![]() ![]() Drag shows at clubs may offer you a crowd to rub up against and a chance to tip a fave queen, but these low- or no-budget music videos needn’t be constrained by stage size. And I mean literally, thanks to computers, right in your face. Even if her music videos get a slick director, the YouTube network that hosts those videos began as a DIY enterprise and fosters mainly user-generated content.įree and easy, clicked hard and shared worldwide, the joy of YouTube’s increasing number of drag music videos - by performers such as Lady Bunny, Jackie Beat, Kevin Aviance, Willam, and Loco Mama - is how in your face they are. Even if a drag performer gets a big name and hipster stylists, hers is at root a DIY stardom. Each comes to life in front of an ordinary mirror or a computer screen, often privately and with little-to-no experience. The first part looks at how the origins of the drag queen video in the days before YouTube.ĭrag queens and YouTube videos are both DIY at heart. Loudermilk writes about the drag queen YouTube videos that are as transgressive as they are outrageous. ![]() Today he remains a cult figure, particularly within the LGBTQ+ community, with his music played in queer clubs, serving as an inspiration to many.Part 1: The Divine Origins In this 3-part series, A. Milstead avoided speaking about his sexuality early in his career, but identified as gay and was more open about his sexuality in his final years. At the time of his death he was preparing for another mainstream role, Uncle Otto on the hit TV sitcom Married …With Children. He went on to have a successful cabaret career in Europe, achieved international chart success with pop hits like “You Think You’re a Man,” “I’m So Beautiful” and “Walk Like a Man,” all of which were performed in drag, and secured movie roles outside of Waters’ universe… although he remained a muse to Waters and would later appear in Polyester(1981) and Hairspray (1988), the latter of which represented his breakthrough into mainstream cinema.ĭivine died of heart failure just three weeks after Hairspray was given a wide release in movie theatres. The risqué movies provided Milstead and his character Divine with a vehicle for fame and notoriety. (No one who’s seen Pink Flamingos will ever forget the infamous scene when Divine as Babs Johnson eats dog feces.) By the mid-1960s, he had embraced the city’s countercultural scene and befriended filmmaker John Waters, who gave him the name “Divine” and the tagline of “the most beautiful woman in the world, almost.” After appearing in several short films, Divine took a lead role in Waters’ early films including Mondo Trasho (1969), Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974), all of which have achieved cult status over the years, but at the time created a stir with film censors. “He was getting the legitimate screen and television offers that showed the industry had finally accepted him as the very good character actor he always knew he was.”Īccording to Jay, Milstead had had a medical checkup the previous week and was declared in excellent health, other than his weight, “which had been a constant problem throughout his life.”īorn in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 19, 1945, to a conservative middle-class family, Milstead developed an early interest in drag while working as a women’s hairdresser. “He was finally getting respect within the industry,” said Milstead’s manager, Bernard Jay, shortly after Milstead’s death. On March 7, 1988, Harris Glenn Milstead – better known as Divine, the larger-than-life drag queen – died in his sleep of a heart attack attributed to his obesity, at the Regency Plaza Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard in a Los Angeles, where he was staying as a guest. ![]()
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