Ru-view: Anger in Bloom
I am ready to be wrong. I am a white man about to dissect an interaction between two Black drag queens. The following contains spoilers about the most recent episode of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, specifically the goings on during the “Untucked” portion of the show after judgments have been made.
To set the scene, Olivia Luxe is a younger drag queen who is upset about being safe this week; she wants for feedback and connection with RuPaul that she doesn’t get by being safe. To meet her needs, she solicits the other safe queens to provide feedback for one another. Kandy Muse offers immediate feedback for Elliott (with two T’s) who neither consented to this process nor asked for feedback on her own. Kandy suggests that Elliott work on her awareness and ability to read the room.
The non-safe queens return, having just received feedback from the judges and the safe queens ask about who is in the top and bottom. Tamisha Iman offers something along the lines of
“I have to say that I don’t like everyone here, but all of you are doing drag that I have to respect because it’s drag I can’t do.”
Kandy latches onto that first statement and inquires further — who is Tamisha talking about and why is she being ambiguous? Tamisha clarifies that at the very least she doesn’t like Kandy. She finds Kandy to often lean toward the arrogant side of confident. For any number of reasons, “arrogant” is a word that Kandy seems wildly uncomfortable with and she begins to get very angry. Kandy proceeds to demand a lot of attention and ruminate fervently and openly about this label of arrogance. The moment is particularly lacking in self-awareness, and the edit showcases this in juxtaposition with Elliott.
This could have been the end, and we would have been left with an angry drag queen who threw a tantrum.
Tamisha did one of the most Atlanta things I have ever seen on the show. When faced with a potential threat by another drag queen, Tamisha bared her own well polished fangs. The underlying message in Tamisha’s tone and words is “I know you’re not threatening me; I know you’re not going to hit me.”
Through the distorted lens of reality TV, Tamisha is painted as a poised adult full of wisdom.
After sitting with this for a while, I began to see Tamisha’s actions in a different lens. Not good or bad, just different and perhaps a bit related to the odd anachronism of her presence this season. Tamisha is a seasoned queen — she’s literally the living matriarch of a drag dynasty. Her drag aesthetic is polished but definitely comes from a different era. Her mentality does as well.
The contestants know they are on a TV show. In moments of extreme emotion, that knowledge is incredible leverage for those who can more quickly compartmentalize their feelings. Tamisha’s inquiries about Kandy’s threats reek of a particular sense of poise and etiquette that seems almost entirely borrowed from the confluence of WASP culture and Black culture. As long as Tamisha remains calm, she can continue to foment Kandy such that the latter is viewed as more of a toddler and more of an “angry Black woman just going off.” In a way, Tamisha is leveraging the world of white supremacy against a young person of color because Tamisha has already groomed herself to those standards. Not to say that Tamisha has ceded herself to whiteness — she is performing a level of excellence we have seen in a number of Black pageant queens including the most recent winner of Drag Race, Jaida Essence Hall.
But also, the demographics for Drag Race lean heavily toward white, cis, gay men.
The response of those white, cis, gay men to angry black queens in the past has been overwhelmingly predictable. Silky was immediately castigated for being too loud and mouthy. The Vixen was dismissed easily as childish and angry. There exist a set of standards for etiquette in our world that remain undeniable even as we begin to appreciate them as insidious tools of manipulation put forth by colonialistic attempts.
I’m not saying Tamisha did wrong here. Tamisha acted as she learned to thrive in a world set against her from the beginning.
At the same time, I’ve already heard the stink of many of my white gay peers talking shit about Kandy for being petulant. I didn’t love watching Kandy spiral out into her emotions. It was selfish and indulgent. At the same time, when I replay her words there is a lot of maturity to be had even in the crude motions.
Kandy claims her anger repeatedly so that her emotional state is clear to the other queens. That is a form of mindfulness, even if it is still a bit wild in her manifestation. Kandy does eventually leave the setting, and perhaps that process could have been expedited and involved less people.
Kandy also later returns and apologizes to the queens for her directionless anger.
How many viewers of Drag Race can say they’ve owned their outbreaks that in that way and to that degree. How many of us simply expect people to weather our anger because we are genuinely hurt?
I’m not saying either queen was right or wrong here. Very flatly the breakdown includes some transgressions on both sides:
- Tamisha had literally no reason to preface her statement about respect with one of disdain. It only invited rebuttal.
- Kandy did lash out in every direction when she was likely just angry at Tamisha.
- Tamisha did nothing to deescalate the situation, and instead leveraged the weight of the panopticon on Kandy.
- Kandy chose to engage elements outside of her control instead of quickly finding a space for her to seethe and feel herself without repercussion.
Anger is a ferocious emotion that most of us are terrible at handling. Being a very angry person myself, I couldn’t help but feel strongly for Kandy in this moment. We know Drag Race to be a pressure cooker, and we’ve seen queens crack in any number of ways.
I’m really proud of how Kandy picked up the pieces, and I’m interested to see how it falls apart again. In the meantime, if you’re a white, cis, gay male viewer try to remember your position against situations like this. As (passive or active) members of an oppressive group, I think it’s our responsibility to engage content like this with a mindfulness toward our own biases. All of these queens deserve our love and support because at the very least they are giving of themselves for our entertainment.
At the very most, they are giving of themselves for the growth and progress of our community and species.
I am team Kandy, and I am team Tamisha. There are no losers here, there are only humans.
