It Feels Like Yesterday: Drag, Nostalgia, and Queer Affective History in The Vaudevillians

Abstract

ABSTRACT Written and performed by the drag team Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales, The Vaudevillians, tells the story of Kitty Witless and Dr. Dan von Dandy, a vaudeville duo whose career was cut short in the 1920s, when they were caught in an avalanche and frozen alive. The conceit of the show is that, during their 90-year hiatus, generations of performers pilfered their songbook and passed them off as their own. Now, they have thawed out and are back to reclaim their intellectual property. In this article, I argue that Kitty and Dan’s quest to reclaim queer coded music under the banner of a single queer authorship gives shape and form to the tradition of queer coding, while also creating an affective history and queer origin myth that exposes the queer temporal ethos of nostalgic drag performance.