Before The Current War On Drag Queens, There Was 'To Wong Fu, Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar'

The bigots won't win.

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. (Thanks, Obama!) This is obviously nonsense, and a social media post reminded me that back in 1995, the camp classic To Wong Fu, Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar was released with little to no backlash, certainly no bomb threats targeting theaters showing the film.

This was no obscure indie film, either. To Wong Fu starred major film stars Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, and John Leguizamo, and it 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.)

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 How Deranged Are The White Fascists Getting About Drag Queens? This Deranged. 

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 Why Boring Conservatives Are Such a Drag About Drag 

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. The ladies in Too Wong Fu don't exist solely to shock or sexually humiliate cis 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.

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. While temporarily stranded in rural, small town America, the drag queens — 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's 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 certainly sounds familiar, doesn't he? "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 realize they sound like an obvious villain. 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. We could still learn a lot from him.

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