If Ru Paul Won’t Cancel Utica-- then Cancel Ru Paul!

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Talk about a friendly goodbye.

"Mean"? Does that really cut it?

Does "mean" hold up against all that ignorance?

I've about had it with Ru Paul and I think it's time the empire started to collapse on itself. Ru Paul's ego is old, fat and bloated--if you don't mind me saying so.

Fat. A word for excess adipose tissue. Something Ru Paul would have, if he didn't look like he had weekly plastic surgery appointments to suck the fat out of every crevice of his body. He would take that as a compliment, certainly!

Gottmik as the first trans contestant? Might as well have a headline that says "Go fuck yourself, trans history!"

Anyway here's all my notes

utica roast outline

 

Intro

hello, I dunno if I'm becky anymore

But I'm sure as hell still mad about it.

Utica's roast was one of the more revealing parts of the show.

Exposed underlying sentiments long encouraged in the show

Season 2 is a great example of virulent fatphobia scripted by Ru Paul himself into the show

--Raven benefits from her real-time roast of mystique during the food challenge. Her jokes about mystique in the interview clips are at least as mean as Utica's roast material. Except-- no roast in sight. Just another contestant on the show.

--they made them eat brains and all sorts of weird stuff that the other queens found disgusting, so that when mystique won first by a large margin (because it was a speed-eating competition!!!) She was double standard punished for both finishing first and finishing first while eating what the other queens treated as such a disgusting array of foods. Mystique was both setup to win, and setup to be shamed for winning.

Season 9 Sasha Velour, Valentina and Eureka have a confrontation

--Eureka is edited as the loud angry fat person bullying the thin people with eating disorders

--Eureka's own experience with eating disorders is completely edited out.

--There is a clip where Sasha begins to apologize to Eureka and her word is clipped mid-sound. Sounds edited, highly suspicious. Perhaps Sasha velour was acknowledging Eureka's truth, and the show edited it out?

--Eureka recieves the villain edit in season 9 and 10 both. When she talks about her serious injury, and the struggles involved in healing from it-- she is treated as someone grasping at straws for sympathy as some sort of advantage in the competition. This is pretty common in the show, but generally pits real vulnerability as not just weakness, but manipulative intent.

--At least three contestants come forth talking about their issues with eating disoders, and none of the fat contestants are ever interviewed about their issues with body image and food. I have a hard time believing Eureka didn't talk about eating disorders.

Fast forward through Nina West, who is labeled as a plus sized without being plus sized. She is a broad, full sized adult man who doesn't try to become an unhealthy size or weight. She is treated as fat, and has self-labeled as such. She also happens to play devil's advocate whenever possible, "diffusing the situation", "putting out fires" aka BEING A HUGE WET BLANKET.

tbh after this recent footage fuck Nina West.

Silky Nutmeg Ganache also recieved a vicious villain edit in the show. I believe she is a huge diva in real life, but I also fail to understand how this is a disadvantage on the show. In all previous seasons-- the biggest diva wins. Unless she is quite literally the biggest, largest diva.

Kim Chi was robbed. Multiple times. Her song "fat femme and asian" not only puts her in a box, but fails to make it a box anyone would want to open. For a queen with such tremendous artistic talent and emotional depth, I feel that "fat femme and asian" is more than a bit reductive. It definitely hasn't aged well, given America's epidemic of asian violence.

Now we arrive to Utica. I'm sure we missed some other plus girls on the show, but I just wanted to make this about Utica TBH. I would love to have a whole separate episode about fatphobia in all the seasons of ru paul, but I needed to give you some history in case you weren't aware or hadn't seen the later seasons.

Utica starts the episode by pandering for compliments about her lipsync. She clearly intends for people to congratulate her for sending Tina Burner home, and for them to say her lipsync was amazing. It wasn't, so they didn't.

She then writes her jokes, which apparently are so bad that Rose even said something in her cutaway interview that she thought they were insensitive at best. She goes to rehearsal, she starts delivering her material

Her first joke is good, she tells her lion king joke. It flops, Michelle critiques-- the way she would with any other queen. Utica responds by fat shaming her, ignoring and insulting her critique. She then tells the Nina West "whale" joke. Doesn't even make a Dory reference (comedy crime no.1)

Loni Love laughs, because the jokes was horribly fatphobic.

