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Immigration

Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 6 – Un Parfum de Drag: Review & Power Ranking

July 30, 2022 by krisis

Bonjour bonjour bonjour, mes chers lecteurs! Welcome to my review and power rankings of the sixth episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – Un Parfum de Drag, which revisits one of the all-time classic Drag Race branding challenges from Season 5.

(Now that All Stars Season 7 has concluded, Drag Race France will have the Saturday spot for its final three weeks to give me time to watch Drag Race Down Under! I’ll be back with my first Down Under post tomorrow, plus a special wrap-up for All Stars.)

Drag Race has many standard challenge formats that are guaranteed to show up in each season. This consistency allows queens to play a meta-game of expectations within the competition, where they are biding their time (or wracked with terror) about an upcoming Ball challenge or Snatch Game.

The remaining five queens were right to point this out at the top of the episode. They’d already been through a ball, acting, singing, and Snatch Game – all core Drag Race Challenges.

The one guaranteed challenge even on non-English season they had yet to face was personal branding, but it’s the challenge that takes the most varied forms.We’ve seen queens do everything from peddling their own autobiographies, to inventing their own flagship merch, to our recent All-Winners cast making up a TikTok dance.

Drag Race France decided to reference perhaps the best-remembered of all of the dozens of Drag Race branding challenges, Season 5‘s “Scent of a Drag Queen.” That was the challenge that spawned iconic ads for Coco Montrese’s nonsensical “Ru Animale,” Detox’s seductive “Heroine,” Roxxxy Andrews’ longstanding personal brand of “Thick & Juicy,” Alyssa Edward’s oft-referenced “Alyssa’s Secret,” Jinkx Monson’s Drag Race institution “Delusion,” and Alaska’s “Red” – which birthed her single “Your Make-Up Is Terrible” and nine years later inspired the name of her 2022 album!

Whew. Seriously, if you’ve never watched it, it’s one of the most memorable and meme-able episodes of all time.

This challenge was proof that we’ve wound up with the correct final five queens, because I can’t imagine any of the eliminated contestants creating such solid work when left to their own devices. All five artists succeeded at making commercials that were proficient and altogether ridiculous.

Even amongst their successes, the challenge showed the clear divide between the queens who understand the power of their brands versus the ones who are simply game to make a silly spoof.

That resulted in one of the most emotionally powerful lip syncs across all of the many Drag Race franchises over the past 14 years. This is ART, y’all. Both queens explored what it means to have regrets and to strip yourself not just of your clothes but down to your very soul. They showed us how you effectively de-drag in a lip sync without it being a sign of desperation. They showed us how ti interact with the other queen in a lip sync with consent and collaboration.

Wow. Nicky cried off an eyelash! If you love Raven and Jujubee doing “Dancing On My Own,” this is a must-watch.

Oh, and there were puppets!

If you want to watch Drag Race France you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

Now it’s time to rank our four remaining queens, analyze their commercials, and applaud their runways! Who is currently on the top of our well-matched Top 3? It’s not the same as last week’s Episode 5 power rankings…

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

[Read more…] about Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 6 – Un Parfum de Drag: Review & Power Ranking

Filed Under: teevee Tagged With: drag, Drag Race, Drag Race France, Drag Race France Season 1, Immigration, Power Rankings

(un/)settled

June 9, 2022 by krisis

Last week I threw away some expired prescriptions from at least a decade ago.

I know what you’re thinking. “Krisis will really blog about anything to keep up these regular posts. Maybe we’ll get a YouTube show reviewing the contents of every trash can in the house.”

Honestly, I wouldn’t rule it out. But, I promise, this trip to the trash can was particularly significant!

When we bought a house back in 2010, in many ways my life entered “accumulation mode.” I never had that much space to fill before, or a space that felt so permanent. After an entire life spent in rentals, I finally felt like I could have and do stuff. I’m not just talking about my comic collection! Having a house also lead to me fronting a full band, learning to play bass, writing a book, and making a huge career pivot.

In short: I felt settled. That extended to more than my stuff. It came with a feeling of psychological safety.

Image by tookapic from Pixabay

Then, almost exactly five years ago, we packed that entire life into a shipping container. We had fewer than 90 days to go from committing to our move to hopping on the first of three flights en route to New Zealand, so the packing wasn’t very discerning. All of the comics, musical gear, kitchen appliances, and expired medication got boxed up regardless of if we’d ever want to see them again in New Zealand.

Even though we’ve long since unpacked all the essentials, in some ways I’ve been living out of boxes for the past half decade. Heck, I needed an almost 90-episode web show to motivate me to unpack all of my collected editions! It’s not unusual for E to send me on a scavenger hunt through the garage for something we haven’t seen since leaving America.

This set me back to a mindset of everything in life being temporary. Having to move again in 2019 when I finally felt at home in our first rental in NZ made things even worse and it was compounded by our deportation scare in early 2020.

I was back to being unsettled.

If feeling settled came with a warm, tingly feeling of safety, feeling unsettled again introduced a constant, low-level of buzzing anxiety in the back of my brain.

I still bought stuff and did new things, but it felt unsteady. Imagine cooking a big meal while wearing roller skates. Would you whisk and chop as confidently? Would you clean up as you cooked? Would it be easy to lift a heavy pan into a hot oven? Or, would you do everything more slowly, with less certainty and more mess.

That’s how being unsettled feels to me now that I know there’s an alternative – slow, uncertain, and messy.

Here’s the thing I’ve slowly accepted about the rollerskate-cooking that is my ongoing immigrant life: forcing yourself to be physically settled helps with feeling mentally settled, and the opposite is true as well.

