Divine drag queen oscars1/21/2024 We’ve been far too tasteful for far too long. She grew up watching Divine “she was my savior,” she told Gay Times, “she was my RuPaul.Divine in Pink Flamingos. RuPaul alum Ginger Minj said in 2019 that playing the sea witch was her biggest goal. For years, the drag community has asked for an actual drag queen to be cast in the iconic role. “Absolutely why we should hire up and coming queer artists with a pulse on the present and a vision for the future more often,” tweeted RuPaul’s Drag Race star and trans activist Kerri Colby. When Disney released a featurette of Ursula’s live-action transformation, drag queens from Art Simone to Sierra La Puerta roasted the uneven makeup application. McCarthy’s performance has not gone without criticism. And that was something that I was very touched by: that he could unleash all that anger within him from growing up gay and overweight at a time where you had to keep all that hidden from the world.” “But as Glenn, he was a very soft-spoken, quiet, shy, sweet man. “As Divine, he could be outrageous, in your face, shocking, aggressive, terrifying, and hilarious,” Schwarz says. Their standout characters are larger than life, satirical, raunchy, and rough around the edges. McCarthy and Divine also share the chasm they’ve forged between the roles they play and their individual identities. Schwarz says McCarthy speaking openly is significant, “because we’re in such a fraught moment surrounding these issues about drag, which is an all-American art form.” (Drag bans are becoming increasingly common, adding to the more than 475 anti-LGBTQ legislative bills introduced across the country this year.) “So the fact that she’s out there promoting a Disney movie and acknowledging the influence of one of the great drag queens of all time, I really have a lot of respect for that.” I wanted to give her everything that she was due.” “Just to give it that same-to give it your all, to throw it out there, no apologies, do it your way. “I just hope to do every incredible drag queen proud, and Divine proud,” McCarthy said at the May premiere. Two decades later, she paid homage to “ the queen of all drag queens” in Entertainment Weekly, dressed as Divine in Pink Flamingos. In a gold lamé swing coat, a huge wig, and big eyelashes, she gave stand-up comedy her first try. McCarthy herself got her start as a performer in New York City in her early 20s as the drag queen Miss Y. “It’s all delicious things wrapped up in one.” McCarthy, who corroborated this on the Little Mermaid blue carpet in May, said that she is a “huge fan of drag.” “It’s just so fun, it’s irreverent, you can poke fun and pay homage to someone at the same time,” she said. Composer Alan Menken, who co-wrote the music with Ashman for the original animated Little Mermaid, also worked on the live-action movie and confirmed in April that Divine was the inspiration behind Ursula. “And I think Divine was somebody who really opened up the possibilities of what drag could be.” How Melissa McCarthy’s Ursula recognizes Divine and drag cultureĭisney can no longer avoid saying that Ursula and Divine are inextricable. “He was a pioneer, and we would not have the landscape of drag the way we know it today without Divine,” Schwarz says. In a sea of queens who “wanted to be Miss America,” glamorous and feminine, Divine, with his fierce refusal to abide by beauty standards, stood out. Four decades before RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag was “the opposite of hip,” Waters says. Back then, drag balls differed drastically from those of today. He started making films with Waters in the 1960s, in Baltimore. But in Ursula, audiences find otherworldly beauty-and now, a clear recognition of her roots.ĭivine, who also went by the name Harris Glenn Milstead, was born in 1945 and died of heart failure in 1988. It has toed a similar line with its practice of queer coding villains: Disney has been soundly criticized both for not making them overtly out and for assigning an evil connotation to being queer. Disney seemed to want to walk a tightrope between appeasing queer fans-many of whom have long seen themselves reflected in its characters-and not alienating those who oppose gay rights. Last year, then-CEO Bob Chapek defended the company’s reported $250,000 in donations to backers of Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Disney has a long, fraught relationship with the LGBTQ+ community. In 1989, Disney would have never openly acknowledged Divine’s influence, says Jeffrey Schwarz, who chronicled the longtime collaboration between Waters and Divine on Waters’ avant-garde “midnight movies,” like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living, in the 2013 documentary I Am Divine.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |