Word: queen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...drama was served up cold on the Olympic rink, it had all the ingredients of a classic face-off: Kerrigan, the almost too model American miss vs. Tonya Harding, the grungy underdog whose ex-husband and entourage allegedly tried to knock off Kerrigan to establish their own proletarian ice queen -- and money machine...
...diva in particular, Maria Callas, is given an entire chapter. "The Callas Cult" discusses what Koestenbaum admits is a gay phenomenon much larger than that of the opera queen. Her life (more, specifically, her affair with Aristotle Onassis) assumed tabloid proportions; she was mainstream enough to be mentioned in Marilyn Monroe movies; and her personality, both bitchy and warm in practically the same instant, is well reputed. He life, in short, was an opera unto itself. In the interview, Koestenbaum agrees that the dead Callas seems even more of a cultural power than she did while she was alive...
...means so much to him, a gay man dying of AIDS and bereft of his position in society. Koestenbaum is of the opinion that this scene serves to establish Hank's gay character, an effective use of opera in a "somewhat shlocky" film. Is Hank's character an opera queen ? Certainly not, according to Koestenbaum. No matter how much opera means in his life, "no opera queen's apartment is that organized" and "no opera queen would have opera on in the background", waiting to be turned up at the appropriate moment. Contrast this with Koestenbaum's explanation of feeling...
Thus, the "Callas Cult" draws from a base much larger in the gay community than just opera queens, that of the professionals in smarmy suits, the successful businesspeople, etc. Koestenbaum, though claiming that his book is "an elegy to the opera queen," addresses the larger question of a universal appeal of opera to gays in general. His last chapter, entitled "A Pocket Guide to Queer Moment's in Opera," is a seemingly random (and highly personal) collection of instances in well-known operas that smack of ambiguity and promise beneath the surface...
...form to this day. To a society which stressed conformation, it spoke the language of individuality, and it exalted the aberrant. As our society becomes more secure in its heterogeneity, it is difficult to say if opera will find its cultural niche eroded. However, in The Queen's Throat, Wayne Koestenbaum seeks not to speculate on opera's future but to express the glory of opera's past and the drama of opera's present...