Courtesy Dylan Pommer
Mona Chromatic
The New Mexico drag community is honestly so much bigger than anyone might expect given the smallness of our towns and such, but there’s a robust roster of queens and kings stretching throughout our state like woah—and Santa Fe has some of the best. In this instance, we’re talking about Mona Chromatic, the aptly named monochrome and cartoonish queen developed by artist Dylan Pommer. Pommer’s Mona recently made an online statement about dropping off the bill ahead of a performance at an up-and-coming Albuquerque nightclub called Prizm after learning its ownership supports Trump. We wanted to learn a little more about why that came to pass, so we spoke with Pommer to learn more. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. (Alex De Vore)
You canceled your upcoming appearance at the nightclub Prizm in Albuquerque. Can you walk us through what led you to this decision?
I was informed by one of the other performers on the show that the owner or owners, or at least one of them, is a Republican Trump supporter, and this performer withdrew from the show because they’re a trans woman. As they said to me, they’re a daughter of immigrants, and they couldn’t in good conscience do it. After finding that out and feeling icky about it as well, I thought, ‘You know what? I need to actually say no, and also probably say something, too.’
It’s a strange situation, and I felt I had two options: withdraw and decide not to do it, or go and do it, and it would feel kind of strange and disingenuous and like I was being used. I would have felt super uncomfortable the whole time, like I was hiding a secret or betraying my class or my friends. It’s just not worth it. It’s too weird when you’re in that kind of world to willingly tolerate that. I don’t know this person personally, and I don’t want to make any judgment calls about his personality, but my friend the performer messaged him about this, and he said it was true, that was how he’d voted and if she needed to drop out, he’d understand.
Obviously, there are conservative queer people in the world, and people can believe what they believe. Did you consider that when making the call?
I spoke to another person in the drag community, and they gave me a different perspective, which was that this person is technically part of the community, so maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to cancel his business—which is not something I ever called for, by the way, I just said what my reason was for dropping out.
If you take the sub-sect of drag performers, there is sort of a hard line we can’t cross where we’re so demonized and belittled and berated by republicans and conservatives and MAGA people. You can say it doesn’t matter what someone’s beliefs are, or maybe they only voted for this guy because of lower taxes; fiscal responsibility; this nonsense you can make up to explain why someone would vote against their interests. But in the drag community, we’re constantly told we’re grooming children or that we’re pedophiles and monsters who want to sneak into bathrooms and spy on people. You can’t vote for or align yourself with that kind of rhetoric and also say, ‘but I do want to hire a bunch of drag performers to come perform at my club.’ It’s just too…I keep using the word ‘weird,’ but it makes me feel like I’m being used or taken advantage of, like a prop. I’m not a token who’s going to show up and placate you because you want to vote one way but also be part of a community.
That’s a firm line I can’t cross, and from the response I’ve gotten, I know everyone else dropped out [of that show], too. Especially now, where we’re actually seeing the negative impact on people’s lives these kinds of politics can have. We’ve just gotten to a point where we can’t allow that to happen. One of the reasons I spoke out is because we don’t have a lot of power, but this is something where we do have some power to collectively say we’re not going to perform at this place because the owner believes in the opposite of what we stand for—not that he thinks we’re others or less than human, but he’s willing to align himself with those people and that’s not a dealbreaker for him. There are other spaces and parts of the community that we know are aligned with us.
After we announced this online, there were people with pitchforks out saying we needed to shut this place down and run them out of town. I’m not saying we should shut it down, or that there’s not a place in the community for it—I was explaining why I as a drag performer and other people in the drag community won’t go there, won’t perform there.
Making punk decisions is always hard. Is Mona Chromatic punk in your mind? Is drag itself a punk rock action?
I was going to say drag in general is punk. The very act is gender subversion and performance art. It’s like a critique or…it’s counter to societal norms, sort of a parody or subversion of societal expectations and the traditional American values. If we look at all the drag performers in New Mexico, I think Mona is probably one of the more punk ones in that I’m not always going to be performing to Lady Gaga or in that traditional RuPaul style, but I think all drag in general is anti whatever social standards. You’ve taken the gender-bending weirdness and pushed it in this abstract punk monster direction where it’s even more into the bizarre performance art aspect.
