Packing tens of thousands of fans into a convention hall is a feat typically reserved for spectacular conventions where new Marvel movies or Lego sets are announced. In 2019, RuPaul’s DragCon New York City proved the exception by bringing in over 100,000 fans of drag, reaffirming beyond a doubt that drag’s cultural force is well and truly alive in the modern day. Hundreds of queens walked the floor in an event featuring discussions led by Whoopi Goldberg and even an appeal to voting from Elizabeth Warren. Events like this convention, alongside RuPaul’s eponymous Emmy-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race, have enshrined drag’s place as a bonafide pop culture phenomenon.
At Harvard’s Houghton Library, the rich history of drag in the United States is currently on display.
“American Drag” traces drag from its Victorian origins through the postwar boom, counterculture movement, and explosion of popularity in the mid-90s. Running from September 6th to January 6th, 2023, the exhibit presents archival posters and photos that highlight the American audience’s shifting appetite for drag along with the art form’s evolution as cultural perceptions on gender and sexuality have changed.
Harvard has its own unique relationship with drag. The Hasty Pudding Institute, founded in 1795 and today the country’s oldest collegiate theatrical company, has a long tradition of drag performances as part of its annual show. In the 1980, following the assault of an Adams House student for his sexuality, the House put on a Drag Ball (later renamed to Drag Night) which has since become an annual tradition, giving students an opportunity to express themselves freely. The exhibition includes a Hasty Pudding Theatricals score from 1910 with a cover image of a student in drag.
Each of eight stations around the room display a different “era” of drag. Seen here from the section on “Countercultural Drag” are three editions of Female Mimics, a nationally published magazine demonstrating drag’s increasing audience.
Literature in general presents a fascinating archive of perspectives on drag, especially when written for the community rather than about it. On display was the premiere issue of My Comrade, a zine meant to document the exploding popularity of drag in New York City in the 1990s. The magazine featured drag icons like RuPaul and Lady Bunny and was meant to spotlight the gay community during the AIDS epidemic, when stigma and discrimination were widespread. As the magazine’s creator Linda Simpson told Dazed, “I wanted to do something that would be reflective of the images—but the times were so dark that I wanted to do something upbeat and defiant.”
The exhibit also incorporates recordings of drag performances, including a performance of Ty Bennett’s Queen for a Day (1961) which is among the best preserved representations of a high-class drag act from this era.
Along the walls are posters from various performances, movies, and documentaries featuring drag and its history, including from the groundbreaking 1968 documentary The Queen, which followed drag queens participating in the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Contest. The documentary (which is available on Netflix) has been heralded for its look into the lives of these performers who routinely faced discrimination and arrest.
At times, the exhibit falls short in its reckoning with divisions in and around the drag movement, particularly on the basis of race. A pivotal scene in The Queen comes when Crystal LaBeija, who is Black, walks off the stage and accuses the organizers of fixing the competition for a white contestant named Rachel Harlow. In a scene so memorable that it’s been featured on a Frank Ocean track, LaBeija tells the organizers, “This is why all the true beauties didn’t come.” LaBeija would go on to found her own ball for Black queens and the House of LaBeija, which spawned its own subculture within drag and has continued on into modern LGBTQ+ culture.
The exhibit successfully presents and contrasts the stories of Sir Lady Java and Burma Taylor , two popular drag queens active in the 1960s and 70s who faced considerably different reactions to their performances. Sir Lady Java, who is Black, faced discriminatory and selective enforcements by the Los Angeles Police Department in shutting down her performances and tried organizing rallies and getting help from the ACLU in vain.
“American Drag” presents a broad view of the perceptions and acceptance of drag, particularly in the last decade. Yet the exhibit fails to provide greater context to the intersectionality inherent in drag culture. Presenting the history of drag as a series of transitions between increasing periods of cultural acceptance is to miss the labor that generations of drag queens and activists had to put in to achieve where we are today, along with how far we still have to go.
Matthew Shum ‘24 (mshum@college.harvard.edu) wants to check out Houghton Library’s books bound in human skin.