Cluster

Reality TV in the Social Media Economy / Justin Trudeau Goes to Canada’s Drag Race: Notes on Canadian Homonationalism

By Avneet Sharma
Host of Canada’s Drag Race Brooke Lynn Hytes and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau in the Werk Room. Used with permission by Bell Media.

Given the global expansion of the Drag Race franchise—originating with the US-based RuPaul’s Drag Race—an international ‘all stars’ season featuring queens from different countries felt not only possible but inevitable. RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. the World was the first of such a series, featuring contestants from the US, UK, Thailand, Holland, and Canada competing to earn the title of “Queen of the Mothertucking World” (“tucking” referring to when a queen conceals her genitalia).1 This new format has literalized Drag Race’s pre-existing status as the “Olympics of Drag.”2 Whereas the term, used by RuPaul herself, used to simply connote the skill level required to excel on RuPaul’s Drag Race, contestants on a vs. the World season are tasked with not only showcasing their own talents but also representing their countries of origin. This is best exemplified by Pangina Heals’s beauty pageant-inspired entrance look featuring a “Thailand” sash.3 Drag Race has become more about nationality than before. Following the success of UK vs. the World, Canada would become the next ‘host country’ by debuting Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, in which queens from different nations compete for the title of “Queen of the Motherpucking World” (“pucking” referring to hockey, one of Canada’s two national sports).4

Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World was especially notable for the second episode, which aired on November 25, 2022, due to a special guest appearance by Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau.5 A release by The Canadian Press6, published by most major Canadian news outlets, reported on Trudeau’s appearance on the series, writing that he is “touted as being the first world leader to visit the competition series founded by RuPaul.”7 Pop Crave, an influential Twitter account with 1.7 million followers that shares pop culture updates, reported on Trudeau’s appearance when it was first announced weeks before the episode: “Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau set to appear on #CanadasDragRace: Canada vs the World. He becomes the first world leader to appear on the #DragRace franchise.”8 As of April 2024, the tweet has garnered approximately 30000 likes and a plethora of responses consisting of garden-variety homophobia, sincere support for the PM, and more ironic responses from Drag Race fans. The first response that pops up on my feed is Drag Race fan @SedderaSide tweeting “‘First world leader on drag race’ YALL FORGOT PRESIDENT KELLY” accompanied with a heavily-memed photograph of season 6 contestant Kelly Mantle.9 This ironic response undermines the significance of the moment. After all, a world leader appearing on Drag Race is bound to be pivotal in queer media history. The gravitas with which it has been reported conveys that we, as queer people, should celebrate Trudeau’s appearance, thanking him for his brave and liberatory act. In many ways, yes, it is cool that a world leader appeared on Drag Race given drag’s status as a subcultural artform by and for queer and trans people. However, the response from Drag Race fans (myself included) has been lukewarm.

Trudeau’s appearance happens at a strange time in the episode. For context, a typical Drag Race episode is divided into two main segments: the Werk Room and the Main Stage. The Werk Room provides the audience with the show’s ‘backstage’ element, showing the queens out-of-drag, getting ready, preparing for the weekly challenges, and socializing with each other. The Main Stage comprises the runway presentations and (depending on the episode) a main performance with contestants in full drag. This is typically followed by judges’ critiques, the ‘lip sync for your life,’ and elimination. When Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) appeared as a special guest on the twelfth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, she did so as a guest judge during the Main Stage segment.10 As such, she watched the queens performing musical numbers on the main stage. She also had the opportunity to watch the runway segment, in which the queens presented their best costumes, hair, and makeup. Additionally, she was able to converse with the queens during the judges’ critiques segment before watching the bottom two queens (in this case Brita and Heidi N. Closet) deliver a lip sync performance to Madonna’s “Burnin’ Up.”11 In other words, AOC engaged with the queens while they were in drag. While the queens acknowledged AOC’s status as a prominent progressive politician, the episode’s focus did not stray from drag performance and artistry. 

