Why is it ok for men to mock women by dressing as women (I’m thinking of John Travolta in the new Hairspray movie)? seems demeaning to me (and not just because he’s a wacko scientologist).
Disclaimers: I have no problem with cross-dressers or transvestites in real life. I also understand John Waters’ sensibilities, as much as anyone can. I didn’t put this in the pit cause I honestly don’t understand why people don’t find this casting offensive.
I don’t think cross-dressing is automatically mocking towards women. Hell, many male transvestites dress the way they do in honest emulation of women, not denigrating at all.
Blackface, on the other hand, is pretty much always mockery.
But whiteface isn’t. Somehow.
…I can’t for the life of me think of an instance where it isn’t. If we are talking black face black face. Not Gene Wilder in Silver Streak or Scott Thompson ina Kids inthe Hall sketch.
Have you ever seen Monty Python? They weren’t making fun of women, they’re just making themselves look stupid for laughs. That’s how it is with most drag comedy I’ve seen. Pretty different from blackface, I think, but that’s just a bit harder to find.
The role Travolta is playing in the Hairspray movie (blech) was originally played by Divine. I feel like somebody is being mocked there. Maybe it’s me. 
Blackface is a specific type of performance that deliberately invokes offensive racial stereotypes - a blackface performance that wasn’t racially offensive would not, by definition, be blackface. It’s intrinsically tied to a particular time and place (late 19th, early 20th century America), and was used as a way of establishing and maintaining a race-based social hierarchy. Absent these racial stereotypes, a white person playing a black character is not blackface. Laurence Olivier playing Othello isn’t blackface. It’s just a white guy playing a black role.
Drag, by contrast, comes from many different sources, and was never rooted in mockery of women. There is no offensive intent married to the concept of drag the way there is in blackface. The conflation of the two is not surprising, as blacks and women have both been at the forefront of contentious civil rights debates within living memory, but there really is no comparison between the two. Generally speaking, a man playing a woman is no different than any other sort of performance. We do not assume that Ed Harris playing an astronaut is offensive to astronauts, because Ed Harris has never really been in outer space. Neither is there any particular reason to assume that John Travolta playing a woman is insulting, just because John Travolta is a man.
And, if I understand correctly (and the Wikipedia article backs this up), a black person can appear in blackface.
Travolta isn’t, unless his interpretation of the role is radically different from everyone’s who’s gone before him, intended to mock women. Edna Turnblad is a very sympathetic character and is written as a woman. It is played as a woman, not as a transvestite or a drag queen.
Which is why I’m puzzled that she has always been played by men, from Divine to Harvey Feirstein to (presumably other men on stage) to Travolta.
Why would a female character always be played by a male? Is it some sort of homage to Divine?
Why is Peter Pan always played by a female?
Because Peter Pan needs to be played by an acrobatic adult, and adult men are much bigger than preadolescent boys.
The cross-casting of Peter Pan arises out of practical needs. Is the same true for the cross-casting of Edna? I’m ready to be convinced, but I can’t think of any such reason.
That’s just how it is. Divine was part of John Waters’s company of actors, although I haven’t seen enough of his movies to know if Divine was usually cast as a woman or as a drag queen. You’re just supposed to accept that he’s a woman, whether it’s for the sake of weirdness, humor or something else.
To add to your list, by the way, Bruce Villanch played the part in a touring production.
All of Divine’s characters were women, IIRC, except a (male) rapist he played in Multiple Maniacs.
But you’re misunderstanding my question. I know why Waters cast Divine in female roles; I’m asking why the role of Edna Turnblad has consistently been played by males, when there’s nothing (that I can see) about the character that demands it.
Then the answer is “homage to Divine.” The story would lose some of its charm without the extra oddity of a man playing Tracy’s mother.
I disagree. Drag for laughs is status comedy. A man playing a woman is going down in status. Therfore it’s funny. A rich man being made to wear a barrel. A matron in furs getting soot in her face. A man choosing to dress as a woman. It’s the same comic through-line.
Well as far as I know it’s always been played by a gay man hasn’t it? Divine, Fierstein, Bruce Vilanch… Those are the only ones I know of.
Is this Travolta’s way of letting us know…
Divine also played a male character in Hairspray in addition to Edna.
Also, the stereotype is that a man dressing in women’s clothing is less of a man, so he’s making fun of himself, not women.
According to him, he’s just a man acting the part of a woman.
I guess if there were a tradition of men dressing up as women and then pretending to be brainless ninnies, I would get good and tired of it. But so far there isn’t, so I’m not.
As late as the 1970’s, too: black British comedian Lenny Henry got his start playing a blackface minstrel, on the now infamous “The Black And White Minstrel Show”. As he later wryly noted, he was a black man playing a white man playing a black man, and it was a profoundly depressing experience.