Maquillage as Mask
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When I judge Lady Gaga, I judge what I feel is the miming of sexuality without the real sexual magic coming from beneath the surface…
Marlene Dietrich is one of the great pioneers of modern sexuality, coming from her own roots as a live singer in cabarets in Weimar Berlin, as an enormous explosive breakout performer as the femme fatale in the Blue Angel in 1930, then a very sophisticated woman playing with transvestism in Morocco, wearing a tuxedo, and then inventing the whole style of hard glamour that is used in all the major fashion magazines world wide, a certain look in fashion… the maquillage as a mask—Baudelaire actually prophesied that—but she’s the one who created that look.
It was a look that gay men love. What gay men understood from the start was transvestism. They understood. They saw Marlene Dietrich as a drag star. In fact she was a participant in the great drag balls in Weimar Berlin at the height of Weimar decadence. I think yes, there always is this transvestism lingering, a masquerade, behind the most glamorous of female looks of the last century.
Fliporto Interview (2011)
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