The Enduring Relevance Of 'Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert' And 'To Wong Foo'

30 years later ...

Actor Terence Stamp passed away last month, and while his most famous role will forever remain General Zod in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, we shouldn’t forget his amazing performance as trans woman Bernadette in 1994’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Debuting at Cannes in 1994, Priscilla was a surprise hit, performing well outside its native Australia. The film is based on the lives of three actual drag queens — Cindy Pastel, Stykermeyer, and Lady Bump — who were set to play versions of themselves until the studio replaced them with more “bankable” actors. Stamp was obviously a known quantity — they were even thinking about Tim Curry in the role, which would have been interesting if perhaps too predictable — but his co-stars Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce were hardly household names at the time. In fact, Priscilla is considered one of their “breakout” films. In this case, “bankable” might’ve been code for “not overtly queer.” The actors can go on the press tour and reassure audiences that they were just pretending. It’s as if drag queens and trans people are entirely fictional characters.

Forgive my cynicism, though. It’s important to recognize that impact Priscilla had in 1994, back when Strom Thurmond was still in the Senate. Bernadette, Mitzi (Weaving), and Felicia (Pearce) aren’t Silence of the Lamb psychopaths, neither are they tragic queers, destined to die or endure unhappy lives. The ways they are different from others is presented as a source of joy not shame. It’s the narrow-minded bigots who serve as the objects of ridicule. (Watch below.)

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Republicans would have you believe that drag queens are some new phenomenon, a radical escalation in the culture wars thanks to an overly permissive society. This is obviously nonsense. Priscilla won an Academy Award for costume design and eventually inspired a 2006 musical adaptation. However, this wasn’t just a weird “foreign” thing. The following year, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar was released with little to no backlash, certainly no bomb threats targeting theaters showing the film.

Priscilla and To Wong Foo are both comedic road movies featuring flamboyant drag queens. However, To Wong Foo was already in production when Priscilla was released. In a 1995 interview, writer Douglas Carter Beane recalls seeing an anti-queer propaganda film where the narrator ominously warned that drag queens are coming to take over your town. Beane thought, “Well, that would be fun.”

To Wong Foo was no obscure indie film, either. Major film star Patrick Swayze (Ghost) was cast as Vida Boheme. There is still some debate over whether Vida is actually trans, like Bernadette. She does seem to live as a woman, rather than treating drag as an occupation or an art form. It’s probably best not to pigeon hole her or demand that the film fit today’s standards. (The upcoming film version of Kiss of the Spider Woman more directly suggests that Molina is a trans woman, rather than a gender fluid queer man.)

Wesley Snipes (New Jack City) played Noxzeema and John Leguizamo was Chi-Chi. Released on September 8, 1995, Too Wong Foo was the number one film at the North American box office for two weeks straight. (This was pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe, but aren't drag queens basically superheroes? They have secret identities, and the costumes are just as fierce.)

The cast appeared on Oprah Winfrey's daytime talk show to promote the film, and there’s a wonderful moment where Swayze says his mother's only reservation was that the film might “poke fun at people who don’t deserve it.” This was a touchingly woke sentiment from Patsy Swayze. Drag queens and trans women (sometimes conflated in media) were often the source of ridicule or fear. Just as in Priscilla, the ladies in To Wong Foo don't exist solely to shock or sexually humiliate the male protagonists. They aren't serial killers who want to knit a woman suit. They are human beings whom the film centers.

Unlike Some Like It Hot and the less artistically relevant Sorority Boys and White Chicks, Swayze, Snipes, and Leguizamo’s characters aren't forced into drag (either to save their lives or solve a crime). It's the life they've chosen, and they are happy to live openly as themselves. (The Some Like It Hot musical re-envisions Jack Lemmon’s character from the original film and is now somewhat of a trans coming out story.)

Fox News was in its infancy at the time, so there wasn't a marathon of content complaining about the overtly pro-drag queen narrative. Vida, Noxeema, and Chi-Chi are headed to Hollywood to participate in the “Drag Queen of America” beauty pageant, but their newly acquired 1967 Cadillac DeVille breaks down in a rural small town, an oppressive and brutal place for all women.

Vida, Noxeema, and Chi-Chi bond with the local women, who are inspired by their sense of style and colorful attitude. The townspeople as a whole defend the ladies from a bigoted cop, and instead of turning them over to him, there’ss a Spartacus -inspired scene where every woman claims she’s a drag queen. We need to see more of this whenever busybodies try to inspect the genitals of women playing sports or using a public restroom.

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Chris Penn’s Sheriff Dollard asks the locals to look the other way when he calls for the heads of the drag queens who “invaded” his town.

“None of you good people need get involved ... don’t protect these freaks ... these weirdos coming in here, these boys in dresses, corrupting you with their way of life, changing the way things have always been. I really don’t think that’s what you want.”

This is the same rhetoric we hear from the likes of so many transphobes who lack the self-awareness to notice their obvious mustache-twirling villainy. Matt Walsh and Charlie Kirk were just children in 1995, but unfortunately ignorance and bigotry are renewable resources that only fuel hatred.

But bigotry's greatest enemy is fearless joy. Swayze, the all-American heartthrob from Dirty Dancing , Road House, and Ghost, enthusiastically demonstrates for Oprah's audience how he learned to walk like a woman in high heels: "You gotta learn to get the looseness,” he said.

Swayze unfortunately passed away from cancer in 2009. His performance in To Wong Foo, as well as Stamp’s in Priscilla, remain defiantly joyful.