Beyond Reality TV: An Appraisal

2010

American Idol Season 9:

Andrew Garcia’s on-stage during early elimination rounds. I don’t recognize the song – Paula Abdul’s Straight Up – but it’s haunting, a heart-strumming interpretation riiighttthere in the sweet spot where hit songs are made. It’s radio ready, and comes before the Top 16 even make the big blue stage. One judge calls it genius.

He doesn’t win the title, but that’s a yank of adages like ‘starlight is fickle’ and ‘such is the game’ (when it’s a ladder). Those of us who stayed glued through the Josephs, Popstars, Think You Can Dances, Best Dance Crews, Gospel Choirs, Amazing Races, Faces, Top Models and Big Brothers, know that reality TV shows are ever-increasingly winding roads. Ever since Will Young and Gareth Gates made the finale of Britain’s Pop Idol, they set the stage for a generational fault-line, a never-ending enlistment programme for the masses, beloved by producers: pit apples against oranges and crown the better. The fans take it from there. I don’t persist for the horse betting and puffery, nor the spectacle of humiliation for higher viewership (I stopped watching Wooden Mic and Untucked yearrrss ago.)

I watch for the comets.

2012

RuPaul’s DRAG Race All Stars Season 1, Episode 5:

Returning Queens Raven and Jujubee are lip-syncing for their lives – PERFECT song, almost no movement required – you could say tough, because they have to go the emotional distance taking us along-with, using energy that moves beyond the body vessel, entangling across barriers of critical judgement. Both performers BRING IT. The crew, lights, editors; everyone was on point.  The camera turns to RuPaul.

“YESSS!” cries Chad Michaels.

In the known universe of great conclusions, it was perfect catharsis. A genuine tear-jerker, rounded off comically by Juju’s crave for fried chicken. Now, acknowledge the many minds that write, critique, produce the show, and at the helm, OFF THE CHAIN level creator RuPaul: still, you can’t script conviction, or spoon-feed great comic timing. But you can fabricate circumstances for it to pop-off and bloom.

2014

DRAG Race Season 6, Episode 7:

Down-and-out in the bottom, Darienne Lake totally eclipses BenDeLaCrème to Expose’s Point Of No Return, forcing RuPaul to save one of the season’s front-runners. Though she eventually gets the chop – that season’s crown going to comedy-incarnate Bianca Del Rio – DeLaCrème rises with galactic presence on All Stars Season 3: she KILLS IT, and dramatically pulls a Shannel, eliminating herself! Not a way we would have chosen; it seems to rob us of the unfolding of that season. What would have happened if they’d faced off against legendary phoenix Shangela? (A queer Battle of the Bastards for damn sure!) It evokes a strong desire to see all the cards played out, and deserved honours heaped upon a victor. See Shon Faye’s offering on DazedDigital re: English rose Divina De Campo versus is-she-really-common? The Vivienne (who I must say, wears said crown oh-so-well!)

Regardless, this queer-flavoured Top Model inspired franchise is defining this period of The Box, flowing with the impact trans-folk generate in literature, politics and social realms. It’s undeniable: Drag Kings and Queens will pepper our cultural reference cloud for centuries to come.

2019

DRAG Race UK Season 1, Episode 5:

Debutants The Vivienne and Bagga Chipz bring together two periods of political comedy for a landmark Snatch Game! I reckon it reintroduces British comedy to the whole world. DRAG Race Thailand already done two iconic seasons: blessed be, the divine double-act of Art Arya and Pan Pan, and clear and present stylings of Thai culture to their Race, it’s not just looking – it’s watching humans create new, potential popular cultural trends.

Erupting into spin-offs, popping out celebrities on-and-off Twitter, adding reams of content to music, film, fashion, dance, and social media vortexes, AND BONUS, visceral expression of the interchangeability of known concepts, it is the emptying out and free play of the crayon box: the human palate has remarkably expanded. DRAG Kings and Queens are creating an entire universe, and through Paris Is Burning, FX’s series Pose, or in the live Balls of Johannesburg happening right now, we are seeing something epic – a broadening of the mainstream, the contact of populations, cross-pollination of language and style, a going-beyond, the likes of Alok Vaid-Menon, Kat Kai Kol-Kes, and Billy Porter. It’s the birth of a great many possibilities, flops, creative directions, political shifts, and foreshadowing unknown things to come. Fusion is fundamentally interesting to human ears and eyes, and it takes root in the mind. We cannot avoid a visible trend easily, especially if we are talking with others on the same subject. We live in a billboard world. We cannot help but update alongside innovation, as it invigorates our psychology. We zest for the new, the refreshing unknown, and we love to see rewards for triumph.

Survivor deserves the prize for getting this show on the road. Isolate a few humans as tribes, incentivise their collective action against each other, whittle the herds down, and let them establish a winner. Give that person a million bucks. Encourage self-interest narratives, personality associations, type vs. type: encourage the TV audience to love, hate, celebrate and suffer throughout the race. Tune in every week.

Sounds dulling. Orwell’s ears be perked to such words, for its true, TV has the potential for propagandizing (and real-time power in communities where internet freedom is restricted). And it’s still true, intersections of stereotypes and stock-characters upset the social fabric, as people are drawn into representation for consumption (Charlie Hebdo, The Simpsons, The Boondocks…) But no show can micromanage identity bursting forth, as ongoing lived realities are used for show-time. Remember Pearl and Ru’s death-stare match? (Which Pearl won, just by the by.) It is uncontrolled theatre: contests of human normativity – authority and repression – parallel contests for economic access, as individuals face the mortality of their personal industry. DRAG Race isn’t an island, and is not read as such. The show’s drama is rooted in entanglements of body, race, gender, sexuality, abandonment, religiosity, war, disease, and of course, happily ever after’s. The lip-sync battles echo the best part of the Survivor format (through an updated lens): when it comes down to it, whose hustle prevails?

It’s clearly not all glamour and gay abandon. We do not see the day-to-day exertions of the majority of DRAG Race contestants’ human selves, professional enmities and gatekeeping, love relationships, rejections, cancellations, marathon MC’ing, Parties, Parties, Parties, the always on-call crowd-pleasing, the real-time Rise and Fall of popularity (equality, and of course, money) – but we get generous peeks at the emotional games through the various mini and maxi challenges. We see humans illustrating how they perceive society and/or the industry they find themselves in, and the psychological pageantry of binaries, Othering, and Fuck My DRAG Right? From dressing puppets to cutting humour for Reads, we see body-type, gender, and style/class conflicts of this time period play out in the subtext. Beneath chosen words or acts is the neural pinball of a human finding out who they become on the road to success, and what they think the road requires of them. This reflexive opportunity is more for us than them. And more than conquering demons, negotiating conventions, or standing shoulder to shoulder with seasoned celebrities, DRAG Race reveals who is a machine: in the full sense of that word. Regardless of who RuPaul crowns, whether they black, white, trans, or nonconforming, we are awakened to actors ready to redefine the commonplace we’ve grown comfortable with.