Background: Manny posted the below essay in social media on May 10, 2018. It was right before The Vixen was to be eliminated from RPDR's revolutionary 10th season. It was revolutionary because of its very diverse cast of queens. I've been watching the show since its inception and I got Manny to watch it with me when he and I first started dating. Sad to say, we no longer watch the show, only because of time limitations. We're just too busy now.
Contrary to Manny's opinion of Eureka, I actually never warmed up to her. In that season, I think The Vixen was completely correct in her assessment of Eureka's behaviour (e.g. weaponizing white innocence) to gaslight and terrorize The Vixen.
I can't find the article now, but I believe it was Kevin O'Keefe who wrote about several queens who defined the VH1 era of Drag Race. One of them was The Vixen, of whom O'Keefe wrote - and I'm paraphrasing - "I don't think that the Melanin Dynasty of Jaida, Monet, Symone, and Yvie, would've been possible if it weren't for The Vixen's season 10 intervention."
Humble brag, but I think Manny is a beautiful writer. Not one word seems out of place.
***
Before The Vixen sashays away tonight, we just want to share that this morning, we were reading a recently published interview, “Shea Couleé Releases ‘Crème Brûlée,’ Talks Azealia Banks and The Vixen,” done by the same writer of the article, “The Black Queens of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 10 Are Revolutionary.” Couleé said she loves the representation of black queens this season. She also said she thinks it’s important to remember “that racism isn't something that is always active. It can be very passive and it's stitched into the fabric of society. Vixen is exposing those threads, not as some fine tailor methodically removing each top stitch, but she's tearing at the seams like a punk anarchist with wild abandon.” Overstated, perhaps—since they are fellow Chicago queens, and sounds like they have known each other for years. Come to think of it, it’s true—except for a couple of vague references, The Vixen has brought none of her brand of identity politics to her unimpressive RPDR performances. And it’s also true that nothing she’s done so far in S10 is novel, (cf. Shangela, and Kim Chi’s fat, femme, and Asian—we love them both). The bar’s set very high this season; queens need even more polish, pop culture savvy, and of course, more (Monet’s anti) jump-splits, at a moment’s notice. We agree with the general consensus here—The Vixen is none of that. Why do we respect the general consensus? Because fans are powerful—even though RuPaul’s always makes the final decisions, she has made mistakes and she has apologized for them (e.g., the Peppermint controversy). And because there’s a whole exciting, dizzying world of fans like us, an entire public sphere of writers, YouTubers, Vloggers, other drag queens, tweeters, facebookers, my beloved fiancé and I have always found it productive, instructive, empowering for us to latch on, often parasitically, to whatever TV models of queerness that speak to us, because we ordinary queers, with our mundane intersectionalities, hunger for a representation that will not be contained by the model minority myth. Yes, we have ulterior motives that are simply our own—to heal our internal divisions. We were disappointed when Yuhua Hamasaki got justifiably eliminated, because we were hoping for interplay, maybe the briefest of an alliance, a strategic essentialism, between a vocal Asian American queen and the other Black queens, a conversation that might subvert the model minority myth that silences “clap backs” (e.g., Hamasaki’s) in order to shame black folks (“Why Ferguson Should Matter to Asian-Americans”). And it just so happens that this season, we found representation in The Vixen, inexorably, and because we found representation in the EXCHANGE between her and Eureka, and because their arguments have polarized us fans, reflecting perhaps the current North American political landscape (we are Canadians), we love the both of them—their bodies, their make-up, their stubbornness and fluidity, their realness—and we hope that like Phi Phi O’Hara and Sharon Needles, The Vixen and Eureka will accept each other. But wait, Eureka has already accepted The Vixen for who she is, with the grace and authenticity that we have now come to admire, thanks to the vocal Eureka supporters in this group. At any rate, The Vixen will be eliminated tonight. And yes, she should have been eliminated a long time ago; but we want and do not want her to win.
No comments:
Post a Comment