Utica laughs at the whale laughing at the whale joke

Utica drives it to the next level by asking if she's triggered, when she stops laughing--

She stops laughing because she realizes this person is not respecting anything she is saying or doing, so she stop feeding the troll.

The troll keeps whacking. Loni Love, to me, seems to retreat.

Michelle steps in, says its very mean, very harsh, not good.

Utica laughs, rolls her eyes, seems to think to herself "well then the right people will love it"

"I think this is funny, everyone else will think it's funny to"

She literally says later in the dressing room, after the rehearsal--

"If I'm having fun, they will too!"

Nope.

Utica performs every joke as-was in the rehearsal. No edits, nothing changed whatsoever. Well, except that the roast has more jokes. And They’re all worse, somehow.

She smiles and enjoys the whole thing start to finish regardless of what her response was.

Her jokes to Heidi were racist, IMO.

I believe that the secret to Utica's offensive humor was that to her, it was very very funny.

To many other people on twitter and reddit, they also loved it. They also thought it was all very very funny.

In order for those jokes to have any punch, any joke, any humor whatsoever-- you have to fill in the gaps. You have to imply. You have to make implications.

You have to have a series of stereotypes that you find less-than, that you automatically assume about people. Those seterotypes, those implications, those biases you find hilarious are all biases. Those are not proven. Those are assumed negative attributes, that you deem unseemly, that you don't associate yourself with. That you go ahead and assume about someone else, that you dont' know. It's bullshit, It's called being a fucking bigot.

If you thought any of Utica's jokes were funny, it's because of those implications. I believe that if you were the wrong kind of folk, you could definitely enjoy various racist implications insinuiated by Utica's material.

No one even mentioned it. The only people I've seen talking about it online are talking about it in other countries, outside of America. Fuck America TBH

Plenty of other queens made offensive jokes with fatphobic material. The implications of their jokes were nothing like Utica's. Gotmikk's joke about Ross coming when the pizza is delivered in a porno implies literally nothing about Ross's lifestyle or character other than a funny joke about loving pizza abstractly. Calling Kandy a roast is also kind of implying that she is delicious.

Loni Love heckles her that she is bombing and laughs. The whole panel laughs with her.

Ru flips her off twice while laughing and smiling

They get their promo shot for the season

The golden meme from Season 13

Utica is proud of her performance, but seems to understand that she wasn't going to be judged well.

She is very proud and at ease leaving the studio. It is, by all definitions, a completely normal exit interview.

She leaves on a high note, Ru Says she looks amazing, and that she was funny sometimes, but other times too mean.

She says she loves her and that she should sashay.

I think she put Symone in the bottom to make sure that Utica was sent home, but perhaps Symone was only in the bottom for her poor performance. Perhaps I'm being way too optimistic

If Olivia had bombed, Utica very well may have survived another day.

Utica's ractist undertones went completely unchecked.

Ru paul laughed his ass off at the whole thing

I guarantee you she will be back for All stars

Yet another chapter in a long history of Ru Paul's Drag Race promoting and benefiting from fatphobia, and fatphobic sentiment.

Arguable Lawrence Chaney is a winner only because of his willingness to play the part.

I shouldn't have to have personal experience as a fat person to be able to see the various contemptuous intents presenting in this episode, and past episodes. Same as racism, it is plain to see. Sexism, plain to see.

 

Again, why is it that on a show that claims to uplift and represent the queer community-- Ru is taking credit for discovering, accepting and adapting trans people for the show, all while silencing and editing out all previous trans contestants. Gottmik is just another chapter in a long history of transgender drag queens. Many previous contestants on the show have come out as transgender, and many previous contestants on the show have identified as nonbinary-- even Gigi Goode who almost won. Why wasn't the gentlemen--start your engines line changed for that season? What about gottmik makes it "racers" instead of gentlemen?? Gottmik identifies as male, he uses he/him pronouns, he just happens to be transgender.

Why. Is. This. The. Season. It. Becomes. Racers.