March 24, 2018

"Being a white guy with a guitar was, as it turns out, not that special."

"I started playing guitar when I was 13. I grew up playing guitar and writing music and I always wanted to be a songwriter and a singer and play the guitar. But while I was finishing college, my drag became lucrative, so I had to pursue what was going to pay the bills — and doing comedy as Trixie was something that I was able to market. Being a white guy with a guitar was, as it turns out, not that special."

Says Brian Firkus, talking to NPR. Here's a video of Firkus as the white guy with guitar that he is and as his drag character Trixie Mattel (who won the just-concluded season of "RuPaul's Drag Race"):



Also from the interview:
Country and folk are genres where characters are really central — you get really into the heart of a person in a song, or there's a very specific story being told. I feel like there's a little bit of that in your drag too.

With Trixie, people like that I look like this fabricated painted creation, but all my comedy and my songs come from a place of reality. It's like the man behind the curtain, it's the crying clown — that's what works for people with Trixie. It's the dichotomy of someone looking like a toy, but then, you know, speaking and singing like a real boy....

In terms of country and folk music — it feels like you're bringing this very explicitly gay perspective into genres that aren't necessarily known for embracing those perspectives.

I think my music is not so much about being gay; my music is about being a human being. It's not about gay relationships; it's about relationships. It's not about feeling like an outsider because you're gay. Maybe it's just about feeling like an outsider. It's funny selling records of this type in this world ... if you look at those publications or those websites, I'm nowhere to be found. It's very weird to be, like, infiltrating....

We are all just, like, hot gluing our clothes on every day to go out into the world and do a job we're not sure we're supposed to be doing. RuPaul says we're all born naked the rest is drag. We're literally all just pretending to be someone — we don't realize how much we're all exactly the same.

28 comments:

Bill Peschel said...

Cue "You Gotta Have a Gimmick":

https://youtu.be/_wErVF7QwIY

Fernandinande said...

"Being a white guy with a guitar was, as it turns out, not that special."

Every snowflake is special, white guy, but perhaps he meant "interesting".

we don't realize how much we're all exactly the same.

Then why play dress-up, white guy?

Ann Althouse said...

"Then why play dress-up, white guy?"

There are at least 2 answers to that question in the text I've given you:

1. It was more popular than his white-guy-with-a-guitar self-presentation, and he needed an audience because he wanted to make money.

2. Everyone is playing dress-up. The white guy with a guitar is still a naked man who has put on a particular type of clothes to achieve an effect and equipped himself with an accessory (the guitar).

Shouting Thomas said...

Women feel compelled to dress their sexual perversions up in a lot of intellectual bullshit.

I’ve met a few women in my life who just enjoy their sexual perversion and don’t engage in this bullshit attempt to make them appear to be intellectual and artistic.

Fag haggery is just a sexual perversion. It gets a lot of women off because it gives them a hard on.

tcrosse said...

On the internet nobody knows you're just a white guy with a guitar.

Ann Althouse said...

@Shouting Thomas

Maybe it's a sexual perversion of yours to see this subject as sexual, but we're not talking here about what anyone does in bed, but about on-stage performance for an audience. A fair amount of dress-up is involved. I'm pretty sure you know that The Rolling Stones invented their style of stage costume by simply wearing their girlfriend's clothes.

the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...

Seeing this made me think of an old SNL skit with Garth Brooks dressed as a woman. More specifically: an Old French Whore.

I search the Internet to find it: it's not there. Lots of dead links with note of NBC removing the material. Not even any photos in an image search, save for a jpeg the size of a postage stamp.

Anyway, here is what the skit was:

Garth Brooks, SNL February 1998: "Old French Whore"

"My absolute favorite of Garth's sketches from his two appearances is a parody game show titled "Old French Whore!" where Cheri O'Teri and Molly Shannon play French prostitutes paired up against high school honor students. Brooks plays a prostitute named Coco, who was apparently personal concubine to Ravel, who knows a lot about Chemistry. Chris Katan, Tim Meadows, and Ana Gasteyer play the high school students with Will Ferrell as the host. Coco shares a tragic story of how she wanted to study chemistry, but it wasn't proper for a young lady to do that back when..."

I remember it as being pretty damned funny.

What good is the internet if you can't even find a 20-year-old video?

As opposed to videos of 20-year olds. A lot of those out there.

I looked up the age of Kim Kardashian when she made her sex tape, hoping for synchronicity, but it seems she was 23 at the time.

Paris Hilton was 18 when she filmed hers.

