If one were to get their drag king introduction from Nicole Miyahara’s documentary The Making of a King: A Drag King Documentary, one might assume that Tim Burton characters are their default aesthetic. Throughout this film, performers adorn outfits resembling The Mad Hatter, Jack Skellington, Willy Wonka, and other characters who either originated with Burton or appear in his work. Some even lip-sync to dialogue from movies like Alice in Wonderland in front of rapturous crowds!
It’s a reminder of how Tim Burton and his societally isolated protagonists used to strike a profound chord with queer viewers. But The Making of a King was shot in the early-to-mid-2010s and a lot has changed since that time. Nowadays, Burton movies and the queer community share more distance — even with his new box office hit Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. How did Burton movies go from omnipresent to passé in queer culture?
The original cycle of Tim Burton work (unleashed between 1988 and 2010) were ingrained into the DNA of a subset of queer culture for a long time. The protagonists of features like Edward Scissorhands resonated on a personal level with queer viewers. “Burton characters are often outcasts and not accepted by society,” explains drag king Alice Cooter. “I think we as queer people can relate to that.”
Drag performer JameSin b’Twixt, echoes similar sentiments. “As a little queer kid growing up in a small, conservative Texas town in the 80’s & 90’s, I came of age with the mindset that being weird and different was not a good thing, much less anything to be celebrated,” b’Twixt explains. “I saw a little bit myself on the screen in so many of Burton’s characters. The weird, lovable outcast that just needed to be shown a little bit of love and acceptance in order to shine.”
There are also Burton’s gnarly images and environments. There are realms where blood squirts out of trees rather than sap and even Batman films are full of charred corpses. To gaze on Tim Burton’s world is to absorb imagery that’s simultaneously unusual and dazzling. “Tim Burton films find the beauty in the macabre and ‘unnormal’,” observes Arsenic Lace. “It is liberating to us who are seen as ‘different’. There is beauty and love in who we are, even if others don’t see it.”
Beyond this emphasis on societal oddballs and gothic imagery, some of Burton’s films shared direct connections with queer pop culture. Most obviously,1995’s Ed Wood chronicled the gender-norms challenging director of 1950s classics like Glen or Glenda. Then there was the 2007 feature Sweeney Todd, adapted from gay musical theater legend Stephen Sondheim’s stage show. And Burton’s entire filmography drew heavily from German Expressionism, an era of cinema many modern viewers consider, at the very least, queer-coded. He often directly pays homage to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a film riddled with queer subtext.
Such movies led to drag king imaginations everywhere going into overdrive. It isn’t just the folks chronicled in The Making of a King that crafted unforgettable memories performing as recognizably Burton creations. “I have a Sweeney Todd act that I’ve performed a few times,” Cooter recalls. b’Twixt, meanwhile, embraced the protagonist of a Burton-produced animated movie for an especially memorable drag performance. “One of my absolute favorite characters I have ever portrayed onstage is the Patron Saint of Halloween himself, Jack Skellington,” b’Twixt excitedly recounts. “The Nightmare Before Christmas was actually the first film I ever saw in a movie theater, so it left a mark on me in numerous ways. I’d like to think that 8 year old me would be pretty excited for what I’ve created today.”
And Burton drag performances aren’t limited to kings. “I just recently portrayed Lydia Deetz for ‘Tim Burton Night’ at Reflections in Fort Worth,” drag queen Arsenic Lace proclaims. The existence of that 2024 occasion, presumably tied into Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s theatrical debut, indicates that Burton hasn’t vanished entirely from the modern drag scene.
Still, Lace herself observes that Burton performances have become outnumbered by more modern pop culture inspirations. “I think society is finally seeing the beauty of horror and how liberating it is to explore those realms of imagination,” Lace explains. Within the drag king world specifically, Cooter echoes Lace’s observation on which genre is dominating the imagination of performers today. “Horror films and Dragula are influences to modern kings,” Cooter declares. Even those reference points provide a much wider umbrella of visual directions than just Burton’s filmography. “Horror films” could refer to anything from campy Rocky Horror Picture Show pastiches to terrifying Ari Aster experiences.
The expansion of drag king influences has occurred as Burton no longer dominates pop culture writ large. Duds like Dumbo and Dark Shadows didn’t capture the imagination of queer viewers — or any viewers — like his earliest works. This decline in notoriety for modern Burton movies has left a void in drag king culture other macabre pop culture is all too happy to fill.
