Problems with Drag Race UK 3′s edit - Part 1
The treatment of Veronica, Charity, Choriza and River could easily be its own post. But this last episode (E07) has left me thinking that honestly, I think the edit and the production has screwed over Krystal and Scarlett.
A lot of what comes out of their mouths in confessionals and the workroom sounds scripted or prompted. Krystal apologising to the judges for River and Choriza's lipsync? Pull the other one. Someone asked her to say that to make out it was worse than it was in my opinion. Same for Scarlett's constant stank-face in the background shots.
As for Scarlett's argument that she was the best because she made Ru laugh most, that also feels like the result of someone saying so to her when they've got her on her own and her just repeating it back to the others.
To be honest I'd not be surprised if the reason Ella, Vanity and to an extent Kitty are being shown as 'boring' is because they refuse to rise to producer prompts. This episode they clearly wanted Kitty to talk about having low self-esteem regarding her body, but she refused, and was it Vanity who said that no-one had ever trolled her? And Ella responded to the prompt with a joke about people online flirting with her - production felt like it was obviously fishing for an online bullying angle which they could no doubt then tie into homophobia/racism/body-shaming, once again pushing the Divina de Campo-esque ‘Megan this is disgusting’ narrative that anyone making a comment on social media is essentially the child of Satan.
Meanwhile in the background Krystal and Scarlett are being pushed to say blatantly unnatural things like 'without Drag Race I wouldn't have any self esteem' and 'I'm so busy with my career in drag I've never been able to stop to have sex' - come on, those sound like Hello magazine headlines. Is that really what you want when half the charm of S1 and S2 were the authentic werkroom conversations about e.g. gender identity, funny moments like A’Whora sneaking around or Baga peeking through the clothes rail, and genuine mature moments like Tia and A’Whora’s conversation about perceptions and growth?