Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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 France Season 1 Episode 1 – Bonjour, Bonjour, Bonjour: Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review and power rankings of the first episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – “Bonjour, Bonjour, Bonjour.”

This episode was about getting to know our cast of 10 French queens in multiple ways – via their entrance looks, a photography mini-challenge, a talent show, and a Jean Paul Gaultier-inspired runway in front of Jean Paul Gaultier himself!

If you’ve been reading my RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 All-Winners season episode recaps, this series of posts won’t be covering the show in such full detail.

That’s not only because those recaps take entire days to write!

If Drag Race France sounds intriguing to you I’d like to urge you to sign up for WowPresentsPlus so you can watch the actual episodes as well as the many other worldwide Drag Race franchises! It’s $4.99 a month or $50 a year, which is a very reasonable price to pay for access to all Drag Race, ever. (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

When more English-speaking subscribers and viewers watch Drag Race France, it is a signal to Wow that we adore drag in every language and would love to see these queens invade their American content more often. (Also, perhaps they could increase their subtitling budget!)

Instead of a recap, first I’ll share my general impressions of the episode, and then I’ll present my Episode 1 Drag Race France Power Rankings. Will it turn out that my pre-season first impressions were totally en pointe or did I miss the mark?

Readers, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne! [Read more…] about Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 1 – Bonjour, Bonjour, Bonjour: Review & Power Ranking

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 7 – Legendary Legend Looks: recap & power ranking!

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Welcome to my recap of the seventh episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Legendary Legend Looks, a design challenge of making a kissing cousin of an iconic RuPaul look that doesn’t have too close of a family resemblance.

What do you want from a reality competition TV show? Your answer may reveal if this no-eliminations All-Winners season is right up your alley or leaving you down in the doldrums.

Personally, I watch reality competitions for excellence. Whether that’s physical prowess on American Ninja Warrior, mesmerizing glass blowers on Netflix’s Blown Away, or the O.G. reality competition winner Kelly Clarkson on American Idol, I want to see someone plucked from relative obscurity and elevated to the height of their industry to show off skills that would otherwise go unseen. I also love

That’s not what everyone is looking for! Some people delight in the drama, the flubs, the flops, and the un-self-aware cringe of reality competitions, cheering when an ill-equipped underdog makes a deep run. This is a crowd who loves the gamesmanship of Big Brother and slow-moving train-wrecks like The Masked Singer.

I’m not saying this pair of preferences are completely mutually exclusive of each other. You can love a superstar talent and a crash-and-burn!

The thing is: this season of Drag Race is completely free of crash-and-burn. We’re watching a showcase of eight of the best-on-TV drag queens in the world whose camera skills have been battle-hardened by one or two passes through the Drag Race machine. Yes, there’s a competition happening, but without eliminations the show is much more about watching the process of drag excellence unfold than it is about the tops and flops of the week.

That’s everything I’ve always wanted from reality TV. No loveable underdogs. No shocking eliminations. Eleven episodes of excellence that hopefully ends with a deserving winner. Imaging getting to see Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood go head-to-head for an entire season of American Idol.

At the same time, I can understand how that is absolutely exhausting for someone who needs the spiciness of some cringe – or, at least some tough judges critiques – to liven up their reality TV.

Which side do you come down on? And, how did you feel about yet another challenge where no one was horrible.

Well, maybe one person was horrible, but we’ll get to that in a moment! Plus, at the end of the recap I’ll update my Episode 6 power rankings to show where the queens stand after another week of Legendary Legend badges. (Want to skip right to the power rankings? Go for it!)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen… win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 7 – Legendary Legend Looks: recap & power ranking!

Drag Race France Season 1 – Pre-Season Power Rankings

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Welcome to my pre-season Power Rankings of the queens of Drag Race France, Season 1!

Ever since Drag Race set foot on foreign shores with Chilé’s The Switch Drag Race in 2015 and Drag Race Thailand in 2018, the international editions of the Drag Race franchise have exploded! We now have ten total country- or region-based versions of the show, with two more on the way.

I love Drag Race in all forms and I watch almost all screen media with subtitles, but I still find it challenging to keep up with non-English-speaking seasons of Drag Race. I think that’s because there’s so much to look at on an episode of Drag Race that sometimes also keeping up with the subtitles and trying to decipher the local references gets to be a big challenge.

(However, I have watched almost every episode of every international season except The Switch and the end of España Season 2.)

I’m excited for Drag Race France not only because I’m a bit of a Francophile but I actually speak French.

Well, not speak it, so much as know a lot of words and a fair amount of grammar after five years of school and a several-year DuoLingo streak which I got so depressed about breaking that I cannot bear to start again. I have the comprehension of perhaps a wise three-year old, but that’s partially because listening to someone speak on a random topic introduces too many unfamiliar words for me. If I know someone is speaking about a specific thing – like comic books or drag – I usually have better luck.

Which brings us to the queens of Drag Race France Season! This debut season features 10 queens as judged by Drag Race Season 11 queen Nicky Doll. Unfortunately, the show did not produce a “Meet The Queens” segment for these amazing drag artists. They only released a set of promo photos and a one minute reel of them posing in their promo looks.

That means my initial pre-season Power Ranking will be more of a first impressions based on their promos as well as a quick scan of their social media. (I swear, Spoilerinas, I have not seen any pre-season tea on this one!)

