s musical choices Dita
remarked:
When we first started, one of our catch phrases was
‘if it ain’t got a twang it don’t mean a thang’. Twang meant a bit of
guitar…[and] there just wasn’t any guitar being used in dance clubs, so when
our songs came on, and we often used classic type songs, it separated us from
what was happening in nightclubs. (personal communication, November 29, 2005).
In this instance the masculine/feminine dualism is
blurred by the incongruity of the sonic information and visual spectacle. The
nightclub space encourages dancing, thus it is gendered feminine. Femininity is
further authenticated via the elaborate costumes and choreography used in Twang
Gang performances. However, by setting these performances to classic rock music
which is gendered masculine, the performance consequently becomes gender
troubled, confusing the feminisation of the space and spectacle with the
masculinity that is culturally signified by rock music.
Camp sensibility is employed extensively in Twang
Gang performances, both in their costume and their musical sketch comedy style.
Mary’s character Tricky is camp in his attention to artifice, and it is “camp’s
attention to artifice…[that] helps undermine and challenge the presumed
naturalness of gender roles and to displace the essentialist versions of an
authentic feminine identity” (Robertson, 1996, p. 6). Tricky is a playfully
arrogant rock god[1], so Mary chooses the music according to
what best represents and identifies with Tricky’s personality. Tricky is hypermasculine
in his physicality and mannerisms, he has excessive facial hair and is often
sporting an exaggerated phallus. In a notable performance, Mary chose
Spiderbait’s version of “Black Betty” as the soundtrack to Tricky’s
performance: the heavily distorted guitar driven rock arrangement of this song
musically authenticates Tricky’s masculinity. During this performance Tricky
was onstage in a car, cruising to this song while dancing girls hung off the
sides of the car swinging their long hair around. In this instance, Mary has
used camp as a strategy for confusing heteronormativity via over-articulation
and artifice: she has exaggerated heteronormative gender roles which are then
queered by the audience who understand that the hypermasculinity is engendered
by a female body.
Camp is used in other instance as an entertaining
political device where by songs are appropriated from popular culture and
inscribed with a new meaning that will resonate specifically within queer cultural
circles. In response to religious and political oppression of queer lifestyles
the Twang Gang developed a show they called “Our Tribe” which was performed at
The costumes were bastardised versions of sacred
religious garments, redesigned with a stylistic fusion of fetish and punk
fashions. The soundtrack to this performance comprised a collection of songs
from popular culture thoroughly considered and arranged so that the concept may
be realised both musically and literally. Musical styles including industrial
rock, pop, dance, and dance remixes of soul and gospel created a shifting
musical energy and shaped the choreography. The lyrics of each song articulated
a particular idea. Some lyrics signify
religion, while others were chosen for other sentiments. The songs chosen
include: “Closer of God” by Nine Inch Nails which speaks of debauchery,
temptation and desire; “Like a Prayer” by Madonna to represent the conflict
between doing what we understand as “right” and what we desire; “Pride: A Deeper
Love” which is an Aretha Franklin remix, encapsulates self-respect and
determination and “Rise Up” by The Sun Kids is, as Dita suggests, indicative of
exploring and reconciling what is best for the individual, “it might be bad it
might be good but make sure it’s the right thing for you” (personal
communication, November 29, 2005). Finally the show ended with “Sing
Hallelujah” by Dr. Alban which celebrates the collective queerness and
diversity of both the performers and the audience. According to Susan Sontag,
“camp doesn’t reverse things. It doesn’t argue that the good is bad, or the bad
is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different set of
standards” (1966, p. 286), and as Dita previously suggested, this is precisely
what the Twang Gang were trying to articulate in their “Our Tribe” show.
As I have demonstrated, popular songs are
strategically incorporated into Twang Gang performances to signify character
identity, articulate the vested interests of queer subjectivity, and for aesthetic
appeal and continuity. Thus music assumes a crucial role in Twang Gang
performance and facilitates multiple positive outcomes. Music provides
accompaniment and a valuable support in the exploration and realisation of
fluid and multifaceted identity; and in performing exercises of the self upon
oneself. The playful nature of music provides a safe space in which individual
Twang Gang members have effected, with the assistance of fellow performers,
certain operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct and ways of
being, so as to transform themselves in the pursuit of greater happiness and
wisdom—a technology of the self. Likewise,
music has assisted the critique of “moral codes” and empowered performers who
were otherwise disempowered by their failure to align with the “acceptable
ranges of conduct produced in the given matrix of truth and power” (referring
to earlier reference by Peraino, 2003).
Social interactions facilitated by music notably
increase a positive sense of self and help to form alliances among all manner
of queer performers, engaging and strengthening a community with many
differences. Queer identity is dynamic, it is always in the process of
constructing itself and never suggests that it is or can be conceived as whole
or static. Alternative ways of being and perceiving the self create queer
temporalities so that queer identified people can act and experience a world
that exists, in this case, outside the heterosexual matrix. The capacity for
music to facilitate these actions and experiences suggests that music is not
only an important facet in the development of identity, but a vital platform
from which to challenge the heterosexist gender paradigm and, by association,
static sexual identity that, if remains unchallenged, will continue to
perpetuate the false truths of gender and sexuality.
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 4, October 2007, ISSN
1552-5112
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Notes