On Saturday evening, July 7, I hiked across the River Liffey to the Pantibar to see the one and only Miss Pandora “Panti” Bliss perform
in her much-talked-about weekly drag show. I entered the experience never
having seen a live drag show (only a few episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race), and wasn’t quite sure how it would differ from
what my very limited, commercially influenced view of what it meant to perform
in drag. Much to my delight, I found Panti and her fellow performers not only
hilarious, fun, and entertaining, but also deeply thought provoking and
inspirational. In watching the show, I found that drag performance as
entertainment is a profound way of destabilizing fixed notions of identity
formation, challenging the way in which these categories are socially
constructed, and creating a space for the envisioning and realization of social
ideals.
Miss Panti Bliss
Find out more about Pantibar at http://www.pantibar.com/
One issue that I felt the performance put pressure on was
that of voyeurism: what does it mean to gather in a space with a large group of
people and expect to be “entertained” through the viewing of other’s
individuals “performing” bodies? In thinking about the expectations held by me
and my classmates before arriving, and our perhaps overzealous excitement to
see the show, I think the question of voyeurism is unavoidable. I first
realized this when we walked into the pub, and the bouncer, while checking our
IDs, said, “You know this is a gay bar, right?” Although we all seemed mildly
baffled as to why he would think this would phase us, it soon became a little
more clear what he meant as we entered to find that the vast majority of the
club consisted of middle-aged, white, gay men. While I don’t think this really
deterred anyone from feeling happy to be there, I have to say that I did feel
like somewhat of an intruder. In a large group of American college students,
mostly female, we not only stuck out, but I suspect that we also looked somewhat
like we were there to “see the spectacle.”
However,
once the show started I began to feel differently. I realized that drag as
entertainment invites, and uses our voyeuristic “gaze” as a tool for social
commentary: In the act of watching, we are consciously being asked to engage
and think critically about the social construction of gender. I think this idea
is ingeniously illustrated in the show through the use of lip-synched songs. To
me, this was a carefully chosen act that parallels the performances of the
bodies onstage: the drag queens, like the way they comically lip-synch, draw
attention to the fact the fact that the gender they display on stage is a performance. Of course to point to their
performance of their gender is not to imply an illegitimacy of transgender
bodies, but to say that, as entertainment, drag is used to remind us that
gender is constructed, not
biological. And, in thinking about it, that is the very reason we come to see
drag shows: because something about the deconstruction of gender interests us.
The use
of continuous costume change also served as a reminder of the instability of
binary gender throughout the show. Throughout the night, Panti changed her
costume every time she entered the stage, and made several jokes about going to
change her “rat’s nest of a wig.” The show also used a lot if homo-erotic
innuendo, and although this could arguably be seen as a perpetuation of the
over-sexualized gay male stereotype, I think that again, this is crucial to the
almost Brechtian way of calling attention to the intentionally overt
performance of gender in the show. By
forcing the audience to become aware of the “spectacle” that is intentionally
created, we are asked the engage and think critically about the social
construction of identity.
However, thinking about drag as intentional “spectacle”
is potentially problematic, especially considering that the gender being
performed is female. While it could be argued that, the representation of the
sexualized female body on the stage only serves to perpetuate the problematic
“gaze”, I think the Brechtian nature of the performance actually fights against
this. Again, not only does the overt display of gender point itself as performance, but it arguably serves
as a sort of parody of the objectification of the female body. In A Woman In Progress, Panti talks about
how for a while as a young adult she was
a cartoonist, but that it was only the “obvious use of the things [I was] good
at.” Later, she felt she achieved a fuller realization of her talents by
performing in drag. I think this illustrates beautifully the purpose behind the
use of the “female body as spectacle” in Panti’s drag show. The bodies we see
on stage are presented as amplified versions of the “femme fatale”, rather than
recreations. Because the genders performed onstage are “larger than life”,
they, like a good cartoon, sketch and create an alternate, imagined version of
the female gender, arguably a separate gender in itself, which subtlety and
beautifully comments on the way gender is viewed in the context of modern Irish
(and largely, Western) society.
