#i don’t think it’s a coincidence that svetlana took a liking to her

[hayscodings]

debbie is the only character in the entire series who never looked down on svetlana for her work or called her by some derogatory name

[loftec]

I was really hoping to update NTW this weekend, but it’s looking less and less likely... so, here’s something else.

I found an alternate season 6/7 thing I started outlining when that whole mess went down, like just ideas for how Ian’s storyline could have worked out after season 5 (I would have included the other characters too, but honestly I don’t know what they’ve been up to since I stopped watching. Fiona bought a building. For some reason. I don’t want to know.).

So I’ve added some stuff for season 8 and 9, and since I’m probably never going to write it I thought I’d just share it for laughs.

May the 4th be with you!

Alt Shameless after season 5

Ian is on his meds and since he broke up with Mickey because he thought he’d be better off alone, he doesn’t go looking for new boyfriends.

He sleeps around a lot though.

He doesn’t have a lot of storyline, because he’s mostly clammed up and moping around, and his family keep assuming that it’s because of his meds.

Maybe four episodes in, something happens at work that makes Ian seek out an LGBT+ group, where he meets Trevor at a charity event. They work together all day and really hit it off, they have some similar interests (interests!), and they end up talking about a lot of things (things!). At the end of the day, Trevor asks him out, and Ian says yes before he’s remembered that he doesn’t do that stuff.

He’s nervous about the date and drinks a couple of beers before Trevor even shows up, he gets piss drunk and wakes up the next day in a strange room.

It’s Trevor’s bedroom, and Trevor comes in with coffee, telling him that Ian was pretty much drunk when he showed up and barely able to stand on his own two legs by the time they left. He doesn’t know where he lives, so he took him home for the night.

Ian tells him about being on meds, and that’s why he got so drunk so fast.

Trevor thinks he could have just told him, and Ian says his mental illness pretty much was the reason his old relationship didn’t work out.

Trevor asks if it was Mickey. Ian wonders what Trevor knows about it.

“You may have mentioned him last night.”

Ian says yeah, and is quick to correct him when Trevor assumes that it was Mickey who left.

“I broke up with him, thought it was the best for the both of us at the time… also don’t think I expected it to last. We usually find our way back.”

“But not this time?”

“He’s in prison. Fifteen years.”

It’s the first time he says it out loud.

Trevor says he’s not interested in starting a relationship with someone who’s clearly still in love with their ex (and Ian kinda smiles, because it’s true and it’s so nice that someone else can see it and accept it and take it seriously). But, he says, you do look like you could use a friend, and not to brag, but I make an excellent friend. He does the cheesy handshake, re-introduction thing (where we find out his last name!) and they agree to be friends.

(Turns out Trevor is estranged from his family, and after maybe a shaky start, he finds a natural spot in the Gallagher clan and becomes part of some of the other plot points throughout the season.)

Ian’s storylines can be about his work, and about stuff happening at the LGBT+ youth center, and they get into hijinks, but nothing super serious (or illegal!!).

Ian at some point has a big moment with Yevgeny, where he comes to terms with no longer being a parent, and maybe even thinking that it’s for the best. (Svetlana and her thrupple storyline can basically be the same, but end differently. With the three of them happy and together, and Yevgeny thinking of Kev as his dad. It’s not ideal, but neither is Yev being sad about his dad being in prison.) Maybe Ian talks to Svetlana about Mickey, maybe finding out for the first time that they aren’t married anymore. We don’t find out what Ian thinks or feels about this.

Throughout the second half of the season. Whenever the Gallaghers gather and Ian isn’t there, they wonder where he is and try to reach him, letting it go when he doesn’t answer.

But after it happens too many times to be a coincidence, they start wondering. Maybe Lip and Fiona talk about it, worrying about Ian having a low, or a high, but not knowing if they should intervene.

Lip talks to Trevor, and tells him more about Ian’s bipolar. Trevor denies having noticed anything going on, and maybe even questions if Lip has any right telling him Ian’s personal stuff.

(Also, I think it would be really nice for Trevor to have a romantic/sexy storyline... so I wouldn’t mind Trevor and Ian starting a friends with benefits relationship, deciding on the terms of it before they start it. Or, Trevor starts a relationship with someone else. Depends on how much drama one wants. Trevor could develop unrequited feelings. If one wants. But personally I think it would be more fun for everyone involved if he was allowed to fall in love with someone else.)

Last episode of the season, they’ve had some big plot point resolved by the Gallaghers getting together and working it out as a goddamned team, and they’re all sitting on the porch steps when a police car stops outside their house.

The officer tells them that Ian is on record as having visited Mickey in prison, and Lip is like, yeah, maybe a couple of times a year ago, what’s that got to do with anything? And the officer says, no, he’s visited once a week for the past six months. And Mickey has escaped. And they have a warrant to search their house.

The Gallaghers sit packed together on the couch watching the news as the officers search through the house, and on the TV we get the whole scoop. There has been a massive prison break and like 40 highly dangerous inmates have escaped, Mickey amongst them.

BOOM. Credits.

Season seven.

Throughout the season, we get like comedic side story lines about the police and the escaped inmates basically roaming the streets. Potentially outrageous and lots of opportunity to oscillate between slapstick comedy and high-stakes drama.

Ian waits for Mickey to contact him, but it doesn’t happen until maybe a couple of episodes in. TENSION.

Ian has other storylines through the season, but mainly it ends up being his secret rendezvous (plural, frequent, in-depth, sexy) with Mickey where they get to spend time together, talk. Bonus if they try to “be friends” for a while, because they don’t talk about the important stuff and they don’t know where they have each other, and they don’t know what’s going to happen. It doesn’t last long, culminating in an explosively passionate love scene.

At some point, Ian is approached by an FBI agent, telling him they have a deal for Mickey if he turns himself in and gives them info on the other escapees. Ian says he’s not in contact with Mickey and even if he was, Mickey would never snitch.

Later on, he talks to Mickey about their future. Mickey explains that the gang he joined in prison are escaping across the border to Mexico, and he has to go with them. Ian says he’ll come with Mickey, but Mickey is firmly against it.

He wants Ian to come with him, of course, but he doesn’t want that life for Ian. No security, a life of crime, on the lam. He kind of gets why Ian broke up with him, now, if this is anything like what he felt at the time, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Ian pleads with him, telling him that breaking up is something he’s only ever regretted since he did it.

Yeah, but what other choice have we got?

Ian tells him about the deal, and takes out two gold bands he’s bought from a pawnshop. If they get married, they can be put in the witness protection program together, and start over.

Mickey agrees, to Ian’s great surprise, and they end the season being shipped off to an unknown location as the busload of prisoners get apprehended on the way to Mexico (cartoonish, but with a little bit of work and research, maybe could be an acceptably goofy and almost realistic plot point).

(For Drama, Mickey could be with the prisoners when they’re apprehended, and he’s shot dead by the police. Cut to Ian being in the ambulance that picks him up, and Mickey is still sitting in his body bag, all bloodied, as they suck face and the FBI drive them to their new location.)

