‘RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under’ S1E4 Recap: Sounds About White
Art returns - yay! - but the show botches the landing. It's far from a fair suck of the sav.
I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you! In a move that surprised no one, Drag Race Down Under brought back Art Simone, though the way they did it was far from a fair suck of the sav.
The show has brought back queens arbitrarily before, particularly in earlier seasons, but it’s become standard practice that they have to fight against the other gone girls for the spot. It’s always one of the better episodes of a season, a circuit breaker from the tensions in the remaining cast.
Blame the edit, but Art’s return was handled terribly — there was nary any reference to Coco or Jojo, and it was clear that the producers decided they wanted her back enough to not risk one of the queens beating her, even in a UK2-style vote.
Then again, there are thousands of production reasons at play, particularly with the pandemic of it all. Maybe Jojo and Coco might have already left New Zealand and couldn’t have re-quarantined in time, for eg., while Art might’ve decided to take a holiday after her surprise exit, rather than return early to Melbourne and have everyone know what happened.
This makes sense, but it doesn’t make the optics less bad that the show decided that the only white queen eliminated was too talented to leave, while Coco and Jojo don’t deserve even a shout-out. Look, if the show wanted Art back, she would have won whatever test they threw at the eliminated queens, but it felt wrong to not give everyone a ‘shot’, or at least some airtime. Adress the elephant in the room.
Give the white girl another go she deserves it! #DragRaceDownUnder
— Coco Jumbo! (@_cocojumbo) May 22, 2021
For such an established queen, Coco has been pretty subdued on social media about Down Under, rarely promoting it in the lead-up. It makes sense if she’s pissed off by how she was treated. I’m pissed off too: it’s a blight on the season, especially while the queen with multiple offenses of blackface nabs her second challenge win. Rumour has it the show addresses Scarlet’s racist performances — which extend beyond blackface, by the way — in an episode. We will see if it centres her tears, or is spun as a redeemable moment.
Tweeting my recap last week, I got into a bit of a discussion after saying I still “loved” this season despite its casting failures. I want to support these queens and enjoy their performances for what they are — love the artists, be critical of the show as an empire.
Down Under is trying its best to make that hard by centring so much of its time on Scarlet. I try not to be so outward with my negative feelings about queens as people, given how awful the show’s viewership can be. But even if I had no knowledge of Scarlet’s past performances, I’d struggle to like her, going off what the show’s giving us.
People are more than their reality TV edit, and I hope that’s the case with her. Her bitchiness and constant AAVE rings super hollow, as if she’s stretched a thin ‘sassy’ persona over an empty vessel. She’s not the first white queen to do this, but at least in the US there’s some context: as a Perth queen, it seems like she’s just absorbed her personality from the internet. Her blackface and racial appropriations, then, read even less as ‘honest mistakes’ (and the litany of them made that already a generous read) and more as an ongoing pattern.
White gay men — myself included — can go down odd, appropriative paths to work out how to express their queerness, especially as the tropes of gayness in film and TV for so long relied on clicked fingers and sassy retorts. Scarlet is clearly talented, but I hope she finds her own voice soon.
Designer? I Hardly Even Know How To Sew
This week’s design challenge brings in the trash and takes out a treasure, Anita Wigl’it. The queens seem fairly shocked to see Art back, but she glides back into the competition pretty smoothly. She fades into the background, mostly present for reaction shots while Elektra and Scarlet war off.
You know the saying, ‘One Man’s Trash is an episode of Girls I still regularly think about’.
Elektra is mad this episode, and she’s right to be. Like I wrote last week, it’s clear the show isn’t invested in her after her win-deserving performance in the girl group challenge landed her in the bottom two. Scarlet’s negging is getting to her, and Ru decides to stir the pot in his walkthrough, asking Scarlet to ‘offer advice’ to Elektra while she’s in hearing distance.
Calling Elektra’s drag “glitter on a turd” is unnecessary, but it’s fun drama. Elektra can take the heat, and has plenty of one-liners to hurl back. For the most part, she channels it into the challenge and listens to Ru when he suggests steering away from a terrible ‘Kangaroo Hunter’ outfit.
There’s also the really important, vital point that Elektra is incredibly hot???
The main queen in a spot of trouble in Anita, who between her smiles is clearly struggling to cohesively tie together her Burn Book look. It comes together on the runway though, and the judges’ criticisms about ‘having seen it before’ suggest that including the books in the trash pile were a trap.
As was the boogie board, and Karen fell right for it. Most comfortable as a character, Karen goes for a Schapelle Corby homage and winds up like Dora The Explorer: it’s honestly one of the worst looks we’ve seen on the show in a hot minute, LaLa Ri, of course, excepted.
Anita looks great, there’s textures and layers and the dress is well put together. Justice.
This week, we have an in-person guest judge, Elz Carrad, a trans actor who stars in New Zealand drama Rūrangi, directed by pit crew daddie Max Currie. I really loved that the show put a spotlight on it: there’s some heart in the empire yet.
For no reason, Etc. is in the bottom because her ethereal, 1920s look is ‘unfinished’, while Kita Mean is determined safe for tying together a ball pit with cable ties. It’s astonishing she’s not in the bottom — this look is incredibly unflattering and bulky.
Even if she cut the balls outlining the dress in half so the outfit had more shape? Right?
Art’s Marie Antoinette look is rightfully praised, even if we’ve also ‘seen it before’. Scarlet nabs the win for a well-made picnic jumpsuit, but it’s Maxi who really astounds, using ‘drag bag’ fabric to create a Vivienne Westwood-inspired two-piece. Once again, I am demanding more Maxi time.
If Maxi barely got screentime this episode, I fear there’s none waiting for her.
In the bottom are Karen From Finance and Anita, lipsyncing to Dannii’s ‘I Begin To Wonder’. Both queens do a real ‘8pm on a Wednesday night’ performance, and in another series, it could’ve been a double sashay.
I’m sad to say bye to Anita, whose sunny disposition added a lot to the cast. She’s right to say All Stars, as she has a lot more to show: who wins Snatch Game only to go home third? Next week, we’re getting a branding challenge, and the season enters its end half.
RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under is exclusively streaming on Stan. A new episode streams every week from 4pm AEST.
Jared Richards is Junkee’s Drag Race recapper and a freelancer who writes for The Big Issue, The Guardian and more. He’s on Twitter as @jrdjms.