Uh-oh. Let's hope the marriage isn't just like Diana's too.
I am as excited as a blushing bride as a I pack up my bags and head out to London to be part of the Wedding of the Century. I cannot wait to be part of the madding crowd as millions gather in London. Obvioulsy this is a BIG DEAL in the U.K., but people will get up at the crack of dawn Friday in the U.S. to gather in New York’s Times Square and in front of their televisions to witness the marriage of William and Kate, the future King and Queen of England.
Of course the reasons there are butterflies in the pit of my stomach are probably different than they are for Kate Middleton. Hers no doubt are about the wedding itself, the details, the endless pomp and circumstance. Her future laid out as international televisual spectacle for all to see. My butterflies are of a giddier sort. I am entranced by the queer possibilities of this royal wedding, the way in which it both upholds normative heterosexuality and then, at the same time, subverts it with its over the top “perfection.” The perfect couple, the perfect ceremony, the perfect tone, the perfect dress can, by the mere fact of their perfection, easily descend into campiness.
The campiness of the royal wedding is made more explicit by the fact that it will be narrated by some seriously campy celebs. I am particularly interested in TLC’s Royal Wedding extravaganza hosted by none other than Clinton Kelly from What Not to Wear and he of the beautifully plucked eyebrows, Randy Fenoli, from Say Yes to the Dress. Clinton and Randy are two shades of gay. Clinton is the seemingly asexual best friend who is willing to say “You cannot wear that! It makes you look dumpy!” Randy is that super gay cheerleader for heterosexual weddings. Like the Father of the Bride character Franck, played by Martin Short, Randy is so truly and really fabulous that he knows exactly how a bride should look and which dress is the one, true “yes.” Even though Randy will always be cheering from the sides rather than experiencing a wedding from the center, like Franck he is simply thrilled to do so. As my girlfriend Suzanna Walters points out in All the Rage, these representations of a particular sort of gay man as central to heterosexual romance became common in the 1990s with TV shows like Will and Grace and movies like My Best Friends Wedding. As Walters points out, these representations of gayness are a mixed bag for gays themselves. But perhaps they are even more of a mixed bag for straights?
In today’s fairy tales, the desexualized and decontextualized white, fashionable gay male character must help the romance come to its inevitable conclusion of the big white wedding. But when the fairy tale is queered in this way, it also simultaneously risks slipping into camp, a loving but nonetheless ironic performance of itself. And because camp is always performative it implies that there in fact may be no original. In terms of campy portrayals of gender, all gender becomes a drag. In terms of love stories, the perfect romance becomes something that is not only marked as theater, but also something that is marked as not really existing in “real life” as opposed to “on the stage.”
And after the wedding of the last century, the incredible fairy tale that was Charles and Diana and the the all too real ending to that romance, an ending that, like the wedding, we also witnessed as televisual spectacle, how can we imagine this wedding between Kate and Will as anything but a highly stylized performance? Fairy tale drag, if you will. The drag made more explicit by looking at it with a queer eye.
