![]() ![]() ![]() Chi Chi DeVayne, a Season 8 queen who is also competing on All Stars Season 3 gave an all-out flips, kicks, and splits performance. Most took selfies as they handed Pearl their dollars, even after we were asked to keep our phones away for efficiency’s sake. Fans, asked to wait in a line down the side of the theater to tip the queens, queued almost down the entire wall. Pearl, looking stunning (she is undeniably fashion-forward), gave a sleepy performance to a song I can’t remember. I saw this mentality baldly on display during the 2016 tour of A Drag Queen Christmas, a holiday variety show featuring the Ru girls. “I don’t quite see Kennedy taking drag to an all-star level,” can be read as a coded way of saying, “I believe the pageantry and showmanship exhibited by black queens is less valuable to the world of drag than the quippy, quirky, aesthetically driven contributions made by other, mainly white, queens like me.” While drag has benefited from the contributions of both white folks and people of color alike, it’s telling who’s allowed to be avant-garde and who is expected to simply entertain. It’s a situation one sees mirrored in something like Southern soul food, where black cooks are often viewed as being “down-home” and rustic while white chefs are credited with “elevating” the genre. This dynamic perpetuates the notion that black art is pedestrian, while white versions of that same art are highbrow. It’s exemplary of a dynamic, emanating from both contestants and fans, that has time and again undervalued the contributions of queens of color, especially black queens. Milk’s dismissal of Kennedy’s art as being less likely to take drag to “an all-star level” is more than a shady throwaway comment. ![]() “If I’m not your cup of tea, then baby don’t drink it.” “Fuck my drag, right?” Kennedy says during her own confessional interview, responding to Milk’s dismissal of her craftsmanship. ![]()
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