Will any of my predictions be accurate based on just a few seconds of content from each of these queens? We’ll find out when the first episode airs on Saturday (though my episode coverage won’t come until next week).

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

[Read more…] about Drag Race France Season 1 – Pre-Season Power Rankings

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 6 – Total Ru-quest Live: recap, songwriting analysis, & power ranking!

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Welcome to my recap of the sixth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Total Ru-quest Live, a “girl group” challenge of constructing throw-back pop songs that would fit in 20-years ago… but with your own unique twist.

At this point in the evolution of Drag Race, it’s fair to ask this question: Does anything matter more than making RuPaul laugh?

This isn’t the case on every reality competition show. Some involve fan voting. Others involve a clear, objective set of success criteria. Others still feature a more-balanced panel of judges, where thwarting the tastes of the most-famous judge can sometimes yield an underdog storyline (see: Simon Cowell).

On any of those shows, some things could matter more than making RuPaul laugh. On Drag Race, nothing matters more.

On Drag Race, there’s no way to win other than to make RuPaul love you. There are no objective criteria for challenge wins, as we’ve seen many times before. The easiest way to secure a win for the week is to amuse RuPaul. That’s a surer bet than designing the most over-the-top costume (e.g., Utica losing the ball to GotMik), delivering a flawless performance (e.g., Jan losing the Madonna/Michelle week to Gigi), or doing more tricks in a lip sync (e.g., anyone versus Simone).

The question of making RuPaul laugh comes with a second implicit question that is much more difficult to answer:

Does making RuPaul laugh matter outside of Drag Race?

That’s a much trickier question. RuPaul loves to point out that “drag will never be mainstream,” but his references used to align much more closely with mainstream tastes. With every obscure Diana Ross reference he dispenses, it’s clear that Ru’s status as a tastemaker is receding. Even eternal mega-stars like Cher or Madonna eventually fall behind the 8-ball of the ever-changing face of pop-culture and have to rely on nostalgia to drive their success.

Nowhere is that more evident than in an episode like this week’s. Ru awarded wins to a pair of outright comedy performances when other queens were delivering smoother pop songs. Ru isn’t looking for a pop songstress – he never has. He’s looking for a queen so far outside of the mainstream that she can make the mainstream notice her.

Even if Ru is laughing at different things than everyone else, she’s laughing for the right reasons.

Which two queens turned out those Ru-larious performances this week versus a pair of powerful popstresses? Read on to find out! Plus, at the end of the recap I’ll update my Episode 5 power rankings to show where the queens stand after another week of Legendary Legend badges. (Want to skip right to the power rankings? Go for it!)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen… win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 6 – Total Ru-quest Live: recap, songwriting analysis, & power ranking!

Music Monday: “Slow Song” – The Knocks with Dragonette

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When I listen to “Slow Song” by The Knocks with Dragonette I feel instant nostalgia.

Have you ever felt that? Maybe not, because I just made it up. Or, at least, I’ve made up my particular use for it. People have coined the term to explain the effect of technology on memory or how to live in the moment.

I mean something different. I’m trying to describe the sensation of encountering something new that makes you feel nostalgic for a certain time or place, even if that new thing does not connect to or embody that memory.

I suppose it is something like déjà vu, which eternally asks the question: Do you really have a fleeting memory of having experienced this moment before, or is it a random misfiring neuron in your temporal lobe?

Yet, my experience with “Sad Song” is different. It wasn’t a fleeting feeling the first time I listened – a passing recognition. It’s a persistent tugging on the strings of my memory. It’s a certain lack of gravity in my stomach. It’s my skin remembering being newer and softer. It’s sudden tears in the corner of my eyes.

A lot of music trades in nostalgia. Even when a song doesn’t use an outright sample of a prior song, sometimes it can evoke an older track just through a certain leap of melody or the timbre of an instrument.

At first I thought that was what I was getting from “Sad Song.” The bass has that certain woody sound to it. And, I’ve been a fan of Dragonette for years – I own every one of her songs. Maybe it was just her voice? No. It wasn’t that. This doesn’t sound like any particular period of music I’m connected to. Dragonette’s voice is smoother and more legato here than her typically prickly delivery.

Slow Song - The Knocks with Dragonette featuring Aquaria

It’s something about the combination of the lyrics and the video.

In the second verse, Dragonette wistfully croons, “Oh, I got ways of losing you baby. I’m faster than whatever you’re chasing.

Something about that line utterly breaks my heart. It feels like the flipside of Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own.” It’s about pursuing something you want and thinking that the person you want – the person you love and need – is right beside you, only to turn to realize they’ve outpaced you and are disappearing into the horizon like a setting sun.

I’m gonna play you
Play you right until the tracks done
Play you however many times I want
I’ll play you like a slow song

I’ll keep you spinning
Spinning circles till the groove’s gone
And fade it out just like a setting sun
I’ll play you like a slow song

She was always faster than whatever you’ve been chasing. You thought she was moving at your speed, but she was really running circles around you, circles and circles again until you weren’t sure if it was her spinning or you.

And then, one day, the groove is gone, and so is she. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was convenience. But it’s over now.

Was that the instant nostalgia? The feeling of that perfectly described fading connection between two friends or lovers? [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Slow Song” – The Knocks with Dragonette