Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 4 – Snatch Game, Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fourth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – a supersized version of Snatch Game, the Drag Race game show challenge of impersonation, comedy, and quick wit.

I think we had more than one potential Hall of Fame performance in this Snatch Game, which is always exciting to see! The first round of the game was more all-around entertaining, but the second round had had a trio of standouts.

Maybe this solidifies the argument for front-loading the season with Snatch Game as well as a Ball challenge within the first few episodes. We really ought to see a queen make it through these Drag Race fundamentals before she sashays away.

Surprisingly, this episode may have also made an argument in favor of the tight 40-minute edit of this season’s episodes. We never saw Ru’s walkaround where he attempts to undermine the queens’ characters choices, insisting that everyone would be funnier if they did Cher. It doesn’t add anything to the show. I much prefer to watch Snatch Game unfurl without a preview of how Ru might be biased for or against any of their choices.

Of course, Snatch Game is the one Drag Race challenge that has such a straightforward format where you can easily cut minutes out of the process of explaining it and it still turns out the same. Next week we’re due for a design challenge, and I fear that we’ll see very little of each queen as they design and construct their garments.

Did the crowd of strong Season 15 Snatch Game performances shake up my power rankings from last week? We had a major fall and a major lift, but not too much jostling between them.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 4 – Snatch Game, Review & Power Ranking

Crushing On: Caught In The Act by Courtney Act (2022)

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I can both love and loathe celebrity auto-biographies, but I definitely loved Caught in the Act.

I can love them because they are a glimpse at the inner life of someone whose art I’ve spent years – sometimes decades! – consuming. They can add fresh context to work that I already appreciate.

I can loathe them because they are often more artifice than reality. Prose is just another method of performance. Sometimes you wind up with a few shocking revelations or debaucherous anecdotes, but that doesn’t meant you’ve gotten any closer to truly knowing the author.Caught in the Act by Courtney Act

(I should know – I’ve been doing it for nearly 22 years now.)

No, I’m not talking obliquely about Prince Harry’s new bestseller, Spare. The first physical, non-graphic-novel book I read this year is Caught in the Act, a memoir in three parts by Courtney Act – contestant on Australian Idol Season 1, finalist on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 6, winner of Britain’s Celebrity Big Brother Series 21, and finalist twice-over on Australia’s Dancing With The Stars.

That’s quite a resume. I first glimpsed Courtney in her “Meet The Queens” interview for Drag Race in 2014 and I was instantly transfixed. I had seen drag queens before and I understood they were often men dressed in exaggerated versions of feminity, but Courtney looked more like a glamorous pop star.

Little did I know how right I was, but also how much that dichotomy often plagued Courtney. (She is credited both as Courtney Act and as Shane Jenek on the book’s cover and is comfortable with either he/him or she/her pronouns.)

The three acts of Caught in the Act are Courtney’s childhood in suburban Australia, her coming out of the closet and into the Sydney drag scene, and her international stardom (and ensuing relationships). I found each portion fascinating, but I think the one that affected me the most (and most unexpectedly) was the portion of the book about Courtney’s childhood.

Courtney and I virtually the same age, separated by only a few months. Even though we grew up across the globe from each other in different cultures, we were exposed to much of the same pop culture. Courtney talks about Madonna and the X-Men, which is shockingly familiar to me. She also talks about years of suffering in silent confusion as she tried to work out why some things in life were “boy things” and some were “girl things.” That felt familiar too.

Early in the book, she says:

I wish there’d been honest and frank conversations going on as well as visible queer people in the world and on TV. I can’t begin to explain what a significant difference that would have made, or what a difference increased visibility since then has made for queer kids today. Growing up in a world of queer invisibility was so isolating. The strange part is I didn’t know I was isolated – I didn’t know I was learning shame, or to hid who I was for safety: it came instinctively for survival. Every now and again I wonder if I’ve retrofitted shame where it didn’t exist. Then I remember: shame is a deposit made for a future debt, and it accumulates over time with compound interest.

That idea that we can’t tell if our adult shame is the same as our childhood shame bowled me over. I stopped and stared in shock at that page for a long while. I’ve never read someone so clearly explaining why the process of coming out can be so long and slow, even when surrounded by an entirely supportive environment. Courtney captures the emotions of childhood, but adds the the adult lens of someone who is on the forefront of conversations about gender all around the world.

What shocked me most about Caught in the Act wasn’t Courtney’s backwards tumble into fame, her drug use, or her sexual encounters. No, the most-revealing aspect of this book is just how long it took her to come to terms with her own gender identity. [Read more…] about Crushing On: Caught In The Act by Courtney Act (2022)

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 3 – “All Queens Go To Heaven” Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fourth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – All Drag Queens Go To Heaven, a peculiar sketch comedy infomercial about the drag afterlife.

Or, as Ru calls it, “The Queerafter.”

The hot topic coming out of this episode isn’t any of the performances – it’s the show’s editing. After a pair of hour-long episodes last week, this episode was just 40 minutes and 57 seconds of content. We haven’t had a Drag Race episode that short since Season 9!

With fifteen queens and three commercials to get through, the tightness caused by losing those 20 minutes of screentime was apparent.

That wasn’t all bad. When it came to shooting the challenge, it meant fewer pointless “gotcha!” moments of a queen dropping one line and Michelle acting like it was the end of the world. While it can sometimes be fun to see the queens in their creative process, I don’t think anything of value was lost by cutting back on those scenes.

On the other hand, runways were rushed and for the first time I can remember there was no private deliberation between the judges that ended with “Bring Back My Girls”!

