It’s time to boots the housing crisis down and slay inflation.
On Tuesday, Canada’s Drag Race announced on social media that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will make a guest appearance on the upcoming Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World season. Trudeau will be the first world leader to appear on any Drag Race franchise (tragically, Queen Elizabeth II never got the chance to kiki with the queens of Drag Race UK and earn a coveted RuPeter Badge).
Trudeau’s turn on the reality competition show is unsurprising, considering his continued attempts to court the sort of people who probably watch Drag Race (i.e. the gays and the youths). Since Canada’s Drag Race launched, it’s only been a matter of time until the optics-minded Liberal leader sashayed into the werk room, rainbow socks in tow.
I don’t doubt his (or more accurately, the PM’s team’s) relatively good intentions to show support for the LGBTQ2S+ community through one of the lowest effort ways possible. But the announcement echoes similar guest appearances by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during All Stars 7 and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during Season 12 in that it has incredible potential to be cringe.
Like, really, really cringe.
Pelosi’s appearance, where she guided the queens in recreating her “shade clap” in particular, has been torn apart for its cringe levels, even by queens themselves like Season 14’s Willow Pill and Bosco.
Drag Race handling of politics as a franchise is mediocre at best, with the American series (and RuPaul in particular) not really doing a ton to use their massive platform to, you know, advocate against the dangerous wave of politicians threatening queer and trans people’s very existence. Mostly it’s just having queens wave a “vote” sign at the end of episodes and having people like Pelosi and AOC on to vaguely talk about how drag queens showcase “freedom of expression” and slightly shade former U.S. President Donald Trump.
It’s frustrating to see a franchise with such a large budget and cultural influence use so little of those resources to actually help LGBTQ2S+ communities, particularly in the U.S. and U.K. where trans people—a sizable portion of not only the show’s fanbase, but its competitors too—are facing life-threatening attacks. Bringing on liberal politicians, particularly sitting ones with actual power, to hand-wave about “loving yourself” doesn’t help anyone. The queens themselves do what they can, from powerfully political runways on topics like Black justice and trans liberation, but the show’s production dances around any concrete calls to action and simply trots out these high-profile political guests to thank queens for existing.
Trudeau’s appearance marks Canada’s first foray into politician-as-guest (despite my repeated calls for a Stephen Harper-as-musical backing for a Rusical). And while the Canadian series has shown some surprising nuance compared to its international counterparts—the Season 2 episode where queens made over queer and trans high-schoolers was a franchise all-timer in terms of actually talking about some of the most pressing issues for queer and trans folks—I’m not confident Trudeau’s appearance isn’t going to give us some combination of the following stilted writing in the following categories:
1) Queens/hosts commenting on how Trudeau’s hot
2) Trudeau awkwardly trying to bring up Liberal talking points in Drag Race catchphrases (i.e. “shantay you stay .. involved in democracy”)
3) A LOT of pontificating about how Canada is a “global LGBTQ2S+ rights leader” or whatever.
And for queer and trans folks, it’s going to come off as cringe. Because we know that the PM and his government can do more to help our communities. We know that there’s a dangerous wave of far-right driven transphobia simmering in our country. And we know that gushing about Trudeau’s hair isn’t going to help any of it.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Trudeau’s appearance on Canada vs. the World will be framed as a way for outspoken queens like Icesis Couture and Kendall Gender to grill the PM on his government’s inaction on issues like actually fixing the blood ban or ensuring trans people have medical access. Maybe some Drag Race writer will go there with a biting joke about Trudeau’s less-than-savoury appropriative make-up history. Maybe Trudeau will use his appearance to pledge money to someone or something.
But more likely than not, like its American predecessor before, Canada’s Drag Race is going to stay content to “shantay you stay” out of anything too heavy. Content to be cringe, I wouldn’t be surprised if we simply get a Maxi Challenge asking queens to design socks “worthy of a G7 summit.”
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