In comparison to AOC’s engagement with the queens (she also appears for an extended period conversing with them on the back-stage spin-off RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked12), Trudeau’s appearance is more stilted, awkward, and self-congratulatory. He does not serve as a guest judge but instead makes an appearance during the Werk Room segment of the episode. While the contestants are chatting in the Werk Room, host Brooke Lynn Hytes joins them in full drag to announce that Trudeau has come to visit them, ostensibly to offer a “welcome” to the non-Canadian contestants of the season.13 After being introduced to each contestant by their drag name and country of origin, Brooke Lynn underscores the significance of the moment: “This is ground-breaking, the first ever world leader to visit a Drag Race set”14 followed by the contestants applauding. Afterwards, American contestant Ra’Jah O’Hara, in a confessional, says “To have a world leader in the Werk Room talking to us, how amazing is that? You better work, Justin Trudeau!”15 Rather than seamlessly becoming part of the show’s usual rhythms, Trudeau’s appearance marks a disruption of the typical Drag Race episode. His segment is extremely self-referential, as though he is appearing on the show specifically to discuss his appearance on the show. It would seem that, by walking into the Werk Room, he has (to put it bluntly) done a significant act of queer activism! 

This calls to question what Trudeau is doing on Canada’s Drag Race to begin with. According to Annette Hill, “the production, aesthetics and politics of reality TV are connected to audiences and publics, consumers and producers, participants and users, fans and anti-fans, readers, listeners, viewers—all these people and their practices.”16 So it seems that Trudeau did not appear on Canada’s Drag Race to engage with the drag queens competing in the show—he did not even meet them while they were in drag!—but rather the intended goal of his appearance was to promote his own allyship and solicit the support of the Drag Race viewership for his centrist17 Liberal party. This reading of Canada’s Drag Race calls attention to the interrelation between politics and reality TV, which always exists with or without the presence of a world leader. For Katherine Sender, there is a “complex interplay among the meanings of nation, gender, class, celebrity, politics and globalism on the terrain marked out by reality television.”18 An audience-centric genre, reality TV provides a space to define and debate these concepts. To that end, this essay analyzes Trudeau’s segment on Canada’s Drag Race in tandem with wider discussions of nation, gender, sexuality, and politics.

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A Canadian Homonationalism

In response to Brooke Lynn proclaiming him the first world leader to enter the Werk Room, Trudeau humbly responds “I’m glad to be the first, but I look forward to the time there’s a third or a fourth,”19 downplaying the significance of his appearance to maintain that his primary concern is ongoing allyship from other world leaders. His being the first is seemingly unimportant, a sentiment that he contradicts almost immediately afterwards. In response to an inquiry from Ra’Jah about racial diversity, Trudeau delivers a statement celebrating the diversity of the room while making sure to tout Canada’s exceptionalism in this regard: “We do diversity better than just about any other place in the world. It doesn’t matter what your background is, where you’re from, who you love, you enrich this place.”20 Not only is diversity a cause for celebration, it is also a competition. And, according to Trudeau, it is a competition that Canada is winning. Furthermore, this statement reveals queer people’s optic value in Canada: their existence serves to improve Canada’s image internationally. By making this statement, Trudeau uses language that is reminiscent of a particular form of Canadian nationalism: a homonationalism that attempts to integrate ‘acceptable’ queer figures into a pre-existing notion of Canadianism.

To address homonationalism, I turn to Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages, which explores the integration of American queer subjects into existing forms of heteronormativity, often at the expense of queer people of color. Puar begins with an assertion that the confluence of American sexuality and politics has led to neoconservatives co-opting the coming out metaphor. Coming out is “invoked incessantly by U.S. neocons to elaborate a burgeoning ease with the notion of the United States as an empire.”21 In other words, American imperialists are feeling empowered enough to ‘come out of the closet’ as American imperialists. For Puar, this phenomenon is “striking not only for its appropriative dissemination, but for what the appropriation indexes,”22 meaning that the rise of more open communities of American queers and American imperialists demonstrates that both communities may not be as diametrically opposed as one would think. Puar argues that “national recognition and inclusion, here signaled as the annexation of homosexual jargon, is contingent upon the segregation and disqualification of racial and sexual others from the national imaginary.”23 If there is a sexual exceptionalism, a form of nationalism that specifically privileges homosexuals, it is contingent on other means of exclusion and marginalization.

