Give tiaras a chance, film recommends
Pair’s drag-positive documentary honors female impersonation

By JILL SPITZNASS     Issue date: Tue, Nov 9, 2004
The Portland Tribune

Like a veteran drag queen getting ready to go on, the documentary “Queen of Hearts” is a work in progress.  The film — co-directed by Jan Haaken, a psychology professor at Portland State University, and Wendy Kohn — uses the art of drag to explore changing gender codes in society. 

Darcelle XV Showplace, the popular female impersonation club in Old Town, is the setting for the documentary, which was inspired by a short film called “That’s No Lady,” a project done by Haaken’s class in 2001.

“Much of my work is bringing into view cultural practices that aren’t always taken seriously,” Haaken says. “But if you look more closely, you’ll see that there’s more going on than meets the eye.”  Drag, she says, is one such phenomenon.  “I became interested in how the drag performers were challenging the boundaries and perception of gender. These performers are more serious, thoughtful and smarter than people realize.”

Haaken says the fact that Darcelle and crew are simply great entertainers didn’t hurt the research process.   “I became a student of drag,” she says. “I must have been at the club 150 times.”
 

Kohn learned of the project through her business partner at Kwamba Productions, which uses mixed media to promote understanding and effect cultural change.   “We decided that there’s really a deeper story here,” she says. “We wanted to really explore the impact that Darcelle and the club has had on the community.”
 

Haaken and Kohn hope to finish the documentary by the end of 2005. They estimate that the finished product will be about 90 minutes long.  “It’s actually moving really fast for a documentary, which can take up to 10 years to complete,” Kohn says of the self-funded project. “In most cases, you do a phase and then try to get more funding to continue the project.”
 

She believes that the film gets a conceptual leg up by focusing on the straight audience as it interacts with the gay performers.  “We’re exploring that interface between straight and gay, because Darcelle really serves as a bridge between those groups. So the club is a segue, a little peek into the gay community. In the film, Poison Waters (a local drag entertainer) describes the performers as eye candy for straights, a way for them to see that gays aren’t so scary.” 
 

It’s a new kind of spotlight for the polished performers.  “There have been lots of articles written about us, but this is the first time anyone’s made a video about us,” says Darcelle, aka Walter Cole, who opened the Portland club in 1967.
   

“The directors concentrated on our interaction with the audience, and the fact that what we do changes people’s perception of who we are,” he says. “They also see that we don’t have two heads because we’re men in dresses. …A lot of people don’t know that and walk in the door scared to death. But we’re entertainers; we’re not transvestites. We help them forget their troubles for a while.”  Perhaps for a long while.
 

“Years ago, a woman called me and said she’d found ladies’ undergarments in her husband’s car,” Darcelle recalls. “She confronted him, thinking that he had another woman. He confessed that they were his, and she was going to leave him. But I told her that transvestites and their wives are the happiest couples in the world. If you accept him and stick with him, you’ll have a happy marriage.  “Well, 15 years later she called me: ‘Darcelle, guess what? We have three children, he still wears dresses, and he’s the best father and husband I could ever hope to have. If I hadn’t talked to you I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, and we wouldn’t have a family.’ ”