Globalizing Drag in the Cook Islands: Friction, Repulsion, and Abjection

Abstract

This article is about a Drag Queen competition I attended on Rarotonga, Cook Islands, in 1998.1 I am returning to it because it continues to perplex me-much as it did the audience on the night it was held. It was a show that combined elements of "Western" drag shows and beauty pageants, and "local" styles of cross-dressing and performing. This combination in itself is not unusual; drag queen competitions that meld local and nonlocal styles of drag performance have been held on Rarotonga since at least the 1980s. This particular show included performances that resulted in the show being judged by many in the audience as less than entertaining and, at times, highly distasteful. These sentiments were summed up in the aftermath, as the unanimous reaction to the competition was, "It was stink."This show was received in a strikingly different way from the many other drag and cross-dressing performances I attended in the Cook Islands, which are generally viewed as extremely humorous and enjoyed by diverse audiences. These performances traverse many contexts: fundraising events for church groups, sports competitions, Independence Day celebrations, and Christmas dance competitions. Usually they involve male groups in female costumes dancing to intricately choreographed performances of local female dances. Solo cross-dressing performances are most common at drag shows or in spontaneous "clowning" among friends at nightclubs or parties.

Querying heteronormativity among transnational Pasifika teenagers in New Zealand: An Oceanic approach to language and masculinity

“…It is difficult to be certain that these Pasifika boys’ conception of masculinity and sexuality, which this analysis suggests could be markedly different from the New Zealand norm (cf. Alexeyeff and her research in the Cook Islands), arises from trans‐Oceanic background and knowledge. However, the approach taken in this study allows for the possibility that it might indeed.…”

“…Sexual prowess in Hawaiʻi represents a different masculinity from that of Māori‐Pākehā masculinity, and it is therefore important to the current study, for the Cook Island, Niuēan, and Sāmoan boys are seen to ignore the local normative version at key moments. Of relevance here is the work of Alexeyeff in the Cook Islands (), which has revealed that local and Western concepts of sexuality and gender are markedly different and come together with friction. Sexuality is not central to masculinity in the Cook Islands, and indeed Oceania more broadly.…”

“…This moment of contestation, as with the previously analysed interaction in response to the homoerotic image, is a reminder that Oceanic perspectives on gender and sexuality rarely mimic Western or cosmopolitan modes of gender and sexuality (Jolly ). Instead, as Alexeyeff points out in relation to the Cook Islands, for example (: 144), ‘Cook Islands “locality” is moulded by the interplay between competing perspectives; Western and local are co‐present in a zone of contestation, and Cook Islanders struggle over their meaning.’ Neither the non‐normative positioning nor Codey's announcement appears to worry Ben, and his undeterred bearing maintains the resignification of young men's masculinity which began in turn 7. Because it places in doubt the centrality of sexuality to gender identity, his performance thus also raises questions about the universal analytical purchase of the concept of heteronormativity, a theme that I will explore in the next section.…”

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Changing Pacific Masculinities: The ‘Problem’ of Men

“…One of the most important insights to have emerged is the view that gender is not a cultural construct grounded in the biology of sexed bodies, but a fluid code that is deployed in relational and transformative terms (Strathern 1988). Elsewhere in the Pacific, recent research into so-called 'liminal' gender categories has illustrated the complex relationship between indigenous configurations of sexuality and processes of globalisation, and in doing so highlighted the importance of being careful not to uncritically impose Western constructs-'straight ', 'gay', 'transsexual', etc.-into Pacific contexts (Besnier 1994(Besnier , 2002Mageo 1996;Alexeyeff 2000Alexeyeff ,2008Wallace 2003).…”