Panti preparing to go onstage
Here, I should take a second to clarify the distinction
between drag as entertainment (specifically in the Pantibar) from the use of drag in everyday life, as well as other transgender
identities. It is the performance space of the show itself that makes all the
difference, because in asking for an audience, attention is purposefully called
to bodies onstage, which are ultimately used towards an artistic purpose. Drag
and transgender identities in the lived reality of everyday life are by no
means “cartoonish,” unless of course that is an intentional choice of the
individual. Subsequently, the performance of a transgender identity onstage, in
no way delegitimizes it, but merely allows itself to become a bearer creative
expression and creator of commentary.
The most interesting moments in the show for me, however,
were when, right before Panti would leave the stage for a quick change, she
would tell us that her friend Bunny was going to “talk to about a little bit
about transubstantiation!” I felt
that this packed little phrase was a beautiful summation of the way in which
the ideas are not only presented, but enacted
within the show. Using a reference to the central event of the Catholic mass
(aside from the fascinating address of a specifically Irish identity in the
context of queer performance) works to conflate the image of the new
“hyper-female” transgender identity to the literal transformation of the host
into the flesh of Christ. The “hyper-female” body, at least in Panti’s show is
a literal embodiment of an idealistic space, where queer gender performance is not
only appreciated, but makes the audience think. This, in addition to numerous
moments of called on audience participation, put into practice something akin
to Jill Dolan’s “Utopian Performative”: in the performance space, we enact the
world we want to see.
Another intriguing aspect of the
performance at the Panitbar, was the
lip-synched performance of scene taken from various films and TV shows. Through
the many hilarious and farcical scenes melodramatically performed by Panti and
Bunny (ranging from Irish soap operas, to interviews with Stella McCartney, to
scenes from Mommy Dearest), we saw
the further development of the critique of constructed “social norms.” By
employing extreme characterization (and lots of slapstick humor), the
performers engaged in a sort of endearing mockery and reaction to the
superficial and constructed images of “real people” that are mass-produced in
the media, begging the question: who decides what is “real”? Through parody,
Panti critiques media for disseminating cultural material that is at once
unsubstantial and ultimately detrimental in the way that it reinforces limited
and superficial ways of dealing with identity. By putting a number of different
female stereotypes on display, Panti puts pressure on the cheap commodification
of human interaction and character, and once again pokes at the instability of
the normative social images that regulate and limit our view of appropriate
social behavior.
Ultimately though, I think the most important reason that
Panti’s show works as a powerful form of critique, is that it fun. Through the spirited and comedic
nature of the show, the performers use “play” (a crucial form of social
development according to many social theorists) to test boundaries, to decide
for ourselves what is “normal” and what is not. In the amusing and encouraging
environment of the Pantibar, we are
allowed to experiment, to test out new ideas, to reinvent old notions of how we
relate to gender. In this way, the drag show intersects with years of Irish
performance, as it acts out Yeats’ ideal of the theater as the “ultimate
creator of all values.” Through the use of humor, Panti creates an inclusive environment
that ultimately serves as a space where people are comfortable experimenting
with, and re-imagining social values.
I walked away from the show feeling mildly, but
pleasantly, surprised by what I had seen. Although I anticipated much of the
camp, the melodrama and glitzy costumes, I had no idea how these components
would be used as powerful vessels for larger social issues. As Panti herself
says in A Woman in Progress, “…that’s
all I am: a big, drunk, devastatingly attractive theatrical device.” Ultimately, drag as entertainment not only
makes important commentary about the construction of gender, but also helps
open up the conversation about formation of identity, and the creation of
social values.
Emma Nicholls, Lauren Hart and Maya Miesner (the author)
with friends at Pantibar
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