drag

Krisis covers RuPaul's Drag Race, international Drag Race, Dragula, and more in their incredibly in-depth essays and recaps on Drag.

Drag Race Belgique Season 1 has arrived!

February 16, 2023 by krisis

C’est l’heure!

Drag Race Belgique Season 1 has premiered and Episode 1 is now available to watch internationally on Wow Presents Plus! (In fact, as of this writing you can watch it for free!!!)

I’m absurdly excited to recap and power rank another French-language season of Drag Race! My coverage will debut on Sunday with my Power Ranking for Episode 1.

Until then, you can read my Pre-Season Power Ranking. And, if you don’t have Wow Presents Plus, you can watch all of the Belgique queens enter the workroom for free on YouTube!

À dimanche!

(I don’t get any kind of affiliate bonus from referring you to WOW+, I’m just addicted to it! Unfortunately, they’ve pumped up the price to a costly $8.30 a month. That’s almost as much as Disney Plus! Of course, if you’re like me and have Drag Race playing in the background every night while you wash the dishes it pays for itself pretty quickly.)

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 7 – “The Daytona Wind 2” acting challenge, Review & Power Ranking

February 11, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the seventh episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “The Daytona Wind 2,” a sequel to last season’s surprisingly well-written melodramatic acting challenge. It was paired with a “Puffer Please” runway theme, where the queens were challenged with making puffer jacket elements look high fashion.

On Season 14, “The Daytona Wind” was a standout episode that helped to solidify the fact that we were watching a cast full of standout performers. However, that wasn’t just because the cast was so great. It was also because they were given a script that made sense and were allowed to act it in a straight-forward way – with jokes inserted later.

If Season 14 was an acting challenge high point, this Season 15 “Daytona Wind” redux was a low one. The queens were saddled with a script that was nothing but Drag Race references that left no room for character choices.

Though some of the humor was inserted later in the edit just like last season, it was the anti-humor of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! I think it’s a tough prospect to deliver a standout performance for that sort of humor if you’re blithely unaware of the style while you are performing.

After Season 14 and All Winners, I think we can all agree that Drag Race is at its best when it sets its queens up for success with strong material and doesn’t try to squash them into obvious archetypes in the edit. Instead, this felt like return to the Drag Race riggory of seasons 11-13, where any challenge could be bent to create any result the producers wanted. That feels unwelcome after getting a breath of fresh air from the franchise in 2021.

Between the painfully awkward challenge and the continued short runtime, this wasn’t an enjoyable episode of Drag Race for me. It also didn’t do much to shake up the existing power ranking divide between the haves and have nots. (The “haves” in this instance are the all-too-obvious group of potential finalists). However, within those two halves of the cast, things did get shuffled a bit – both due to this week’s performances and the news of an impending Lalaparuza Lip Sync smackdown on the next episode.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 7 – “The Daytona Wind 2” acting challenge, Review & Power Ranking

Drag Race Belgique Season 1 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Ranking

February 5, 2023 by krisis

It’s time for the second Drag Race season of 2023 – in a new country, but fronted by a familiar face: Drag Race Belgique Season 1 hosted by two-time Canada finalist Rita Baga! The show premieres on February 16, so it’s time to check out this inaugural cast of 10 Belgian drag queens for my pre-season Power Ranking.

I write these Power Rankings not to judge these queens and their drag, but to have fun trying to predict what their drag and their editing says about their placement on the show. Part of that is 15 years of examples of what aspects of drag do well on Drag Race, but a lot of it is the amount of confidence, experience, and adaptability artists bring to the show.

Or, said another way, we’re looking closely at their Charisma, Uniquness, Nerve, and Talent.

My typical pre-season rules apply: I’ll spend two minutes looking at these artists’ social media feeds, examine their promo looks, and then watch their “Meet The Queens” segment twice (with the subtitles on, of course!).

That’s it! Then, I’ll make my totally blind, no-spoilers try at ranking their chances to win the show.

Part of what I love about Drag Race‘s worldwide franchises is that they often exist outside of the the homogenizing effect the US franchise has on drag. Queens all over the world have access to the same social media, but in other countries what will bring fans out to bars and clubs differs greatly from the states. Even after four Ru-hosted seasons of Drag Race UK, its queens do not feel as “same-y” as most of a brand new US cast can often feel.

I know very little about Belgium and its culture – and, especially nothing about it’s queer culture! I’m excited to listen and learn as I respond to the show, but I also invite those of you who are more familiar to point me towards facts or resources so I can study up!

Just from checking out the Instagram’s of these ten queens, it seems like we might be in for the most gender-bending, androgynous series of Drag Race. There’s a lot of playing with gender signifiers from this cast, and not all of them “erase their face” the way queens are often expected to do in the states.

I have a certain predisposition for drag art that has that slight edge of androgyny to it form growing up on things like David Bowie and Priscilla Queen of the Desert. It will be interesting to see how that plays with the judges, especially Rita Baga as head judge.

Also, trend alert: thin brows!

(Another cultural difference I noticed: outside the US, people still use Facebook a lot more, so public figures still have active Facebooks and don’t tend to use LinkTrees as much! That’s true in NZ as well.)

Between that, the fact that this is another French-speaking season (I’ll be able to understand some stuff!), and what might be the most-gorgeous promo videos of all of Drag Race herstory, I am so ready dig into this season when it debuts on February 16. If you want to watch Drag Race Belgique you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises. (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 6 – “Old Friends Gold” Girl Groups Challenge, Review & Power Ranking

February 4, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the sixth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “Old Friends Gold,” a girl group challenge with the twist of playing elderly Golden Girls singing in unlikely genres.

I found it hard to react to this episode because there was barely anything to react to. While we did get some recording footage of the queens, their runways were five seconds each and we still haven’t seen any of the judges’ private deliberations.

What we did see was a cast of queens who did a perfectly fine job at playing old ladies, with one or two obvious standouts. I’m sure some of the singing queens like Luxx, Marcia, and Salina felt put-out that the perennial Girl Groups challenge went a comedy route (though I’m sure it pleased Loosey). We wound up with a surprising winner, a shocking performance from the runner up, and two queens who have been invisible in the edit lip syncing to see who will be invisible for another week before being dismissed.

Did this cramped episode edit shake up my Power Rankings after last weeks’ “House of Fashion” design challenge? Absolutely! We’ve got some jostling in the top ranks as well as some shuffling in the bottom. We’re five challenges into this season with at least seven more to go, but right now it feels like there are only four queens in serious contention for the crown. Can anyone else break through?

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 6 – “Old Friends Gold” Girl Groups Challenge, Review & Power Ranking

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 5 – House of Fashion, Review & Power Ranking

January 28, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fifth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – House of Fashion. It’s an unconventional material design challenge with a twist: the queens are split into three groups and have to present cohesive runway collections for the House of (Michelle) Visage, the House of (Carson) Kressley, and the House of (Ross) Matthews.

This episode lacked a certain spark, and it’s hard to decide if that was down to the 40-minute runtime or the peculiar version of this familiar challenge. Seasons 3, 4, & 5 each opened with and iconic unconventional materials episode with a full cast of queens.

Season 4’s “RuPocalypse Now!” is probably the best of the bunch – packed with Sharon’s zombie look, Jiggly’s baked potato couture, and LaShawn Beyond’s classic “Post-Apopaloctic” line. It’s a 63-minute edit, but 20 of those minutes are entrances and a length photo shoot challenge! That means the meat of the design challenge (including the whole “wrestling with zombies for clothes” bit) still fit into 40 minutes, and it included both a walkaround with Ru and the private judges deliberations.

Of everything that feels squeezed by these 40-minute edits, I think the element that is most-sorely missing are those private judges deliberations. Without them, we don’t have any sense of RuPaul as a character on her own show. It also complete defangs Michelle Visage if we can’t hear her cutting opinions in private. Finally, it renders the guest judges completely pointless, since we don’t get to hear their unbiased opinions as they go to bat for the queens.

It was especially cruel to miss out on those deliberations in this episode, where Michelle and Ross had queens representing their brands and the guest judge was Janelle Monae, who knows something about fashion!

House of Visage

House of Kressley

House of Matthews

Looking beyond the edit, there was also the unusual nature of this iteration of the unconventional material challenge. First, since the queens were in teams it meant there was no apparent fighting over materials – sharing was in their best interest. Aside from losing the prurient fun of the catty fighting over who gets what leopard-print pillow, what was really lacking was a feeling of scarcity.

Part of what makes unconventional material challenges truly challenging is the queens trying to figure out what they can construct out of things other than fabric. Yet, in this challenge there was enough for nearly every queen to make a cape!

If I had to award a team win, it’d go to the House of Matthews. Even if their collection trended a little bit casual, it was cohesive and there wasn’t a bad look in the bunch. The judges seemed to agree, giving half the group a high placement and calling the other two safe.

What did this unconventional version of the unconventional materials design challenge mean for my power rankings? While the very top remains the same as last week’s Snatch Game ranking, there are some major shake-ups in the middle of the pack as the queens without wins jostle for positive critiques and screen time.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 5 – House of Fashion, Review & Power Ranking