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Jacob Bloomfield, "Drag: A British History" (U California Press, 2023)
00:42:23
An interview with Jacob Bloomfield
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- [00:00]
Marshall Po
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Marshall Po
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:04]
Isabel Machado
Hello and welcome to New Books and Gender Studies, a podcast from the New Books Network. I'm Isabel Machado and I'll be your host for this episode and today. I can't wait to talk to Dr. Jacob Bloomfield about Drag A British History. Published by the University of California Press in 2023, a British history is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain from the 1870s to the 1970s. It provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Dr. Jacob Bloomfield is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Constance and an honorary research fellow at the University of Kent. He's. His research is situated primarily in the fields of cultural history, the history of Sexuality and gender history. Jacob, welcome to New Books and Gender Studies.
- [03:01]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Thank you.
- [03:04]
Isabel Machado
So, to get us started, tell us how this book came about, or as I like to ask folks here, tell me your book's origin story.
- [03:15]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Yeah, well, so I guess I've always been interested in gender variance in popular culture. For example, growing up I was a massive, massive Prince fan, you know, and so I had, you know, an interest in gender variance via Prince and other forms of popular culture. But really, this project started in my master's year at the University of Edinburgh and I read an article by Charles Upchurch, who's a great historian of gender and sexuality and queer history. And he, he wrote an article about the Bolton and Park case. And the Bolton and Park case is for those of audience members who don't know basically what happened. There is two female impersonators, as they would have been called then, that is drag performers who also cross dressed in their private lives. They were arrested in 1870 for conspiracy to commit sodomy. And the court case that came afterwards sort of rested on the question of whether cross dressing indicated sexual immorality and specifically sex between or among men. And they were eventually acquitted because the prosecution couldn't definitively prove this link between same sex desire and homosexual acts and cross dressing. And so this sparked my interest in the wider history of male cross dressing and male gender variance and drag performance. And only over a decade later I've written this book. So took me a little while from my master's year, but I persevered. So. And I'm happy to have released it this year.
- [05:33]
Isabel Machado
Yes, and I'm very glad that you wrote it. Something that I'm always curious about when I read a new book is about how it opens the opening of a book. And I found yours fascinating. So would you mind sharing a little bit about that story with us and telling us a little bit also about Lord Chamberlain's files? Why did you decide to open the book with Mr. Ronald John Hill's 1958 visit to the we're no Ladies mail review.
- [06:05]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Yes, thank you for asking that question. I open the book with a vignette about an official in the Lord Chamberlain's office. Lord Chamberlain's office was basically Britain's state theater censor between 1737 and 1968. And Secretary Hill, who's an employee of the Lord Chamberlain's office, attends this all male show, this drag show called we are no Ladies. I think I said it in 1958. This is and I believe October 1958. I'd have to go back. But anyway, so the show is in. It's in Notting Hill. And he is there, Secretary Hill, because he's heard that the performers in the show have been going off the licensed script, or they haven't been adhering to the licensed script. You had to, if you wanted to perform play for the public in Britain during this time, you had to submit your script to the Lord Chamberlain's Office and they would license your play based on the script. But you couldn't go off script. You had to adhere to the licensed script. And the Lord Chamberlain's Office had been getting complaints that obscene unlicensed material was being performed there. So I open with that vignette, not because I think We Are no Ladies is a landmark in theatrical history. It's sort of a. Sort of a silly lowbrow drag show. But I think it's a case study that reveals the myriad of ways in which people thought about drag then. So some people wrote into the Lord Chamberlain's Office saying this show is homosexual filth. Secretary Hill himself wasn't so enamored with this show, but he ultimately let the show continue because he said, you know, drag is a theatrical tradition in Britain. We can't stamp it out from the stage. It's as old as the stage, is what he says. He mentions that the show is very well dressed, so the performers look glamorous and they pull off convincing feminine presentations. He notes that many people in the audience are so called respectable looking people who attend with, quote, wives and girlfriends. And so I think this show sort of demonstrates all the different ways in which people were thinking about drag at the time, the different ways in which drag was perceived. It could be perceived as, as a time honored tradition in theater. It could be perceived as homosexual filth. It could be perceived as glamorous performance. It could be perceived as just kind of fun, light entertainment. So I think this case study is quite revealing because it sort of highlights all the different ways people thought about drag. And then I sort of go into those different perceptions of drag throughout the book.
- [09:42]
Isabel Machado
Yes. And it's, as I said, it's a great opening.
- [09:46]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Thank you.
