On a brightly lit soundstage, two heavily made up drag queens look out at us, the audience outside the screen. They are bemused, observing without observing. Cognizant of the watchers they cannot see but just know will be there.
“I’m Trixie Mattel,” says the first, eyes popping beneath heavy lashes and iconically bombastic eyeshadow.
“I’m Katya!” exclaims the second, the persona of a Russian prostitute wrapped around the skin of a native Bostonian.
“And we’re queens who like to watch.”
I Like To Watch is a Netflix-sponsored series, freely available on Youtube, where Trixie and Katya watch series and movies available on Netflix. It is one of a thousand series in the “React” vein on YouTube, where any number of viewers watch and provide commentary on other media, although unlike most it is explicit as a platform for corporate promotion. The two queens constantly refer to a fictional “Bob Netflick” who pays them for their services, or complain about the budget and cramped space they’ve been allotted.
It should be just another shill. So why is it so enthralling?
Comparing I Like To Watch to other offerings in the heavily saturated reaction genre highlights a disparity in approach. On the surface, I Like To Watch fits in with the genre’s reliance on the watcher’s initial reaction to a piece. Unfiltered, unscripted, genuine human emotion. We not only get a glimpse into the emotional and physical resonance of media but also into the lives of other people. People like you and me. But not Trixie and Katya. They are outwardly and deliberately larger than life, an exaggeration of the “traditional feminine,” as opposed to your Average Joe Let’s Player or Reactor, and in this way preferable. The celebrity of today is no longer a star out of reach, but eternally reachable and visible. Parasocial relationships are encouraged, thriving incubators for fans who will follow a creator’s every action and project, even and especially among Reactors and Let’s Players. The duo, however, put on an act beyond that. We get their “true selves,” consisting of laughably approachable nymphomania, an abhorrence for children of all ages, and very rarely a glimpse at the truth beneath the makeup.
Their reactions, too, are delivered with barbed wit and impeccable timing. Where a reactor’s vocabulary and references are generally limited to a smaller cultural or linguistic sphere, or even just a montage of shrieks and yells at some generally spooky or exciting nonsense, Katya and Trixie will pull from the depths of RuPaul to the heights of philosophy without pausing for breath. It is the difference between the hyperactive amateurs of the Internet and finely honed entertainers, knowing when to let a joke breathe and when to let it keep running. There is no topic too shameful, no man too sinful to ogle at, no comment too base for them to deliver, and it seemingly comes to them as easy as breathing. But that is the advantage of practice, of having made their livings on being as sharp as a knife and twice as fearsome.
Of course, for the sake of Bob Netflick our terrible twosome must still play along with the network’s requirements. It is difficult to say whether the constant cries of “werk” or “sickening” are their natural reactions to the likes of Elite and The Princess Switch, or whether the two are contractually obliged to work gay lingo and sex jokes into the mix every few minutes. But they know that we know, with a half-smile and glance aside, not so much straddling the line of good taste as they are working it like a pole. And they are not shy about hating things, even if they must end every episode telling us that what we watched had “everything.” Their vocal dislike or even venom is refreshing and eloquent in an environment usually composed of disparate poles – absolute hatred or absolute enthusiasm.
It may sound ridiculous to say this, but I Like To Watch is to reaction videos what drag itself is to an average musical performance. We enjoy performances for the talent and spectacle, and drag adds an extra layer of the latter. That which is not aligned with our “normal,” our 9-5s, beiges and grays. As a society we openly or secretly crave to be released from the confines of what is “normal,” fascinated by the counterculture that is the world of drag queens. The transparent deception and acknowledgment that this queen is somebody else out of the false lashes and eight inch heels, but we are dancing to her tune because she’s better and bolder than us. To some, aspirational. To others, heretical.
Are we viewers, or voyeurs? Do we laugh with the queens, or at them? In a kinder world we would appreciate them purely on the basis of their talents. But like a circus clown Trixie and Katya come to us in their painted faces, delighting and entertaining, aware that when the lights go down and the facepaint comes off they are supposed to be nobody.
And yet.
They’re paid to do what we do for free. To comment, to criticize, to consume. They know it. We know it. On one hand, the objects of ridicule. On the other, targets of envy. And they will continue to watch safe in the knowledge that they’ll be the ones having the last laugh.