Core Post #2 - Sabina

So this week is especially fun for me because I do work on RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR or Drag Race) and am always looking for more texts that critically discuss this show. What I found especially interesting about “She’s Not Acting, She Is” by Strings and Bui was the question of “passing”, in this case not in relation to gender, but race (and ethnicity). I have never been able to put into words what it is like to watch some of the contestants play with race in this way, but Strings and Bui do it so effortlessly. “Unfortunately, this racial rigidity remakes race into the biologically fixed category from which gender has just escaped. In other words, race is naturalized even as gender is destabilized” (832). As Strings and Bui note, white and Asian contestants see race (and ethnicity) “as a mutable characteristic” (832) while the Black, and brown (non-white Latine, Native/Indigenous, etc) contestants do not have the same ability to “change race” due to the way the judges force them into racialized boxes. 

Switching gears a little, I found Anna McCarthy’s discussion of “trauma” in “Reality Television: a Neoliberal Theater of Suffering” to connect pretty well to what I’ve observed on Drag Race in the contestants' confessionals, RuPaul’s werk room walkthroughs, and an end of season segment where RuPaul asks the remaining contestants to speak to their younger selves. “Indeed, the forms of violence and mutilation routinely displayed on reality television immediately spring to mind as ideal sources for such a project of witnessing. It seems to me that it’s impossible to talk about trauma’s place in reality television without talking about torture and violation” (30). What this immediately made me think about was an early example of this is from season 5, episode 7 “RuPaul Roast” when contestant Roxxxy Andrews breaks down on stage after a lipsync against Alyssa Edwards to Willow’s “Whip My Hair”. In this exchange, Roxxxy begins to cry, overwhelmed with emotions, and RuPaul probes her to share what she’s feeling. Roxxxy discusses not feeling wanted as a child and ultimately shares that her mother left her and her sister at a bus stop when she was three, using this as justification for her “strong character”. RuPaul responds in an encouraging and loving way, speaking to the queer community as a whole, saying, “You are so welcome here. You know we, as gay people, we get to choose our family. You know, we get to choose the people that we’re around. You know what I’m saying? I am your family. We are a family here.” RuPaul echoes this sentiment of “chosen family” echoing alternative forms of kinship proposed by queer theorists for years. The runny makeup, the crying, and RuPaul’s visible return to character add to the authenticity of the scene, making it feel like a real moment between these two people and not just a scene on tv. Now, this type of production is exploitative and a violation, but seemingly integral to the production of reality television. Where I find that this theater of suffering, and by extension the consumption of personal crisis, comes into play is the reaction by the fans. 

When I searched Google for “Roxxxy Andrews bus stop speech” to remind myself what exactly she said, the first video that popped up was “Bus stop roxxxy Andrews LOL” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He3PicN5wnM) . This is a 16-second fan-edited video with 171,000 views that splits Roxxxy Andrews’ speech with a previous video of RuPaul laughing while saying, “That’s funny, tell it again!”. Recommended videos included “Roxxxy Andrews/Say So mashup” and “8 Most Emotional Moments on RuPaul’s Drag Race” but I couldn’t find a video that showed the scene as it aired on Logo without ultimately turning to (British) Netflix. What this tells me is something in the production of Drag Race allows the queens to be violated and treated as a product meant for consumption. The authenticity of whatever the moment is doesn’t matter, the trauma doesn’t matter - what matters to production is how viral and sensational (memeable) the moment is, translating to the audience that the queens are an endless commodity. Which I guess might be the point? 

When read through a critical lens like McCarthy’s, the “Bus stop roxxxy Andrews LOL” video is a reflection of Drag Race’s exploitation of trauma: the audience comes to expect a traumatic storyline and fanvideo RuPaul applauds Roxxxy for making this happen and producing the scene, knowing that it will be it viral moment asking her to “tell it again”. A reliance on traumatic events to create a good storyline is inherent to reality television, sure, but as Strings and Bui alluded to, the way Drag Race churns out the personal trauma storyline reveals (ru-veals) how the exploitation of contestants' trauma is also incredibly racialized, prioritizing the emotions of white queens (and Asian queens) while continually “torturing” Black queens and other queens of color.