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Isabel Machado
But as you write here, quote, so many meanings have been and continue to be attached to drag. An objective sense of what constitutes drag can be elusive. I definitely agree with that. But to write a book that has drag on the title, you had to come up with some sort of working definition. So how are you defining and using the term drag here?
- [10:13]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Yeah, thank you for your Question. I mean, I've thought about this a lot. My thesis was actually called male cross dressing performance in Britain. And so I could have called it male cross dressing performance. Of course, using the term male can maybe bring up its own issues, but I think use it. Saying drag kind of speaks to the cultural moment we're in now and gives it some relevance for today's readers. So I wanted to use the term drag in the title and go into what drag means. So historically, traditionally, drag can generally be described as men dressing as women, women dressing as men for the purpose of performance. But it's also another definition which I use in the book and which I think is relevant historically and today is drag is a kind of performance that comments on gender, even if gender isn't the only theme. And I think even more avant garde forms of drag that you see today still constitute a commentary on gender. They can. It can comment on a myriad of other things. Drag can. But I still feel that the commentary on gender has been and still is a key part of drag performance. And I think, you know, you, one could pick holes in my definition and maybe some people will come out but. And do that. And I'm fine with, you know, people picking my definition apart, but I do think it is good for scholars to come up with a concise, memorable definition for terms like drag.
- [12:19]
Isabel Machado
Yes, And I appreciate that. Would you mind also talking a little bit? And that's something that you do that, you know, as, as I mentioned to you, off the record, I want to use this in my teaching, your book and my teaching as well. I appreciate you talking a little bit. The sort of. The meaning and the evolution of the term. There's a lot of confusion out there, I believe, at least I believe it doesn't mean dress as a girl, right?
- [12:48]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
No.
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Isabel Machado
So can you talk a little bit about what the term means and sort of like historical meaning and how the term evolved in the time period that you're covering here?
- [13:02]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Yeah, thank you for that question. So the term drag meaning cross dressing first becomes popularized with an 1870 article in Reynolds's newspaper. That's the first time that the term drag meaning cross dressing appears in published form. And it's actually in an article on the Bolton and Park case, which I just mentioned. Bolton and park in the court case, these private correspondence written by Bolton and Park and also from others to Bolton and Park emerged. And Ernest Bolton would, for instance, use the term drag to mean cross dressing. So. So the. The term first becomes popularized in the mainstream in 1870. And that's part of the reason why this book is an analysis of drag between 1870 and 1970, because I think 1870 is an important kind of cultural moment or a kind of key historical moment. And one of the ways in which it's a key historical moment is because you have the popularization of the term drag itself. And drag comes from, like a lot of etymology, it's not a very satisfying story, but basically it comes from the drag of a gown on the ground. So it's not, for instance, a reference to dressed as a girl in the Elizabethan theater. Drag is a more modern term.
- [14:58]
Isabel Machado
Yeah, I'm a bit tired of telling people that I don't know where the dress as a girl thing came about, but it didn't make a lot of sense to me. So I loved seeing your discussion here of the history of the term and.
- [15:14]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
All that I find with. I'm not a linguist or anything, and I do cite two sources, for instance, one being Lawrence Sinelek, who wrote a towering book on crossdressing performance called the Changing Room. But. So I'm not a linguist, but I do feel like oftentimes if someone talks about the history of a word or a phrase and the story or the background of that word or phrase is quite neat, then usually there's something. I find it suspicious if it's kind of a neat story attached to that phrase or word. Oftentimes etymology is quite messy and unsatisfying. So I find the messy and unsatisfying stories related to etymology to be much more plausible most of the time.
- [16:11]
Isabel Machado
Yes, I definitely agree with you. And you started touching on my next question. So I was about to ask you about the time period covered there. So you told us a little bit about why you decided decided to start in the 1870s. But how and why did you decide on this particular time frame, this particular hundred years so, from 1870s to 1970s?
