OK – here’s the story.\u00a0I was reading\u00a0a newspaper the other day and it reported that a Hartford, Connecticut bar had scheduled Shirley Q.\u00a0Liquor to perform this month. For those of you who don’t know, Shirley Q. Liquor\u00a0is a drag queen. Not only that, it’s a southern white man impersonating a poor southern black woman (the actor also plays a white Christian woman and a white male doctor as other characters in his repertoire).<\/p>\n
Anyway, I believe it was around 20 various gay\/lesbian and African-American groups that are now protesting this performance. In fact, I think the city council is even\u00a0voting whether to ban the performance (do they have that right or is this merely a symbolic gesture)?<\/p>\n
So I guess my question is this (and I’m playing devil’s advocate here); how does this differ than any other type of impersonation that we currently see on TV or in the media. I mean, the PC thing to say is that you shouldn’t mock\/impersonate a minority. So that means a white person shouldn’t impersonate a black person. But why is it okay to impersonate other minorities in the name of entertainment and we’re allowed to\u00a0all love it?<\/p>\n
Men dress as women nightly\u00a0in bars across the country to entertain straight and gay audiences. They also have appeared in movies (Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis in “Some Like it Hot”, Gene Hackman\u00a0in “The Bird Cage”, Patrick Swayze, John Lequizamo and Wesley Snipes in “Too Wong Foo”, the entire cast of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”, Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire”…and the list goes on and on). Is this offensive to women to have a man play a woman?<\/p>\n
Also, straight actors frequently take\u00a0gay roles in movies and TV (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall\u00a0in “Brokeback Mountain”, Tom Hanks in “Philadelphia”, Paul Rudd in “Object of my Affection”, Eric McCormack in “Will and Grace”, Hilary Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry”, Cybil Shephard\u00a0in “The L-Word”\u00a0…and dozens more). Is this offensive to gay men and women to have straight actors portray them?<\/p>\n
The roles I mentioned aren’t stereotyping the gay men, so does that make it OK? What about Bronson Pinchot in “Beverly Hills Cop” or Sean Hayes in “Will and Grace”? In those roles they’re completely stereotyping the effeminite gay male…and gays and straights alike crack up watching it. Why are these impersonations acceptable but not others? Aren’t they just as offensive?<\/p>\n
Then there are the Wayan’s Brothers who did the movie “White Chicks” where two black men played white women (essentially the same thing as Shirley Q. Liquor…in reverse). Hell, the straight older Wayan’s Brothers used to also have characters impersonate stereotypical gay men back in the 80’s with their Men on Film segments\u00a0on “In Living Color” (which I found hilarious, even as a gay man.)<\/p>\n
I’m just asking…I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m just wondering why certain impersonations (no matter how much they play into stereotypes) are allowed without question while others aren’t. Thoughts?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OK – here’s the story.\u00a0I was reading\u00a0a newspaper the other day and it reported that a Hartford, Connecticut bar had scheduled Shirley Q.\u00a0Liquor to perform this month. For those of you who don’t know, Shirley Q. Liquor\u00a0is a drag queen. Not only that, it’s a southern white man impersonating a poor southern black woman (the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}