Season 8

Ian and Mickey try to start a new life and it turns completely ridiculous (like, imagine a mix between IASIP where Mac and Dennis are in the house with the Mac & Cheese mixed with like, Suburgatory, or Weeds, or whatever. Two gay South Side kids suddenly trying to make a life for themselves in some middle class suburb somewhere, and they hate it and it all goes to shit. But they love each other and get each other through it.)

The hardship they face in their new life doesn’t come from them, (it’s from situations and circumstance, and other people being impossible) and every time something happens it only leads them to break down another barrier by eventually talking about their feelings and hopes for the future, and thoughts about the past. And I want them specifically to talk about Yevgeny, how hard it was for Mickey to feel anything good about him at first, but now he misses him like he’s missing a limb. Them trying to be a wholesome couple in a suburb somewhere is an unmitigated disaster, but it does help them get a lot closer to each other and work through their problems, and their past.

And then through some Shameless™ retcon, something suddenly makes it possible for them to return back home. Or maybe they’re just like, fuck this, is there anyone stopping us from just grabbing our shit and going home?? No. So they do.

Yevgeny is part of the reason why they return. They move in to the apartment above the Alibi at first, and Mickey can work with Svetlana in the bar and cook up semi-illegal side-hustles with Kev. 

Everybody they know are on their side, denying everything in true South Side style if anyone asks about them, once again solidifying the core concept of the show; we take care of family.

The whole thing where they’re possibly in danger from the Mexican cartel looking to exact revenge for Mickey snitching (if they ever find out that he’s alive) could be played for laughs and brushed off, until it might come back and create more Drama in a later season, if needed, before being permanently resolved.

Characters thinking they’re invincible and being stupid about stuff like this is fine, I think, if they do it for a good reason.

[koganphrancis]

Actual footage of Ian trying to wake up his dick.

Season H8 Episode 3: Where Everything’s Made Up And The Points Don’t Matter

The good(ish) news about this week’s episode is that compared to last week’s, nothing hurt all that much and no groups of innocent people were shamed.  

The bad news is-it still sucked.  It was written by the evil Krista Vernoff and had very little to do with what had gone on the week before.  Ian and Terror, in particular, seemed to have no connection with what happened in the last episode (except we saw a shot of Ian’s shitty tattoo at the end).

Since the demon show is continuing at least one more season, I wish they’d force writers to read the scripts they didn’t write, instead of (I’m assuming) just getting summaries or following general ideas on the white board.

Anyway, almost all the troubles the gang was facing last week disappeared as if by magic-or really crappy script writing.

Svetlana and Vee made up in less than 30 seconds.  While I’m glad for Svetlana, what was the point of even having her “impounded” for such a short time?  And the authorities are just going to drop the whole sex trade excuse Vee used to have her taken into custody?  And I guess maybe this will set up tension when they’re all working together at the bar again-but maybe not?  It was dumb.  

Kev had a bunch of DNA testing done-um, how are they going to pay for that?-and found out he’s Bart from Kentucky and his family tree only has one branch.  Can’t wait to see where this inbred storyline is going (please read that in a very sarcastic tone).  Last week’s bears are about to be replaced by next week’s hicks, maybe.  Smell that comedy gold!  

Youens plowed his car into a house and even that-or the threat of prison-wasn’t enough of a wake up call to try to return to sobriety.  (Why is he off the wagon after getting Lip on it?  I’m pretty sure Krista didn’t bother to write a reason, or maybe I was so bored I missed it.)  The main thing I took away from this part of the story was when Youens says if he had killed the woman in the house with his car, he would’ve gotten 20 years for vehicular homicide.  Really?  And Mickey got 15 for NOT killing a woman who was shooting at him when the cops showed up?  And with no physical evidence or witness testimony that he had tried to kill Sammi?  Wow, ain’t that a bitch?

Neil dumped Debbie (something Snore and Terror can’t seem to do with their Gallaghers) and told her she’s a horrible person.  When Debbie repeats that to her family, none of them even question it or try to tell her she’s not.  

Liam was barely in it.

Frank is all into this mellow “I’m a saint” thing now and it’s just zzzz.  

Fiona gets a tenant for the empty apartment, but the evil gf of Nessa is waiting on the staircase in her daisy dukes when he comes out from seeing the place and lies to him about bedbugs so Fi will rent the place to her friends, but for less money.  Cuz all these coincidences could totally happen-from her friends needing a place to Mel being on the spot when the one qualified renter comes to see the place.  Later Fi goes all South Side on Mel and it was so damn boring.  Rumbling over an apartment rental?  Yawn.

No Snore in this episode, but Lip does mention how he can’t even take care of Lucas anymore, so I’m betting we don’t see the kid ever again again.  It’s no big loss to the show, but it’s so stupid that Snore has no problems/struggles raising a kid on her own.   

Carl loses the hot tub (has to sell it for quick cash-or the meth dealer took it-I wasn’t paying close enough attention-he’s there when it’s taken away and he takes Carl’s towel from around his neck and that was actually kinda funny), and somehow (magic?) knows how to drive and operate a backhoe.  That someone left the keys in at the cemetery.  Krista, how many coincidences am I supposed to swallow?  Not to mention the rip off of Ian stealing the helicopter?  Get some fresh ideas!  You also have had them dig up a dead relative before.  

Now for Ian who every week is truly this show’s blank slate.  Last week he was acting like maybe he was manic-this week?  No sign of that.  Things start with a family-except for Fiona-council of war about the drug dealer that’s after them, and we get a new piece of Ian canon-he was a crack (or some other drug that Monica was using-Frank doesn’t specify) baby.  Ian tells Frank if he doesn’t help them figure out a way to get out of the shit they’re in with the drug dealer, Ian will take a tire iron to “old Frank”.  Frank says, “You’ve been a drama queen since the day you were born, Ian.  Wouldn’t stop screaming until you were fully detoxed.”  Ian does one of his stunned big blink looks, and the story moves, well not ON, but people keep talking.  

Oh, and just a side note, but Ian’s been shown drinking coffee at least twice in the Gallagher kitchen this season, and the cock mug is nowhere to be seen :(  

Next scene is Ian walking into Terror’s office area, all cocky.  “Brought you that chocolate flavored soy shit you like, then there’s coffee.”  (I’m not sure exactly what he says after “like” and Charter/Spectrum cable doesn’t communicate with my TV so the close captioning doesn’t work-don’t get me started on how I have to use different remotes to do different things.)  Terror says, “With a side of snark just how I like it,” in the most annoying, whiny voice possible.  WHAT is Ian supposed to see in him?  And, was that comment all that snarky?  And, should Ian be having what’s at least his second dose of caffeine on his meds?  

If I’m going to count how many times they needed Mickey in this episode, the meeting about how to deal with the drug dealer was one, Ian and his coffee intake is two, what fucking Terror says next is three...

“Thought you had to work today.”  NO!  Terror does not know or care about Ian’s schedule!  That was a Mickey thing and a Mickey thing only!  Ian LIES to everyone else about when he’s at work!  And so far in canon, Terror is way too into himself to know where or when Ian ever works.  Grrrr.

Ian says, “Soon, yeah.  So... that drug dealer that chased me?  Can’t seem to shake it off, don’t know what’s wrong with me.”  And he says it all small and scared-after walking into the place boasting about his cafe purchases-I don’t like how they keep having Ian’s moods change on a dime-especially since again, I just think it’s bad writing and not trying to tell the audience he’s slipping or anything’s wrong.  

Anyway, Mickey thought #4-Ian seems to be acting like if there’s something wrong, Terror will get into being his hero and fixing things for him, LIKE MICKEY USED TO DO ALL THE FUCKING TIME.  So, not only so much for “this isn’t me anymore” (which is so hard to take with all this running from killer meth dealers shit), but also WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU CAN’T FIX ME BECAUSE I’M NOT BROKEN?  (more of that in a minute)

Terror just smirks at his computer after Ian’s lines and Ian says, “You laughing at me?”  Terror answers, “Only cuz it’s still hard for me to tell when you’re joking-are you serious?”  And, WTF?  When has Ian EVER joked with Terror?  “I’m into cock. I’m a top.  I don’t want that up my ass.  I don’t want to hang out with Monica.  I told you I didn’t want to hang out with Monica.  I was with Mickey.”  Have they had any other conversations?  Has Ian ever said anything he didn’t mean to this asshat?  

Ian doesn’t answer, just sort of shrugs to answer the are you serious.  Terror says, “Wow, well nothing’s wrong with you.  I think it’s probably hard for a normal person to shake off a drug dealer chasing them.”   Ian says, “Gallaghers are not generally normal humans.”   T: Grief can change people. I: What? T: Ah, grief.  I mean, your mother died.  It changes you.  Maybe you should talk to the counselor.  (Krista!  We went over this ground LAST week and, while that should’ve been Terror’s advice then, it wasn’t, and why isn’t this story going anywhere, ever?) I: (creeplily turns the conversation into a come on) I’d rather talk to you. (Sits up, leans in towards Terror)  In fact, I’d rather do something with you that doesn’t involve talking. T: (closing down immediately and going cold) Ah, well, sorry, I’m busy trying to help out at risk youth.

So, yeah, that should’ve been his reaction LAST week-wtf?  It’s truly like last week never happened.  I wanted Terror to reply to that “I don’t feel like talking” call back in Mickey’s bedroom with, “Bitch, I just got you laid last week!  I’m never gonna sleep with you again, so there’s the door.”  But, no.  And Ian going from “I’m sad, please help it” to seductive or whatever the hell they think it is, is just...OOC and not attractive and as always, their total lack of chemistry makes everything worse.  But now that Terror has said no for the millionth time, it’s really coming off as rapey whenever Ian tries.  

Then, before he even starts his shift at work, Sue tells him his “uncle” was there looking for him and describes the meth guy, so Ian goes tearing out of the EMT station with Sue yelling after him that he has a shift.  If he STILL has his job after this 18th strike or whatever he’s up to...well, I won’t be surprised at all because Shameless has given up on reality more than ever and Gallaghers never get into any real trouble.  

There’s the scene at the hot tub with the guy dunking Carl and Ian trying to protect him with the bat, and then there’s another meeting to try to figure out what to do because they only have $9000 left from all the meth Carl sold, so finally they cave and go talk to Fiona and there’s a painful scene where she makes them admit she was right-which in this case she actually was, but in other cases she’s fucked up just as badly as they have-plus I’m NEVER forgiving her for saying Mickey would set a match to Ian’s life-what about what he’s managing all on his own since he’s been back?  What about the fact that Mickey did everything he could to always keep Ian safe and happy once he was back from the army?  Grrrrr.  

Anyway, the family digs up Monica and Krista waves her fairy wand again and has the meth dealer listen to Frank’s reasoning that half the meth belonged to Monica so them coming up with almost half the money is good enough-and that if the meth guy ever goes near his family again he’ll put him in the ground with Monica.  Yeah, meth dealers are known for compromising and listening to ownership rights theories.  And who wouldn’t be threatened by old broken-down Frank?  Eye roll.  

Anyway, Ian returns to the cemetery alone to try to put Monica’s headstone back together, but the pieces fall apart and he sits hard on his bum.  The camera’s behind him-and his shitty tattoo-so who knows if he’s crying or finally giving in to the fact that she’s dead and gone or what, but I won’t be surprised if he’s now completely over her death and ready to become a brand new man-yet again-next week.  Which is the episode where Ian supposedly crosses a boundary with a teen from the youth center.  Will his months of no sex except last week’s blowjob lead to him having sex with a teen?  Probably not, but cripes, what else could it be?  

[its-a-queer-thing]

hey! i haven’t send anything in a while so all these feelings are sorta bottled up in my mind and i just needed to share them with you! soo. I got real sick and i’ve to stay home for a few days. Skipping school gave me more time to watch shameless and even though i dont wanna admit it, that’s all i’ve been doing for the past two or three days :“) NICE.

anyways!

i’m on season 5 currently, and shit just got real. real bad, real weird, real messed up! I knew Ian was going to turn out being bipolar, but the first time the mania started to kick in, it fucking terrified me. No seriously, all Ian scenes right after he’d got back from the army were nearly giving me chills. Knowing that "it” was going to happen made me so uncomfortable somehow. Damn, Cameron is a GREAT actor.

for the past two or three seasons, i honestly hated Lip for doing stuff he did to Mandy and so on, but after that, seeing how he truly cares about his family even though he’s terrible at relationships, i kind of still like him. idk.

Steve disappointed me. a lot. His comeback was epic, but i don’t trust him anymore. and i honestly don’t care about whether him and Fiona is going to happen again or not. He’s an asshole. at least for now.

The drama between Vee and Kev scared me a lot because i LOVE them and their beautiful relationship, but i know they’ll find ways to each other. ahh.

anyways, getting to the actual question, this isn’t really related to what i talked about, but whatever. so. who is your favorite female character and why(i hope i havent asked this already omg)?

personally for me, it’s either Mandy, or Svetlana. Or both. Svetlana has had a major development if you ask me, and instead of a dumb hooker, i see her as a different.. strong woman who has been though  A LOT but still managed to be who she is now. Idk, i think she’s hilarious.

thanks for putting up with my long ass lectures hahah <3

I’m so sorry you’ve been ill, love! I hope you’re feeling better now!

Yes! Cameron is so underrated, same as Noel! I pray they both just keep getting more and more jobs because they are both so crazy talented and deserve every single role they want! And Ian was bonechilling in season 4 with how quick he would go from laughing hysterically to super serious, from relatively calm to murderous, just... fuck! And then 4x12 brings me to my knees. Gallavich can’t have one goddamn episode of happiness because even in 5x01, Mickey is so blissed out to have his family dynamic, his boyfriend and wife getting along, he’s got a new scam going that should be relatively easy to keep going, life is good right?! THEN we find out that Ian is cheating on him and rejecting any possibility that he’s like Monica. And it just keeps going from there and fuck my heart just can’t take it! T_T

Yeah, Lip and I have gotten along ONCE and that was in season 3 when he called everyone on their shit for letting the pedophile go just because she was a woman. Because even when he was taking care of Liam, I think he only took care of him to the extent that he did to a. get back at Fiona moreso than he believed she couldn’t and b. to get girls. It’s no coincidence to me that he was being rejected left and right and could only get his third or fourth choice to fuck him and then suddenly he brings Liam to school and BAM. Chick magnet. I think he milked that for all he was worth and no one will ever be able to tell me otherwise. Then in season 5 he acted like he gave a shit about Ian but what exactly did he do to show it? Not much. He criticized Mickey, talked to Mickey once, and talked about how guilty he felt being away from his brother when all he had to do was call him once or make the effort to visit him at the Milkovich house, awkwardness with Mandy be damned. MAKE PLANS! Go out and DO something! Invite him to dinner! FUCK! And finally the way he tries to convince Mandy to stay... He really thinks he’s God’s gift, especially with Mandy who has really low standards, and it’s disgusting. He takes advantage of her low standards to seem like a prince by spouting out sweet shit to her when he knows she’s vulnerable, and thinks that throwing his magic dick in her followed by telling her she deserves better and inviting her to breakfast is going to get her to stay. Fuck Lip. FUCK. Lip.

