History of Drag
Drag is an art form that often plays with gender roles and breaking their boundaries. The drag queen wears feminine clothes, wears heavy make-up and entertains as a performing artist. Drag queens sing by themselves or as a playback and dance. They dress up as a woman’s gender role by exaggerating certain characteristics to make a comical, dramatic, or satirical impression. A transvestite differs from drag in that they do not dress up as the opposite sex for the purpose of performing.
HISTORYin Drag Theatre
Drag has a long history in theatrical entertainment. In the past, women were not allowed to act as actors for religious reasons or due to other norms in society, so men performed women’s roles dressed as women. The tradition is known almost everywhere. This was the case, for example, in ancient Greece, Shakespearean England and Japan in the 17th century.
Drag Masquerade
The grand masquerade party in Harlem, New York, in 1859 marked the beginning of the liberal Pansy Craze era. By the 1920s, these drag balls became immensely popular and were attended by people of all colors from all walks of life.
Vaudeville
The big breakthrough of drag queens in the late 1800s came with vaudeville. The most successful drag queen was Julian Eltinge, who made his Broadway debut in 1904, achieved superstar status and was the highest-paid performer in the world. Her performance included singing, dancing and numerous costume changes. He made the transformation from a man to a woman on stage in front of an audience.
After World War I, in the 1920s, liberalism and tolerance prevailed in Europe, and drag entertainment flourished. Prohibition was enacted in the United States, but merry drag masquerades were still celebrated in speakeasies.
In the 1930s, the Great Depression began in the United States. Pansu Craze and vaudeville’s heyday had come to an end. A dark period also began in Europe, and tolerance disappeared when Germany drifted into Nazi rule in the 1930s.
The return of drag entertainment
In the 1950s, drag entertainment began to revive and drag artists began to appear in European films again. The first drag queen beauty pageant was held in the United States in 1959, and the 1967 contest was made into a film, The Queen, which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. It is considered one of the milestones in the history of drag.
Other milestones included John Waters’ film Pink Flamingos in 1972, which brought the American drag artist Divine to international fame, and Jim Sharman’s musical film The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975, which sparked a phenomenon that continues to this day. Despite the occasional quieter periods, drag entertainment continued to rise all over the world.
Drag in Finland
Drag came to Finland in the late 1970s. Great enthusiasm was aroused by the drag group After Dark, founded in 1976 by the Swedes Christer Lindarw and Lasse Flinckman, whose shows were very professionally executed.
Finland’s first professional drag show was seen in the summer of 1979 at the opening of Club Diana at Restaurant Kaisaniemi with Reijo Paukku & Guys. Reijo Paukku’s significance to Finnish drag is significant, because when designed by a distinguished theatre director, drag entertainment was given greater weight and it was understood as a serious art form. Drag quickly rose to the headlines and the popularity of the public.
Soon Mega-Paula, i.e. Juha Rastas and Sylvester Lindarw, also started in the Star Sisters group.
The business grew and from the early 1990s onwards, several drag shows toured Finland. There was Duo Bitch, La Revue Après Rasage, Les Femmes, Pola Ivanka’s Queens of Night and the live singing Les Boys. In 1998, the ShoWhat duo, i.e. Osku Heiskanen and Jarkko Valtee, started. These were followed by Jukka Kuronen, Miss Divet aka Marko Vainio, Raisa and Ritva, Christal Snow, NikoLa, Airline Raijan Air, etc.
At the Helsinki City Theatre, Mikko Rasila’s, Markku Nenonen’s and Veli-Matti Ranta’s drag performance SuperDames: Who Told Me? (1996) and the sequel SuperDames 2-World Tour (1998), in which Veli-Matti Ranta was replaced by Janne Marja-aho, caused great admiration. They sang themselves and the conductor was Anna-Mari Kähärä.
In 1997, the Don’t Tell Mama nightclub started the Miss Drag Queen pageant, which received a lot of media attention right from the start. Since 2007, the competition has gone by the name Drag Show Artist and has produced several new artists for drag entertainment.
Drag shows are a natural part of the entertainment scene these days, and there are several skilled drag artists performing in Finland.
Text: Hanna Kalsto