So when Valentina stepped onto her first runway in a mariachi charro suit in front of guest judge Lady Gaga and said with a wink and smile, “I’m Valentina I’m from East LA, and I’m repping Mariachi Plaza,” she was doing something much more radical than showing where she was from and what she was about. But cultural factors, such as the race, education, and class privilege of the contestants, as well as cultural legibility and erasure, are beginning to shape the show into a space that can be hostile to a certain type of racialized outsider - a space both Nina Bo’Nina Brown and Valentina found themselves in during Season 9. Performativity and irreverence around taboo subjects such as gender and sexuality are historically part of the fun and craft of drag, and make the show accessible to mainstream audiences. Nina Flowers, BeBe Zahara Benet, Jujubee, Tyra, Raja, Alexis Mateo, and Yara Sofia were top queens of color in the early days of the show, and more recent standouts such as Bob the Drag Queen, Kim Chi, Adore Delano, and Bianca Del Rio still earn its top honors. This is not to say that the show hasn’t allowed queens of color to succeed. The episode’s runway added insult to injury, when contestant Detox emerged in a pink mariachi suit and emitted totally meaningless approximations of mariachi gritos. Season 5’s telenovela challenge in Episode 9 proved to be more an exercise in acting out racist stereotypes than succeeding at capturing the camp and humor of telenovela drama.
Her heavily accented English and interpretation of humor led to her elimination, after which she was subjected to a hamfisted “English translation” by Charo in the Season 4 reunion.ĭrag Race has also often failed to represent Latinx culture beyond stereotypes and caricature. While their performances were not necessarily up to par with the other queens, the issue of celebrity impersonation for Latinx queens highlights the conundrum they face when making their "Snatch Game" choices: Impersonate a Latinx star no one will recognize, or fail to capture an American star on the basis of language and culture? Kenya Michaels’ depiction of Beyoncé on Season 4’s "Snatch Game," while crude, is an example of this conundrum. (Jinkx Monsoon, on the other hand, was praised for making a similarly risky choice with Little Edie.) Lineysha Sparx, one of the only Afro-Latinx queens to compete on the show, was similarly eliminated for portraying Celia Cruz in Season 5’s "Snatch Game." For example, Nina Flowers was eliminated from All Stars Season 1 for portraying La Lupe, which RuPaul warned would go over viewers’ heads. The so-called “Latin Queen edit” tends to show Boricua queens set to stereotypical salsa music at their loudest and most incomprehensible, opting for gags highlighting the language barrier, or moments when it becomes obvious that their cultural touch points don’t line up with the show’s American sensibilities. RPDR’s otherwise groundbreaking inclusion of Puerto Rican queens, a nod to Latinx influence in drag ball culture, has not always been particularly sensitive. Trans women, black queens, Asian queens, and big queens have all struggled with the show’s implicit bias, and Latin queens - specifically those with strong accents or those who speak English as a second language - are no exception. RuPaul’s Drag Race, often held up as an example of positive mainstream queer and racially diverse representation, has also inadvertently created an insider and outsider culture. The show's first first-generation Mexican queen, who centered her immigrant identity and treated herself as nothing less than a superstar, had lost spectacularly in front of the world.īut before her elimination, Valentina’s run revealed some ugly truths about the social world of RuPaul’s Drag Race - the abuse, anti-blackness, and anti-trans prejudice the fandom continues to struggle with the illegibility, rarity, and threat of Latinx excellence on mainstream television the tenuousness of racial and ethnic solidarity between queens of color and their fans and the show’s double standard concerning who gets to define themselves as exceptional. For many of us Latinx fans of the show, there was a sharp sense of loss at Valentina’s exit - her unapologetic Latinidad made her presence feel extra defiant and joyful in a political moment marked by grief and anxiety over DACA threats, ICE raids, the border wall, virulent racism, and anti-gay hatred targeting Latinxs, and especially Latinx queer people.
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