Steve was character assassination. Get used to it, love. Sadly that’s Shameless’ game. They love to tear their characters down after they’ve left so that the audience will stop asking for him. It never works, but that’s what they do. Granted, Jimmy/Steve was never THAT bad, but they really upped the asshole factor  for season 5 and it was really frustrating that they brought him back literally just to stir things up because they couldn’t get creative and think of a new conflict. Very disappointing, indeed.

As much as I hate the drama between Kev and V, I kind of liked it just because it’s relatively unrealistic to have a couple NOT have issues. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they had their issues, but they were generally resolved in two episodes MAX. So this was interesting because they also really got to the deep rooted problem and started looking a way to get past it, which is SUPER important. I also love that they showed the father getting uber obsessed with his children and the mother just not connecting the way she feels like she should. It’s great because it shows that there isn’t one right way to parent and there isn’t one right way to react to a life change like that. Some mothers don’t instantly latch to their children the way they are told they will and it sets up a lot of disappointment when it doesn’t happen. It was an interesting discourse.

Favorite female character is probably V. She is loyal to a fault and does what she has to do to get by and isn’t ashamed of it. She  loves fiercely and isn’t afraid to take charge and I LOVE that in a woman. And Shanola Hampton? She is H.O.T. HOT! Such a beautiful woman inside and out. <3 She is probably the only female character on this show that hasn’t seriously pissed me off tbh lol.

Svetlana and I have issues. It’s not just that she raped Mickey, but that she knew that what happened between them was nonconsensual but didn’t seem to understand that he wouldn’t want to be around her or see his kid. It may be that she is with that group of people who believe that men can’t be raped or something, but I will never forgive her for jumping to the blackmail game when Ian came back. She could have reasoned with Ian or told Mickey “look, it’s clear you don’t give a shit about the baby, but I’m keeping it and I can’t do it alone. We’re already married so why don’t you just help me with the kid. You don’t have to play husband, just be a father to the kid and help me out financially.” And if he still didn’t come along, just keep working on him and get Ian and Mandy involved! Be resourceful woman! She KNEW what would happen if Terry found out Mickey was still gay and to spite Mickey’s fear would put his life in very real danger just to get her way (and to support her child, I understand, but again... There are different courses of actions that could have been taken). Then there are future things that make me dislike her, but I’ll wait until I know you’re there to discuss them. :)

Much love, dear and I hope you get better soon if you aren’t already! Send me more of your thoughts when they come to you! <3

[isaiahrippinus]

The Drag Brunch Industrial Complex

In April 2016, drag queen Ritzy Bitz received a message on social media from Voss Events warning her that a popular show she hosted would have to change its name. Voss Events, run by the notorious Brandon Voss, in the years before sending ominous threats had become one of the leading production and marketing companies for LGBTQ talent. The burgeoning brand is widely considered a pioneer of world tours and media blitzes for top-level drag artists — something that would have been inconceivable only a decade ago

before the rise of RuPaul’s “Drag Race.” Having conquered nightclubs and global nightlife, Voss was setting its sights on a new territory: brunch.

“When it was first drawn to my attention [they told me] something like, ‘Hey, we’ve trademarked Drag Brunch, can you stop using that on your advertisements?’ And I thought that was pretty aggressive — but whatever. I understand. I thought: I’m doing brunch locally, but they’re doing brunch globally,” says Bitz. “I also laughed because they had only made the trademark just weeks after I had been joking about making my own trademark for Drag Brunch. It could have been me. I took it as a challenge to personalize my show and not just call it Drag Brunch.”

Indeed, Voss had trademarked the phrase “drag brunch” in 2018, but for some reason news of their menacing forewarning went viral much later, in December of 2019. The old news suddenly sparked ire from local drag talent in New York and beyond. It seemed pretty obvious that Voss’s tactic was largely unenforceable on a legal level, but many were stunned by the audacity of the move.

Credit: Voss Events / Facebook.com

Pariah Sinclar, a self-described “up-and-coming housewife” who runs a drag brunch at Of Love And Regret in Baltimore, felt that Voss was going against the true spirit of drag with this strategy.

“That’s so ridiculous!” said Sinclair. “It’s the opposite of what drag is: Drag, in its essence, was about civil rights. It was about sticking up for what you believe in — and now, these people are just trying to make themselves into a monopoly.”

The Voss situation remains unresolved. (A request for comment from Voss Events was not returned.) At least one brunch provocatively changed its name in hopes of triggering litigation, but nothing resulted from the rebranding.

Economic Opportunity

The struggles that have played out around something as seemingly innocuous as brunch are a microcosm of bigger dynamics within the LGBTQ community. As drag becomes an increasingly mainstream art form, performers will have to decide if their shows are art or just another form of money-making entertainment: Is drag a creative and generative exploration of gender identity, or are drag performers just gender jesters for hire? Brunch has become the strange stage on which this battle now plays out.

It’s hard to say exactly when the popularity of drag brunch really intensified. The tradition had certainly existed on a smaller scale in gay bars or small-scale, queer-owned restaurants before “Drag Race,” but its rise in ubiquity quite clearly coincides with the show’s massive and growing popularity.

Svetlana Stoli, a drag performer who manages the legendary Lucky Cheng’s drag brunch in New York City, says that “it really started slowly growing in 2016. In 2018 and 2019 there was a real explosion. Last summer almost everyone started throwing it out there. It was ‘Drag Race’s’ move to VH1 that really got restaurants interested.”

Thotyssey, a website that shares info about drag events in New York, now lists approximately 20 separate drag brunches hosted in the five boroughs every weekend at both queer-owned and -operated venues and in spaces that otherwise have no connection to the LGBTQ community.

Credit: Voss Events / Facebook.com

Until rather recently, the idea of seeing drag outside the confines of a gay bar was unheard of. Drag performances were necessarily held in nightlife venues — largely because being seen in drag essentially magnetized hate crimes. LGBTQs survived by hiding their lives in literal darkness. Drag events, like ballroom competitions, started so late because the performers were quite frequently sex workers coming from other jobs. But as drag has moved from a denigrated art form into art galleries and beyond, the medium is now being seen by the light of day — although there’s widespread disagreement within the community as to whether drag makeup looks good in sunlight.

As drag no longer only exists after midnight, suddenly hoards of new audiences are being drawn to the art form now that it’s more accessible. Like RuPaul’s “Drag Race,” drag brunches often appeal to audiences of straight women from a variety of economic backgrounds. Private drag brunches have become chic events for the hyper-wealthy, as seen in several episodes of “The Real Housewives” franchise. In fact, drag brunch has become so lucrative that some performers, like Ritzy, no longer work at nightclubs at all.

“Brunch is becoming the new gay nightlife,” she says. “I was able to survive working brunch and only brunch as my only gig for three years. And for the first two years that was only Sunday!”

Katrina Colby, a drag performer who works brunches at City Tap in Washington, D.C., and Red Star in Baltimore, says she sometimes makes close to 10 times as much money at a brunch than she would working a gig at night.

“For brunch shows I make anywhere from $150 to $1,200 dollars. A night-time show is somewhere between $30 and $150, but it really doesn’t get much past that,” says Colby.

Is Nightlife Over?

Considering the immense labor issues that drag performers are up against to this day, these kinds of earnings represent newfound freedom for artists who would otherwise likely be relegated to lives of poverty and strife. And it’s not just the queens who are making bank. The bars and restaurants themselves are raking in considerable profits from these events. Ethan Ashley, a manager at Nellie’s Sports Bar in Washington, D.C., broke down the numbers:

“Drag brunch is our bread and butter on weekends,” he says. “It makes up to $20,000 if we sell out. It depends a bit on how much people are drinking” during the two rounds of brunch seatings on any given Saturday. Compare that to a Monday night, which Ashley says is their slowest day of the week: “We would normally do like $2,000 or $3,000 on that night.”

Ryan Overberg, a manager at Therapy in New York City, didn’t offer specific estimates of profits, but agreed that brunch is a boon to his business, essentially adding a full night’s worth of profits to the week: “It’s an expensive thing to put on because it’s one of our biggest shows,” Overberg says. “It can sometimes be the equivalent of a really great Thursday night. It’s not quite [as profitable as] a weekend night, but we do well. … We’ve been sold out for the past two months.”

Many drag performers think that an added bonus of drag brunch is getting to act as ambassadors for the queer community, in that a lot of drag-brunch audiences may have never seen drag before. Because drag has become so commonplace — perhaps even oversaturated — within the gay community, some artists relish the opportunity to finally showcase their talents in front of audiences who show actual enthusiasm.

“Gay men are so fucking judgmental, you know this!” says Sinclair. “The straight, drunk women are easier to entertain. You don’t have to do as much to get their money. Gay men expect more because they go to shows regularly. … I appreciate drag brunch because it allows me to reach people who’ve never seen a drag show in their lives.”

“If you’re doing drag brunch you have to cater to a straight crowd,” Colby concurs. “But they appreciate you more. I don’t really like working for gays anymore unless the check is high-dollar. Gays couldn’t give a fuck less. Gays don’t come out to the gay bars anymore anyway, because they don’t — excuse my language — need to find dick at a bar anymore. Night shows are becoming more and more obsolete.”

Drag As Art

But a growing contingent of drag performers is increasingly critical of the drag brunch industrial complex. Because drag has traditionally served as a conduit of community healing or as a political act of gender transgression, many younger and anti-capitalist queers are questioning the assimilationist strain of drag brunch as a practice: If drag had been the artistic medium through which many queers found political liberation, what does it mean that drag is now becoming entertainment for predominantly heterosexual audiences? Can regurgitating heterosexual pop culture for heterosexual crowds even be considered an act of resistance or defiance — even if it serves an ambassadorial purpose? Does drag need to have artistic aspirations at all, or is earning a living enough of a goal for drag performers?

Credit: Voss Events / Facebook.com

Qhirst With a Q, a New York-based, non-binary drag performer, was deeply critical of what they see happening in the scene.

“It’s very hard for people to take [drag] seriously or give it any kind of respect as an actual art form,” Qhirst says. “It’s very hard for us to get out of bars and to be recognized as anything other than low-stakes, lowbrow, drunk entertainment. And brunch is already this stupid, cosmopolitan, urbanite thing — it’s just this frou-frou, gentrified, bougey thing. The best you can hope for is that it’s a really good racket. Drag brunch is the equivalent of if you want to be a real writer but the best you can hope for is writing product descriptions for a website.”

“I think of what I do as a form of self-expression,” Qhirst continues. “Drag is kind of special to me. I want me doing it to be an opportunity to connect with people that I care about, for us to share a space, and to have fun. I’m doing it for myself. But I guess I’m an outlier in that way — because of ‘Drag Race’ and all of these brands and corporations clamoring to get a cut of the drag pie.”

Another fear expressed by both Qhrist and Pariah was that the drag brunch would eventually go the way of jazzercise, Beanie Babies, and Furbies — that it’s simply a faddish bubble that will eventually burst, potentially leaving many unemployed or under-employed.

“We’re all going to look back and say, ‘God, remember drag brunch? Remember when everyone wanted to go to fucking drag brunch?’” Qhrist moaned sarcastically.

Brunch Beyond the Binary

In scanning advertisements for endless drag brunches, it’s rare to see performers outside the gender binary. What’s more common is a kind of traditional or conservative drag defined by high glamour and feminine glitz.

“It’s limiting,” explains Sinclair. “If you’re more of a club kid, or if your drag is not really what is considered mainstream or conventional — some drag performers don’t want to be a woman! — that’s a little more difficult to sell at a brunch.”

But if drag brunch has become unfriendly to those outside of the binary, to what extent is this genre of drag reinforcing gender stereotypes rather than subverting them? To what extent are bar owners just ruthlessly capitalizing on the newfound popularity of LGBTQ culture? These were precisely the questions Velma Blair had in mind when she started running the midnight drag brunch at AllWays Lounge and Theater in New Orleans.

“Most drag brunches are just commodifying queer culture,” says Blair. “A lot of people producing [drag brunches] don’t really have any stake in the drag community — they’re trying to do something that will make them money. The people there just think it’s a funny thing to do — they aren’t there for the artistry of it. It’s very entry-level, basic, non-threatening drag. In some ways it can approach the queer equivalent of a minstrel show? … With the midnight drag brunch I try to give audiences something more diverse, and for the brunch aspect I try to focus on queer food vendors that do pop-ups in town so that I’m able to support local businesses at the same time.”

Like Velma’s event, it’s slowly becoming more common for “alt” drag performers to create their own drag brunches — like the recently announced “Manmosa” show, a drag king showcase in Queens, N.Y. Whether these events will also begin to attract heterosexual onlookers as their main source of income remains to be seen.

Although there’s something inherently silly about drag brunch, the new paradigms that are playing out at these showcases represent bigger struggles for the queer community as LGBTQs are increasingly considered “normal” in the First World. Can the queer community retain its sense of individuality and identity, or will it increasingly bend to the whims of heterosexuals who continue to exert control over our civil rights?

