on Dragula...Season 5
how overproducing a show caused a stupid amount of drama on the internet
Let it be said that Dragula will always be my first love when it comes to drag as a form of art — performance, visual, and otherwise.
I wasn’t really into drag until the pandemic. And even then, my partner and I were mostly just watching Trixie Mattel and Katya’s UNHhhh series on Youtube or their Netflix sponsored We Like To Watch. I always had an aversion to reality or competition shows on TV like Drag Race — not because of drag itself but because of how similar shows were built on the idea of false narratives and fake drama for the sake of easy views. They always read as hollow, to me. (Yes, I’m aware how redditneckbeardincel that sounds. See my previous posts on my pathetic teenage years.)
It wasn’t until I was sick in bed one day that my partner was flipping through Shudder and decided to try out season 4 of The Boulet Brother’s Dragula as it was airing.
And we were hooked.
Drag Race meets Face Off and Fear Factor with a campy murder-monster tone and queer folks galore.
Totally up my alley.
What stood out to me the most from season 4 of Dragula, specifically, was how oddly positive the show was. Save for one brash exception (who was eliminated very early into the competition) every drag artist was overwhelmingly kind and helpful to their competitors.
This wasn’t my understanding of reality shows at the time — bearing in mind I had NEVER watched much to begin with. But my thought was that most competition and reality shows were built off of ratcheted-up drama (synthetic or organic) that devalued the quality of the work for the sake of easy clicks.
And, in Past-Me’s defense, that’s not an inaccurate read of most reality TV.
But season 4 of Dragula, I know recognize, was a totally unique situation. Having now watched every season of Dragula (and quite a few of Drag Race and several other reality/competition shows,) it seems to fair to say that the catty stereotype isn’t without merit.
But I’m so glad that season 4 of Dragula was my first exposure to this kind of art, because it feels like the one and only season of a show like that which would keep my interest long enough for me to get invested and really cheer for artists like Hoso Terra Toma and Sigourney Beaver — with no linger disgust for other artists unnecessarily throwing shade around.
I prefaced my opinion on the latest season of Dragula (which just wrapped last night) with all that because I don’t want to come off as “blah, this show was so DRAMATIC for DRAMA’s sake.” I did like season 5, I really did.
But so much of this latest season of Dragula felt so manufactured.
Forced conflicts that seemingly didn’t exist for more than 5 minutes. Shit-talking out of nowhere that was predicated on nothing and had no payoff. A very forced villain of a character who repeatedly comes off as a perfectly decent person in interviews but then starts making heinous comments at the work table when there’s nothing else going on — as if someone behind the camera literally nudged them and said, “say something shitty!”
The addition of lip synching challenges and curbing of the exterminations to dull tests of generic pain didn’t help the optics. What made Dragula special, and separate from Drag Race, had already been recognized as dwindling in recent seasons.
Whether because of the pandemic or the explosion of season 4 and Titans (Dragula’s version of All Stars,) the fanbase for season 5 was exponentially larger than before — having amassed a large crossover with both the RuPaul scene AND the horror scene —and consequently, the Boulet Brothers tried to pivot. Moreso towards the former than the latter.
To their credit, they upgraded the stage, lights, and production design. They could afford licensing more popular music and wrote a dozen more original tunes for the floor shows. There’s a polish to the show that wasn’t there before (this probably upsets the old Dragula fans who thrived off of the dingey and dirty aesthetics of the first 2 season — which solely existed on Youtube.)
BUT, what clearly came with those upgrades was an unfortunate set of hefty expectations. A weight fell on the show’s shoulders, and it appears the Boulets/production fell victim to the whims of those expectations.
Like I said, the biggest knock on the show for season 5 is how visibly manufactured every facet was. Drag artists of all varieties came to showcase their talents, but what they tell the camera in their confessionals vs what they say to one another in the work room feel completely disconnected.
Compare this to Drag Race, where (produced or not) the artists there are very much in lockstep when it comes to their image. If they’re acting like a bitch in the workroom, their interviews mirror that. If they claim to be capable of reading for filth and tearing another artist to shreds, they tend to be able to prove that. (And when they can’t back up their claims, the show mercilessly teases them for it until the end of the season. This is part of why the artists on Drag Race tend to have a lasting legacy online and become the essence of so many memes.)
But there was such a blatant narrative being pushed in Dragula season 5 that I had never clocked in the previous seasons. Either because the previous storylines grew more naturally, or because the production was better at covering their tracks.
