Karl Marx famously said that people make history, but not in conditions of their own choosing.
Gender theorist Judith Butler, who regards all gender as a kind of performance, echoes the Marxian formula when she says that gender is the “practice of freedom in a scene of constraint”.
Butler was surely thinking of precisely the sort of gender performativity that is on show in Leave It on the Floor, a highly enjoyable movie about the African-American ballroom scene of drag shows in which participants dress up (often outrageously) and strut their stuff as stylised representations of “woman” or “man”.
It’s probably the most entertaining of the feature films to be seen at the second segment of the 2011 Out in Africa South African Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, now staggered through the year rather than all lumped into one biggish fest.
In full swing
Leave It on the Floor takes the classic form of a wanderer finding and entering a hitherto unknown and largely self-enclosed world. In this case it’s the world of competitive drag balls, and the wanderer is a hunky young man called Brad (Ephraim Sykes) who has a big falling out with his mother (who is as over-the-top as any drags he will meet), steals her car and heads off to Los Angeles. There he stumbles upon an underground ballroom with a drag show in full swing, and soon he’s being pulled into that world.
Oh, and he’s singing all the way — for, yes, this is a musical. Not just a musical in which songs are naturalistically incorporated into the story because the protagonists are doing a show, or are performers anyway (think Cabaret as the template and Dreamgirls as a recent example), but one in which the musical numbers are integrated with the diegesis, with characters likely to burst into song at any moment.
For example, as Brad arrives in LA he is contemplating his situation by singing a song called Loser’s List (with breaks for ordinary talking and so on). He keeps singing it all the way into the ballroom, where his musical meditation is intertwined with another song, Ballroom Bliss, sung by those creatures seducing him into this joyous, if troubled, world. Eventually, of course, Brad changes his tune and is singing Ballroom Bliss too.
Behind the ballroom bliss, though, is a more down-home world — one in which a communal house of penniless performers is ruled by a mother hen hilariously named Queef Latina (Miss Barbie-Q). She keeps a firm grasp on her brood, pushing them towards new heights in the drag competitions while checking on their romantic shenanigans. When Brad arrives at the house, arm in arm with performer Miss Eminence (Phillip Evelyn), Queef Latina barks at him: “What do you want with my daughter?”
General hilarity
Queef Latina emerges as the centre of it all, despite Brad being nominally the protagonist. It’s not just her involvement with her protégé-children but also her own romantic issues that come to the fore, and Miss Barbie-Q deals powerfully with several show-stoppers, from the heartfelt I’m Willing to the rousing Knock the Muthaf*kk**s Down and the defiant interplay of His Name Is Shawn (sung at a funeral), as well as ensemble numbers such as Black Love, which embrace the whole cast.
Black Love and the punchy dirge It’s My Lament offer a counterpoint to the colourful drag performances and the general hilarity to be had in this story (for Leave It on the Floor is also very funny). Such numbers explore the pain and trauma underlying these lives, and how the world these people have created gives them a way to deal with such difficulties. The funeral song, for one, touches on homophobia in the African-American community and, in call-and-response style, allows each side to state its case.
If the script and plot of Leave It on the Floor stumble over themselves occasionally, it’s because the film is trying to pack a lot in. Perhaps some of the plot points are there only to get us to the next song, but that’s a common device of musicals — and when the song arrives it’s usually worth it.
The appropriately named Glenn Gaylord is chiefly responsible for the book, with music by various expert hands, choreography by Beyoncé’s Frank Gatson Jr, and overall direction by Sheldon Larry.
They and a cast giving its all make the movie a pleasure to watch, stumbles or no stumbles. It’s filled to bursting with drama, colour, life — and a higher proportion of laughs than most conventional comedies. Like the drags themselves, Leave It on the Floor may teeter a little on its outrageously high heels, but somehow, through faith and passion alone, it manages to stay aloft.
Out in Africa is on from August 12 to 21 at Nu Metro Hyde Park in Johannesburg and V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. Go to oia.co.za for full programme. The third and last segment of OIA 2011 takes place in October