OPINION - Drag Race: a glitzy camp metaphor for gay people becoming themselves

There was a moment in last night’s final of RuPaul’s Drag Race when the four remaining contestants fighting for the blessing of their glorious leader were presented with pictures of themselves as children. They were each asked what advice they would give the child in these sentimental family portraits. One by one, the tears began to clog the theatrical make-up on their face. This is the kind of cheap, effective, cloyingly basic reality TV trick which Drag Race subverts so beautifully.

You can’t present a picture of a young Bake-Off or Strictly contestant and ask them how much they dreamt of turning into someone who might one day master the cookery of croissants or how to tango. Drag Race isn’t really a talent TV show at all, in this sense, because the exterior search for the interior self is a more complex business than all that. Cooking and dancing are skills to be acquired. RuPaul and his producers can throw as much glitter, mascara, leather and lace at their contestants as they like but a central truth will remain. Drag Race is a grand metaphor for the gay experience. Seeing the contestants turn into Warholian superstars is about them being able to express themselves freely, an expression which society has historically constricted.

That this year’s Drag Race final came in the same week as the Colorado Springs massacre at Club Q won’t have registered with all viewers. But the TV show makes enough of its political capital and clout that, for those who did notice these shadows over the show, it will have landed with a thud. This week, US shootings in gay clubs changed from something that happened in 2016 at Pulse, Orlando, when 39 innocent people were killed on account of their sexuality, to something that now happens. That normalising shift feels seismic.

We go to gay clubs to go through the same microcosmic transformation that Drag Race effects each week in big, bold costumery, spelt out in camp and glitz. For LGBTQ+ people, they are a passageway to finding our true selves, learning how comfortable we are at enacting this truth in an environment where we are no longer the minority and suddenly experience the comforting warmth of what it feels like to be in the majority.

Drag Race is a mix of wisdom and innocence, partly the reason it appeals so innocuously to the young. It distils a kind of demented gay bar energy onto screen. It understands the vicious, blue-collar heart of drag and turns that on its head, finding the emotional truths buried beneath.

Last night’s coronation was particularly poignant. When Danny Beard, a no-nonsense Scouse fashion plate, told the story of how a kid at his school came into the classroom with a knuckle duster he’d fashioned exactly to harm him, a chill fell over the room. You can dress that story up in as much theatrical macquillage as you like, but the hurt it prompts is forever raw, naked and stripped back. The Drag Race final felt like queer positivity radiating out of a week that could not have needed it more.

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