- [16:37]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Yeah, thank you for your question. So I could have gone with a myriad of kind of time frames for the book. For instance, I could have started in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater with the Boy Players. But I kind of wanted to talk about where our present day idea of drag emerged. And I think that kind of starts in the 1870s or the second half of the Victorian period. So, for instance, you have the popularization of the term drag, you have new sexual theories and what would eventually become sexology, sexual science that starts to pathologize gender variance and cross dressing, for example. So you have these new theories, both, you know, philosophical and scientific, that say you know, if you see a man wearing a dress, it's not merely just superficially a man wearing a dress. There's something deeper behind that. It indicates something about this person's Persona and private life, etc. You also have theater becoming kind of the dominant cultural form in Britain during the second half of the Victorian period. And one of the big arguments of the book is that drag is very much at the heart of popular culture. And, you know, I'm assuming a lot of the people reading my book will be people who like drag. But my hope is that even if you think drag is some sort of niche, silly subject, you'd still get a lot, a lot out of my book. Because I'm trying to tell a story of popular culture, gender and sexuality more widely through a store, through a study of Dragon. And then I stop in 1970. Not because nothing interesting happens after 1970, but, you know, lots of interesting drag history happens after 1970. But I think that sort of is when the art form takes a turn. So it kind of. You have, from around 1970, you have purer forms of drag being more overtly claimed by gay culture and gay politics. For instance, you have the radical drag contingent of the GLF in Britain using drag in protests and also forming a commune in Notting Hill based around this idea of radical drag. And even kind of not so political performance in pubs, etc. Becomes kind of more overtly gay, basically. And so you have that. And then you have less pure forms of drag percolating around popular culture. So for instance, you have pop stars and rock stars presenting themselves in sort of drag adjacent modes. That's often linked to kind of the, I guess, powder keg moment that people often point to is Mick Jagger in a Rolling Stone's performance in Hyde park after the death of Brian Jones. He wears, I think it's pronounced a fustanella. It's a Greek sort of cassock type thing, but it's interpreted as being a frock. And he's also wearing makeup and stuff as well. So kind of relevant because a new Rolling Stones album is out. So they can thank me for their spike in sales after this comes out. So. And that Rolling Stones concert, I might have mentioned it is in 1969. So I'm not. So I sort of end in 1970 because I think that's sort of a definitive break from the type of drag I'm talking about, which is a. Which is a mass cultural form that people up and down the country were seeing. People of all sorts of different classes, people of all sorts of different cultural tastes. And that doesn't necessarily disappear after 19. But I feel like 1970 is where drag takes a turn to the extent that, you know, the story I'm trying to tell is maybe less relevant, let's say from 1970 or less pertinent or.
- [21:41]
Isabel Machado
You know, so good, so good, so good. Give big.
- [21:47]
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- [22:39]
Isabel Machado
Yeah, no, I think it makes perfect sense. So as a historian, that's something that I appreciate in your book, is how you're showing here how controversies and anxieties about drag are culturally and historically specific. And I'm just quoting you here to make sure that I not plagiarizing, they defy categorizations that mark prominent present day cultural understandings. So I've looked at drag histories in other parts of the world and I do agree with you on that. So I just wanted you to talk a little bit about this importance of placing drag performances of the past in their specific historical context. Because I think sometimes we, you know, like to look at the past to talk about the present.
- [23:31]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Yeah. So I'm trying not to. In this analysis of historical drag, I'm trying not to essentialize drag as, for instance, a queer art form. Of course drag has held fascination for same sex desiring and gender non conforming audiences and practitioners. So I'm not trying to deny that history. But when I wrote the book, I was careful not to essentialize drag as meaning one thing, that is homosexuality or sexuality in general, because it was a mass cultural form and the audiences who were watching drag and the performers who are doing drag didn't essentialize drag as meaning one thing. And that's a main argument in the book because drag was a mass cultural form, it spoke to a myriad of concerns people had. It was very. Drag was very adaptable and protean in terms of kind of the type of concerns it spoke to. For instance, I talk about the performances of Arthur Lucan who played a character named Old Mother Riley. And Arthur Lucan's heyday was basically the 1930s through the mid-1950s. He actually died backstage waiting in the wings to go on stage in the clothes and makeup of Old Mother Riley. And it was quite fitting because he was very devoted to this character to the extent that he showed up to radio performances in the full costume of Old Mother Riley and freaked out co stars like Bela Lugosi by, you know, greeting them as Old Mother Riley and not Arthur Lucan. But anyway, Arthur Lucan was seen as his audience, was seen as working class. He appealed to people in the provinces and the suburbs and industrial cities. He wasn't popular in the West End even most of his films didn't premiere, didn't show up in the West End when they were released. And he spoke to working class concerns. He knew his audience. And you know, Old Mother Riley was a dame character, so that's an old woman played by a man. And the dame today is mostly seen as a slapstick, almost sort of clownish figure. And Old Mother Riley, the comedy in Old Mother Riley's stage shows and films, you know, was slapstick performance. But he also, the Old Mother Riley stage shows and, and films and radio performances and gramophone records, he had a whole media empire. Also spoke to deeper working class concerns. For instance, in the film Old Mother Riley mp, Old Mother Riley runs to be a member of parliament against her former boss. And this former boss is also a landlord, by the way, so doubly an enemy of the working class. And Old Mother Riley runs and wins on a platform of universal employment, for example, and preserving public parks. So. And you know, maybe you could interpret in Old Mother Riley performances some form of. Some sexual undertones maybe. But you know, mainly people associated Old Mother Riley with working class culture, working class concerns, family, entertainment, things of that nature that didn't have anything to do directly, at least with sexuality. And, you know, so yes, I think a history of drag, if you tell a history of drag, it is a sexual history. But there's also a myriad of other issues that drag brings up, such as, you know, convalescence after the World wars, which I discuss, such as working class culture, as I said, time worn, theatrical, traditional, etc.
