Artist Scores Big With Game That’s a Real Drag

If Elton John is pinball’s wizard, Michael Brown is its queen. A gay 36-year-old artist from San Francisco, Brown is the creator of Go Girl!, a pinball machine with a homosexual theme. The winner of the custom game competition at the Pinball Fantasy ’97 convention in Las Vegas last weekend, Brown has given pinball a face lift with his use of wigs, makeup and campy commentary.

To begin the game, one must step into Brown’s shoes--a pair of red metal stilettos welded to the machine’s platform. Pulling the plunger sends the ball up a ramp where it rolls by a miniature Ken doll wearing makeup and a pink feather boa. The ball then makes its way into what Brown calls “the protest area,” a series of bumpers marked with such gay political icons as Act Up and Queer Nation, before careening toward the drop targets--renowned homophobes Jesse Helms, Lou Sheldon and Fred Phelps.

If you mess up and lose your ball down the center hole, a dark-haired drag queen pops up on the video monitor, teasing: “It’s always better the second time.” And if you do well, a queen cheers you on with “She is on fire!” or “Go girl!” All the while, a disco soundtrack throbs in the background.

High scores result in “wig mode,” which freezes the game’s action and places a number of wigs on the screen (an auburn bob, a curly perm). A built-in video camera then photographs your face, placing it in the wig of your choice and storing your image so that it actually becomes part of the game. Before the action resumes, a drag queen whispers naughtily: “That’s the biggest wig I’ve ever seen!”

“Drag is such a fun thing, and that’s sort of the whole nature of what this is about,” Brown says.

Brown used the infrastructure of the classic Earthshaker pinball machine as his base, swapping out components. Brainstormed about four years ago, Go Girl! was constructed as an art piece and was shown in a few galleries, but last weekend was the first time Brown took his machine “into the pinball world, and everybody loves it. It doesn’t even faze them that this is a political issue.”