One of the criticisms of modern drag is that it’s become a bit normie. A bit pay to play. That maybe the ancient art of using makeup and lace fronts to lampoon gender norms has become somewhat mainstream.
But far from the polished queens you might see under studio lights, a very different kind of drag has taken root in the birthplace of democracy. Athens is well known as a popular home for underground, anarchist punks. Predictably, it is also home to underground, punk drag queens, who revel in the weird, freaky and hairy.
Film director Fil Ieropoulos has made it his mission to document this rag tag bunch since the early 2010s, with writer and co-creator Foivos Dousos.
Their latest release, Avant-Drag! explores the stories and artistry of ten Athenian queens through poetic vignettes, before bringing them together for a Da Vinci-style last supper. “I wanted to give each artist their own space, each one to expand on their case aesthetically and politically,” Fil tells me of these chapters. “But then I wanted to show that they are a part of a wider thing; a community. Rarely in the history of cinema have drag queens had the opportunity to meet each other to talk about things seriously, and to be taken equally seriously by audiences.”
Serious it may be, but uptight it is not – Avant-Drag! is full of silly, funny and bizarre scenes to keep you entertained, including a nun dominatrix drag queen who praises abortion asking their sub to eat from the “apple of knowledge” (bitten into straight from a codpiece). Also, a cabbage roll is mashed up and injected somewhere it never should be.
“I think it’s important for art to make you uncomfortable. It means your moral, aesthetic principles are being questioned,” says Fil. “Even if a work of art ultimately does not manage to transform you, it has at least planted a seed of doubt in your head. This is the only way to change the world – by allowing art, ideas and culture to penetrate our comfort in order to shake us up.”
This equally applies to the rough visual storytelling of the Athenian queens. Dresses decorated with Chron’s disease medication, raincoats splattered with blood, breastplates made of cherry buns and sellotape. There is no designer couture here.
“When I first heard that drag artists take a loan in order to compete in RuPaul’s Drag Race, I thought, ‘ok, this is the end of any notion of edginess in drag; it has now completely drenched itself in the perils of the spectacle,’” Fil tells me. “The Greek drag queens are more collage-y and harsher on the edges visually. Complexity of concept and a tendency towards the transgressive is more important in this scene than cratfts(wo)manship.”
In some ways, the world that Fil depicts in Avant-Drag! is reminiscent of the Queer underground of old, a drag without capitalism. It’s a drag that emerges from danger and oppression and police brutality – the film makes reference to the death of drag performer Zackie Oh, a close collaborator of the group featured in the documentary, and its creators.
Avant-Drag! also traverses the complex cultural tapestry of Greek identity. Greek flags pop up ubiquitously, oppressively, stupidly – on flag poles, finger nails, fridge magnets. Nationalism itself is reimagined as a kind of drag that’s up for the taking, as silly as a clown wig. The fantastical, dreamlike tapestry of the film reflects the jarring mythos of Athens.
“Most nationalisms are complicated and contradictory,” says Fil. “In the case of Greece, there is the extra complexity of the country’s relation to ancient Greece. Despite the fact that this was a very long time ago and there is little cultural connection between contemporary Greece and ancient Greece, in some people’s imagination, there is still a notion of Greek superiority.”
In the film, one artist states: “National myths are always a collage of contradictory cliches. A well tuned Frankenstein’s monster. In Greece… we hear magical conspiracy theories where everything comes together in a psychedelic mixture. A murky soup with Orthodox churches, ancient oracles, moussaka, folk music, small white houses, frozen coffee, beaches, Spartan warriors, tzatziki, Parthenons, feta, myths, AirBnb.”
This is certainly not the Athens of an in-flight magazine – most of the action takes place in tiny flats and on graffiti covered roadsides – but that makes it all the more powerful, because no one can put it on a fridge magnet. Which is just the way they like it.
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