The 52: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Namar
From June 2023 to June 2024 I'll be watching a lgbtqia+ film each week and coming back here with my thoughts, feelings and plenty of hopes we aren't met with the "kill your gays" trope. I call this The 52.
The instant I found out Patrick Swayze, the icon, the legend, the dream of dreams, was playing a drag queen in a film that seemed to have some sort of icon status, I nearly lost my mind.
Was I disappointed? Not a jot.
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Namar is exactly what you want from a film. Radiating joy, tension, hijinks, found family and the raddest soundtrack around, I came to watching this soon after putting a tentative pause on my first watch of Priscilla and I feel like, possibly, this was a film made in response to the success of that queen of the desert. Where I found Priscilla toxic, dated and upsetting, however, To Wong Foo is nothing short of sumptuous.
Following drag queens Vida, Noxeema and Chi-Chi as they travel across America to attend the final of a prestigious drag competition, oh, how to put it into words?! This film radiates growth and learning and it is so wonderful. Chi-Chi is told she must pass several tests to become a true drag queen, not just a drag princess, and I feel that we as viewers join her in that journey, learning as much about ourselves and our dreams as the three protagonists do.
Of course, very few films are perfect and this one is not, but for the most part I feel it is uniquely good intentioned. The queens were not the butt of the joke and rarely did they make others the crux, either, unless it was deservedly so. Patrick Swayze imbues more heart into Vida than I knew an actor was capable of and I am charmed, astonished and utterly smitten. I didn’t know I could love him any more, and yet here I am.
A homoerotic police officer, RuPaul in *another* queer film, Robin Williams in the strangest cameo ever (never complaining about a Williams cameo), and finally:
Men! Acting like women! Men wanting to be with one another, men touching each other! Their stubbly chins, rubbing up against one another. Touching each other... manly hands... touching swirls of chest hair... occasional whiff of rugged aftershave... their low baritone voices sighing, gruniting... they hold one another in manly, masculine arms! Hold one another... tight.
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