“Hello, uglies!” the Boulet Brothers announce as they stare down “Dragula’s” season three competitors. Among them is Landon Cider, the show’s only drag king.
“I’m Landon Cider,” he states in his introductory video. “And I’m here to rep for all the f***ing drag kings.”
The show, now in its third season, follows a competition between a group drag performers all fighting to become crowned “Dragula: The World’s Next Drag Supermonster.” Each week, competitors get assigned a monstrous task that allows them to explore the art of drag performance. For example, they might be asked to make costumes out of trash or be required to include circus acts in their final showcases. Landon Cider made his mark in the first episode by swallowing a chalice full of live spiders, and is consistently among the top performances of the week.
Eight episodes into the season, it’s clear Cider is doing exactly what he set out to do. He’s survived the elimination challenges long enough to carve out his place among the top three competitors, while also making history as the first king to appear on a U.S. drag show.
Drag kings, or people who personify masculine personas for their performances, have been growing in popularity, though their visibility comes to a screeching halt when it comes to media representation.
Even as queer culture has inched its way into the spotlight, it has only done so by maintaining the rigid binaries that many claim to reject.
For example, the premiere of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in 2009 signified great leaps being taken toward bringing queer people and culture into the public eye. However, 11 seasons later, the show has only featured drag queens and even gone as far as to delegitimize transgender
performers, thus gatekeeping the spaces designed to embrace liminal expressions of gender in the first place.
In contrast, the Boulet Brothers have always celebrated deviation from the norm, and hence set up “Dragula” to be an inclusive space for all genders and gender performances. By opening their show to kings, genderless avant-garde performances and non-binary competitors, the Boulet’s have allowed drag to be shown for what it’s always been: an artistic expression of self and identity.
Granted, one show can only do so much to unravel the knot of systematic hierarchies and other (sometimes) unintentionally oppressive structures that develop within communities.
As activists, however, it can be easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer mass of problems that need to be solved. I encourage myself and others to celebrate the small victories: revel in the progress being made, even when there’s still farther to go.
“Dragula” is designed to challenge contestant’s innermost fears. The weakest competitors of the episode face intense tests such as skydiving, getting a tattoo or being buried alive to prove their will to remain on the show. The hosts—decked out in latex, faux claws, white eye contacts—revel in their ghoulish personas as they toe the line between taunting and terrifying contestants and inspiring them to become their best drag selves: something that can never happen if you are unable to express your identity.
As the season finale of “Dragula” approaches, I’ll be cheering on Landon Cider and every other boundary-breaking expression of gender, in and out of the limelight. Everyone deserves to live their own “spooky” life.