This is all a result of MTV trying to launch a vapid new knockoff of the already vapid Real Housewives in the timeslot after Drag Race, as if MTV has so many important shows on their schedule that they couldn’t eek out another 30 minutes of airtime.

No matter the reason, the unfortunate result is less airtime for this huge cast of queens.

That’s not the bill of goods that has been sold to queens who apply to Drag Race. If anything, the past few seasons have promise them more screentime, more runways before anyone is eliminated, and more chance to connect with Ru. The combination of production rushing to make early, permanent eliminations combined with this rushed edit has rendered half the cast virtually invisible. In this episode, either your story was important to the edit or you didn’t get a single line.

That sucks for this group of the most talented performers on television. It’s not just that we are missing out on memorable moments they each may have created in the workroom or on the runway. It’s also that viewers are getting less time to learn their quirks and fall in love with them. That’s going to hit the queens where it hurts the most – the wallet – as it will undoubtably lead to less merch sales and weaker live support for some of the early outs.

I feel like that’s all the more reason to write at length about each one of these queens in these posts. We might see them for only a minute or two in an episode, but they’ve been working their whole lives to have these moments. Each one of them deserves a damn novella.

Did a rushed episode mean that the rankings stayed mostly the same as in the double-episode premiere? Absolutely not! We have a new top queen, some jostling for a spot in the finale, and a ru-vised bottom half.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 3 – “All Queens Go To Heaven” Review & Power Ranking

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 1 & Episode 2 – “One Night Only” Talent Show Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my supersized Power Rankings of the massive double-episode premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “One Night Only”! This pair of premiere episodes introduced a never-ending cast of 16 queens competing in a mini-challenge photoshoot, a Talent Show, and a runway theme of “Who is She?”

The last season of Drag Race was one of the most-entertaining in the history of the show. It also verged on jumping the shark. There were several stretches of episodes with no eliminations, the season shoved an excessive (but entertaining) lip sync tournament in the middle, and the entire thing was saddled with the “it’s chocolate” save mechanism that was obviously fully under the control of the producers.

It left Season 14 feeling belabored. For the first time, many fans complained that Drag Race was… well, dragging. Drag Race is at its best when it is a non-stop variety show competition with real stakes for the contestants when they misstep. The more it is stuffed full of non-eliminations, immunity, or special saves, the more it drifts into feeling scripted – which minimized the agency of a talent cast of artists.

What saved Season 14 from sailing straight over the proverbial shark was its cast. In retrospect, the cast seems packed full of unforgettable personalities – but, part of why they were so unforgettable is that we got so much time between them Sashaying away!

As it turns out, a belabored season can still be one of the best, as long as it spends that extra time showing off its cast.

The show seems to be headed in the opposite direction this year, with a massive cast competing all at once in this first pair of episodes with a supposedly irreversible elimination at the end. That means far less early screen time per queen. Plus, after this initial pair of episodes, episodes will only air for an hour on MTV (which means the actual content is more like 40 minutes).

Will Drag Race be able to steer away from its impending shark jump by producing a brisk, tight, shenanigan-free season that shows off the talents of its massive cast? Or, will this extra-long season of extra-short episodes collapse under the sheer weight of trying to make each of its 16 queens stand out.

Only time will tell if the season was successful, but based on these first two episodes there seems to be a clear divide in the cast between the competitors and the potential fodder. Several queens burst out of the gates ready to slay, while many others seemed to struggle to make their drag ready for prime time.

Which queens came out on top and which ones are in danger of an early elimination? My Power Rankings considers each queen’s performance on the show as well as how they are treated by the edit and the “meta game” of what a queen needs to win Drag Race in the wake of a season with an unusual winner like Willow Pill.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 1 & Episode 2 – “One Night Only” Talent Show Review & Power Ranking

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

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It’s time, my drag-loving darlings! That’s right, we’ve made it through a year of ten spinoff seasons of Drag Race to return to the mothership! And, mother has arrived with a massive cast of queens, so put on your reading glasses and get ready for my RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 Pre-Season Power Rankings.

This will be my eighth year writing about Drag Race in some form or another, which is wild! This time around, there’s plenty to write about: the show is launching with sixteen drag artists! The most, ever!

Each weekend (life allowing) I’ll share my Drag Race Power Rankings after the episode airs. My Drag Power Rankings aren’t about how good a queen is at drag or how much I personally like them. They are purely about predicting how well a queen might perform on the show based on their performance to date and how they are treated by the show’s editors

When it comes to the Pre-Season, I base my rankings off of two watches of each queen’s “Meet The Queens” promo interview and a quick 5-minute spin through their social media.

My Power Rankings are not about tearing any artist down. I revere Drag Race because I think it’s the most challenging competition show on television. Contestants need to act, sing, dance, model, lip sync, host, perform stand-up, sell products, write songs, make their own costumes, and more – all while applying face after face of stunning and intricate make-up. At this point in my life I’ve tried to do the majority of those things individually and they’re all pretty challenging.

And, I’ve done very few of them while wearing a corset and high heels.

While the tone of some of my critiques can be very pointed, every queen who competes on Drag Race is a world-class artist. I respect every one of them. I could spend an entire year and not get close to any of their performances in most challenges (except, of course, for songwriting).

One thing to keep in mind is that these “Meet The Queens” promos are shot after some or all of the season is complete. That means that the queens are interviewing with full knowledge of who will be first out and who will be a frontrunner. Drawing conclusions from these interviews isn’t just about prognosticating. Sometimes there are obvious tells from the queens about how things are going to go.

Who’s on top based on first impressions solely from their Meet The Queens and social media? And, who do I think is likely to receive the first boot when the season premieres on MTV this Friday?

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings