Pompom Palace Presents

An Evening With Darla

Overlooked queer icon Darla (1975-1992), more infamously known as Precious from film director Jonathan Demme’s 1991 thriller, Silence of the Lambs, had a short, but storied cinematic career. Besides her role as Precious, Darla first appeared as Pink Poodle in Tim Burton’s directorial debut Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Queenie in Joe Dante’s star-studded dark comedy The ‘Burbs (1989), Ratty Poodle in Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), along with minor tv appearances.

“An Evening with Darla” offers a corrective narrative by proposing an original single channel video where Darla, the petite white bichon frise, is edited into a new storyline as the main character. Beyond honoring Darla, this new work revisits the troublesome representation of queer and trans representation in mainstream Hollywood cinema, from the marginalized misfits in Batman Returns to the notably negative portrayal of trans identity in Silence of the Lambs whose representation on screen has embossed a harmful legacy for trans lives. In this way, “An Evening with Darla” offers another possibility where queerness is not demonized, marginalized, or erased, but reimagined as a core way of life.  In lieu of sound, the window display will be retrofitted into a palatial pompom shrine worthy of our dearest Darla girl.