Variety: When “RuPaul’s Drag Race” launched on Logo a decade ago, it was watched by so few people that the inaugural run was later lovingly dubbed “The Lost Season.” But as the years and seasons of that reality competition series went on, its popularity grew exponentially and its influence subsequently spread over other parts of the entertainment industry — from a sketch on “Saturday Night Live,” to seeing the queens who had come through the competition guest star on scripted television shows including “Playing House” and “Room 104,” to having drag performers become integral talent on the big screen.
3 comments:
I think the most important message from this article is that having real drag queen play the drag characters on film is very important. I watched the move Dumplin and by far my favorite part of the movie was a scene that was mentioned in the article which was when there were many different drag queens of all different sizes and styles performing as Dolly Parton. I think this scene did do an incredible job of portraying the drag world honestly and showing how many different kinds of drag there are and how diverse this art form is. I think hiring a drag artist to play a drag character is really important because drag queens are so much more than their persona, they are performers and actors and can do so much more than what people expect when watching their onstage drag performances. I am so glad that people in Hollywood are working to show the different sides of drag and to show the people behind this art form.
I think that the shift for drag more into the mainstream is very interesting, and overall, a good thing. It is something that I have really only recently been exposed to, and I am glad that I have been. I think that the cultural significance of RuPaul’s Drag Race has continued to grow beyond the confines of the drag community, and has had a largely positive influence on that of the LGBT community. It is interesting to see this influence in mainstream movies such as A Star is Born and Dumplin’. While I have yet to see Dumplin’ I have seen A Star is Born multiple times, and the drag characters in that show, while not gaining much screen time, are still very important. They are not thrown in just to please the crowd and attract a certain audience. This is absolutely a new and positive change in the realm of cinema that I look forward to seeing more of in the future.
I think representation in film and theater is extremely important, and it’s something the industry has been getting much better at regarding breaking the stereotypes behind common uses of women and people of color. In this past year, however, the representation of drag queens and non-binary people has been much higher. One of the biggest keys to representation is having the represented characters be played by people that actually fit their stories in real life (aka NOT using blackface when you have a black character or NOT making able-bodied people pretend, they are disabled for the sake of theater). Having actual drag queen represents the drag queen in recent movies perpetuates the idea that these are real people in real life that we need to respect outside of the movies, they’re not just characters. I really liked what they did in Dumplin, and how they focused on showing all different types of drag queens because now are they not only being represented but also diversified. There is no “one type” of person in any underrepresented group—there is a whole community and I’m glad the communities are finally behind represented properly.
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