No Loving For Wong Foo: Racism and Gender Stereotypes in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everthing! Julie Newmar

When a straight man puts on a dress and gets his sexual kicks, he is a transvestite.

When a man is a woman trapped in a man's body and has a little operation, he is a transsexual.

When a gay man has way too much fashion sense for one gender, he is a drag queen

and when a tired little Latin boy puts on a dress he is simply a boy in a dress.

                                                                        -Wesley Snipes

            Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes) explains to the Chi Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo) what a drag queen is.  The moment is the most memorable one in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (directed by Beeban Kidron), which tries desperately to appeal to a mainstream audience.  The line though directed at Chi Chi is meant to inform the audience of what a drag queen is, rather than leaving them a mystical aberration of humanity.  The movie plays heavy into gender stereotypes of both men and women and the queens though portrayed as saviors in the movie are really one-sided versions of queens that have only the positive qualities that would appeal to the mainstream.  To Wong Foo parades as a multi-cultural celebration of genders but establishes a gross hierarchy of race and gender through the characterization of submissive women, domineering men, and a trio of queens ranked by their race.

            Vida Bohemme (Patrick Swayze), Noxeema Jackson, and Chi Chi Rodriquez are three New York queens who find themselves on a road trip to California in a convertible Cadillac.  On the cliché trip out west the three find themselves voguing alongside a train, staying at a hotel posed as female basketball players, and vying for the position of dominant queen.  But inevitably the heroic voyage must be filled with obstacles and an arch nemesis.  Vida Bohemme ends up being humiliated by one white Sheriff Dollard (Chris Penn) who after trying to assault what he thinks is a woman finds genitals of the improper sort and promptly receives a kick which knocks him out.  The three take off and then break down shortly after and end up stranded in a heartland town.  Then like any classic western, the three outsiders proceed to clean up the town, put the villains in their place, and help the average citizens become heroes in their own right.  The movie is filmed linearly with standard camera shots.  If not for the impressive cast the movie could slip by as any B-rated Hollywood flick.

            While mainstream audiences enjoy the movie as humorous and heartwarming there is little material in the movie to make them feel uncomfortable.  The three queens never touch each other or other men except to punch or throw them.  The women, all submissive, are either abused by men or unable to tell the men that they are attracted.  The white men in the town are all abusive and have power over the women.  The only black straight man (Mike Hodge) in the movie is a nice quiet and safe man that lets the audience forget that they have negative feelings about minorities.  The movie plays up these stereotypes to let the audience have a laugh rather than discomfort over their negative feelings toward queens.  The abusive white men like Virgil (Arliss Howard) who beats his wife Carol Ann (Stockard Channing) until she cries only make the drag queens out to be more sympathetic.

            But the movie is not kind or honest in its portrayal of gender.  The queens show little in the way of sexual energy.  Vida and Noxeema do not even mention their desires.  Only Chi Chi finds a love interest who she seduces through deception.  But the movie doesn't allow drag queens to be about gay sex.  Chi Chi gives up the lover to a girl rather than let audiences think that the boy could possibly know what she really is and actually be interested in her as a man.  The queens are only there to demonstrate to the straight men and women around them who to act properly in their own genders.  In a way, they are objects of contrast, rather than real people.  The women must all learn from the queens how to be more dominant and outspoken as well as how to outfit themselves like women.  Noxeema leads them all to a discovery in the local clothing store of outrageous 60s clothing which sets the women free to be flirtatious, sexual, and proud.  The women are incapable of doing this on their own.  The men also must learn respect through castration and reformation.  Noxemma grabs one rude boys balls and forces him to talk to the women like they are ladies.  The whole notion that these townspeople are uneducated hicks who do not know what it means to be a man or a woman is insulting but the stereotype that drag queens are an expert on both genders is doubly disturbing.

            To make matters worse, the queen also perpetuate stereotypes about race in their hierarchy.  Vida, the white women, is the educated rich woman from a suburb in Pennsylvania.  She leads the crew, drives the car, and makes the final decisions about everything including taking Chi Chi along.  Her word is always final.  Noxeema, the black woman, is the voguing, snapping, smart-mouthed but distant woman who often disagrees with Vida but doesn't ever fight for her own opinions. Chi Chi, the hispanic woman, is the slutty, foul-mouthed, ignorant, "swayback" who constantly makes mistakes against the wise advice of her companions simply because this is her role.  The portrayal of these identities and the insults that they trade are so offensive that they lose their humor after the first ten minutes of the movie.  In one scene Vida calls Chi Chi "swayback," "putah spanish fly," who has a "piñata for a head."  Chi Chi responds by calling her a "white, honky, cracker bitch," and while the mainstream audience is laughing, the lgbt community, and minority rights groups are squirming in their seats over the disgusting portrayal of racist queens.  RuPaul's brief appearance as Rachel Tensions in the beginning of the movie is perhaps the only moment where the problem is even acknowledged or where the absurdity of the trio's makeup is even glimpsed at.

            The resolution of the movie is the biggest moment of disappointment for the movie.  The abusive white men are driven out of town, the women all find male hookups to dance with and the three queens are left watching from their balconies.  The townspeople protect them from the sheriff by parading as queens themselves and then the drag queens come down and dance.  Finally, in the closing scenes, Chi Chi wins Miss Drag Queen and gets to meet Julie Newmar.  The disappointment is not that everyone lives happily ever after but gays really don't live happily ever after.  While this movie does not have the typical suicide or murder or a gay like most mainstream Hollywood films, the movie fails to reconcile the drag queens with their sexuality.  Not one of them gets a chance to touch another man.  So while it is entertaining to see three big-name actors dress in women's clothing, it accomplishes nothing in moving sexual freedom forward.  The bravest moment in the whole film is a small side plot where one woman in the town Beatrice (Blythe Danner) finally admits that she has a thing for Billy Budd (Mike Hodge) the only black man in town.  The interracial relationship is the riskiest thing but is so downplayed that the audience is not given time to dwell on it.

            While the movie is funny and appeals to a wide audience, it makes no progress for women, gays, or minorities.  In many ways, the gross stereotypes accepted by the film could actually hinder progress.  Though the movie was a relative commercial success none should be proud of it.  As far as I am concerned, the only progress that To Wong Foo makes is establishing that Wesley Snipes looks awful in a dress and that John Leguizamo has nice legs.