My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them

Margaret Dumont (1882): Duchess of Dignity

24 Margaret Dumont Duchess of Dignity Christopher Murray Margaret Dumont was called “the fifth Marx Brother” by Groucho, appearing in seven of their films. In each, she played the comic foil: a stately society matron who was a perfect target for the boys’ insults and jibes. Unlike some other divas, she was not a subject of adulation, but rather has become someone for whom I have empathy. She played the role of an often-oblivious woman whose only purpose was to be made fun of. This is a lesser-known kind of diva, but an important one. As much as gay men identify with the glamour of a screen siren or disco diva, we also have always been drawn to tragic figures of ridicule. Monica Lewinsky is 25 a recent inheritor of this mantle, a society woman who becomes a target for widespread sexualized derision. It takes the special perspective of the homosexual male to rescue her, to reverse the prevailing attitude, and to put her on a pedestal as a survivor, a person worthy of dignity. Dumont was also the still center around which comic chaos revolved. Without her, the Marx Brothers’ madness had no form, no structure. I imagine the never-seen internal experience of her character and a growing rage toward her tormentors. This parallels the gay man’s anger at being a target of bullies and demagogues . Certainly, she was ridiculous: pompous, hefty, and selfimportant . Her flaws rationalize the enmity directed at her, but don’t excuse it. The viciousness of humor operates in opposition to the human necessity for tolerance and understanding. In our fantasies, like our comedies, we take delight in behaviors that wouldn’t be acceptable in our real lives. The sadism shown toward Dumont is the sublimation of those darker impulses toward misogyny and even rape in the deepest reaches of the male psyche. Dumont is punished by the Marx Brothers for no longer being sexually attractive and for representing the power found in social position and money. For this, she must undergo humiliation. If she isn’t destroyed, she may become the castrator. This weak stab at Freudian interpretation aside, my attempt to imagine Dumont’s pain is analogous to any gay man’s attempt to connect with the glamour and emotional freedom of a more conventional diva. In fact, my groping toward empathy for Dumont embodies that creative leap from observation to identification that is the hallmark of the gay man’s love of his diva. That it can be applied not only to the victorious siren and femme fatale, but to the forlorn, forgotten, fat, and fatuous as well, is, to me, moving and transformative. I never thought the Marx Brothers were all that funny. They were barbarians and bullies, stupid and self-aggrandizing. But something in me responded to their cruelty. When I was in fourth grade, with my parents involved in a bitter separation, I took my Margaret Dumont 26 confusion and hurt to the schoolyard. There by the tree next to the swing set, I became one of the Marx clan and mercilessly teased and taunted an outcast, a boy named Mark with a round face and funny square glasses who spoke in a stilted, strangled voice. I made him my bitch, calling him names and pushing him in the dirt. I relished in making him cry, tears drawing a path down his face toward his mouth open in a round howl of surprise and pain. My favorite teacher, Mrs. Brady, witnessed my torture of Mark, and I’ll never forget her confusion and dismay as she asked me why, why had I targeted this poor boy with such ferocity? And then I felt flooded with shame, felt it rising in my throat like bile. It was my first and maybe still my most intense experience of being ashamed, greater than any based on my latent sexuality. I had become my disapproving father, my rough brother. After that, I knew somehow that I couldn’t live my life managing my own pain and fear by transforming into an aggressor. It felt too terrible to have a person I admired like Mrs. Brady show me to myself as a bully. Eventually, I tried to make amends to Mark, befriended him. At first he was wary and uncertain, but after a while I learned his solitary games, began to share his complex inner world of...