Fassbinder’s Fascist Drag

This article examines the concept of fascist drag in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films. It traces the semantic history of drag—as weight, obstruction, and cross-dressing—to analyze how Fassbinder intervenes in post-1945 political discourse in West Germany. To parse drag’s semantic history means to think about Fassbinder’s aestheticization of politics in the Federal Republic. The director’s employment of fascist drag visualizes and makes audible how politics and aesthetics always intersect with gender to bring about the shattering of historical continuity and to call into question conservative ideologies and mainstream representation. The essay first connects drag’s weightiness to The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), then examines its friction in Lola (1981). Finally, it shows how drag’s varied meanings intersect in Lili Marleen (1981).