It’s — TransTainment!
Welcome to the world of transgender people in the arts and entertainment! We call it TransTainment!
This past Saturday RuPaul Charles hosted Saturday Night Live. Some of the skits were dead on arrival but one outstanding bit was a take on the Drag Queen Story Time phenomena. “Library officials” portrayed by cast members, introduced RuPaul as a special guest who will teach the children in the crowd how to read. It soon becomes apparent that the kind of “reading” RuPaul is there to teach is not about books. RuPaul is teaching the kids how to throw shade in grand drag queen style. The other outstanding bits of the show featuring Miss Charles were all pre-recorded. The most entertaining filmed sketch was RuPaul’s drag queen makeover of cast member Pete Davidson. Read all about the “reading” skit in Newsweek.
Chad. The next drag superstar?
Speaking of Pete Davidson’s drag makeover; RuPaul spots Davidson’s “Chad” character during a photoshoot and stops everything to turn Chad into the next drag icon, the next RuPaul. But Chad is never enthusiastic about anything and finally says he doesn’t want to be the next drag superstar. View the video on the UPI website.
Billy Porter made the news recently when it was announced that he would appear on an upcoming episode of Sesame Street wearing his iconic tuxedo dress. Of course this led to a flurry of comments, some favorable and some outraged that a man in a dress should appear on a children’s show. The fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be different seems to drive the protests coming from people of a conservative bent. We all know that seeing Billy Porter singing with a penguin while wearing a fabulous outfit might inspire some young folks to want to dress that way but that’s because they were already born that way. Any cisgender straight kids will not be harmed when the episode airs. You can read what Porter said in response to the critics in the Yahoo U.K. entertainment news.
James Charles channeling Kylie Jenner.
YouTube “beauty influencer” James Charles made the news on January 27 when he posted an Instagram photo of himself impersonating Kylie Jenner. Jenner had posted a photo of herself posing in front of a tan SUV. Charles, made up to look exactly like her and with his butt padded out to Kardashian proportions, recreated her pose with similar clothing and a black SUV. Charles’s re-creation hit Instagram an hour after Jenner’s went up. Crossdressers take note; James Charles got it all together in under an hour. Unless he was lounging around already impersonating Jenner that is an impressive speed makeover. Read the article in the Yahoo Entertainment news. We wonder if Kylie will have self esteem issues over a 20-year-old male looking as hot as she does.
Legendary French female impersonator Michou has passed away. Michou ran France’s most celebrated drag cabaret, Chez Michou, for more than a half-century. He died on January 26 in a hospital in Saint-Mandé, a suburb of Paris. He was 88. Learn more about him and his career from The New York Times.
Mikkel Boe Følsgaard as Agnete.
In the new movie A Perfectly Normal Family, two sisters find that their lives are changed forever when their father starts a gender transition. The writer-director Malou Reymann’s father went through a gender transition. Screen Daily has an interview with the director. While the film is telling a true story from the children’s point of view the director chose a cisgender male actor to portray the transgender woman. This may stir up some controversy but the reasoning behind the casting choice had to do with the necessity of introducing the father to the audience as a male in the early minutes of the film. The actor Mikkel Boe Følsgaard could portray both aspects whereas, in the director’s opinion, a trans woman who had completed her transition would have a hard time playing the father before transition.
Jazz Jennings as Micayla in Denim.
Jazz Jennings stars in a new film titled Denim that looks at the life of a trans girl in high school. She is outed by a vengeful classmate after she uses the girl’s restroom. Director Daryen Ru says, “Denim emphasizes that transgender people are people too. Regardless of all of the ways that we try to categorize, label, and divide people, at the end of the day, we are all humans and want the same things. Love and acceptance.” Learn more about the film from the Dazed website.
Charles Busch, male actress, playwright and and reluctant drag legend, has written another play that calls upon his fondness for the films of Hollywood’s pre-code era. The time from 1929 to around 1934 when male characters would pull up their pants and talk fast while dames would emote energetically in a strange accent that mingled elements of the Mainline and Broadway. The new play is called The Confession of Lily Dare and Busch plays Lily by drawing on the mannerisms, personalities and style of the great actresses of the old pictures. He portrays her at different times of her life, going from young ingenue to old madam. He is always hovering between spoofing and homage. Read all about the play in The New York Times. It runs through March 5 at Cherry Lane Theater, Manhattan; 212-352-3101, primarystages.org. Running time: 2 hours.
Swann on the right.
Do you think that drag balls were only a thing in Manhattan in the 1980s-’90s? If so you are wrong. Drag balls have been happening in the U. S. since way, way back. And drag queens have been on the scene since those early days. The person who gets credit for being the first drag queen is a black man named William Dorsey Swann, but to his friends he was known as “the Queen.” Born in Maryland around 1858, Swann endured slavery, the Civil War, racism, police surveillance, torture behind bars, and many other injustices. In the 1880s he became the first activist to lead a queer resistance group and referred to himself as a “queen of drag.” By 1888 Swann was running drag balls in Washington, D.C. To the average Washington resident of the day Swann’s balls were shocking and immoral affairs where men dressed as women and got up to who knows what? To the attendees of the parties they were a place where they could be themselves. Learn more about Swann and the balls from an article in The Nation.
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Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment
About the Author (Author Profile)
Angela Gardner is a founding member of The Renaissance Transgender Assoc., Inc., former editor of its newsletter and magazine, Transgender Community News. She was the Diva of Dish for TGF in the late 1990s and Editor of LadyLike magazine until its untimely demise. She has appeared in film and television shows portraying TG characters, as well as representing Renaissance on numerous talk shows.Subscribe
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