In this case, Puar is referencing a form of homonationalism that incorporates homosexuals who do not go against the grain of racialized forms of American belonging. They are often white gays whose “brand of homosexuality operates as a regulatory script not only of normative gayness, queerness, or homosexuality, but also of the racial and national norms that reinforce these sexual subjects.”24They are therefore “complicit with heterosexual nationalist formations rather than inherently or automatically excluded from or opposed to them.”25 They are exceptional queer subjects who do not embody the characteristics of ‘problem’ queers (most notably trans and racialized individuals). The stakes of such homonationalist attitudes are dire as “exception discourses rationalize egregious violence in the name of the preservation of a way of life and those privileged to live it.”26 Violence against racialized others is not only acceptable but necessary to maintain the American queer way of life. 

The vilification of racialized others is thus done in Western countries in the name of queer rights. This is best exemplified in a protest by the British lesbian and gay rights political group OutRage, in which they chanted “Israel: stop persecuting Palestine! Palestine: stop persecuting queers!” and “Stop ‘honour’ killing women and gays in Palestine.”27 Although this messaging acknowledges the atrocities committed against Palestinians, OutRage’s support of Palestinians is not based on basic moral principles (i.e., genocide is always wrong and never justifiable) but is instead contingent on people having the ‘correct’ politics. Protesting the loss of human lives is only done in the name of queerness. Beyond demonstrating a callous attitude towards genocide, their messaging also “reaffirms the modernity of Israel and Judaism and the monstrosity of Palestine and Islam.”28 Puar elaborates:

Delineating Palestine as the site of queer oppression—oppression that is equated with the occupation of Palestine by Israel—effaces Israeli state persecution of queer Palestinians. Israeli state persecution of queer Israelis—because Israel is hardly exempt from homophobic violence toward its own citizens regardless of religious or ethnic background—is erased in this trickle-down model of sloganeering.29

These attitudes are animated by the belief that homophobia within racialized communities is more nefarious than racism. The queer disavowal or disdain of religion, which has been disproportionately directed towards Islam, exemplifies this belief: “queer secularity, and queer transgressive subjecthood in general, is also underpinned by a powerful conviction that religious and racial communities are more homophobic than white mainstream queer communities are racist.”30 From personal experience, there is an expectation for racialized queers to denounce their race and religion in favor of their queerness. This expectation is built upon several assumptions. First, that the racialized queer will be more accepted within queer communities than racialized communities. Second, that all white communities are necessarily less homophobic. And third, that there are no significant forms of racism within queer communities (despite racism informing the expectation in the first place). 

A Canadian homonationalism would operate in a similar manner, though it would be articulated in a different way specific to the conditions of queer life in Canada. Julian Awwad explores the homonationalist discourse that was prevalent in Canada following the re-election of Prime Minister Stephen Harper—a victory for the Conservative Party—in 2011. Awwad notes a growing sentiment of Canadianism at the time, referencing the then-Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney’s assertion that “Conservative values are Canadian values.”31 In justifying Conservative legislation and policies as protective of Canadian values, the Harper Conservatives posit a new form of national belonging and exclusion. Despite actions against queer communities, such as the withdrawal of government subsidies for the lucrative Pride Toronto, the Conservative government publicly maintained a veneer of allyship with queer Canadians since “explicitly advocating homophobia would be a politically costly endeavour [sic] for the Conservatives.”32 Awwad argues that the “Conservative rhetoric of Canadian nationhood, at the intersection of sexuality, race, and citizenship, subsumes queerness in order to govern it,”33 furthermore exploring how “sexuality serves as a key site for remoralizing and refashioning the responsible autonomy and civic virtue of the queer citizen under the leadership of a Conservative government.”34 The ideal queer Canadian is therefore a white homosexual who stands against the racialized communities that exhibit what Kenney refers to as “barbaric cultural practice.”35 Liberal politicians likewise benefit from allyship, though their form of allyship is less a passive acceptance and more a performative embrace of queer communities. Liberals therefore appear a more suitable option than the Conservatives for queer Canadians, despite upholding values that aren’t as drastically different as they claim.   