Sometimes that’s buying a new shelf to improve the clutter. Others it means inviting friends over for dinner, because that is a thing we can do.

And, sometimes that means unearthing a box full of expired prescriptions I haven’t dealt with since 2012 and tossing them all in the trash.

Filed Under: essays Tagged With: Anxiety, Immigration, New Zealand

35-for-35: 1997 – “Shame On You” by The Indigo Girls

November 15, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I do this thing where a band floats around on the periphery of my world for many years until, finally, one of their later singles becomes my touchtone and doorway back through their catalog.

I did it with Ani DiFranco, with Tori Amos, with Radiohead, and in 1997 I unknowingly did it with The Indigo Girls – it just took another five years for me to really feel the impact.

I had heard of the Indigo Girls before, in passing. My friends sang “Closer to Fine” in a talent show and I had to have heard “Least Complicated” at some point to explain my later familiarity with it. Yet, it was “Shame On You” that clicked in my adolescent brain in the fleeting years of when alternative rock radio that would still play an acoustic song by a female singer.

Even before I was a guitar player I appreciated the utter simplicity of this three-chord tune with it simple I-IV-V progression. It reminds me of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl,” and every time Amy Ray says “la la la, shame on you” I always want to shout back, “sha la-la la-la la-la la, la ti da!”

(I swear, I had no thoughts of how politically relevant this pick would be when I made it a few weeks ago. That’s folk music for you.)

Despite hitting all the right Lilith Fair influences to make me love it, the song resonated with teenaged me on another level because it was one of the few songs on the radio at the time aside from Rage Against The Machine that was making a statement about anything. The song starts with Ray relating the story of her friends the window washers.

My friends they wash the windows and they shine in the sun
They tell me wake up early in the morning sometime
See what a beautiful job we done
I say let’s put on some tunes sing along do little all day
Go down to the riverside take off our shoes wash these sins away

The river said, “la la la,” it said shame on you

This was a different sort of blue collar nod than you’d expect to hear in a Springsteen tune. Ray wasn’t saying she was an every-woman, or bemoaning the plight of an underclass. She says “my friends” as she introduces these people who hang from the sides of tall buildings while she’s on the road as a rock star.

Her friends want her to appreciate their windows like they appreciates her music. She wants to take off her shoes with them and head down to the river, where they’re all the same and they can hear the water burble “shame on you” as their sins wash past downstream.

In retrospect, is this sort of romanticism of blue collar ideals from someone far outside their sphere more of a downward punch than Springsteen similar everyman vibe? Usually I’d say “yes,” but Ray continues…

I go down to Chicano city park because it makes me feel so fine
When the weeds go down you can see up close in the dead of the winter time
But when the summer comes everything’s in bloom and you wouldn’t know it’s there
The white folks like to pretend it’s not but their music’s in the air

And you can hear ’em singing, “la la la,” they say shame on you
And you can feel them dancing, “la la la,” they say shame on you

indigo_girls-shaming_of_the_sun-frontalShe has now identified herself, the narrator, as an outsider to all of the beauty that she witnesses. Is that patronizing or is it acceptance and affection for the other?

I was particularly struck at the the time at the gently accusatory way she says, “the white folks like to pretend.” Isn’t she a white folk, too? Or, maybe that’s only a label for those pretenders, and everyone else are just people.

And who is now admonishing “shame on you”? Is it the white folks, clucking at the Chicano culture? Or, the Chicano clucking in response that the white folks refuse to enjoy it even when it puts a smile on their face.

Or both?

My friend Tanner she says you know me and Jesus we’re of the same heart
The only thing that keeps us distant is that I keep fuckin’ up
I said come on down to Chicano city park wash your blues away
The beautiful ladies walk on by
You know I never know what to say

And they’ll be singing,” oo la-la-la-la-la, shame on you”
They’ll be dancin’, “la la la,” they say shame on you, shame on you

Wow. Had I heard anyone on the radio before so casually state their attraction to someone of the same gender? Who’s the shame on now? Ray for being attracted to them, or Ray for never knowing what to say?

That’s why I am so convinced this song isn’t punching down, not even punching up at the white folks. It’s not about punching. It’s about dancing, and finding those shared little moments of humanity with people who aren’t like you in the slightest. It’s about the shame in not admitting how much you just want to kick off your shoes and dance along.

Oh, wait, there is the one punch…

Let’s go road block trippin’ in the
Middle of the night up in Gainesville town
There’ll be blue lights flashing down the long dirt road
When they ask me to step out
They say, “We be looking for illegal immigrants can we check your car?”
I say, “You know it’s funny I think we were on the same boat back in 1694.”

And I said, “oo la-la-la-la-la, shame on you”

That line has always stuck with me, and it has never before felt so relevant as it has this year. Or this past week.

How can you turn your nose up and close your doors completely to the immigrants who want to forge a life in America when that’s how all of us got here … except for our indigenous people, to whom we all owe a debt that we can’t ever repay for destroying their land, their people, and their culture? Who are we to want to build a wall between us and Mexico when they have an actual, persistent culture to bring into our melting pot of customs imported from afar?

I wasn’t ready to really love The Indigo Girls until I borrowed their older CDs from my first boss, Laura, back in 2003, but as soon as I heard those records I realized that I already loved this band, and I probably always will.

(And, in a fun tie-in to yesterday’s post: E and I walked up the aisle together to a cello version of “Least Complicated!”)

Filed Under: Song of the Day, Year 17 Tagged With: 35-for-35, Chicano, Immigration, Indigo Girls, White Privilege

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