Like I'm going to spend all day trying to find a celebrity sex tape filmed when the celebrity was 20 years old. I have better things to do.

Really.

The Germans have a word for this.

Shouting Thomas said...

I think my sexual perversions are pretty keen, too.

The whole world should take them up so they are more readily available when I want to indulge.

I deserve government grants and an academic post with tenure where I can rant about my perversions.

A nice title would be welcome, too.

I’ve been around onstage performers all my life. In fact, I’m one. Onstage performing’s ultimate goal is always to get your sexual perversion serviced in bed.

Eleanor said...

Men dressing up as caricatures of women is the same as white people putting on blackface and doing a minstrel show. It's hypocritical to shun one and not the other. Suggest we bring back the minstrel show with its black-faced "endmen", and see what kind of reception you get. What's the matter? Women can't take a joke? Do black people lack a sense of humor, too? Ask Tyler Perry what he thinks of blackface.

Heartless Aztec said...

What a nice little tune. That one's going into blue tooth rotation. As for the rest - eh. A guy with a guitar is something special.

gilbar said...

from Yahoo answers:
"Here are 2 compilation videos that have been produced that each contain Garth Brooks as the "Old French Whore"

You can buy these 2 videos at a variety of stores online.

Saturday Night Live: Game Show Parodies (2000) (TV)
- Features Old French Whore w/Garth Brooks

Saturday Night Live: The Best of Cheri Oteri (2004) (TV)
- Features a clip from Old French Whore w/Garth Brooks"

i bet you could by them through the Althouse portal.... But, what The Heck Good is the internet if we have to BUY our sex tapes? This is Just WRONG!!!

gilbar said...

i just checked, and Amazon only has Game Show Parodies in some new media format called "VHS" I don't even know what sort software you'd use to convert that into a more traditional format

Kate said...

But his drag is too far along on the "scary clown" continuum. He's creepy.

And he can piss off for saying "white" guy. A million guys (and gals) of any race play decent guitar. It's not that hard. That's why none of them are famous. Clapton -- or Hendrix -- or Knopfler or Campbell are rewarded with success for being unbelievable at what they do.

Kate said...

The more I think about it, the angrier I get. I saw him play in that video. He's average. How dare he try to leverage his skin color as an excuse.

Henry said...

White guy with accordion?
White guy with tuba?
Yes!

* * *

And Mr. Firkus is correct.

the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...

"i just checked, and Amazon only has Game Show Parodies in some new media format called "VHS""

I only used the old Betamax3000 format.

The Germans have a word for this.

rhhardin said...

Being a white guy with a lute does better with the babes than white guy with a guitar, at least in the 60s.

Phil 314 said...

I'm no country fan but even still that seemed like a pretty mediocre melody.

When did schtick become deep truth telling?

Wince said...

The music was lame and I didn't get the video.

Was the guy throwing the close out of the house supposed to be his same-sex lover?

Angry because he found out he's a transvestite?

Why was he then performing surgery on that guy?

What kind of surgery?

BUMBLE BEE said...

RuPaul truly reeks of heaviosity.

Fernandinande said...

Ann Althouse said...
"Then why play dress-up, white guy?"
There are at least 2 answers to that question in the text I've given you:


My question was rhetorical. I don't care what these silly creatures think about anything, which is why I skipped most of the text.

Anonymous said...

That's a good pop tune he is trying to sell.

Howard said...

What a old it is getting drag - apologies to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

eddie willers said...

Hip country music is played on a Telecaster, not a Strat.

tim in vermont said...

Of the words that each sex uses most commonly that is distinct from the other sex in on line dating profiles, ‘guitar’ is number three, I think, that is mentioned by men. Oddly, women don’t look so much for guys who play guitar.

tim in vermont said...

Although I have been playing with metronome daily for about two months, just doing scales, and picking the same not for two minutes three or four times a day, at faster and faster tempos as the days go by, and suddenly I find that I might actually listen to myself play even if it weren’t me.

I was kind of shocked when I went to play a song that was just cowboy chords, that you wouldn’t think would be any different, how different and better it sounded. But still, my guitar is more like meditation for me, like a little Buddha statue, and I don’t inflict it on others.

RigelDog said...

If he has musical--as opposed to comedic/theatrical--talent, it surely wasn't showcased in this video. Adequate guitar, completely average voice, and formulaic country song with one decent "hook" line. Blah. Plus he doesn't look good bald, with no eyebrows. What a trade-off: looking good in drag vs. looking like a chemo patient when not in drag.

Ann Althouse said...

He has eyebrows.