Is RuPaul’s Drag Race the Opiate of the Masses?

Words: Tsari Paxton

Make it stand out

The sixteenth merry-go-round of RuPaul’s Drag Race just came to an end. It’s undeniably been a good season – lots of catfights, great fashion. Meanwhile, I was also watching UK vs the World season two. And a bit of All Stars España. Oh, and I think there’s also a Belgian season on air.

Even for the hardiest of fans, the onslaught of Drag Race has become relentless. It takes me back to late afternoons on Christmas Day. I’m a sticky-fingered child feeling slightly ill as I’ve gorged on all my gifted sweets and chocolates, and now it's time to sit down for dinner. One begins to wonder: how much is too much? And is the large percentage of my declining attention span that this show gobbles up a positive force in my life?

I should mention that I’m a Drag Race super-fan. Having watched the show for over a decade, I consume the show as ritual, almost like sport. I feel every emotion with my favourites and loathe their antagonists. I adore Michelle Visage so whole-heartedly that I sometimes slide into her DMs when I’m drunk (she’s yet to respond). Once I’ve watched an episode, I'll then clamour onto social media and lose myself in deep-dive statistics and BTS content. And when I meet a fellow Drag Race fan, our shared love is a connecting force, eliciting easy, lively conversation.

The lacquered veneer of an episode of Drag Race has an intoxicating appeal that few gays or teenage girls can resist: the bright lights of the runway. The stupidly silly sense of humour. The conclusion of each episode with a high-stakes lip-sync. The music that constantly rises and falls to create a cascade of emotions. The editing that carves each queen into a digestible and entertaining character. And the virtuosic harvesting of contestants’ trauma for good television. And yet, despite the palpable construction of it all, you feel that there is something real there. These are artists whose sparkling drag personas have been forged through, and in spite of, the hardships of being misunderstood in a cruel world. And for the audience, this self-actualisaiton is a beautiful and empowering thing to witness.

“The lacquered veneer of an episode of Drag Race has an intoxicating appeal that few gays or teenage girls can resist.”

Originally conceived by RuPaul as a tonic against hardening far-right factions of America, his search for the next drag superstar first aired in 2009. The show was an instant hit, coming of age through the carefree early years of Obama’s America and yanking drag out from the fringes of society and into the primetime of popular culture. As the show rocket-launched the language and humour of drag into the mainstream – say together now: yass queen, slay! – one could argue that actual drag culture was not brought along with it. A telling snub is that drag queens are almost never invited to be a part of the flagship show’s judging panel. Those considered worthy to pass judgement are celebrities often without much, if any, knowledge of drag, such as Maude Apatow, Shania Twain or Jeff Goldblum.

Instead, RuPaul’s vision of how a drag queen should look and act has become the benchmark of a drag queen’s worth – a glossy ideal at odds with the art form’s rough-and-ready origins. A queen with aspirations of taking home the crown should present as conventionally attractive, and be able to deliver high-fashion, modelesque looks. She should be able to sew, to keep up choreography and to do improvised acting skits. She should be a funny, sexy bad bitch with a tough exterior, which the audience will momentarily witness crumble (before it reforms in a triumph).

Drag artists’ inherently public transgression of gender means they have always been one of the most boundary-pushing forces within the queer community. Is it not concerning then, for one show - one person - to have such a dominant hegemony over the art form? And, perhaps even more concerning, does the collective mental energy that Drag Race takes up distract us from the things we should be fighting for as a queer community? By leaving us fixated on lip syncs and catfights, rather than engaging with a more diverse range of concerns or artists: is Drag Race the opiate of the masses?

The term ‘opiate of the masses’ was Karl Marx’s description of religion. Marx argued that religion is an ideological tool that legitimises and defends the interests of the dominant, wealthy classes. And it does so in part by placating the poor and exploited classes. Through this prism of thought, the never-ending stream of Drag Race content (religion) that the queer community (an often poor and exploited class) consumes is designed to placate our dissatisfaction with the power structures of society (rich white men).

With fourteen Emmy awards, a permanent Vegas live show and multiple international conventions known as Drag Con, the show is a cash cow. And it is the 1% of the queer community who benefit most heavily from this global phenomenon – mostly white, male World of Wonder producers and financiers like the notoriously corporate-minded Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. For these fine examples of the gaytriarchy, the status quo is working just fine.

Over the course of the show, RuPaul has never stood for very much politically, beyond hollow remarks on the importance of ‘love’ and getting contestants to dance around with a ‘Register to Vote’ placard on US election years. Five years ago, he likened trans women participating in drag to athletes taking performance enhancing drugs. The backlash to this led to a rare apology from RuPaul, and a sharp turn for the show – trans, non-binary and cisgender female queens are now regularly cast and some have even won. However, similarly to when Beyonce suddenly became a gay rights advocate, it felt as though RuPaul was moving with the tides, rather than swimming against the current.

In the paywalled online education platform Masterclass, RuPaul was commissioned to speak on ‘self-expression and authenticity’. Yet his advice is astonishingly trad-core:

“Wear a suit. You want to make more money? You like money? Put yourself together. People respond to it. It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the narrative that is already implanted in people's consciousness. You don't want to swim upstream. You want to work with what people already know."

RuPaul seems to believe that he found fame and fortune by himself, and others should be able to do the same. His most quoted pop-psychology concept, the ‘inner saboteur’, puts the onus of success on oneself as it suggests the only barrier is our self-sabotaging and self-doubting tendencies. The sign-off for each episode –‘If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?’, also reveals a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of neo-liberalist individualism lying just beneath the surface.

My resounding concern is that we - the fandom - are spending our lives watching, thinking and talking about a show that appears transgressive but is actually telling us that the surest way to success is to have money, be hot and not to rock the boat.

But maybe I’m asking too much of the show? Each episode of Drag Race is like a 70-minute outing to a gay bar – you get to see some cute guys, experience glistening drag, and be privy to a little drama, all from the comfort of your couch. The high from opiates is notoriously pleasant – so in the doomsday era of late capitalism, perhaps we should just take the drugs and be grateful to RuPaul and his cronies for their never-ending stream of irresistible entertainment. Still, let’s all keep our eyes on the doctors in charge.