drag

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 UK vs. The World Season 2, Episode 1 – Queens’ Variety Show Power Rankings

February 10, 2024 by krisis

The Olympics of Drag Race is back! It’s RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 Episode 1 – a Queen’s Variety Show talent performance and a national pride “For Queen and Country” runway.

That allowed 11 queens from 7 different Drag Race franchises to show off their brands and how they’ve grown since their original run (or, in a few cases, how they stayed exactly the same).

The entire point of the Talent Show as a challenge on Drag Race is for each queen to have a minute of uninterrupted stage time to show off the idiosyncrasies of her personality and aesthetic.

Very few queens actually manage to do that.

Across many franchises, we’ve seen dozens of queens misunderstand this challenge as “deliver your club performance (without using a licensed track).” Really, the challenge is, “give us a commercial for your brand that people will always remember you by.”

Think of some of the most-impactful talent show performances we’ve seen on Ru-hosted franchises. For me, that includes Tatianna, Willow Pill, Anetra, & Jimbo. They were all unique, slightly surreal, and surprising while also making complete sense once we got to know the queens better. Tatianna is about unclockable realness with moments of silliness. Willow Pill is about making light of morbidity. Anetra is about being a ballroom-imitating martial artist.

And Jimbo is about… baloney?

Those performances can be endlessly imitated, but the original magic will never quite be recaptured because each one was as much about talent as it was about brand and personality.

Three queens figured that formula out on this episode, and it was unsurprising to see all three of them in the top of the critiques.

The same thing is true about any kind of runway about local or national pride. It’s not about dressing as a cheesesteak if you’re from Philly. It’s about showing your home and what it means to you as seen through your own unique lens of drag.

What did that mean for our power rankings compared to my pre-season prognosticating? Two queens quickly vaulted to the top, a shaky queen solidified her standing, and one predicted finalist didn’t have the intense glow-up I was expecting.

(Want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World outside of the UK? For most of the world, it’s available with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best international drag superstar win!

Drag Race Belgique Season 2, Episode 2 – Drag-en-Ciel design challenge Power Rankings

February 9, 2024 by krisis

Bon retour, mes chers lecteurs, dans plus de classements! Drag Race Belgique Season 2 Episode 2 was titled “Drag-en-Ciel,” and it was a design challenge with a single color theme. Each queen was randomly assigned one color for her constructed outfit.

(“En ciel” mean “in the sky” and is a play on “arc-en-ciel,” which is the French phrase for “rainbow.”)

Vous êtes-vous déjà demandé ce qui se passerait si toutes les reines échouaient à un défi? C’est bon pour l’emission si les reines se font bien. Mais la série ne peut pas faire grand-chose aider quand tous le reines se débattent avec le même défi.

The cast of Drag Race Belgique Season 2 did not completely fail at this single-color design challenge, but they came dangerously close.

The challenge included a bevy of what seemed like conventional materials that wouldn’t be hard to work with. Yet, on the whole this cast doesn’t seem to have an eye for styling – nor do they have or the punk spirit of last season. Even the high placements could have been bottom material on a stronger design challenge.

That made this episode drag a bit, since none of the workroom gnashing-of-teeth resulted in any truly awesome runway moments. Since it was a design challenge and not a ball, there were no other more-polished runways to rely on.

Drag Race has a vested interest in putting on a show, and when everyone fails it needs to turn that into a spectacle like “Shakesqueer” or the Season 14 Snatch Game to keep things entertaining. But, there was no righteous rage from Rita Baga this episode – that’s not Belgique’s style. Even the bottom queens were treated gently, and ultimately the right queen went home.

Drag Race Belgique is at its best when leaning into intellectualism and its national identity, but this felt like it could have been an episode of any franchise. The combination of underwhelming designs and a muted response from the judges – plus a distinct lack of nerve amongst the contestants – made for a weak episode.

What does that mean for our Power Rankings? Some shake-ups from the Episode 1 “De Retour” talent show rankings as a quiet queen makes her move, a confident queen stumbled, and a safe queen seems to be doing pretty darn well.