- [28:21]
Isabel Machado
So one of the things that I like the most in this podcast is to be able to chat with other folks about their research process. And I am obsessed with your book's photos. I also love some of the readers letters that you quote here. Tell us a bit about your research process. How or where did you find the sources and what kinds of sources helped you tell the story?
- [28:48]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Yeah, thank you for your question. Of course, I looked at lots of newspapers, arts criticism in the press, and that's basically because a lot of the performances I discussed were never filmed. And one of the few ways in which they were recorded was through reviews in the press. So that was obviously very helpful. Another great boon from my project was the Lord Chamberlain's plays in the British Library. And the. So obviously I'm not a big fan of theater censorship and I don't. I'm glad that theater censorship in Britain or the state regime of theater censorship ended in 1968. So let me just make that clear. But a silver lining of the state regime of theater censorship is that you can go to the British Library and find entire play scripts, because these, as I mentioned, these scripts were submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's Office in order to be licensed. And, you know, you can also find what the Lord Chamberlain's Office found controversial about certain plays. And of course, it's important to acknowledge that the Lord Chamberlain's Office was not representative of the British public. So you can't necessarily say, oh, well, the Lord Chamberlain's Office found such and such a topic controversial, and therefore it was controversial amongst the wider population. But the Lord, through looking at the Lord Chamberlain's plays, you can see, you know, people would write into the Lord Chamberlain's Office complaining about certain performances. As I mentioned, again, maybe these people were not representative of the wider population, but you do get a sense of what, you know, some potentially average theater goers thought about certain plays. And you get a sense of what the police might have thought, because sometimes the Lord Chamberlain's Office would send the police to plays to observe them. You get a sense of what the courts thought, because the Lord Chamberlain's Office was dependent on the police and the courts to prosecute producers, performers, etc. Who were seen to be violating theater censorship laws. So, and then also you do get people engaging in the debate over theater censorship as a whole and giving their opinion on what the Lord Chamberlain's Office is doing. So, you know, again, it's important not to make kind of broad claims about what the wider public thought based on what you read in Lord Chamberlain's plays, but you do get a good sense of what A variety of parties thought about certain performances. I also thought it was important to talk about the Lord Chamberlain's office because they arguably had the most direct control over drag performance out of kind of any agent in, in Britain, they had the most direct control over the regulation of drag performance. So I do think again, even though you can't necessarily extrapolate what everyone in Britain was thinking about drag based on what the Chamberlain's office thinks they are very important in terms of where drag fit legally and kind of stories of state regulation of drag.
- [32:50]
Isabel Machado
Yeah. Again, looking at the sources you use, it was very inspiring. And it's always very tricky, right, that these mechanisms of policing, of repression yield amazing source basis. It's always tricky to deal with that. I still want some time to ask you about your new project that I'm fascinated with. But to start closing our interview, I wanted you to talk about the current, as you mentioned here, conspicuousness of drag and the subsequent backlashes that we're dealing with today. I found it interesting and agreed again, looking at this history in other contexts, that this claim that only now drag has gone mainstream isn't necessarily accurate. So I want you to talk a little bit about that. But also if you draw any parallels between the controversies and anxieties of the past to the ones that we're dealing with today.
