No Place Like Home: Sex, War, & Undoing the Image of America in MoMA’s “Make Love, Not War”

The United States of America is a drag queen. Drunk, dressed in her shiniest finery, and thickly rouged, the American empire according to Jack Smith looks more like a drag version of Rose Kennedy than the mighty Uncle Sam. Yet, even draped in red satin and crowned with a teased wig, this Empress has no clothes.  Smith’s gender-bending Song for Rent (1969) opens “Make Love, Not War,” a selection of eight short films that brings together the erotic and political energies...