The Boulets are hardly shy about their preferences when it comes to their favorite artists — and how they treat those artists with brash prejudice. Almost every season, there’s at least one subpar artist that deserves to go home for a trash look or bad performance, and yet, the Boulets will either save them from extermination at the last moment or let them “die,” only to have them be “resurrected” the following week for shits and giggles.
It was never more apparent than this year with Jay Kay, a drag artist known for micro-budget looks and a punk approach to performances. It’s admirable, of course, but it was going to be hard to compete against the INSANE caliber of the other artists on the lineup this year.
And yet, Jay Kay was brought back from the dead. Just long enough to kill off the fan favorite, Jarvis Hammer. And, for the first time ever in Dragula, via a lip synch. A thing that Jay Kay does as part of their profession, and a thing that Jarvis very vocally has never done and never will do.
It read as incredibly subversive to what Dragula audiences wanted.
Now, we can nitpick every moment of season 5 to death (looking at you, Forced Romantic Conflict Between Niohuru X and Orkgotik During The Last Supper!) At some point, it’s pedantic and pointless to berate the show for just trying to change and grow over time.
I still had plenty of fun watching season 5. It just wasn’t as fulfilling as seeing my personal favorites (Landon Cider, Victoria Elizabeth Black, etc.) go all the way in an ostensibly authentic manner.
But I do have to cover one last thing — the sheer VITRIOL that spewed out from the fanbase (old and new) as this season progressed.
Season 5 of Dragula was a diverse cornucopia of men, women, trans, and nonbinary artists of all types and persuasions. It should’ve been a moment of celebration and a point of strength for the season.
But instead, the fanbase devolved into relentless madness.
When a white artist said they thought a black artist underperformed, they were immediately harassed for being racist. When a male artist insulted a female artist, they were harassed for being sexist. Everyone was accused of being transphobic and generally bigoted in some way whenever a non cis artists screwed up.
It spewed out all across social media, even enveloping several veteran drag artists from both Dragula and Drag Race in the muck.
You know the devolution of human interaction we’ve all been experiencing for the last fifteen years or so? It was all that, vacuumed packed into a three month brawl of sheer lunacy. The most vocal fools got the most spotlight, instigating unnecessary arguments between people with wide platforms, fueled further by bad faith actors who live for the drama (ah ha! So, if the show won’t give you the drama you crave, you’ll just make it for yourself via accusations on Twitter, eh?)
And I think I’ve read more about that kind of hatred across the fanbase these last few months than I have about anything regarding the actual competition. Very little about how stunning every look that Throb Zombie turned out was. Or how Niohuru X was maybe the next Victoria Elizabeth Black in terms of aesthetics. Or how Orkgotik probably had the greatest personal triumph of any artist on the show’s history.
And still, to this day, the fanbase is tearing itself apart. The Fantasia fans are coming after the Jarvis fans who are coming after the Jay Kay fans who are coming after Koco Caine who is attacking everyone and the cyclone spins ever onward.
‘So and so failed because they don’t belong in an artform intended for gay men’ is the one that actually breaks my brain.
Drag may have been born from the gay underground counter culture, but that doesn’t mean it belongs exclusive to gay men. Never has. RuPaul REALLY struggled with this lesson in the early seasons of her show, but the Boulet Brothers deserve commendations for never once questioning this. They’ve had drag queens, kings, nonbinaries, hes, shes, theys, and monsters of all varieties since day 1. As it should be with all things drag.
All this to say, drag is great in all forms. The glamor of Drag Race, the filth of Dragula, and the camp at your local watering hole on any given Thursday.
But the massive explosion in fandom across all platforms of drag in recent years has brought with it a kind of insincerity. (And I say this as someone who is very aware that they are still VERY new to being a full fledged drag fan.) A toxicity that plagues so many other forms of art once they reach that point of popularity. Think Marvel, Star Wars, etc. Their popularity passes the event horizon and suddenly the fanbase becomes a black hole of menacing asshattery.
There’s something potent and invasive about vast groups of fans when it comes to making things like a tv show so precious that it’s seen as offensive when the story goes in a direction they don’t like. As we’ve seen with huge franchises, it can cause the product to sour VERY quickly and for the fans to start to eat their own.
It’s worth remembering then, just how huge drag is nowadays. RuPaul’s Drag Race is one of the winningest TV series at the Emmy’s ever, and Dragula is the single running show that has kept Shudder alive since the pandemic. (Okay, them and Joe Bob. But if you’ll notice, those two are starting to bleed into each other more and more.)
Several artists from this season of Dragula were sent death threats and threats against their loved ones. And that just seems insane for a form of art that is based entirely around love, acceptance, and expression of self.
Maybe the lesson of drag shows as a whole is that we, as a people, just don’t deserve it sometimes.