Part of that transition also reflects an inevitable generational shift. Burton’s best films are inextricably tied to the 1990s and early 2000s. Once the late 2010s and early 2020s rolled around, it was time for the torch to be passed to a new era of pop culture. And in this era of countless streaming services, there are more pop culture influences than ever for drag performers to draw from. There isn’t a monolithic source of artistic inspiration that looms over the entire scene.
The evolution for drag kings isn’t just rooted in evolving pop culture influences but also evolving gender expression. “Something I really do love about the current King scene is the embracing of gender fluidity,” b’Twixt observes. “Toxic masculinity has at times permeated and been very prevalent in King culture, so it’s really refreshing to see a shift where more and more Kings embrace the glitter, glitz, glam, and things that have traditionally or historically been perceived as more ‘feminine’.” Once symbols of an alternate masculinity, Burton’s characters now likely feel part of a regressive mainstream.
At the very least, Burton himself has made regressive comments that go against the inclusive spirit that’s supposed to inform drag king performances. “While I harbor no ill will towards my friends who choose to dress as fun, easily recognizable characters,” performer Sass Crotch emphasizes on this matter, “I no longer have space for a man who claims that Black people just don’t fit his aesthetic. I don’t love a dude who thinks segregation in Hollywood is ‘great,’ and don’t want to give him more of a platform than he already has.”
They’re referring to statements made by Burton in 2016. Here, he bristles at the idea of incorporating more racially diverse casting in his movies. He also lambasts other pop culture properties engaging in inclusive casting. As a cherry on top, he makes an ill-advised comparison to saying he never yearned for blaxploitation movies to feature white people. Why then, Burton wonders, should viewers yearn to see non-white characters in his features?
This reflects the unfortunate reality of art about outsiders made by deeply privileged voices. Burton’s sympathy for societal outsiders includes folks with scissors for hands or night-time vigilantes. However, he’s much less sympathetic to actors of color Hollywood excludes on a systemic level. With this sympathy double standard in play, it’s no wonder some modern drag king performers feel uncomfortable drawing from his works.
Even after Burton’s comments and directing movies as bad as Dark Shadows and Dumbo, recent box office smash Beetlejuice Beetlejuice proves his work can still leave a mark on pop culture. (Many Halloween-themed drag shows this year will likely have somebody saying “it’s showtime!” as a new incarnation of Beetlejuice.) But scoring a hit with a nostalgic legacy sequel isn’t the same as Burton’s streak in the 1990s and 2000s. It also doesn’t erase the noticeable decline in Burton cinema in the modern drag scene.
Perhaps that’s for the best given that this auteur once identified with outsider culture is now largely connected to Hot Topic merchandise and questionable interpretations of diversity. The memories and connections certain drag performers have for Tim Burton can remain. But there’s also room for new dominant visions in the drag space. In other words, it’s “showtime!” for new visions of what drag king performances can look like.
Comments
This was so interesting, thank you Lisa!
I feel like a lot of things about Burton’s views and his artistic output make more sense when you realise that a vast majority of his work is just obvious projection of his own feelings and self?
Like let’s be blunt: most of his protagonists LOOK like him visually, even when they’re being played by his at the time best friend, and the love interests were usually played by his now-ex wife. His films are just him trying to impress upon the world his own feelings of being alienated growing up (which is even more obvious when you also consider his comics, drawings and poems). I think that kind of attitude can make art which is, on the one hand, very authentic and sincere, and on the other hand, I think it can make the artist quite arrogant and closed-off to criticism and new ideas: why should Tim Burton, Noted Auteur And Gothic Genius Who Is Loved By All, consider having diverse voices and experiences included in his work, when his work is all about HIM?
Obviously him making all his films as mirrors to his own personality and tastes worked at first, and obviously a lot of people empathised with it themselves, but I think it also has the effect where the reflections those mirrors are showing off just…aren’t changing or reflecting anything that we haven’t seen before. They’re still just showing Tim Burton. Meanwhile, I think it also makes him less interested in making, or equipped to make, art about anything that ISN’T himself and his feelings of childhood alienation.
This isn’t to defend him even a little bit, he definitely needed to understand why saying what he did about black actors is an embarrassing view to air in public, but I feel like his lack of empathy for marginalised people who have experiences he hasn’t felt personally AND the staleness of his artistic output likely comes from the same place: a close-minded fixation with his own inner world.