The article The Drag Brunch Industrial Complex appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/drag-brunch-industrial-complex/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/190626266844

[johnboothus]

The Drag Brunch Industrial Complex

In April 2016, drag queen Ritzy Bitz received a message on social media from Voss Events warning her that a popular show she hosted would have to change its name. Voss Events, run by the notorious Brandon Voss, in the years before sending ominous threats had become one of the leading production and marketing companies for LGBTQ talent. The burgeoning brand is widely considered a pioneer of world tours and media blitzes for top-level drag artists — something that would have been inconceivable only a decade ago

before the rise of RuPaul’s “Drag Race.” Having conquered nightclubs and global nightlife, Voss was setting its sights on a new territory: brunch.

“When it was first drawn to my attention [they told me] something like, ‘Hey, we’ve trademarked Drag Brunch, can you stop using that on your advertisements?’ And I thought that was pretty aggressive — but whatever. I understand. I thought: I’m doing brunch locally, but they’re doing brunch globally,” says Bitz. “I also laughed because they had only made the trademark just weeks after I had been joking about making my own trademark for Drag Brunch. It could have been me. I took it as a challenge to personalize my show and not just call it Drag Brunch.”

Indeed, Voss had trademarked the phrase “drag brunch” in 2018, but for some reason news of their menacing forewarning went viral much later, in December of 2019. The old news suddenly sparked ire from local drag talent in New York and beyond. It seemed pretty obvious that Voss’s tactic was largely unenforceable on a legal level, but many were stunned by the audacity of the move.

Credit: Voss Events / Facebook.com

Pariah Sinclar, a self-described “up-and-coming housewife” who runs a drag brunch at Of Love And Regret in Baltimore, felt that Voss was going against the true spirit of drag with this strategy.

“That’s so ridiculous!” said Sinclair. “It’s the opposite of what drag is: Drag, in its essence, was about civil rights. It was about sticking up for what you believe in — and now, these people are just trying to make themselves into a monopoly.”

The Voss situation remains unresolved. (A request for comment from Voss Events was not returned.) At least one brunch provocatively changed its name in hopes of triggering litigation, but nothing resulted from the rebranding.

Economic Opportunity

The struggles that have played out around something as seemingly innocuous as brunch are a microcosm of bigger dynamics within the LGBTQ community. As drag becomes an increasingly mainstream art form, performers will have to decide if their shows are art or just another form of money-making entertainment: Is drag a creative and generative exploration of gender identity, or are drag performers just gender jesters for hire? Brunch has become the strange stage on which this battle now plays out.

It’s hard to say exactly when the popularity of drag brunch really intensified. The tradition had certainly existed on a smaller scale in gay bars or small-scale, queer-owned restaurants before “Drag Race,” but its rise in ubiquity quite clearly coincides with the show’s massive and growing popularity.

Svetlana Stoli, a drag performer who manages the legendary Lucky Cheng’s drag brunch in New York City, says that “it really started slowly growing in 2016. In 2018 and 2019 there was a real explosion. Last summer almost everyone started throwing it out there. It was ‘Drag Race’s’ move to VH1 that really got restaurants interested.”

Thotyssey, a website that shares info about drag events in New York, now lists approximately 20 separate drag brunches hosted in the five boroughs every weekend at both queer-owned and -operated venues and in spaces that otherwise have no connection to the LGBTQ community.

Credit: Voss Events / Facebook.com

Until rather recently, the idea of seeing drag outside the confines of a gay bar was unheard of. Drag performances were necessarily held in nightlife venues — largely because being seen in drag essentially magnetized hate crimes. LGBTQs survived by hiding their lives in literal darkness. Drag events, like ballroom competitions, started so late because the performers were quite frequently sex workers coming from other jobs. But as drag has moved from a denigrated art form into art galleries and beyond, the medium is now being seen by the light of day — although there’s widespread disagreement within the community as to whether drag makeup looks good in sunlight.

As drag no longer only exists after midnight, suddenly hoards of new audiences are being drawn to the art form now that it’s more accessible. Like RuPaul’s “Drag Race,” drag brunches often appeal to audiences of straight women from a variety of economic backgrounds. Private drag brunches have become chic events for the hyper-wealthy, as seen in several episodes of “The Real Housewives” franchise. In fact, drag brunch has become so lucrative that some performers, like Ritzy, no longer work at nightclubs at all.

“Brunch is becoming the new gay nightlife,” she says. “I was able to survive working brunch and only brunch as my only gig for three years. And for the first two years that was only Sunday!”

Katrina Colby, a drag performer who works brunches at City Tap in Washington, D.C., and Red Star in Baltimore, says she sometimes makes close to 10 times as much money at a brunch than she would working a gig at night.

“For brunch shows I make anywhere from $150 to $1,200 dollars. A night-time show is somewhere between $30 and $150, but it really doesn’t get much past that,” says Colby.

Is Nightlife Over?

Considering the immense labor issues that drag performers are up against to this day, these kinds of earnings represent newfound freedom for artists who would otherwise likely be relegated to lives of poverty and strife. And it’s not just the queens who are making bank. The bars and restaurants themselves are raking in considerable profits from these events. Ethan Ashley, a manager at Nellie’s Sports Bar in Washington, D.C., broke down the numbers:

“Drag brunch is our bread and butter on weekends,” he says. “It makes up to $20,000 if we sell out. It depends a bit on how much people are drinking” during the two rounds of brunch seatings on any given Saturday. Compare that to a Monday night, which Ashley says is their slowest day of the week: “We would normally do like $2,000 or $3,000 on that night.”

Ryan Overberg, a manager at Therapy in New York City, didn’t offer specific estimates of profits, but agreed that brunch is a boon to his business, essentially adding a full night’s worth of profits to the week: “It’s an expensive thing to put on because it’s one of our biggest shows,” Overberg says. “It can sometimes be the equivalent of a really great Thursday night. It’s not quite [as profitable as] a weekend night, but we do well. … We’ve been sold out for the past two months.”

Many drag performers think that an added bonus of drag brunch is getting to act as ambassadors for the queer community, in that a lot of drag-brunch audiences may have never seen drag before. Because drag has become so commonplace — perhaps even oversaturated — within the gay community, some artists relish the opportunity to finally showcase their talents in front of audiences who show actual enthusiasm.

“Gay men are so fucking judgmental, you know this!” says Sinclair. “The straight, drunk women are easier to entertain. You don’t have to do as much to get their money. Gay men expect more because they go to shows regularly. … I appreciate drag brunch because it allows me to reach people who’ve never seen a drag show in their lives.”

“If you’re doing drag brunch you have to cater to a straight crowd,” Colby concurs. “But they appreciate you more. I don’t really like working for gays anymore unless the check is high-dollar. Gays couldn’t give a fuck less. Gays don’t come out to the gay bars anymore anyway, because they don’t — excuse my language — need to find dick at a bar anymore. Night shows are becoming more and more obsolete.”

Drag As Art

But a growing contingent of drag performers is increasingly critical of the drag brunch industrial complex. Because drag has traditionally served as a conduit of community healing or as a political act of gender transgression, many younger and anti-capitalist queers are questioning the assimilationist strain of drag brunch as a practice: If drag had been the artistic medium through which many queers found political liberation, what does it mean that drag is now becoming entertainment for predominantly heterosexual audiences? Can regurgitating heterosexual pop culture for heterosexual crowds even be considered an act of resistance or defiance — even if it serves an ambassadorial purpose? Does drag need to have artistic aspirations at all, or is earning a living enough of a goal for drag performers?

