People
who know me realize that I do not watch much television, considering I hardly
have time to sleep. However, I do frequently watch one show: Rupaul’s Drag
Race. While there is no show more stereotypical for individuals of my sexual
orientation to watch, I am not ashamed to admit that I watch every single
episode. The show itself, while funny, is not outrageously hilarious. What is
outrageously hilarious, however, are the various images made by fellow fans and
posted on Reddit.
My
best friend and I were browsing Reddit to find these images, and as usual, we
found several that made us laugh uncontrollably. I try to think about why we
find these images so fascinating, but I am at a loss for the reason. One of the
images that made us laugh the most showed the scene from Mean Girls, where all
of the girls are in the gym being asked about who has ever felt personally
victimized by Regina George, except the face of Ms. Norbury was replaced by the
face of Rupaul, the face of Regina George was replaced with the face of a drag
queen Adore Delano, and the faces of many of the girls were replaced with
various faces of the drag queen Laganja Estranga. The caption read “How many of you have felt personally victimized by Adore Delano?” This image surfaced less
than a day after an episode of Rupaul’s Drag Race where Adore Delano, Laganja’s
friend, called her out openly about being fake on the show and Laganja,
mid-breakdown, shouted, “I feel v*** attacked!” and stormed off of the stage.
This breakdown has resulted in the surfacing of dozens of gifs and images about
Adore and Laganja, but this image has to be my favorite due to the direct tie
to my childhood thanks to the Mean Girls reference.
I
do not exactly understand why the people of the Internet find so much joy in
Laganja’s emotional turmoil, but nonetheless we do. Every week she was featured
on the show, more images about her mental and emotional state surfaced on
Reddit. While I do not find the images particularly malicious and believe that
they are done in good humor, I frequently wonder how it makes Laganja feel.
Hopefully she too takes it in good humor.
After reading this post, I immediately went to YouTube to see what Rupaul’s Drag Race was for myself. As soon as the first thumb nail popped up I recognized the show from the many gifs I had seen off of Tumblr (no shame). The first clip I watched was "Best Jinx Moments", a competitor from Season 5. The very first thing they mention is that she is a narcoleptic drag queen, and from that exact moment I was hooked. This show is fantastic!! I had seen the memes and picture references to the show before when I had been online, but had never understood them until just now. I now have a new way to procrastinate late at night in the library, so thank you for that!
ReplyDeleteAs for being able to laugh at the characters (and at oneself as far as stereotypes go) I see no shame in it at all. Reality shows and YouTube videos are made so ridiculous to give us a break from reality, and their entire purpose is to make us laugh uncontrollably. This is only intensified when other popular culture references are thrown in, making hilarious jokes that bond us to our generation. Life would close to pointless Mean Girls jokes were no longer relevant, let's be honest.