The racialized exclusion of homonationalism is not unique to the Canadian context, but the Conservative government’s ‘acceptance’ of the queer community allowed Canada to claim its own exceptionalism with regards to attitudes towards queers. Yet if Canada prides itself on its treatment of queers, “it follows that legal reward is intimately tied to violation abroad.”36 Yet again we see a vilification of racialized others. Awwad elaborates:

Whereas homophobia is displaced onto countries of the global South, the homophobia of countries of the global North is masked through rhetorical appeals to gay rights as human rights with tenors of moral superiority. For example, Minister Kenney has singled out the persecution of gays and lesbians in Iran, yet in a typical neoliberal appeal, he places the onus on private gay and lesbian organizations to sponsor more refugees and bring them to Canada.37

The gross neoliberal mindset reveals that the priority of the Conservatives is not supporting queers so much as using Canada’s ‘queer-friendly’ status to justify their support of atrocities committed overseas. Let’s thus return to Trudeau’s proclamation: “We do diversity better than just about any other place in the world.”38 This ambitious statement, strategically formulated to be difficult to prove or refute by any metric, serves to justify Canada’s exceptional status. Trudeau’s vision of Canadian homonationalism does not reflect the Conservatives’ particular agenda (Trudeau’s Liberal government is admittedly more relaxed about immigration). Rather, a new Canadian homonationalism is born—one composed of flashy or conspicuous gestures of support towards queers and minorities to justify Canada’s supremacy in the world order. The stakes of such homonationalist rhetoric are made apparent when considering Trudeau’s ongoing support of Israel and their airstrike campaign on Gaza in the name of liberal democracy.39

Reading Canada’s Drag Race through the lens of homonationalism, Trudeau’s appearance takes on a more propagandistic quality. The segment consists of Brooke Lynn and Ra’Jah vocalizing how significant it is that Trudeau is on Drag Race, followed by a post-mortem after he leaves where the contestants discuss how “amazing”40 it was to speak to a politician on queer issues. Given the self-congratulatory and self-referential tone of the special guest appearance, I contend that this is a transparent P.R. stunt meant to promote Trudeau’s image to Canada’s Drag Race’s largely queer audience. However, the general (non-homophobic) response to Pop Crave’s tweet41 has been instead focused on contestant Silky Nutmeg Ganache’s subdued reaction to Trudeau (she is known to have a big personality, especially in her interactions with special guests; I recall an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race where she literally carries Miley Cyrus around the Werk Room42) and Trudeau’s history of blackface and brownface.43The success of Trudeau’s P.R. stunt is dubious. 

Brooke Lynn Hytes, Justin Trudeau, and the cast of Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World in the Werk Room. Used with permission by Bell Media.

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“Hi, Daddy” or A Queer Response to Power

Perhaps the most brilliant reaction to Trudeau’s appearance on Canada’s Drag Race comes from a user who tweeted “idk anything about this guy but it seems like he just goes around doing things.”44 This tweet calls to question the effectiveness of Trudeau’s act of allyship and brings attention to its ultimate futility. Preaching anti-homophobia to a group of drag queens is hardly the most effective form of queer activism. In fact, the segment’s radical potential comes from the contestants’ interactions with Trudeau rather than anything Trudeau said himself. Specifically, I refer to Stephanie Prince saying “Hi, Daddy” (the word “daddy” being used to signify an attractive older man), Ra’Jah O’Hara seductively saying “I know that this is the Great White North, but how do you feel about adding some brown milk powder?” and Icesis Couture, as Trudeau walks out of the Werk Room, yelling “Hate to see you leave, love to watch you walk away, baby!”45 A normative reading of these flirty remarks that sexualize Trudeau would deem them inappropriate (in many ways, they are!), but perhaps the flirting takes on more dimensions when we consider the way it undermines Trudeau’s power. Trudeau is a world leader, ostensibly the most ‘powerful’ man in Canada, addressing a group of queer people, mostly people of color. Referring to him as “Daddy” serves a dual purpose of acknowledging that level of power while attempting to neutralize it. By cutting him down to size, they reduce him to being yet another decently good-looking white man with good hair. In many ways, these remarks can also serve as a form of initiation into the Drag Race set and community, as flirting is common parlance among contestants.