(Want to watch Drag Race Belgique outside of Belgium? For most of the world, it’s available with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

February 7, 2024 by krisis

Are you ready to watch the United Kingdom take on the world? On Friday 9 February, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 debuts on the BBC and worldwide on WOW+.

UK vs. The World is the de facto UK “All-Stars,” pitting some of the top queens from the RuPaul-hosted UK series against queens from other Ru-hosted shows in the US and Canada plus English-speaking queens from some of the many international Drag Race franchises!

Of course, a new RuPaul-hosted series means a new series of weekly Power Rankings posts! And, although I am no longer doing my pre-season predictions posts for new queens, this is a season full of 11 queens we’ve met already from 7 different Drag Race franchises.

How are these incredible artists positioned to take the crown? I’ve ranked there potential to snatch the crown based on what we’ve seen from them on their original season(s) plus their Meet The Queens pre-season interviews.

Remember: I write these pre-season power rankings purely for fun, which is the same reason I recap all of the many Drag Race franchises week after week. If I make any critiques of these incredibly accomplished drag artists, those critiques are purely within the framework of what the show expects of them.

In the case of Pre-Season power rankings, my rankings double as a placement prediction. I have a I have a shockingly good track record at these predictions, but I haven’t tried my hand at an All Stars season for several years. Will my prognostication hold up for this special Olympian battle of global drag juggernauts? Of course, Season 1 of this show is famous for throwing all possible predictions out the window thanks to two massive shock eliminations that meant it was virtually impossible for anyone to predict the ending. Will Season 2 by just as unpredictable?

(Want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World outside of the UK? For most of the world, it’s available with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

Check back later this week for my recap and power rankings of the first episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2, in addition to my ongoing coverage of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16 and Drag Race Belgique Season 2.

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best international drag superstar win!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 5 – Girl Groups & “Faster Pussycat Wig Wig” runway Power Rankings

February 4, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 5 was a Girl Groups challenge paired with a wide-open runway prompt: Faster Pussycat Wig Wig! The combination let the queens really show of their range and their imagination. It resulted in strong showings from the entire cast and the tightest judging so far this season.

Drag Race can sometimes be stingy with music options when it comes to its mid-season “Girl Groups” songwriting challenges. Even with strong songwriters like Leland on the production team, often we get a somewhat limp instrumental track without much implied melody for queens to work with.

(There have been some obvious exceptions on the international franchises, like MNEK’s outstanding “Break Up (Bye Bye)” for UK Season 1).

On this episode, the queens got to work with three genuine RuPaul tracks – and, all three of them are absolute bops with House music flavor. Ru has always produced highly-entertaining, booty-shaking dance music. Last year’s record, Black Butta, felt as though it leaned out of making club-ready drag music and slightly more into the current pop mainstream. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the mainstream has been loving House music influences for the past few years, in no small part thanks to Beyoncé.

For my dollar, “Stay Baby” is the best production of these three tracks, but “Courage to Love” is some of Ru’s better inspiro-pop, and as goofy as “ASMR Lover” is as a title it’s a catch tune.

Was it the high quality of these songs that led to such an outstanding trio of girl groups this episode? Or, do we really have a cast of 12 highly-capable queens who know how to both write and sing? I feel like I was considerably harder on the lyrics produced by the All-Winners for their Girl Groups than I am on the lyrics from this cast.

I was asking the same question for this runway prompt. “Faster Pussycat Wig Wig” is basically just a wig-styling assignment. To this cast’s credit, only one of them took it as a signal to do a full-on cat-themed look – and even she used that to play with proportions in an interesting way. Everyone else got imaginative, and while I didn’t love every outfit there were barely any BOOTs in the mix.

(Although, I think it’s telling that both of the frontrunners pulled the same “the wig is a cat” gag as each other, both layering it on top of another reveal. To me, that was a real “they cracked the code” sort of moment. Both queens seem to have an intrinsic understanding of the beats they need to hit to please Ru, while the other queens chasing them are having trouble finding that rhythm.)

