This ability to read Garland beyond face value—to sense, for example, as she crumbles from the despair of her partner's addiction A star Is Born, that she was speaking for herself as well—it also placed her at the forefront of the camp. The “failed seriousness,” as Susan Sontag later put it, of a child star who developed a trademark life to deal with the limelight has been a boon to generations of drag queens and actresses wanting an award-winning biopic.
Although the lexicon of contemporary gay culture is unthinkable without “Judy, Judy, Judy,” audiences clamored for Judy at Carnegie Hall he inhabited a world far more hostile than the modern listener. In addition to brutal policing and social ostracism, the 1950s and early 1960s were a heyday of Freudianism in America, and the emerging profile of homosexuals as effeminate, repressed, and grotesquely emotional elicited both patronizing sympathy and blatant contempt. In a very homophobic article about esteemed sir in 1969, William Goldman managed to summarize both: “First, if [gays] you have an enemy, it's age. And Garland is youth, eternal, over the rainbow. And secondly, the lady has suffered. Homosexuals tend to identify with pain.”
Although Garland's death in 1969 on the day of the Stonewall riots is mythologized by some as a driving factor in the uprising, it actually marked a decisive generational rift. Gay liberation was, in large part, about realizing a self out of the shadows. The defiant, often fractious young gay man who emerged in his wake did not need Garland as a conduit to express himself or articulate his political demands. In turn, beloved Judy has become not only famous but also a bit shameful, an activity associated with the most pathetic kind of cloistered: suggesting mothballs, jazz hands and a deferred life of masochistic longing.
But even as Garland's cult waned, it planted the seeds for strong new affinities to grow between performers and their audiences. In Judy at Carnegie Hall, one can hear the genesis of modern queer fandom, in all its kinship and complex emotional juxtaposition. Judy's highs and lows were gradually given a cleaner form by the artists who succeeded her, smoothing over the turbulence in favor of a much more manageable approach to pop as a way of life, be it telling a well-rounded approach to sex. and romance (Madonna), share moments of devastating vulnerability (Janet Jackson), or perform jazz standards while taking over A star Is Born (Lady Gaga). Even when things are tougher, she remains the benchmark for previously talented performers who persevere against unimaginable odds: just look at how often her name comes up in discussions of Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston or Britney Spears.