The act of referring to Trudeau as “Daddy” could also be seen as markedly Canadian, as the disbursement of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB)—the Canadian government’s main emergency incoming program during the height of COVID-19—resulted in Canadian TikTok users referring to him as “Daddy Trudeau.”46 To be a Canadian was to spend Daddy Trudeau’s money that year (I even recall a friend telling me that they spent Daddy Trudeau’s money on a sex toy). This sexual articulation of nationality is reminiscent of queer activist discourses. Specifically, I am reminded of Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman’s analysis of Queer Nation, a New York City-based LGBTQ activist organization from the 90s that was known for its confrontational tactics.47 According to Berlant and Freeman, “the consumption of nationality in the nineties appears motivated not by a satisfaction that already exists but by a collective desire to reclaim the nation for pleasure, and specifically the pleasure of spectacular public self-entitlement.”48 The project of reclaiming the nation for pleasure is fulfilled by markedly sexual behavior, a tactic that Queer Nation had employed. 

Indeed, “Queer Nation’s outspoken promotion of a national sexuality not only discloses that mainstream national identity touts a subliminal sexuality more official than a state flower or a national bird, but also makes explicit how thoroughly the local experience of the body is framed by laws, policies, and social customs regulating sexuality.”49 Being openly sexual calls attention to how the body—the queer body especially—is legislated. As such, Queer Nation “understands the propriety of queerness to be a function of the diverse spaces in which it aims to become explicit”50 and “always refuses closeting strategies of assimilation and goes for the broadest and most explicit assertion of presence.”51When Icesis Couture catcalls Trudeau and makes it known that she is staring at his ass, she does not do this as a form of queer activism. However, the act itself certainly mimics the “militantly erotic interventions”52 characteristic of Queer Nation. Icesis’s interjection about Trudeau’s butt is especially notable since it happens just in the nick of time, seconds before Trudeau walks out of the Werk Room for good. Not only does it serve as an endpoint of Trudeau’s interactions with the contestants, but it is also the most aggressive form of flirting since it directly and unambiguously objectifies Trudeau.

Another way one can read the remarks made by Stephanie, Ra’Jah, and Icesis (incidentally, all three being people of colour) is through the lens of what Berlant refers to as Diva Citizenship, which “occurs when a person stages a dramatic coup in a public sphere in which she does not have privilege.”53 Though not quite a dramatic coup, sexualizing the PM on national television is still a bold move that exemplifies what it means to push the limitations of sexual discourse. Although politics and sexuality have always been linked, Canadian politicians are best served by presenting an image that completely aligns with sexual norms: the respectable married54 good-looking gentleman with good hair who exhibits the most normative form of sexuality. This is perhaps why, on a franchise where conspicuous displays of sexuality and glamor are prevalent, Trudeau wears the most basic outfit imaginable (trousers and a button-up shirt) and shies away from responding to any of the contestants flirting with him. Berlant stages a hypothetical, as a reference to Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: 

Let us suppose it were true that the queen of America came down to Washington and put the knife to the president’s throat. Her strategy would be to refute his privilege, and that of citizens like him, to be above the sensational constraints of citizenship. The queen of America educates him about his own body’s boundaries with a cold tip of steel, and he emancipates the slaves.55

By flirting with Trudeau, Stephanie, Ra’Jah, and Icesis demonstrate a form of power they have over him. As racialized queer citizens, they have the ability to be openly sexual without marked loss of power (remember that being on Drag Race altogether gives a queen a significant amount of cultural capital) while Trudeau does not have the power to exhibit any sort of sexual behavior lest he alienates his centrist and left-of-center voter base. Furthermore, their flirtatious remarks also serve to neutralize or devalue Trudeau’s power, his ‘officialdom,’ by reducing him to a sexualized body. He enters the Werk Room as ‘the most powerful man in Canada’ but leaves as a piece of meat thrown to the queer contestants. 

