BBC drops Drag Race UK

[NotInMyyName]

Sadtimes#

“Started in 2019, Drag Race UK brought British drag into mainstream entertainment in the UK”. I think the Black & White Minstrel Show played a similar role in platforming Black performers in the 1950/ 1970s. And made them mainstream entertainment. Giving a voice to marginalised, and underrepresented cultures. BBC

Drag is a celebration and protest

It absolutely isn't. It's a group of men saying 'aren't women shit compared to men! Hahahaha! Let's take all the worst stereotypes of how women behave (bitchy, cliquey etc), and combine them with ridiculously over the top makeup and massive fake boobs. Throw in some offensive language about how disgusting women's bodies are and then tell women that they're joyless harridans because they look at drag and say ' hang on a minute, why are we the ones getting shit for saying that men laughing at us is misogyny on steriods?'

If it's a protest, why are women the punchline?

So what is drag protesting?

Good question. Men being cruelly deprived of the right to wear fake breasts?

If a group of male people are protesting by showing just how much they hate female people in general by their style of mockery that crosses into perpetuating misogyny. When you have male people simulating miscarriages and abortions on stage for laughs, with names to match, that is not protesting their own treatment. That is viscious hatred of female people.

There has been too much televised and self published content.

It hasnt been criminal to be gay in a very long time. What the hell does men dressing as female caricatures have to do with being gay, anyway? And no idea what 'orderly daughters' are. A fuck-you against women? Certainly looks that way.

'Sex clowns' was bang on about drag.

Excuse me? To protest the historic criminalisation of homosexuality, gay men like to dress as grotesque parodies of women for lols?

I think the logic is that because some men are sad, largely about the behaviour of other men, women have to be made into the punchbag. It makes no sense, but it's actually quite a common scenario.

Drag Queen Story Time was just utterly bizarre. I cannot understand the mindset of librarians saying 'shall we get some really cool and interesting strong female role models in to speak to the kids? Perhaps examples of women who have excelled in occupations traditionally filled by men. Wouldn't that be inspiring?'.

'Oh no, no, let's get men dressed as hideous caricatures of women in instead to read to the kids! It's a protest...or something'.

Despite the outfits, there is a huge macho competitive element to drag. It is a certain sort of gay man telling the straight establishment that they can be vile to women too but in their own way.

The ‘orderly daughters’. WTAF!

Nothing about mocking simulations of miscarriages and abortions for laughs is about pushing back on ‘orderly daughters’. It is however, securing misogyny.

Good. I completely sick of seeing men in drag on so many TV shows.

Thank fuck for that!!

What a load of misogynistic bollocks that should never have been given airtime in the first place. Leave it to rot in the dingy pubs and clubs where it belongs.

'Orderly daughters' is Polari for police.

How is mocking women a 'fuck you' to the police? Any logic here at all?

Celebrate good times, come on!
I can't see modern drag as anything other than vile, misogyny so am cheering the demise of that particular outlet. Can we spend taxpayers money on actual entertainment now?

I loved 'old' drag, which were your actual female impersonators, creating characters that they played, and played well with comedic writing that absolutely did not rely on grim, porn addled tropes as their 'punchline' - Cissy and Ada, Hinge and Bracket, Dame Edna, Lily Savage.

They were funny, and done with an amount of affection for females that you could recognise. I recognise what drag race peddled, and affection for females wasn't it.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. We'll not miss you.

Well, no. It was the character of La Voix they were calling "she". They were at no stage pretending La Voix was a woman. People always referred to Dame Edna Everage as she, but there was never any question of believing she was actually a woman.

I'm pleased, mostly because this always seemed to me to be a total waste of airtime. The only shtick is that men dress as extremely highly exaggerated versions of women, wearing clothes, hairstyles and make up that actual women would never wear. And that's it. It's not enough to fill one programme, let alone several.

There's a garden centre near me, a good one, which I no longer use, partly because of a coded notice excluding non-British people, quickly removed, but mostly because they hosted drag nights, and one of the performers used a pornified version of my perfectly ordinary name. It was worse than when I hear a person calling their dog by it, because at least they like their dog. (Bitch)

Interestingly, the rise, fall and cancellation of DRUK on the BBC does follow roughly my own arc from be kind to terfy. I admit that I used to enjoy it, but since the scales fell from my eyes, and don't anymore and my reaction to the cancellation is mostly 'about time'.

My gay friend who used to be a big fan also stopped watching a few years ago, not because he discovered his inner terf, but because he just didn't think it was any good. I suspect this is all about cost cutting and falling popularity and not because auntie beeb has realised the tide has turned.

Possibly, but if there was strong viewing figures, much as I loathe it, I expect the BBC would have kept it - so maybe the fact that the public are turning away is the major reason?

Strictly is well past its sell by date, but still continues to be very popular, so makes commercial sense to keep it alive.

Agree so much with the comments about Hinge and Bracket, Edna Everage and Lily. These artists were clever and witty and had real talent. There was nothing offensive about their acts and as a woman, I felt an empathy with the characters.

The brash sexuality, fetishising and crudeness of the current batch of female impersonators is a complete turn off and nowhere near the skill of the previously mentioned.

I looked up why Paul O’Grady dropped Lily Savage and apparently one of the reasons was realizing he could connect with audiences and be just as funny without the heavy drag. He also remarked that wearing miniskirts and full drag felt increasingly undignified as he got older.

Yes, but from a pure televisual format TV shows prefer to have a visible disability.

And with LGBT+, the BBC now do same-sex pairings in Strictly to again make it visibly obvious.

I know this is off topic, but I'm really curious about the coded notice.

Well then you get onto the mess that is TQ+, whereby straight people can be part of the original LGB community because trans can mean just about anything today. Trans is a deliberately ambiguous term.

So pleased to read this earlier. It was utter shite!
Pissed off about Ski Sunday though.

Drag is not wholesome at all...and certainly not something for family viewing as it was starting to become. The whole drag culture, the jokes etc are often sexualised and 'smutty'.

Also in recent times a number of high profile drag queens have died from recreational drug overdoses, and in one case died whilst sodomising a dog.The decadent, 'subversive' and 'transgressive' culture in which drag operates in not in the least bit family friendly, or benign.