- [33:57]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Yeah, thank you for asking that. So I actually wrote an article in the Telegraph about this issue, that issue being the present day culture wars over drag performance. And it's sort of interesting. When I first started the PhD thesis, I kind of felt like I was talking to supporters of drag. And the, the point of my book isn't to be a, as I might term it, a. Well, actually guy, you know what I mean? The point of the book isn't to be contrarian and to tell people they're wrong about what they think about drag. Because, you know, if somebody says I connect drag with queer culture or I associate drag with queer culture, I don't think they're wrong. But what I am trying to do is contextualize what people think about drag currently. So I say to those people, okay, well, you know, my book, well, illuminate how drag and queer culture came to be associated. So for both practitioners and observers, for example. So the aim of my book is to put these are modern ideas of drag into a historical context and not to tell people they're wrong about what they think about drag, because I don't think they are. So when I first started I kind of thought, okay, I'm contextualizing what drag supporters think about drag currently. So, for instance, there's this idea that drag has become more globally homogenous based because of RuPaul's Drag Race today. And, you know, I think there is a lot to that argument. But also I say, well, in the 19th century and 20th century, there were global networks of drag, too. You had drag performers moving across the Atlantic in both directions, going all around Europe and North America and Australia, for example, performing their drag shows. You had plays involving drag that were popular on both sides of the Atlantic. So there was a global network of drag to point to in the 19th and 20th centuries. So I thought I was sort of speaking to drag supporters and offering historical context to what they thought about drag. Now I feel like I'm sort of with the current day, with the present day culture war over drag, I sort of feel like I'm talking to drag the opposition or drag detractors. And I'm not sure whether they'll buy my book necessarily. But, you know, my Telegraph article is sort of speaking to the socially conservative detractors of drag or the socially conservative opposition to drag, saying, hey, you know, there's actually a long tradition of people who were socially conservative embracing drag. There's a tradition of drag actually appealing to conservative tastes and conservative moors. And, you know, a big argument in my book is that drag was at the heart of British popular culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. You know, when radio first emerged, you have drag on the radio from the very beginning, in the 1920s and 1930s, for example, when television first emerges, you have drag on television. The drag ventriloquist Bobby Kimber was on television in the late 1930s. And of course, later on, you have Danny LaRue, who is a ubiquitous presence on television as well as on stage. So it's interesting that conservatives who, you know, claim to venerate British culture and British tradition are turning their backs on this, on this, you know, cultural tradition. And in a way, now I feel like the book is speaking to those people a little bit. But like I said, I'm not sure if they'll buy the book. Probably you're more likely to buy the book if you like drag. But I'll say right here, if you like drag, buy the book. If you hate drag, buy the book. If you're ambivalent towards Dragon, buy the book. I think all those groups of people will find something to like.
- [38:51]
Isabel Machado
Yes, they will. And as I have been telling the folks who are collaborating in my new project that involves drag performers, drag's been here for A long, long time and it ain't going nowhere. So there's no, no use in all this silly backlash now.
- [39:09]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Yes. And I just want to say that the book, of course, you know, I enjoy talking about past drag performance, but I welcome. It's not meant to be overly nostalgic. I think drag in the present day is great. It's obviously adaptable. It's ever changing. As I said, I still think that the definition of drag as a commentary on gender is still relevant, but maybe that'll change in 10 to 20 years. And I think it's great that all sorts of people are getting into drag and that what a drag artist is, is basically based on a person's self definition. You know, CIS women can be drag queens, CIS men can be drag kings. You have non binary drag artists, so you have. So drag is ever changing and it's getting more and more interesting and creative. And so I think the art form has a bright future.
- [40:23]
Isabel Machado
Yes, yes, amen to that. But I can't let you go without telling us a little bit about your new project that I'm already looking forward to.
- [40:33]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Thanks. So the next project is about Little Richard, but oddly for a project about Little Richard, I'm sort of taking Little Richard out of the spotlight. You know, you have the Charles White biography autobiography on Little Richard and you have the recent documentary that came out. So I think there's been, you know, not enough probably, but still a good amount of solid material on Little Richard himself. And I'm sort of moving the spotlight towards how people received Little Richard, the historical reception to Little Richard amongst various demographics of people. White people, queer people, straight people, Europeans, non Europeans, the black queer community. And so I'm looking at the historical reception to Little Richard and I'm looking at his overall cultural impact and how kind of narratives of Little Richard's life and his kind of cultural significance have changed throughout time, ever since he first emerged in the mainstream, at least with the single tutti frutti in 1955.
- [41:53]
Isabel Machado
As I said, I'm looking forward to that and I hope when the book's ready, you come back and tell us all about it. Thanks, Jacob. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.
- [42:04]
Dr. Jacob Bloomfield
Okay, I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. And thank you all you listeners out there in radio land.
- [42:11]
Isabel Machado
Yes, thank you all for tuning in to this episode of New Books and Gender Studies, a podcast from the New Books Network. I'm Isabelle Machado, and until next time.