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148 THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP
for the Rockettes; one of his popular articles was entitled, “My 46 Dancing
Daughters” (1955). And Liberace presented boy pianists onstage as his protégés
at the same time that he celebrated Paderewski as his own mentor. In this way,
genealogies were configured that could serve to displace a gay identity, that is,
for those who participated in “a conspiracy of blindness.”
As straightforward and vacuous as they appeared, Liberace and the Rockettes
were complex stage spectacles. Liberace was Count Dracula aglitter, America’s
blue-collar royalty, a kitsch Rockefeller, and a high priest all rolled into one
(Plate 16). The Rocket(te)s on the other hand were all-American girls who
represented inversions of the normal gender categories with their theatrical
presentations of military drills and regimentation, machine-gun taps, and high
kicks that “go up like rockets”; all typify Rockettes choreography. The military
theme was also evident in the title of Captain bestowed on one Rockette.
From a feminist perspective, female bodies cast as rockets would constitute
fetishism, that is, the symbolic representation of a penis on women in order to
counteract a man’s fear of sexual difference. Most discussions of fetishism by
feminists however seem to assume not only a heterosexual gaze, but a
heterosexual constructor of the fetish image as well. As Marjorie Garber has
asserted, “the ideology of the fetish is the ideology of phallocentrism, the
ideology of heterosexuality” (119). Conversely, in the writings of most gay men
theorists the fetishization of women is a nonissue, an aporia (but see King). Once
again, this absence appears to reflect an underlying assumption that fetishizers of
women are by definition heterosexual subjects. Indeed Freud viewed fetishism
not only as a safeguard against castration, but as a safeguard against
homosexuality! (Freud 216). But were the Rockettes the fetishized objects of
male heterosexual desire?
First of all, men were not the primary spectating audience of the Rockettes. If
Markert turned the Rockettes into an object of capitalist desire in the form of the
well-oiled military machine, he at the same time downplayed their showgirl status.
Recall, he did not like “the flashy, exotic type, such as the dyed blonde with
ultra-high heels or swishing sexy walk.” Indeed, during one part of the show, the
Rockettes wore tuxedos to dance with Liberace; the climax as usual was the
uniform, downstage high kick that always got applause (actually more medium
in height to accommodate Liberace! He couldn’t get it up).
Transvestism unmarked: homoeroticism and the disruption
of social hierarchies
Garber has called Liberace’s kind of outrageous display “unmarked
transvestism” (356). Technically not cross-dressing in any literal sense,
unmarked transvestism nevertheless has a feminizing effect insofar as it makes
the male performer into a glitzy object of the gaze. Thus Liberace made his
entrances in long, often pastel, capes with high standing collars. Add to this, as I
pointed out earlier, Liberace’s full, slicked-back head of dark hair; his seemingly