Couples

by Victoria A. Brownworth

It was a pleasure to randomly catch bisexual comedian and San Francisco-raised Margaret Cho on “The

Instead, they wanted to celebrate pop culture by creating a new audience for it on television. Bailey observes that most of our waking hours are spent in front of some sort of screen whether it be our phone, our computer, or television, hence the book’s title.

Bailey grew up watching television and as a young gay boy got to see other LGBTQ people. He quotes drag queen RuPaul: “Everything I learned, I learned through television and thanks to television I saw who I was and I found my tribe.”

For Bailey, popular culture is queer culture, because it is the queer person’s makeshift solution for being judged invisible, pretending LGBTQ people don’t exist. TV gave visibility to gay people. “Being seen in the ScreenAge means you exist. If you aren’t seen, you don’t exist.”

Bailey views queer culture as universal because it’s promoting the idea we should live in a world where no one is ignored or pushed aside and told they are wrong, thus relatable to all people.

“It’s the queer community’s compassion and empathy as well as its inclusivity that makes it such a good purveyor of culture.”

For Bailey, America is a queer society because so many people dream of becoming something they are not, by (re)inventing themselves.

Bailey feels television has gotten a bad rap, responsible for dumbing down our culture and portending the end of our civilization. It’s a revelatory medium whose goal is to make everything visible. Through TV, Bailey found a world free from judgment and provided creative inspiration. TV goes behind the scenes. It’s real life in that it shows what is.

Sashay, you stay

Bailey is best known for co-producing the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” series since 2009 and its dozen+ international spin-offs. Drag is essential for Bailey. He again quotes RuPaul: “You’re born naked and the rest is drag.”

Bailey views drag as a mashup of pop culture. “It makes fun of all the celebrities, pretentions, and excess, but at the same time celebrates and loves it.”

Drag is the art of pretending but exhibiting an inventiveness enabling us to imagine ourselves as who/whatever we want to be. It subverts the concept that there’s a right or wrong way to be, in a sense leveling everyone equally, revealing who we are, as all good.

So it’s not surprising Bailey was a big fan of evangelist/talk show host Tammy Faye Baker, making a documentary (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) on her, which inspired the narrative film that won two Oscars, including Best Actress for Jessica Chastain. Bailey felt it was a win for Tammy.

“Tammy always said she was a drag queen and she was in on the joke,” says Bailey in his book. “She basically said being gay was okay and we weren’t bad, which was huge in her evangelical/Pentecostal circles.”

Wondrous world

Bailey’s artistic mission is to “turn the common, the maligned, and the misunderstood” into art especially those characters who get no respect, are looked down, are obscure, or underappreciated in our culture. He now reimagines them as heroes.

World of Wonders’ success comes from their ability to use a queer lens and offer a different perspective on a subject so you understand it in a whole new light, such as explaining the importance of the Statue of Liberty through its gift shop and then divulging that it’s hollow inside, an illusion, so in its own way America’s top symbol is a drag queen.

In interviews, both Bailey and Barbato have railed against the anti-drag/ trans legislation sweeping the country, calling it “un-American” because drag extols individuality and self-expression, very American traits. This threat, particularly the idea drag queens are predators, “is an attempt to turn the clock back to some imaginary time when drag queens did not exist, which is never and therefore render invisible certain people. It will fail because any attempt to turn the clock back has always failed.”

One can only hope with this book’s publication, both Bailey and Barbato will garner the praise they deserve for being pioneers and prescient about gay cultural trends long before they became popular. “ScreenAge” is an apologetic whimsical celebration of reality television and how World of Wonder boosted queer representation on all types of small screens.t

‘ScreenAge: How TV Shaped Our Reality From Tammy Faye to RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ by Fenton Bailey. Ebury Press/Penguin Random House $24.95 www.worldofwonder.com

View” April 12 and then have her turn up again that night playing a psychic on our fave new sit-com, “Not Dead Yet.” That episode also broadened the gay subplot with Dennis (Josh Ban-

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On “The View,” host Whoopi Goldberg asked Cho what she was livid about and Cho launched into a passionate defense of trans kids. Cho said, “We have to protect trans kids’ lives. We have to protect trans children and the trans community, the nonbinary community, the gender nonconforming community.”

Cho also said succinctly, “When you outlaw a bathroom for someone, you outlaw their humanity.”

Take that in, embroider it on a pillow, silk-screen it on a T-shirt and have that be your answer to everyone who makes this their issue. (By the way, this also goes for homeless people.)

Cho then took on the new anti-drag bills, saying, “If it’s Christians [standing against drag], Christ himself is wearing a long dress and a duster from Chico’s.” Cho continued the joke. “In the Bible, him and the Apostles all went to Chico’s and got the same Bea Arthur sets. It’s a ‘Golden Girls’ special. They’re all wearing the duster.”

Here’s the ‘Beef’

Speaking of San Francisco comedians I love, Ali Wong is the star of “Beef,” the new A24 series that’s currently the most watched series on Netflix. “Beef” is fabulous. The ten-episode series is an Asian-American comedy/drama created by Lee Sung Jin. It stars Steven Yeun and Wong as Danny Cho and Amy Lau, two people whose involvement in a road rage incident pits them against each other in a wild series of events that peel away the layers of who they are, the lives they are leading and what they want and can’t have. Hilarity – and pathos, a surprising amount of pathos – ensue.

For more information: Call: 628.217.6314

Email: curb.2@sfdph.org

Website: www.curb2.org

Eye Spy “A Spy Among Friends” just dropped on MGM+, formerly known as Epix. It’s good period drama, with gorgeous sets, superb acting and an incredible true crime/spy/traitor story – perfect for our current milieu. Based on the New York Times bestselling book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, this series dramatizes the true story of Nicholas Elliott (Damien Lewis) and Kim Philby (Guy Pearce), two British spies and lifelong friends. Philby was the most notorious defector and Soviet double agent in British history. The series takes place in England in 1963. Nicholas Elliott is working for SIS as an intelligence officer and is left in turmoil when he learns his close friend and colleague Kim Philby has been secretly working as a double agent for the KGB and has defected to the Soviet Union.

The two men were incredibly close throughout their lives, since school days, and Philby’s betrayal of Elliott is astonishing for its breadth and longevity.

“A Spy Among Friends” is so good. Guy Pearce is just extraordinary as Philby. The series was adapted by Alex Cary and directed by Nick Murphy. It’s also available on Amazon Prime. Shark shop

A San Diego lesbian couple, Vicky and Charisse Pasche, the co-founders of a gender-neutral clothing line, Dapper Boi, appeared on the April 14 episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank.”

The out proud couple were coolly in full butch-femme representation and they were fabulous. Vicky explained it was “my own personal struggle” that led her to co-found the company.

“Shopping in the men’s department –not made to fit the curves of a woman’s body or really anybody you know for that reason – it was also just a super awkward experience socially, going over to the men’s department. What fitting room would I go into?” said Pasche.

Sadly, Dapper Boi didn’t get a deal, but they got to talk their talk, highlight their clothing for all genders and represent real life queerness on network TV in prime time.

But the couple didn’t leave emptyhanded. Shark and clothing mogul Daymond John gave the women his number and an offer of mentorship. “This is not the end of Dapper Boi, and we walked out of here with a mentorship,” Charisse said. Brava!

“Shark Tank” has previously highlighted other LGBTQ businesses and you love to see it.t

Read the full column, with clips and trailers, on www.ebar.com.