Credit: Voss Events / Facebook.com

Qhirst With a Q, a New York-based, non-binary drag performer, was deeply critical of what they see happening in the scene.

“It’s very hard for people to take [drag] seriously or give it any kind of respect as an actual art form,” Qhirst says. “It’s very hard for us to get out of bars and to be recognized as anything other than low-stakes, lowbrow, drunk entertainment. And brunch is already this stupid, cosmopolitan, urbanite thing — it’s just this frou-frou, gentrified, bougey thing. The best you can hope for is that it’s a really good racket. Drag brunch is the equivalent of if you want to be a real writer but the best you can hope for is writing product descriptions for a website.”

“I think of what I do as a form of self-expression,” Qhirst continues. “Drag is kind of special to me. I want me doing it to be an opportunity to connect with people that I care about, for us to share a space, and to have fun. I’m doing it for myself. But I guess I’m an outlier in that way — because of ‘Drag Race’ and all of these brands and corporations clamoring to get a cut of the drag pie.”

Another fear expressed by both Qhrist and Pariah was that the drag brunch would eventually go the way of jazzercise, Beanie Babies, and Furbies — that it’s simply a faddish bubble that will eventually burst, potentially leaving many unemployed or under-employed.

“We’re all going to look back and say, ‘God, remember drag brunch? Remember when everyone wanted to go to fucking drag brunch?’” Qhrist moaned sarcastically.

Brunch Beyond the Binary

In scanning advertisements for endless drag brunches, it’s rare to see performers outside the gender binary. What’s more common is a kind of traditional or conservative drag defined by high glamour and feminine glitz.

“It’s limiting,” explains Sinclair. “If you’re more of a club kid, or if your drag is not really what is considered mainstream or conventional — some drag performers don’t want to be a woman! — that’s a little more difficult to sell at a brunch.”

But if drag brunch has become unfriendly to those outside of the binary, to what extent is this genre of drag reinforcing gender stereotypes rather than subverting them? To what extent are bar owners just ruthlessly capitalizing on the newfound popularity of LGBTQ culture? These were precisely the questions Velma Blair had in mind when she started running the midnight drag brunch at AllWays Lounge and Theater in New Orleans.

“Most drag brunches are just commodifying queer culture,” says Blair. “A lot of people producing [drag brunches] don’t really have any stake in the drag community — they’re trying to do something that will make them money. The people there just think it’s a funny thing to do — they aren’t there for the artistry of it. It’s very entry-level, basic, non-threatening drag. In some ways it can approach the queer equivalent of a minstrel show? … With the midnight drag brunch I try to give audiences something more diverse, and for the brunch aspect I try to focus on queer food vendors that do pop-ups in town so that I’m able to support local businesses at the same time.”

Like Velma’s event, it’s slowly becoming more common for “alt” drag performers to create their own drag brunches — like the recently announced “Manmosa” show, a drag king showcase in Queens, N.Y. Whether these events will also begin to attract heterosexual onlookers as their main source of income remains to be seen.

Although there’s something inherently silly about drag brunch, the new paradigms that are playing out at these showcases represent bigger struggles for the queer community as LGBTQs are increasingly considered “normal” in the First World. Can the queer community retain its sense of individuality and identity, or will it increasingly bend to the whims of heterosexuals who continue to exert control over our civil rights?

The article The Drag Brunch Industrial Complex appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/drag-brunch-industrial-complex/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/the-drag-brunch-industrial-complex

[wineanddinosaur]

The Drag Brunch Industrial Complex

In April 2016, drag queen Ritzy Bitz received a message on social media from Voss Events warning her that a popular show she hosted would have to change its name. Voss Events, run by the notorious Brandon Voss, in the years before sending ominous threats had become one of the leading production and marketing companies for LGBTQ talent. The burgeoning brand is widely considered a pioneer of world tours and media blitzes for top-level drag artists — something that would have been inconceivable only a decade ago

before the rise of RuPaul’s “Drag Race.” Having conquered nightclubs and global nightlife, Voss was setting its sights on a new territory: brunch.

“When it was first drawn to my attention [they told me] something like, ‘Hey, we’ve trademarked Drag Brunch, can you stop using that on your advertisements?’ And I thought that was pretty aggressive — but whatever. I understand. I thought: I’m doing brunch locally, but they’re doing brunch globally,” says Bitz. “I also laughed because they had only made the trademark just weeks after I had been joking about making my own trademark for Drag Brunch. It could have been me. I took it as a challenge to personalize my show and not just call it Drag Brunch.”

Indeed, Voss had trademarked the phrase “drag brunch” in 2018, but for some reason news of their menacing forewarning went viral much later, in December of 2019. The old news suddenly sparked ire from local drag talent in New York and beyond. It seemed pretty obvious that Voss’s tactic was largely unenforceable on a legal level, but many were stunned by the audacity of the move.

Credit: Voss Events / Facebook.com

Pariah Sinclar, a self-described “up-and-coming housewife” who runs a drag brunch at Of Love And Regret in Baltimore, felt that Voss was going against the true spirit of drag with this strategy.

“That’s so ridiculous!” said Sinclair. “It’s the opposite of what drag is: Drag, in its essence, was about civil rights. It was about sticking up for what you believe in — and now, these people are just trying to make themselves into a monopoly.”

The Voss situation remains unresolved. (A request for comment from Voss Events was not returned.) At least one brunch provocatively changed its name in hopes of triggering litigation, but nothing resulted from the rebranding.

Economic Opportunity

The struggles that have played out around something as seemingly innocuous as brunch are a microcosm of bigger dynamics within the LGBTQ community. As drag becomes an increasingly mainstream art form, performers will have to decide if their shows are art or just another form of money-making entertainment: Is drag a creative and generative exploration of gender identity, or are drag performers just gender jesters for hire? Brunch has become the strange stage on which this battle now plays out.

It’s hard to say exactly when the popularity of drag brunch really intensified. The tradition had certainly existed on a smaller scale in gay bars or small-scale, queer-owned restaurants before “Drag Race,” but its rise in ubiquity quite clearly coincides with the show’s massive and growing popularity.

Svetlana Stoli, a drag performer who manages the legendary Lucky Cheng’s drag brunch in New York City, says that “it really started slowly growing in 2016. In 2018 and 2019 there was a real explosion. Last summer almost everyone started throwing it out there. It was ‘Drag Race’s’ move to VH1 that really got restaurants interested.”

Thotyssey, a website that shares info about drag events in New York, now lists approximately 20 separate drag brunches hosted in the five boroughs every weekend at both queer-owned and -operated venues and in spaces that otherwise have no connection to the LGBTQ community.

Credit: Voss Events / Facebook.com

Until rather recently, the idea of seeing drag outside the confines of a gay bar was unheard of. Drag performances were necessarily held in nightlife venues — largely because being seen in drag essentially magnetized hate crimes. LGBTQs survived by hiding their lives in literal darkness. Drag events, like ballroom competitions, started so late because the performers were quite frequently sex workers coming from other jobs. But as drag has moved from a denigrated art form into art galleries and beyond, the medium is now being seen by the light of day — although there’s widespread disagreement within the community as to whether drag makeup looks good in sunlight.

