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THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP 117
because, unlike male impersonation, the man who appropriates his “opposite” is
not simultaneously effaced by it.
The intensely felt sense of mystery Cocteau describes as invoked by
Barbette’s act is an apt description of the effect Charles Ludlam creates when he
plays women’s roles in his Ridiculous Theatrical Company productions, an
effect he places in the service of very different ends. In his extraordinary 1973
production of Camille Ludlam played Alexandre Dumas fils’s Marguerite, the
Lady of the Camellias, as well as Greta Garbo’s version of the character from the
1937 film, to Bill Vehr’s Armand Duval in full period costume (Plate 10). 6
Unlike the narrative construction of Barbette’s act—his supposed simulation of a
woman and subsequent transformation into a man—Ludlam’s hairy chest was
clearly visible above the cut of his gown, signaling his status as male from his
first entrance. Hence, in the process of enacting the passionate and doomed love
affair between Marguerite and Armand that dominates the Camille narrative,
Ludlam and Vehr made manifest the desire of two men for each other. At the
same time, like Barbette, Ludlam conjured a credible representation of a woman
despite clearly visible evidence to the contrary. In his review for Women’s Wear
Daily, Martin Gottfried wrote that “Ludlam becomes quite believable as
Camille.” Writing for The New York Times, Clive Barnes called Ludlam “a
completely convincing Camille.” 7
In playing Marguerite, Ludlam negotiated a position somewhere between a
Brechtian presentation of the character and an illusionistic portrayal, a position
somewhere between the parameters Barthes articulated when he wrote that “The
Oriental transvestite [actor] does not copy Woman but signifies her: not bogged
down in the model, but detached from its signified; Femininity is presented to
read, not to see: translation, not transgression” (53). 8 Although Ludlam mostly
played the role for comic effect, he also played it earnestly in moments where he
milked the pathos of a scene, hushing the audience, to seduce them into “seeing”
a woman as a kind of “set-up” for moments when he dropped the character
altogether to deliver a line or two as his actor-playwright-gay-male self.
In the final act, for instance, Marguerite on her death bed—her penniless,
consumptive state played earnestly by Ludlam—calls to her faithful maid, “I’m
cold. Nanine, throw another faggot on the fire!” Nanine replies, “There are no
more faggots in the house.” Dropping the character, Ludlam sits bolt upright,
surveys the audience skeptically, and says plaintively, “No faggots in the
house?” Then throws his dust, returns the character to her death bed and says,
“Open the window, Nanine. See if there are any in the street” (in Samuels and
Quinton 246).
In a piece entitled “Reading Past the Heterosexual Imperative,” I argued that
male drag emphasizes the illusionistic qualities of impersonation in that the actor
attempts to simulate that which he is not, the “other.” Instead of foregrounding
dominant culture’s fiercely polarized gender roles, men’s Camp tends to
reinscribe, rather than undermine, the dominant culture paradigms it appropriates
for its parody. 9 In this characterization of gay male theatre I was thinking