Answering hatred with glitter is a time-honored drag tradition that France’s answer to “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is keeping alive in a new stage spectacle.
The Paris Olympics may be over, but the event is still on the minds of many in the city — and not just sports aficionados. On Tuesday, the audience at “Drag Race France Live,” a stage version of France’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race” equivalent, erupted in cheers at the mere mention of the Games’ opening ceremony.
The host of both shows, the drag queen Nicky Doll, made jokes about her own appearance in the outsize display on the Seine river, which was directed by Thomas Jolly. Then she hinted at the international backlash to the tableau she took part in, which some people read as a mockery of the biblical Last Supper — or even a display of Satanism.
“If I’m a Satanist, I sold my soul for waterproof products,” Nicky Doll told the crowd, referring to the downpour of rain that marred the show in July.
For French drag, the Olympics’ opening ceremony came at a pivotal moment.
France was relatively late to embracing American-style drag: While the country has a long cabaret tradition, it used to favor “transformiste” drag performers, who impersonate real-life artists instead of creating a character of their own. “Drag Race France,” the TV show, didn’t premiere until 2022. (“RuPaul’s Drag Race” first aired in 2009.) Yet the French show’s winners, and Nicky Doll, quickly became mainstream figures. The inclusion of drag queens in the opening ceremony pointed to their newfound prominence within French culture.
Yet what could have been a moment of cultural consecration soon turned sour. Shortly after the broadcast in July, a number of conservative figures in France and abroad took aim at the scene featuring drag queens. In it, the queens gathered around a table surrounding the DJ and activist Barbara Butch, who wore a halo-like headdress. While Jolly denied that the tableau was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” describing it instead as “a grand pagan festival,” he was nonetheless accused of insulting Christianity and received death threats.
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