San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
S.F. iconic drag queen remembered as pioneer
In an era when drag performers are also entrepreneurs, social media stars, merchandising tycoons and headline international tours, the pioneers of the art form are rightly being rediscovered.
Craig Seligman’s new biography, “Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?: Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag,” is the latest offering in this niche of 20th century queer history, and it has a worthy subject. Fish, an Australian-born drag queen, writer and artist was considered a San Francisco institution in the 1970s and ’80s. His most lasting media legacy is undoubtedly his role as Capt. Dan Tracey/Tracey Daniels in Phillip R. Ford’s 1991 drag sci-fi film “Vegas in Space,” which Fish co-wrote. The movie has become an underground classic for its surreal art direction and camp humor.
The temporal and often underground nature of drag performance has meant that iconic performers have sometimes faded from memory. (Fish was also a noted stage performer in San Francisco and his native Sydney, co-founding local drag troupe the Sluts a-Go-Go.) Since Fish’s death in 1991 from AIDS, “Vegas in Space” and footage in Marc Huestis’ documentaries “Chuck Solomon: Coming of Age” and “Another Goddamn Benefit” have survived as proof of Fish’s effervescence, timing and wit.
Seligman, who is also the author of “Sontag and Kael: Opposites Attract Me,” puts Fish into the context of his time and the gay scenes of Sydney and the Bay Area. While Fish remains a noted figure of San Francisco drag lore — he was “sainted” by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence after his death and was the subject of the play “Simply Stunning: The Doris Fish Story” at Theatre Rhinoceros in 2002 — Seligman provides the first full history of Fish as an artist.
Born Philip Mills in Sydney in 1952, Fish grew up in a middle-class family in the suburb of Manly (which Fish joked was ironic), finding his way to drag through the glitter and androgyny of late 1960s and ’70s music and fashion. He first experimented with drag as a teenager, and, upon moving to Sydney after completing school, formed the drag group Sylvia and the Synthetics. The name Doris Fish came in homage to actress Doris Day, according to Seligman’s account in the book, and he claimed to be ignorant of the misogynist slang of the term “fish” in American gay culture. While he was known by most as Doris, he identified as a cisgender male and used male pronouns. Fish also frequently did sex work to support himself and his creative projects.
In 1975, Fish moved to San Francisco and found his drag community among performers including the late Tippi and Miss X, with whom he would form the Sluts a-Go-Go. Their productions included stage shows like “Who’s Afraid of Box Office Poison?,” “Blonde Sin” and even a revival of the Maxwell Anderson child-murderer drama “The Bad Seed.”
Fish and the Sluts were a sensation. He also wrote a column for the gay publication the Sentinel, modeled for a line of drag greeting cards and hosted a cable access show covering LGBTQ issues. As the AIDS crisis decimated San Francisco’s gay community, Fish was among its victims, dying before the official premiere of “Vegas in Space” at the Castro Theatre. The film would go on to screen at festivals and gain cult status as a midnight movie. By the time of his death, Fish was esteemed enough in the community to have been the beneficiary of a major gala performance featuring the luminaries of the local drag scene and been honored with a Doris Fish Day in San Francisco.
Seligman’s subtitle is fitting, as even the casual follower of drag can easily see the through lines from Fish to the present. Fish was among an early wave of drag artists, including John Waters muse Divine, to break through, if not to full mainstream popularity, then to cult acclaim. Coming after the more avant garde Cockettes troupe of the early 1970s and before the punk-meets-performance art milieu of T-shack at the Stud Bar in the 1990s, the Sluts and their style of gender satire are an unmistakable link to San Francisco’s current drag aesthetic, with its emphasis on eccentricity and humor. Beyond setting Fish in the larger context of the times, Seligman’s book also reveals the man behind the queen and includes dishy remembrances from close friends and collaborators.
“Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?” is another worthy history of San Francisco’s underground and queer scenes, along with Huestis’ memoir “Impresario of Castro Street,” Alvin Orloff ’s “Disasterama!” and Monique Jenkinson’s “Faux Queen.” All these books show how the city has frequently been a leader in discussions about the intersections of art, identity and politics.
But what “Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?” ultimately does is remind queers, and young drag artists especially, that they have a cultural lineage. Years before RuPaul dared put a drag competition on television, Fish dared be a queen of all media.