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Conclusion 

I was drawn to write about Trudeau’s appearance on Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World because I felt I was watching something absurd. Rather than engaging with drag culture the way AOC did, it seemed like Trudeau had just walked into the Werk Room specifically to be flirted with by gay men, even though he acted like this was not the case. That this happened on an ‘international all-stars’ season also foregrounds the ideas of nationality with which Drag Race is always at play. My primary motivation in writing this essay was to dig deeper and find a more compelling way to read this segment. The result is that I have ended up with two strands of analysis that seemingly contradict each other. On one hand, Trudeau’s appearance is a transparent attempt to solicit a queer audience’s support of the Liberal party through homonationalist rhetoric reaffirming Canada’s exceptional status in the world order. It is an opportunistic P.R. stunt at best. On the other hand, the contestants flirting with Trudeau demonstrate how racialized queer subjects can employ “Diva Citizenship” and use sexuality to create their own displays of power, thereby undermining the homonationalist rhetoric Trudeau employs (if only for a moment).56 Rather than trying to tie these two threads together, I want to highlight that it is precisely these contradictions that create the reality TV moment. If reality TV is an audience-centric medium, it follows that it thrives not on a universal identification-for or identification-against, but by the debates and arguments it generates. In that sense, Canada’s Drag Race has succeeded in creating a notable moment in which wider questions of nation, gender, sexuality, and politics emerge.

I additionally argue for a thorough analysis of Liberal rhetoric and the performative integration of queer subjects into the Liberal image of Canadian society. In doing so, I reveal the limits of the Liberal construction of a fair and equal Canada, ‘enriched’ by the presence of racialized queer people. Progressiveness seems to be the lingua franca between Canada’s major political parties, albeit to different degrees. This image of Canada as a liberal utopia is one that has made the country more desirable internationally—it was especially prevalent during the 2012 United States presidential election when left-leaning Americans proclaimed they would move to Canada if Republican candidate Mitt Romney won.57 Ironically, Canada had a Conservative federal government under Harper at the time. Furthermore, events such as the 2017 shooting that killed six people at a Quebec City mosque and the 2021 truck attack in London, Ontario that killed four members of a Muslim Pakistani-Canadian family reveal the pervasiveness of white supremacy and Islamophobia in Canada.58 This is not to mention violence enacted upon Indigenous and other racialized communities, including the Highway of Tears murders59 and the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet while Toronto police officers were in her apartment.60 Considering all this, it is doubtful that Canada does diversity “better than just about any other place in the world” as Trudeau claims. It therefore becomes vital to question this implicitly exclusionary rhetoric—which incorporates queerness while disenfranchising racialized others—and explore how it functions to create or maintain Canada’s international status.61