Speaking of trouble with rhythm, this may have been the most-entertaining choreography rehearsal we’ve ever seen on the American franchise. Each group had its unique challenges to surmount, which lead not only to funny moments on stage, but absolutely righteous moments between the eight queens watching the rehearsal.

In the end, the Girl Group performances were so tight that you could easily make the case for any queen to be on the top of this episode. Instead of going for an obvious “one top and one bottom from each team” critique, the show instead bucked tradition for the US franchise and handed out a group win. As a result, that yielded a painfully obvious pair of bottoms – one due to the girl groups, the other due to the runway.

That means we’ve got a handful of big shake-ups in the power rankings compared to last week’s power rankings for RDR Live. In a week where every queen does well, it forces me to really pick apart their momentum. What are their narratives in the edit? What is the story for them Ru seems to be telling with her critiques? And, do they have any hope of lasting until the finale when two (or maybe three) of the top spots already feel like they’re all locked up?

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!

Drag Race Belgique Season 2, Episode 1 – De Retour Talent Show & Drache Nationale runway Power Rankings

February 2, 2024 by krisis

Bon retour, mes chers lecteurs! It’s the return of Drag Race Belgique! Drag Race Belgique Season 2 Episode 1 was titled “De Retour,” and it was a standard first episode of an international Drag Race: a talent show and a “Drache Nationale” runway that showed off a national theme.

(“Drache National” is the Belgian phrase in French for a heavy rainstorm on Belgian National Day, 21 July.)

J’aimerais pouvoir vous parler de cette émission dans un beau français, mais cela prendrait dix fois plus de temps! Alors, vous obtenez mon anglais. Mais, je vous invite à commenter en français et je comprendrai (la plus grande partie).

That goes for those of you who comment in English as well! If you want to see me continue to cover Drag Race Belgique (and other franchises), your views, shares, and comments really matter. The reason I started covering more international franchises in 2023 is because my coverage of Drag Race France Season 1 in 2022 was massively popular – as much as some of my biggest comic guides!

This premiere episode kicks off an intense week of international Drag Race, with three franchises debuting in just 8 days – Belgique, Drag Race España All Stars, & RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World. When I first saw that schedule I thought, “perhaps I’ll just do a brief post on each.” Yet, as I watched this episode – and especially as the queens of Drag Race Belgique Season 1 returned to walk the runway – I remembered just how much I adored this franchise when I wrote about it last year.

Bien sûr, j’aime toujours une saison qui est en français! Mais il y a autre chose que j’aime dans Drag Race Belgique. L’année dernière, j’ai vu que… there is some tension inherent in Belgian drag. On one side, there are very traditional, established cabaret artists. On the other, there are punks who are playing by their own rules – including all of last year’s top three – Susan, Athena Sorgelikis and winner Drag Couenne.

Yet, no matter what “side” they were on, the queens were incredibly smart. Belgique Season 1 gave us some of the most clever art references we’ve had on any Drag Race runway with their bandes dessinées and “Ce n’est pas une pipe” runways.

Not only that, but the judges have a very keen eye for fashion. They don’t only want over-the-top looks, but looks that speak to certain styles and references from distinct regions of the country or specific aspects of its history.

Pour moi, la Belgique est peut-être la meilleure de toutes les franchises pour raconter l’histoire du drag d’un pays (alongside Drag Race Phillipines!). Despite the widespread skepticism about Rita being a Canadian hosting a Belgian show, I feel like she respects the culture of Belgian drag and is not trying to make it into something exclusively Canadian or entirely international. Just the fact that a weirdo alikeDrag Couenne won the first season of the show speaks volumes – usually first season winners tend to represent something quintessential about the country’s drag.

Because of all of that, I couldn’t bring myself to not write about this season – at least, for the premiere! I think we once again have a cast full of incredibly smart queens who fall to either side of that old-school cabaret / new-school punk divide. And, they seem particularly strong – without the drag neophytes we saw as early outs last year.

(Want to watch Drag Race Belgique outside of Belgium? For most of the world, it’s available with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

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