Building an Empire of Illusion

Abstract

This chapter explores Liberace’s ability to attract audiences through a clever and spectacular masculinity that distracted them from his sexuality. Tracing his evolution into an international performer, it outlines his ability to create musical and visual spectacles and to carefully manage his image. As he became a multimedia celebrity, critics and tabloids maligned his queer masculinity. Through self-neutering and counterdomesticating, he reframed himself as an exemplar of normalcy. These tools helped him triumph through during a 1959 libel suit that threatened to expose his sexuality. He then spectacularized his image exhibiting an unmarked transvestism that endeared him even more. During his final years, when a former lover attempted to expose him and he was dying of HIV/AIDS, he maintained a conspiracy of blindness with his audience.