GLITTERING JUNK: JACK SMITH AND THE VAST LANDFILL OF IDENTITY

[...]this is no dream world, it is not even the world of daydreams, tho' that is closer: it is the world of art, a formally artificial arrangement.2 Trash as art, the transformation and acceptance of identity, more specifically, of the playfulness and creativity of identity in relation to the world, allows Smith to create an art of acceptance within which male and female merge to become "creature," allowing conceptions of identity to mutate from the world to the self and back again. Listening to Jack Smith and Mario Montez's (a drag performer's performance of the film star Maria Montez) performance of The First Memoirs of Maria Monfe% on the CD Silent Shadorn on Cinemaroc Islandbegms to reveal a way into a new kind of analysis: an analysis based upon the limits of classification and, most importandy, the materiality of the performance itself.3 The performance is filled with the "ching" of hand symbols, "exotic" music, the arrangement of junk, ridiculous screams, slow delivery, and an obsession with Maria Montez's fragrance of choice, Shalimar. Philosophically, an artist such as Foreman may see the world as a cozy "reverberation machine," as in the title of his book of plays and essays alludes to, in which everything is present in everything else, a distincdy non-dualisdc approach to the world, and an almost utopian vision of equality.18 However, Foreman's singular vision provokes the charge of a lopsided world, a dictatorship ruled by a privileged ivy-league educated male acting as puppet-master in a patriarchal fantasy of domination most often shown in his use of the nude female body. Bonnie Marranea and Gautam Dasgupta in their book The Theatre of the Ridiculous place Smith alongside Charles Ludlam, Ronald Tavel, Kenneth Bernard and John Vaccaro.20 Stefan Brecht in his book Queer Theatre theorizes Smith as a vital link between Ludlam and Vaccaro as well as The Hot Peaches, Andy Warhol, and John Waters.21 In Brecht's version of Smith's legacy, he becomes part of a political struggle for identity and community: the site of what he calls the "f.p."-free person.22 In addition, Brecht, Marranea and Dasgupta all connect Smith's performance style to Camp: an often theorized aesthetic and political aspect of queer theory most often performed within the Theater of the Ridiculous.