To Wong Foo, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Priscilla

 

by Pa Rock

Culture Vulture

Last night I came across a movie classic streaming on Amazon Prime and spent a very enjoyable evening watching a a nearly thirty-year-old film.  "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything!  Julie Newmar" is one of the better movies about drag queens ever made.  It is funny as well as dramatic, and certainly emotionally-uplifting as well.  As I watched this top-drawer film, I silently dedicated the evening to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, both of whom appear to possess an unnatural fear of drag queens and who support legislation that aims to keep the drag culture away from public view.  Both of those good-old-boy he-men seem to be operating under the assumption that if a young boy sees a man in a frock, he will grow up wanting to wear make-up and dresses.

Oddly Donald Trump, who looks like an old drag queen with very bad hair, seems to generally give this easy culture war target a pass.  Perhaps that is Rudy's influence rubbing off on him.  (Serious question:  Is there any man in America who wears more make-up than Donald John Trump, or wears it as badly?)

I question the DeSantis-Abbott premise that a desire to cross-dress is like a virus and something that you catch through exposure.  I watched "Some Like It Hot" at a movie theatre in 1958, with my mother, and didn't rush home and start trying on her clothes.   Nor have I ever worn women's clothing - even after watching "Tootsie" and the old Tom Hanks' television series "Bosom Buddies."  I'm not built for that.  I even have a hard time looking presentable in my own clothes.

If you have never seen "Wong Foo," now is a great time to catch it while it is streaming on Prime.  It is the story of two professional drag queens - Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes - who win a regional contest in New York City that gives them free airline transportation to Los Angeles to compete in a national drag contest.  Before they make the trip, however, they run into a young Puerto Rican drag queen (whom they refer to as a drag princess) (John Leguizamo) and decide to sell their airline tickets, buy a $50 boat of a used convertible, and drive to LA and take the princess with them.  Along the way their car breaks down near a small Nebraska town, and the three very stylish "ladies" from New York manage to totally change the local cultural landscape.  The movie is fun, and, at times, very poignant.

"Wong Foo" came out one year after the release of a similar (and better) movie in Australia.  "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," was the tale of two drag performers, one of whom was a transgender woman (Hugo Weaving and Terence Stamp) who live and work in Sydney and are invited to do a long run at a club in Alice Springs which is on the far side of the Australian outback.  They invite a young drag performer (Guy Pearce) who is very outgoing, somewhat petulant, and hard to control in social situations, to join them in the journey to Alice Springs, and the young queen manages to talk his rich mother into buying them a used commercial bus in which to make the trip.  They paint the bus pink and christen her "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert."

Most of the rest of that movie is a roadtrip across the Australian outback by bus, with breakdowns along the way.  The two movies, Priscilla and Wong Foo, have many similarities, but Priscilla is more professionally done with better music and many more musical stage productions.  Either is a very entertaining way to spend an evening.

I would recommend that both Governors DeSantis and Abbott keep their distance from these films just in case the urge to cross-dress can be transmitted telepathically through film.  However, with those white vinyl boots that Governor DeSantis wore in the wet aftermath to Hurricane Ian, he may have already been infected.

(Special Drag Notes:  "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" has been adapted as a musical for the stage and has already enjoyed a world tour, and "Some Like It Hot," the 1958 classic film which starred Marilyn Monroe and  Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag, is currently enjoying great success as a musical theatre production on Broadway.  Put that in your pipes and smoke it, Ron and Greg!)