We're Here Review (TV Series, 2020)
A long long time ago, I used to write recaps of a lot of reality shows. These articles always did really well, especially for shows that didn’t receive the most press coverage. For full disclosure, I stopped doing these recap articles because reality TV so routinely manipulated real people into cartoonish supervillains that just pointing out a negative edit was enough to get more hate sent to these people. No thank you.
One of these shows was RuPaul’s Drag U. This RuPaul’s Drag Race spinoff series saw three women transformed into drag queens by three drag race contestants. The series was intended to be a positive experience for the contestants, ending in a graduation ceremony where everyone performed for a final grade and the winner got crowned with a feather boa. It was a silly show with its heart in the right place. The series is considered a bit of a joke now, but there was a kindness in its approach that sat right with me.
Jump forward 10 years to the present and HBO released the new reality series We’re Here. We’re Here sees professional drag queens (and RuPaul’s Drag Race alumna) Bob the Drag Queen, Eureka, and Shangela visit small towns across America to put on local drag shows. Each episode profiles three individuals or groups of people who agree to spend a week learning how to be drag entertainers. At the end of the episode, the professional queens perform a show with the newer drag performers for a hometown audience.
We’re Here is the full realization of what RuPaul’s Drag U attempted to do. This is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy with more realistic framing. The show acknowledges that they’re not going to instantly transform someone’s life with wigs and makeup. This is a first step to shake up their experience and send them on a new path. It is an exercise in building self-confidence through performing arts.
Each episode is a different experience. The format mostly stays the same, but the type of people profiled changes each episode. For me, episode four is the embodiment of what this show can be. The three subjects have important stories exploring issues effecting LGBTQIA2S+ families. One family is dealing with an unexpected death by suicide just a year before. Another woman is a confident lesbian struggling with being misgendered in public because of her wardrobe and hair. And one indigenous man struggles with homophobia and racism as he pursues a career in photography celebrating life on the reservation.
The form of the episode is the same for each contestant. They get the opportunity to discuss their life both with their assigned drag queen and in interviews with the camera. You see them with their friends and families discussing their lives and introducing their experience. At the same time, the drag queens are trying to advertise the upcoming show to the community, showing how different people react to queer people walking right up them in their daily lives.
The different groups collaborate on performance numbers that are important to the participants. The family dealing with the death by suicide want to memorialize and celebrate their lost daughter, sister, and friend. The woman wants to celebrate femininity in her own way, complete with a sparkly woman’s suit and Grace Jones-inspired flattop wig. The indigenous artist and his friends want to use their platform to raise awareness of the struggles in their community, including the disappearance and murder of indigenous women across North America.
Each performance is given a sizeable budget and production resources to make it happen. You’ll see a team of makeup and hair artists you might recognize as drag queens themselves. I recognized Six and Laila McQueen working on various participants throughout the series. Others are professional makeup artists, hair/wig stylists, and fashion designers with large social media presences. They do an incredible job not just creating wonderful stage looks but building up the various subjects to perform with as much confidence as possible.
I single out episode four because the balance seems right. Some of the episodes focus so much on the darker, heavier storylines that some participants become little more than a blip on the radar in the show. We get to focus on them only when they discuss anything remotely unfair in their lives. The series clearly set out to have the professional drag queens bring the levity on the show and struggled at first to let the participants be happy and confident before the drag makeover begins.
Episode four doesn’t feel like this. All of the stories told are treated as important stories. The subjects seem to drive the performances more than in other episodes. It’s also an episode where each group seems to have a larger supportive community around them that happily participate as well. The crowd for the show is clearly filled with their actual friends and family. This is made clear with how many audience members actually are involved in the performances.
All three performances are great, but I have to make special mention of the indigenous man’s performance. It starts with a reference to Bride of Frankenstein, with him lipsyncing on a hospital bed after being brought back to life. He revealed on the show that he was hit by a car that left him permanently injured, which led to the starting point of the performance. When he rises from the operating table in a white costume, he is covered in projections of his photography featuring members of his community. The lights shift, the costume is ripped apart, and members of his community join him holding signs declaring the need for support for various issues facing them on the reservation. It is one of the most powerful performances on the show made all the more special by actually allowing indigenous people to voice their own stories.
It is an incredible exploration of the political nature of drag. This is a queer art form that relies on putting a magnifying lens up to the role of gender in society to celebrate and critique how we expect people to behave. Drag performers draw attention with their exaggerated presentation wherever they go, which instantly gives them a larger presence at any event they do. They have had a large presence at protests for years. Bob the Drag Queen’s drag career started as part of protests for marriage equality in America; his career is one many involved in and defined by activism. Drag, as an art form, gives a group of largely marginalized voices a stage to do whatever they want for a song or a set. It is a form of entertainment, but the act of transforming into a performer exploring gender is a political act in American society. Drag is for everyone to enjoy, but not everyone is willing to put themselves out there as a drag performer.
We’re Here uses this powerful art form to give people in small towns a platform for their story. The show is not trying to manipulate you with their lived experiences like so many other candid reality shows. It is a platform for these people to tell their stories. Those happier stories that can get less screentime are still allowed to be happier stories and they do get told. The more somber stories require more nuance and the show allows that.
The show also does something rather unexpected with its platform. There are participants on this show who want to work on being better allies for the LGBTQIA2S+ community. They do all the same things: tell their story, meet with the professionals, learn a routine, get into drag, and perform. While they do this, they are guided on how to be a good ally. We’re Here takes the position of leading by example in all aspects of production. The show encourages the straight allies to be open and vocal about their support of the greater queer community as a way to help potentially less accepting people understand. They are there to uplift the community, not speak over it, and the series does a great job setting that expectation.
We’re Here is such a breath of fresh air in this style of inspiring reality TV shows. The season finale turned into a recap show because of COVID-19, which stopped production of the intended finale three days into shooting. Every new moment featured on the show (and there are plenty) shows how positive the production actually was. There’s not enough time in an hour to show off all the people who were given the chance to perform or be celebrated during these shows; the recap episode clearly shows how inclusive these performances actually were. We’re Here showed up to six small towns with the intention of building up the queer community and giving these people a platform to share their stories. It just feels honest even in its silliest moments and that’s worth praising.
Very few reality shows come out of the gate this polished. There will be a season two of the show (it may have already finished production) and I’m excited to see how the program evolves.
We’re Here is streaming on HBOMax.
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