Blind, or Completely Deranged: The Fragility of White Privilege in “Hairspray”

(Last week, I went over a way to employ basic media criticism in writing compare/contrast essays. This week, I’ll provide an example.)

Oh my God, how times have changed… - Velma Von Tussle, Hairspray

Hairspray, originally a 1988 film, was adapted to a stage production in the early 2000s, which was then adapted to another film in 2007, and a live TV special in 2016. The primary villain of the piece, Velma Von Tussle, fights against the racial integration of the television show, The Corny Collins Show, that she produces, preferring an all-white, attractive, and slender cast. When an opening occurs because of a dancer having to take a sabbatical, for “about nine months…”, open auditions are scheduled to fill the slot.

That audition scene illustrates the first meeting of Velma Von Tussle with the show’s/film’s protagonist, Tracy Turnblad, a progressive-thinking, overweight young woman who’s greatest dream is dancing live on Corny Collins. This meeting is the set-up for the number, “(The Legend of) Miss Baltimore Crabs”, a song where Velma describes her ascent to power and influence through winning a beauty contest in her youth, though she admits to sleeping with the judges in order to secure her victory.

While there have been several portrayals of Velma Von Tussle, there is a visible difference between the interpretations of the character by the actresses Michelle Pfeiffer, who acted in the film version, and Kristin Chenoweth, who featured in the 2016 special. While viewers have their preferences, both renditions of the characters are valid ones, each presenting Velma Von Tussle as an influential xenophobe, but the performances of “Miss Baltimore Crabs” vary in their tonality and their delivery, which imply subtle differences between the two.

Pfeiffer’s Sinister Queen

Above is the performance by Michelle Pfeiffer in the 2007 film version. Pfeiffer’s portrayal is of a Von Tussle in full Queen Bee mode. Her tonality shows a woman with power, who’s comfortable with that power. Her speech patterns are measured, demure, but commanding, dismissing the mocking by her daughter that her moves are outdated, but still retaining her power. When the group of auditions arrive, she delegates the task of tearing them down to the young girls in her flock, “Girls? Go get ‘em,” as she considers them unworthy of her time, and then sigh, “Proceed,” to give them clearance to attack on her behalf.

Pfeiffer’s Velma is a woman still living in the past, both in her views of racial integration and in her methods of gaining and keeping power through sexual favors and exerting influence to remove any threat before it can even become one. Her delivery of the song is smoother, the voice of a character who is comfortable in her privilege.

Chenoweth’s Diva Queen

Chenoweth’s performance follows the same line of a beauty queen, though the tonality is more bitter. While Chenoweth’s Velma took the title, her voice becomes more shrill at points, like describing how Shirley Temple “stole her friggin’ act”. This Velma, unlike Pfeiffer’s, does not delegate when it comes to attacking the girls who are auditioning, preferring to attack only Tracy herself with a sigh and a “I’ll handle this,” before the shrillness returns.

Chenoweth’s Velma is a beauty queen who believes the pageant never ended. She’s a diva, a belter, and expects all to bow at her feet as if she still wears the crown, as “time seemed to halt” when she won. She demands attention where one it was given freely, and snaps at anyone who might disagree or contradict her. She’s essentially a Mean Girl for whom high school never ended.

The Subtle Divide

Both performances feature the question to Tracy, “Would you swim in an integrated pool?”, with the same response, “I sure would! I’m all for integration. It’s the new frontier!” In both cases, the following line is, “Not in Baltimore, it isn’t.” The delivery varies in a subtle fashion, though. Chenoweth’s has more of an edge of denial, an insistence that racial integration will never come to Baltimore. When she delivers, “First impressions can be tough, and when I saw you, I knew it. If your size weren’t enough, your last answer just blew it!” it’s another insistence, much more forcefully, of her power and privilege. Her anger shows, and it belies that Chenoweth’s Velma sees Tracy (correctly) as a threat to her status before vocalizing in her face and quickly sending Tracy away. It’s Chenoweth’s Velma, though, that shows the most blatant example of her racism and privilege by referring to “separate but equal” and ordering a young black woman to “bow and exalt” before her after denying the girl a chance to audition.

Pfeiffer’s delivery, on the other hand, has more the tone of an annoyed parent needing to, once again, correct an unruly child. Her Velma is one put upon by the need to explain to Tracy that while she may be white, she’s not the typical beauty standard: blonde, thin, and attractive. Her delivery of “Ugh… You may go…” has the feel of a bored noblewoman tired of humoring the commoners, which speaks to the privilege of both Velmas. Tracy is from a poorer section of Baltimore from a working class family, while the Von Tussles are clearly upper class, if not at least high middle.

While Chenoweth’s Velma sees Tracy as a threat at first, both eventually see her as the raison d'être for the crumbling of their power and influence. It should be noted, however, that resistance to Von Tussle’s influence over the culture of Hairspray’s Baltimore is shown as having been in place long before Tracy gets on the show. The host Corny Collins, and Motormouth Maybelle, has been slowly introducing black music and dancing to the Baltimore audience for some time (it’s why Tracy wants to be on the show so much). It’s a case of evolution, in the case of Corny and Maybelle, and revolution in the case of Tracy, as Tracy’s addition is the catalyst that burns down Velma’s power structure all the faster.

The Fragility of Privilege

It’s when her influence begins to wane that Velma takes more drastic measures, firing Maybelle, trying to get Tracy fired, attempting to seduce Tracy’s father, and sending the police after her in the final act. It’s not that her privilege has crumbling, but more that it was an illusion that she used social mores to push people to do what she wanted, and when the mores began changing, she lashed out in more desperate fashions. It’s a case of Velma believing she would succeed because her methods worked when she was 18, such as trying to rig the final contest to favor her daughter even after eliminating the prime competition.

The endings all differ, usually with Velma getting her comeuppance in being fired or arrested, though in the 2016 special she changes her ways almost unbelievably quick, likely to retain what power and influence she had in the television industry, though justice isn’t done for her xenophobic attitudes. Rather, her arrest is because of her husband’s suspicious death, her firing is because she is caught admitting live, on camera, that she rigged the contest to favor her daughter. This is largely for the sake of the (usually white) audience, as Velma’s attitudes are more on the “timid bigot” spectrum of racism than the more blatant uses of hate speech. Microaggressions are the weapon of choice, as always, for the privileged villain. That Tracy is able to find ways around Velma’s methods underlines how illusory her influence actually is as society marches on, though it must be noted that the footholds that Tracy gains come largely from the sustained efforts of the black students and community that she spends so much time.

Tracy uses her white privilege as well, but in a positive fashion. At the sock hop where Tracy is discovered, she initially attempts to dance with the black students, and when they refuse for fear of punishment, she doesn’t appropriate the dances she learned from them until given express permission. Despite that the moves are definitely influence by black music and culture, that a white girl is putting them on display makes them easier to accept, and helps to lay the foundation. When the protest occurs in the third act, Tracy walks at the front, but not at the center, knowing that being a white girl marching with black activists will bring attention to the march, but not attempting to steal the spotlight from Maybelle or the hundreds of other marchers.

In conclusion, Hairspray serves as a musical snapshot of the time before racial integration and Brown vs. Board of Education was the law of the land in the United States, but it also examines how perceptions of one’s privilege and the status of others because of it still affects society today, both positively and negatively.

Also, it’s got a great soundtrack.

Hairspray! and Hairspray Live! are available on Amazon