Performing ‘Judy’: The Creation and Function of Cover Personae in Popular Music in Rufus Wainwright's Judy Garland Concerts

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Notes

Auslander adapts Frith's definitions for performance analysis in theatre and performance studies, writing: ‘I will refer to the three layers of performance [Frith] identifies as the real person (the performer as human being), the performance persona (which corresponds to Frith's star personality or image) and the character (Frith's song personality)’ (Philip Auslander, ‘Performance Analysis and Popular Music’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 14.1 [2004], 1–13 [p. 6], and Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996], pp. 186, 212).

Auslander, ‘Performance Analysis and Popular Music’, (p. 10).

Ibid., p. 7.

Rufus Wainwright, ‘Rufus Picks His Gay Icons’ (2006), http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2006/nov/10/rufuspickshisgayicons [accessed 6 December 2009] (para. 3 of 12).

Richard Dyer, Stars (new ed., with a supplementary chapter and bibliography by Paul McDonald) (London: BFI, 1998), p. 20.

Ibid., p. 34

Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Societies, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 138.

Ibid., p. 139, 190.

On the development of her gay following as it developed in her career, Dyer writes: ‘I have tried to look at her through a particular world-view, that of the white urban gay male subculture that developed in relation to her after her major period [of] film stardom and as she was becoming better know as a cabaret, recording, and television star (and subject of scandal)’ (ibid., p. 3).

Brett Farmer, ‘The Fabulous Sublimity of Gay Diva Worship’, Camera Obscura 59, 20.2 (2005), 165–94 (p. 189).

Ibid., p. 189.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 169.

Ibid., p. 173.

Dyer. Heavenly Bodies, p. 151. The specific aspects Dyer refers to in his analysis of Garland's image are ‘ordinariness, androgyny, and camp’ (ibid.).

Rufus Wainwright, cited in Nancy Franklin, ‘Rufus at Carnegie Hall: Nancy Franklin on Rufus Wainwright doing Judy Garland’, The New Yorker (26 June 2006), http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/06/26/060626ta_talk_franklin [accessed 23 November 2009] (para. 4 of 4).

Wainwright, ‘Rufus Picks His Gay Icons’.

Farmer, ‘Fabulous Sublimity’, p. 169.

Ibid. For Farmer, his own diva worship was directed towards Julie Andrews. In an analogous anecdote of childhood self-authorship through diva worship, he writes: ‘Indeed, transformed into a sign of my developing homosexuality, any attachment to Andrews became more than ever an integral component of my subjectivity and an indefatigable resource for survival in the face of what I perceived to be an unaccommodating social world’ (p. 167).

Ibid., p. 170.

Phil Gallo, ‘Rufus Wainwright Sings Judy Garland’, Daily Variety, 26 September 2007, p. 8.

Dyer, Heavenly Bodies, p. 140.

Ibid., p. 144.

Cited in Jim Farber, ‘Singing Judy in this Guise’, New York Daily News, 13 June 2006, p. 50.

Though the concert included an appearance by Garland's daughter Lorna Luft, who in essence signaled Garland's would-be approval of the event, Liza Minnelli and other members of the Garland family were less than pleased with Wainwright's decision to restage the concert. Diplomatically addressing their disapproval, Wainwright has said, ‘All I'll say is that, you know, when you resurrect such a sort of momentous character and icon as Judy, you do wake a lot of people up. And you know, some people's feathers are ruffled [i.e. Minnelli's]. Some people want to fly [i.e. Luft]’ (quoted in Scott Simon, ‘Wainwright to Channel Garland, Live’, Weekend Edition, transcript, National Public Radio, 10 June 2006).

Stephen Holden, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Conjuring Judy Garland’, New York Times, 15 June 2006, p. B2. Holden goes on to clarify his statements: ‘“They” would be the heavily gay, male, over-30 audience at the sold out Carnegie Hall last night and tonight; the legend would be Judy Garland; and the gawky, flouncing pop shaman conjuring her would be Rufus Wainwright, the 32-year-old singer-songwriter and opera maven descended from folk-rock royalty.’

Ibid.

Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), p. 39.

Guy Trebay, ‘A Judy is Born’, New York Times, 4 June 2006, Style, p. 1; and Holden, ‘Somewhere’, p. B2.

Holden, ‘Somewhere’, p. B2.

Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 2–3.

Ibid., p. 3.

Ibid., p. 7.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, ‘I, New York: Countdown to Judy: Week 1: Rufus Wainwright’, Time Out New York (20–26 April 2006), http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/i-new-york/1318/countdown-to-judy [accessed 23 November 2009] (para. 2 of 5).

Farber, ‘Singing Judy in this Guise’, p. 50.

Simon, ‘Wainwright’.

Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! Does Judy! Judy! Judy! [DVD]. While I am quoting here from Wainwright's performance of the concert in London and not at Carnegie Hall, this moment was used in each performance as the spot during which Rufus would tell his own personal story rather than one of Garland's. The particular story for each concert changed based on the location of each concert. For instance, Wainwright's story at the Hollywood Bowl was about a time when Betty Buckley saved him from drowning in the Chateau Marmont's pool when he was only four years old (Gallo, ‘Rufus’, Daily Variety, p. 8).

Elisabeth Vincentelli, ‘I, New York: Countdown to Judy: Week 2: Stephen Oremus’, Time Out New York (27 April-3 May 2006), http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/i-new-york/1424/countdown-to-judy [accessed 23 November 2009] (para. 3 of 6).

Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! Does Judy! Judy! Judy! [DVD].

Dyer, Heavenly Bodies, p. 175.

Michael L. Quinn, ‘Celebrity and the Semiotics of Acting’, New Theatre Quarterly, 6.22 (1990), 154–61 (p. 159).

Michael Mario Albrecht, ‘Acting Naturally Unnaturally: The Performative Nature of Authenticity in Contemporary Popular Music’, Text and Performance Quarterly, 28.4 (October 2008), 379–95 (p. 383).

Ibid., p. 384.

Ibid.

Kate McGarrigle, ‘Liner Notes’, in Rufus Wainwright, Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall (Geffen Records, B0010318–02, 2007).

Elisabeth Vincentelli, ‘I, New York: Countdown to Judy: Week 5: Rufus Wainwright’, Time Out New York (18–24 May 2006), http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/i-new-york/6700/countdown-to-judy [accessed 23 November 2009] (para. 1 of 6).

Holden, ‘Somewhere’, p. B2.

In her book Making Americans, Andrea Most has argued ‘each song offers the performer the opportunity to create somebody new, somebody different from the character in the dialogue scenes’ (Andrea Most, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004], p. 10).

Trebay, ‘A Judy Is Born’, p. 1.