Fierce or shady? The all-drag audience on Channel 5’s Celebrity Big Brother’s Bit on the Side, Wednesday January 28 2015
Yesterday I learned via Facebook that there had been an all-drag audience on Wednesday’s edition of Celebrity Big Brother’s Bit On The Side, the spin-off discussion programme tied to the reality show. That sounds interesting, I thought, even though I’m not a CBB fan, so I watched it on catch-up.
But it wasn’t interesting. It was deathly dull. The only remotely surprising or engaging thing that happened was someone falling over.
How, I wondered, is it even possible to put a couple of dozen drag queens in a TV studio and end up with such tedium? I don’t think it’s that they’re boring people – I’ve seen some of them perform with talent and charisma and plenty of the looks showed imagination and flair.
I think the problem is to do with two things that were on display throughout the show but have nothing to do with what has made drag performance so powerful and important in queer culture: compliance and conformism.
The uncomfortable overall impression was that the queens were bussed in to provide a colourful backdrop, agreeing to an essentially powerless role in proceedings for the sake of being on telly. For most of the show, they sat quietly as clips from the house were played, paid panelists were interviewed or body-language experts were consulted.
On the rare occasions their opinions were solicited, they stuck to the party line, discussing just how awful professional-troll housemates Perez Hilton and Katie Hopkins are or sticking up for Michelle Visage, the RuPaul’s Drag Race co-host also competing in CBB.
They were even given paddles to wave with the words FIERCE and SHADY on either side – indigenous drag language reduced to insta-poll fodder.
No one challenged the host’s authority. No one talked when they weren’t meant to. No one left their place in the carefully demarcated drag pen. Certainly, no one poked any fun at CBB itself, let alone the wider cultural and political worlds it operates within. Any conflict or dissent fell comfortably within the programme’s expectations – either arguing over the content of CBB on its own terms or competing for the attention of the studio cameras on their own terms.
The show didn’t even give viewers any real sense of why Visage might be an important figure to young drags.
I found myself wondering what was actually at work here. Was this about drag’s glorious history of defiance, subversion and revolution? Or was it more about ego-driven concerns of glamour, celebrity and external validation? Or simply a chance to have a giggle and indifference to the idea that it’s possible to defy the terms of mainstream TV? (Or did rebellious outbursts end up on the cutting room floor?)
Maybe this risks taking the whole thing too seriously – hey, it’s only Big Brother. But I found it depressing that on one of the few occasions drag performers made it onto national media, the format didn’t allow them any meaningful self-expression, and they did nothing to challenge that.
In any case, the result was two other things that have nothing to do with what makes drag great.
It was tame and it was boring.
You can watch the episode on Channel 5’s Demand 5 catch-up service here.
