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Written by jay
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Monday, 02 February 2009 12:14 |
 On the day of the premiere of Rupaul's Drag Race, Salon.com enters the drag discussion with a new piece suggesting that the audience for drag has dwindled, and that drag queens have recently "faded from the mainstream."
This is of course coming from a writer under the age of 30 (Thomas Rogers) who has probably not spent a lot of time following the ongoing and lively drag scenes in New York or San Francisco (we recommend to him our primer on the recent history of drag). He cites the ends of Wigstock and Trannyshack as evidence of drag's dying popularity, but we'd argue this is misinformed--these were just major productions that a couple of established queens got tired of producing.
Rogers quotes Rupaul as calling drag "a punk rock reaction to our masculine culture," and that's a decent interpretation of contemporary drag but probably not what anyone would have said twenty years ago.
But he also doesn't have much good to say about Ru's new show, which we might have mentioned premieres tonight on Logo (and you can watch it for yourself right here, right now):
"Drag Race" aims for high camp, but, unfortunately, with the show's low production values and sloppy execution, it lands somewhere closer to pathos. The prizes are meager (at one point, a contestant wins a basket of chocolates and sparkling wine), and the challenges are astonishingly unimaginative ("Strike a pose and take a picture of yourself"). More tragically, with its haphazard production design and awkward camerawork, the show robs the queens and their performances of all of their glamour. The appeal of drag has always been its over-the-top fabulousness, but there's little that's fabulous about performing on a cheap set under dull lighting in front of Santino from "Project Runway."
Ouch! Well, these shows always take a few weeks to find their legs, right? We won't give up on you Tammie Brown!!
RELATED:
Cracky Ex-Club Kid James St. James Interviews Rupaul
Our New Favorite Drag Queen: Tammie Brown
Rupaul's Drag Race: The Teaser Clip
Where Have All the Drag Queens Gone (Salon.com)
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