Like many others, I discovered the Cockettes through David Weismann and Bill Weber’s wonderful eponymous 2002 documentary (frockumentary?), and like that film, this book is an essential monument to the countercultural force of nature that was the Cockettes, the late 60s/early 70s San Francisco queer drag troupe who took on the tedious establishment of mainstream America with tatty glamour and unrelenting fierceness.
Its principal author, Fayette (“Fayette”) Hauser, was one of the original line-up, which started life in a hippy commune in San Francisco in 1969, Kaliflower House, and she does a great job of introducing all the various and varied members – which briefly included Sylvester and, even more briefly, Divine – and charting their short but incandescent existence on the fringes of the hippy counterculture.
Led by the glitter-bearded Hibiscus – who embodied the poet John Giorno’s mantra that ‘you gotta burn to shine’ – they were a genuinely mixed bag of men and women, black and white, gay, straight, bi, whatever: all bonded by a shared love of taking acid and dressing up, boldly challenging norms and conventions of gender and dress. Starting out as street theatre, they soon found a home at the Palace Theatre, where they entertained the hippy audience in between screenings of avant garde films and Hollywood classics. Their riotous, bawdy mad-cap shows were described by the unflappable Truman Capote as the most outrageous thing he’d ever witnessed.
Hauser describes the radical philosophy behind their seemingly shambolic appearances:
“Our artistry expressed what we saw as both beautiful and absurd, which became the core aesthetic of our group. We wanted to speak with our bodies, and the voice was Drag. We created a super surreal concoction of Sacred Thought on our bodies with fabric, totems, handmade, hand-dyed, ripped and torn. Clothes were transformed and transformational, a timeless symphony of soul-seeking through what we wore.”
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n a culture increasingly deadened and bolstered by gender dimorphism and gutless conformity, the Cockettes were on the frontline, a ray of hope, angels of light, a joyful army of pancaked, feather-boa’d warriors to be treasured by all who hold individual freedom and self-expression to be sacred principles of life. Keeping boredom at bay as a radical act of political transformation.
With contributions from other members such as Sweet Pam, and Peter Minton, their pianist, amongst others, including Sebastian (the manager of the Palace Theatre), Maureen Orth (the journalist who covered the Cockettes’ disastrous trip to New York) and John Waters, whose gloriously trashy films were screened at the Palace, this is a comprehensive and thorough document or testament to the power and importance and unbridled creativity of the ‘Freak’. But the real stars of the show here are the photographs that capture the visionary chaos of their short but brilliant trajectory.
This is an important, major contribution to our queer history. It will make you long for a time machine in order to travel back and participate or witness; or at least make you want to drop acid and raid the dressing up box.
The author Fayette Hauser grew up on the East Coast and came of age as the fertile Underground of the 1960s was blossoming. She is a graduate of Boston University, College of Fine Arts with a BFA in painting and sculpture. Fayette co-founded the pioneering, experimental theatre group The Cockettes in 1969, San Francisco. Now living in Los Angeles, she writes, lectures, and travels sharing her photographs, stories, and thoughtful insights.
Published April 7, 2020 by https://processmediainc.com/
Review by Jonathan KempQueerguru London Contributing Editor Jonathan Kemp writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches creative writing at Middlesex University. He is the author of two novels – London Triptych (2010), which won the 2011 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and Ghosting (2015) – and the short-story collection Twentysix. (2011, all published by Myriad Editions). Non-fiction works include The Penetrated Male (2012) and Homotopia?: Gay Identity, Sameness and the Politics of Desire (2015, both Punctum Books).
Labels: 2020, book review, Jonathan Kemp, the Cockettes
