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12016-04-13T13:32:09-07:00Casey Diaz070c773ac008bf619142bbad2de8c516fbf3b25d679014gallery2016-05-05T10:44:16-07:00Brita Loeb942120b745a4be9609a81faa3ba80521f37067e8A shallow narrative of the Los Angeles punk scene tells the story of heteronormativity: white and straight. White males, like Darby Crash, remained closest- a fact that speaks to the difficulty of minority identification in a hardcore scene. Yet, drag legend Vaginal Creme Davis challenged dominant culture, and punk subculture. [MAYBE LEAD HEAR WITH SUCH DIRECT ENGAGEMENTS AS RIFFING ON BLACK FLAG (THE FACE OF SOUTH BEACH VIOLENT WHITE MACHO) WITH HER BAND BLACK FAT Rising to popularity from her zine Latoya Jackson, Davis also performed at punk shows as the front-woman the band, Afro Sisters. Grace Dunham in her New Yorker article articulates that "...she [Vaginal Davis] referenced and drew inspiration from iconic black radicals like Angela Davis, after whom she named herself.”
Self-described as African-American and Mexican-American [citation], Davis examined her Chicana background and its mix with blackness, especially through her group, Cholita [insert link]. In performing her various minoritarian identities and the intersection of them (mostly via drag), Davis in a true punk fashion reject dominant modes of normalcy, with what Munoz deems "terroristic drag" [citation]. Davis' guerrilla tactics aimed to critique punk's whiteness, as she infiltrated a dissent, but nonetheless mainly white male culture through mixed media: zines, performance art, and of course her bands- PME, Cholita, and Black Flag [link]. Duhham pays homage to Munoz's term, for she writes. “Muñoz was the first person to use the term “terrorist drag” to describe the work of Davis—in particular, the way she interrogated rather than obscured her cultural otherness.” [citation]
"A handful of punk icons flaunted gayness outrageously, such as the African American drag diva Vaginal Creme Davis, who created a band called Cholita: The Female Menudo (for which she performed as a Latina-swapping ethnic identity as well as gender" (Gay LA, 252).
Munoz in his own words comments on the way in which Davis interrogates straight culture, her attack on white-male norms. He writes [insert]
Doyle writes, "Davis is a black drag queen, a grande dame of the queer underground in Los Angeles, on the margins of both the Los Angeles art world (as not-commercial) and the gay scene as well (black, queer punk-rock drag queen she is" (Sex Objects, 126).
She, unlike other artists depicted in this chapter, acts and represents anxieties of the queer body, through her queer body of work that engages the objectification of women's bodies.
