Cher-ing/Sharing Across Boundaries

Abstract

Cher-ing/Sharing Across Boundaries interrogates the multiple performances of Othered identities by the artist Cher throughout her career as drag. In considering the possible influence of these performances on ideas of ethnicity and gender in mainstream media, I question the very concept of authentic or originary identification through a cultural studies analysis of Cher as traversing the boundaries that supposedly separate identity categories. I use Judith Butler’s (1990, 1993) concept of performativity as applied to drag as well as multiple authors’ converging theories about the politics of camp aesthetics such as those of Jack Babuscio (1999), Caryl Flinn (1999), Andrew Ross (1999), and Pamela Robertson (1996), to situate the ethnic and gendered politics of Cher’s many differing performances. Spanning music videos and her variety show in the 1970s, motion pictures in the 1980s and 1990s, concerts in the late 1990s, and appearances as herself in the new millennium, her performances allow us to consider the production of identity itself and whether subversion of confining ideas of naturalness or authenticity is possible within these enactments.