As drag no longer only exists after midnight, suddenly hoards of new audiences are being drawn to the art form now that it’s more accessible. Like RuPaul’s “Drag Race,” drag brunches often appeal to audiences of straight women from a variety of economic backgrounds. Private drag brunches have become chic events for the hyper-wealthy, as seen in several episodes of “The Real Housewives” franchise. In fact, drag brunch has become so lucrative that some performers, like Ritzy, no longer work at nightclubs at all.

“Brunch is becoming the new gay nightlife,” she says. “I was able to survive working brunch and only brunch as my only gig for three years. And for the first two years that was only Sunday!”

Katrina Colby, a drag performer who works brunches at City Tap in Washington, D.C., and Red Star in Baltimore, says she sometimes makes close to 10 times as much money at a brunch than she would working a gig at night.

“For brunch shows I make anywhere from $150 to $1,200 dollars. A night-time show is somewhere between $30 and $150, but it really doesn’t get much past that,” says Colby.

Is Nightlife Over?

Considering the immense labor issues that drag performers are up against to this day, these kinds of earnings represent newfound freedom for artists who would otherwise likely be relegated to lives of poverty and strife. And it’s not just the queens who are making bank. The bars and restaurants themselves are raking in considerable profits from these events. Ethan Ashley, a manager at Nellie’s Sports Bar in Washington, D.C., broke down the numbers:

“Drag brunch is our bread and butter on weekends,” he says. “It makes up to $20,000 if we sell out. It depends a bit on how much people are drinking” during the two rounds of brunch seatings on any given Saturday. Compare that to a Monday night, which Ashley says is their slowest day of the week: “We would normally do like $2,000 or $3,000 on that night.”

Ryan Overberg, a manager at Therapy in New York City, didn’t offer specific estimates of profits, but agreed that brunch is a boon to his business, essentially adding a full night’s worth of profits to the week: “It’s an expensive thing to put on because it’s one of our biggest shows,” Overberg says. “It can sometimes be the equivalent of a really great Thursday night. It’s not quite [as profitable as] a weekend night, but we do well. … We’ve been sold out for the past two months.”

Many drag performers think that an added bonus of drag brunch is getting to act as ambassadors for the queer community, in that a lot of drag-brunch audiences may have never seen drag before. Because drag has become so commonplace — perhaps even oversaturated — within the gay community, some artists relish the opportunity to finally showcase their talents in front of audiences who show actual enthusiasm.

“Gay men are so fucking judgmental, you know this!” says Sinclair. “The straight, drunk women are easier to entertain. You don’t have to do as much to get their money. Gay men expect more because they go to shows regularly. … I appreciate drag brunch because it allows me to reach people who’ve never seen a drag show in their lives.”

“If you’re doing drag brunch you have to cater to a straight crowd,” Colby concurs. “But they appreciate you more. I don’t really like working for gays anymore unless the check is high-dollar. Gays couldn’t give a fuck less. Gays don’t come out to the gay bars anymore anyway, because they don’t — excuse my language — need to find dick at a bar anymore. Night shows are becoming more and more obsolete.”

Drag As Art

But a growing contingent of drag performers is increasingly critical of the drag brunch industrial complex. Because drag has traditionally served as a conduit of community healing or as a political act of gender transgression, many younger and anti-capitalist queers are questioning the assimilationist strain of drag brunch as a practice: If drag had been the artistic medium through which many queers found political liberation, what does it mean that drag is now becoming entertainment for predominantly heterosexual audiences? Can regurgitating heterosexual pop culture for heterosexual crowds even be considered an act of resistance or defiance — even if it serves an ambassadorial purpose? Does drag need to have artistic aspirations at all, or is earning a living enough of a goal for drag performers?

Credit: Voss Events / Facebook.com

Qhirst With a Q, a New York-based, non-binary drag performer, was deeply critical of what they see happening in the scene.

“It’s very hard for people to take [drag] seriously or give it any kind of respect as an actual art form,” Qhirst says. “It’s very hard for us to get out of bars and to be recognized as anything other than low-stakes, lowbrow, drunk entertainment. And brunch is already this stupid, cosmopolitan, urbanite thing — it’s just this frou-frou, gentrified, bougey thing. The best you can hope for is that it’s a really good racket. Drag brunch is the equivalent of if you want to be a real writer but the best you can hope for is writing product descriptions for a website.”

“I think of what I do as a form of self-expression,” Qhirst continues. “Drag is kind of special to me. I want me doing it to be an opportunity to connect with people that I care about, for us to share a space, and to have fun. I’m doing it for myself. But I guess I’m an outlier in that way — because of ‘Drag Race’ and all of these brands and corporations clamoring to get a cut of the drag pie.”

Another fear expressed by both Qhrist and Pariah was that the drag brunch would eventually go the way of jazzercise, Beanie Babies, and Furbies — that it’s simply a faddish bubble that will eventually burst, potentially leaving many unemployed or under-employed.

“We’re all going to look back and say, ‘God, remember drag brunch? Remember when everyone wanted to go to fucking drag brunch?’” Qhrist moaned sarcastically.

Brunch Beyond the Binary

In scanning advertisements for endless drag brunches, it’s rare to see performers outside the gender binary. What’s more common is a kind of traditional or conservative drag defined by high glamour and feminine glitz.

“It’s limiting,” explains Sinclair. “If you’re more of a club kid, or if your drag is not really what is considered mainstream or conventional — some drag performers don’t want to be a woman! — that’s a little more difficult to sell at a brunch.”

But if drag brunch has become unfriendly to those outside of the binary, to what extent is this genre of drag reinforcing gender stereotypes rather than subverting them? To what extent are bar owners just ruthlessly capitalizing on the newfound popularity of LGBTQ culture? These were precisely the questions Velma Blair had in mind when she started running the midnight drag brunch at AllWays Lounge and Theater in New Orleans.

“Most drag brunches are just commodifying queer culture,” says Blair. “A lot of people producing [drag brunches] don’t really have any stake in the drag community — they’re trying to do something that will make them money. The people there just think it’s a funny thing to do — they aren’t there for the artistry of it. It’s very entry-level, basic, non-threatening drag. In some ways it can approach the queer equivalent of a minstrel show? … With the midnight drag brunch I try to give audiences something more diverse, and for the brunch aspect I try to focus on queer food vendors that do pop-ups in town so that I’m able to support local businesses at the same time.”

Like Velma’s event, it’s slowly becoming more common for “alt” drag performers to create their own drag brunches — like the recently announced “Manmosa” show, a drag king showcase in Queens, N.Y. Whether these events will also begin to attract heterosexual onlookers as their main source of income remains to be seen.

Although there’s something inherently silly about drag brunch, the new paradigms that are playing out at these showcases represent bigger struggles for the queer community as LGBTQs are increasingly considered “normal” in the First World. Can the queer community retain its sense of individuality and identity, or will it increasingly bend to the whims of heterosexuals who continue to exert control over our civil rights?

The article The Drag Brunch Industrial Complex appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/drag-brunch-industrial-complex/