DRAG
The Category Is…
TRAUMA DUMPING ON THE RUNWAY? Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve…and Trauma? Drag Race’s search for the total package includes revealing your deepest vulnerabilities on national TV during challenges, a practice that has continued to divide fans By Bianca Guzzo
If there’s something RuPaul’s Drag Race has become really good at, it’s pumping out new content for loyal fans three or four times a year. While this has resulted in an endless supply of entertainment, it also means the debate of quality over quantity is one that comes up a lot among Drag Race fans online. In the haste to produce new and fresh content, creators don’t want to give fans the same-old predictable challenges…so sometimes we get new and exciting ones. Some of them are great additions to the show’s repertoire of iconic weekly challenges, and some of them (let’s be honest here) are flops.
Viewers of the show will also be familiar with what happens at the end of the second-last episode of each season. Ru holds up a photo of each finalist queen as a toddler, and then asks each what they would tell their younger selves. While the segment usually tugs at the heartstrings of viewers who have been watching these queens’ journeys from the beginning of the season, long-time fans have started taking it for what it is: the final competition to see who can produce the best mascara-stained tear and inspirational quote to show the judges who is the most vulnerable, and therefore most deserving of the crown.
In a mid-season episode of the show’s sixth All Stars run this past summer, an entire episode was focused on a talk show challenge. The challenge’s objective was for the queens to dig deep and get personal with a pre-selected topic. At the end of the episode, a few of the queens (who had never been in the bottom before) were told their optimistic performance in the challenge was off-putting and made judges uncomfortable. One of them ended up being sent home despite having one of the best looks on the runway that week. This sparked a debate among Drag Race fans on Twitter about the subject matter of the episode, and the direction the challenges were taking on the show. Was this new challenge a step in the right direction with getting to know the queens on a personal level, or was the show exploiting its contestants’ trauma for entertainment?
Like the “what would you tell your younger self” segments, the Pink Table Talk challenge in All Stars 6 elaborates on the concept of the chats the queens have in front of their vanities, but with the intention to cut deeper. On paper, the talk show challenge makes sense, especially with the direction the show seems to be taking with what Ru, and the production, expect from the queens. Drag Race has never been a simple pageant, but now more than ever, the show strives to crown a well-rounded queen. She has to produce the gag-worthy looks and pull at viewers’ heartstrings to gain the popular vote from judges and fans. But the Pink Table Talk challenge, and subsequent elimination, rubbed the majority of fans the wrong way.
SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
Sharing personal stories isn’t something new to the franchise. It’s something that usually happens when the queens are getting ready for the main stage in the last half of each episode. They have talked about everything in these four- to seven-minute sections: about abuse, about race and, for some, about living with HIV. While some of the stories are heavier, there are also stories of joy.
16
IN MAGAZINE
The challenge saw the remaining nine queens split into three groups to discuss different hot topics: Sex, Motherhood and Body. One of the most common criticisms of the episode among fans was that the conversations didn’t feel completely genuine due to the fact that they were cut and pasted together in editing. But the overall production value of the challenge was also disappointing to viewers, who are used to seeing over-the-top campy sets built for challenges