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Endnotes

  1. RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. the World, series 1, episode 1, “Global Glamazons,” aired February 1, 2022, on Crave.
  2. Danielle Nett, “’Flats Are For Quitters’: RuPaul Talks Drag, ‘All Stars’ And Identity Politics,” NPR, January 28, 2018, npr.org/2018/01/28/580976984/flats-are-for-quitters-rupaul-talks-drag-all-stars-and-identity-politics.
  3. RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. the World, series 1, episode 1.
  4. Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, season 1, episode 1, “Bonjour, Hi,” aired November 18, 2022, on Crave.
  5. Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, season 1, episode 2, “Snatch Summit,” aired November 25, 2022, on Crave. 
  6. Canada’s national news agency; basically the Associated Press but Canadian.
  7. The Canadian Press, “Trudeau makes appearance on Canada’s Drag Race spinoff,” CBC, November 25, 2022, cbc.ca/news/entertainment/justin-trudeau-canada-s-drag-race-1.6665348. 
  8. Pop Crave (@PopCrave), “Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau set to appear on #CanadasDragRace: Canada vs the World. He becomes the first world leader to appear on the #DragRace franchise,” Twitter post, November 8, 2022, 12:43PM, twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1590037417524080642.
  9. Seddera Side (@SedderaSide), “‘First world leader on drag race’ YALL FORGOT PRESIDENT KELLY,” Twitter post, November 8, 2022, 12:44PM, twitter.com/sedderaside/status/1590037636898779136. 
  10. RuPaul’s Drag Race, season 12, episode 7, “Madonna: The Unauthorized Rusical,” aired April 10, 2020, on Crave.
  11. Ibid.
  12. RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked, season 12, episode 7, “Madonna: The Unauthorized Rusical,” aired April 10, 2020, on OutTV Go. 
  13. Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, season 1, episode 2.
  14. Ibid.
  15. Ibid.
  16. Annette Hill, Reality TV (New York, Routledge, 2014), 7.
  17. Andrew Olive, The Canadian Environment in Political Context (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 55.
  18. Quoted in Hill, Reality TV, 14-15.
  19. Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, season 1, episode 2.
  20. Ibid.
  21. Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 1.
  22. Ibid.
  23. Ibid., 2.
  24. Ibid.
  25. Ibid., 4.
  26. Ibid., 9.
  27. Quoted in Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, 17.
  28. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, 17.
  29. Ibid.
  30. Ibid., 15.
  31. Julian Awwad, “Queer Regulation and the Homonational Rhetoric of Canadian Exceptionalism,” in Disrupting Queer Inclusion: Canadian Homonationalisms and the Politics of Belonging, ed. Julian Awwad, Suzanne Lenon, and OmiSoore H. Dryden, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016), 19.
  32. Awwad, “Queer Regulation,” 20. 
  33. Ibid.
  34. Ibid.
  35. Quoted in Awwad, “Queer Regulation,” 19.
  36. Awwad, “Queer Regulation,” 29.
  37. Ibid., 30.
  38. Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, season 1, episode 2.
  39. The Canadian Press, “Trudeau affirms support for Israel in call with war cabinet member Benny Gantz,” CTV News, November 16, 2023, ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-affirms-support-for-israel-in-call-with-war-cabinet-member-benny-gantz-1.6647407.
  40. Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, season 1, episode 2.
  41. Pop Crave (@PopCrave), “Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau set to appear on #CanadasDragRace.”
  42. RuPaul’s Drag Race, season 11, episode 1, “Whatcha Unpackin?” aired February 28, 2019, on OutTV Go. 
  43. “What we know about Justin Trudeau’s blackface photos — and what happens next,” CBC, September 20, 2019, cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-votes-2019-trudeau-blackface-brownface-cbc-explains-1.5290664.
  44. abby (@dontclosemyeyes), “idk anything about this guy but it seems like he just goes around doing things,” Twitter post, November 8, 2022, 6:26PM, twitter.com/dontclosemyeyes/status/1590123729203314689. 
  45. Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, season 1, episode 2.
  46. Jon Erlichman, “Young Canadians flock to TikTok to thank ‘Daddy Trudeau’ for CERB spending sprees,” BNN Bloomberg, July 22, 2020, bnnbloomberg.ca/young-canadians-flock-to-tiktok-to-thank-daddy-trudeau-for-cerb-spending-sprees-1.1469011.
  47. Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman, “Queer Nationality,” in The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, ed. Lauren Berlant (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 145.
  48. Berlant and Freeman, “Queer Nationality,” 148.
  49. Berlant and Freeman, “Queer Nationality,” 148.
  50. Berlant and Freeman, “Queer Nationality,” 151.
  51. Berlant and Freeman, “Queer Nationality,” 151.
  52. Berlant and Freeman, “Queer Nationality,” 158.
  53. Lauren Berlant, “The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Notes on Diva Citizenship,” in The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 223.
  54. I acknowledge Trudeau later separating from his wife complicates this argument.
  55. Berlant, “The Queen of America Goes to Washington City,” 226.
  56. Berlant, “The Queen of America Goes to Washington City,” 223.
  57. Deborah L Jacobs, “Move To Canada? Not So Fast,” Forbes, November 5, 2012, forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/11/05/move-to-canada-if-romney-wins-not-so-fast/.
  58. Sheena Goodyear, “White supremacy is a ‘harsh reality’ in Canada, says public safety minister,” CBC, May 18, 2022, cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-wednesday-edition-1.6458296/white-supremacy-is-a-harsh-reality-in-canada-says-public-safety-minister-1.6458298.
  59. Don Sabo, “Highway of Tears,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, June 6, 2016, thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/highway-of-tears.
  60. “Regis Korchinski-Paquet’s family files $10M civil lawsuit in connection with her death,” CBC, June 29, 2022, cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/regis-korchinski-paquet-family-civil-lawsuit-1.6505802.
  61. Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, season 1, episode 2.

  • Avneet Sharma

    Avneet Sharma is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto’s Cinema Studies Institute. His research investigates the effects and potentialities of desire in queer spectatorship, contending that queer spectators engage in ‘improper’ viewing practices that generate provocative interpretations and forge communal bonds. His other interests include contemporary cinema, psychoanalytic film theory, and using computational methods to analyze online cinephile cultures. In addition to his scholarly work, he is a Pre-Screener for the Planet in Focus International Environmental Film Festival.