The Dagmar Onassis Story (1984)

Overview

Performing gender and bending gender always had an element of risk. As, of course, it still does now. I think what's interesting about the John Kelly film The Dagmar Onassis Story, and the many drag performers that are featured in it, is that it shows how many different strategies and politics and poetics of drag there were in the East Village at that time—ranging from Joey Arias and Klaus Nomi, who appeared with David Bowie in spaceman fashions on Saturday Night Live, but also you have RuPaul, Lady Bunny, and Ethyl Eichelberger. There were many different drag strategies but drag was definitely underground, punk, subversive. There’s something about a John Kelly performance which has the heightened theatricality of a drag performance, but it’s also incredibly lyrical and emotional and it’s hard not to get caught up with the intensity and the adoration of a fan who is so deep that he actually becomes this persona.