I've been a fan of
Rupaul's Drag Race from season one. I don't talk about here too often because there are so
many fantastic recaps I really don't have anything unique to add. One of the highlights of the show is "The Snatch Game," a parody of the old 70s game show,
Match Game, where each of the queens do a celebrity impersonation while trying to match answers with two celebrity guests. ("Dumb Dora is so dumb..." I had to squeal when I head that one of the queens was impersonating Little Edie Beale, Jackie O's cousin and center of the documentary
Grey Gardens, along with her mother and Jackie's aunt, Big Edie (which I've
written about before), and was gobsmacked when several of her competitors didn't know who that was. Reading some of the recaps this morning, I'm not alone, but it's naive to expect everyone's cultural references to be the same, even in a subculture like drag.
That being said, here's a great
Little Edie primer and why she's such an important figure in the lives of some gay men.
"Yet Big and Little Edie were also weirdly noble as they lived in their cracked little world. Little Edie, especially, may have been plagued by disappointment, but she also developed a unique style and point of view. She is the personification of camp: all tragedy and confidence and utter disregard for what’s appropriate. That’s what makes her such a powerful gay icon. A lot of gay people know what it feels like to be pushed away from the glamorous center of things, so we have to make a kingdom of our own… even if we never forget the sting of rejection."
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