All the world's a stage.
1. Into Introduction.
On December 3rd, 2018, the website Into published an article titled "Ariana Grande's 'Thank U, Next' Music Video Is Surprisingly Anti-Queer." This article, running a little under 1.5K words, criticizes the video heavily for, among other things, transmisogyny and blackface. It was met with overwhelming backlash. Part of this backlash included death threats towards the author, and the editor subsequently removed the author's byline the same day.
(Tweet by @Into: Editor's Note: We have decided to remove the author's name from this piece after the editorial team was alerted that a high volume of death threats were being made against the writer as a result of the opinions presented in this piece.)
On December 4th, Zach Stafford, Editor-in-Chief, INTO, posted an update to the article that apologized, saying "the piece missed the mark and should not have been published as is." When it comes to the audience response that the claims in the article are a reach, I generally agree.
(Tweet by @TheVixensworld in response to @Into's original post of the article: Ok, this is ME in all my "me-ness"...saying this is a reach.)
However, there are some points brought up in the article that I feel missed the mark due to their presentation, rather than their premise. The article bites off more than it can chew. Each claim in the article could very well be 5K word essay in it of itself, but the article is presented more as a survey of wrongdoing than an academic discussion. Each claim is followed up by a short one-liner explanation / joke that expects the claim to be intrinsically understood, and then moves onto the next. I think all of these claims could make wonderful research questions:
So i'm not going to dip into the second two, what I want to look at is this character here. 
Because I think there's some nuance that needs to be discussed, and if I have a purpose in life, it's to take things and make them needlessly more complicated.
Before I go any further, I want to give a disclaimer, one made best by YouTube superstar Lindsay Ellis in one of her most recent video essays.
"I hope this doesn't come across that I am trying to make a grand sweeping statement about how "thing bad" (even thought that does seem to be the most effective way to get popular on YouTube) but rather "thing exists" and "thing is part of a system that you may not even be conscious of."
-Lindsay Ellis, icon.
"Thing bad" doesn't make for the best academic deep-dive. It doesn't really get to the nitty gritty of it all (something I believe the original Into article suffers from). Asking, "how do we identify this thing and in what ways does it function," reveals much more than giving something a name and slapping on a value statement.
So let's get going. 2. The Into author's argument:
The author provides us with two quick sentences.
Just 16 seconds into the video, trans viewers may be stunned to see a cisgender man, Ariana’s backup dancer Scott Nicholson, in a bright pink cardigan and wig playing a trans(?) woman. We’re already supposed to laugh at him for his feminine mannerisms. This argument is fairly simple. An cis male actor appears on screen performing femininity. The Into author argues that the intent behind this is to make us, the viewers, laugh. Let's put a pin in that. 3. Response from JakeyonceTV
(Tweet by @jakeyoncetv in response to @Into's original post of the article: Into: This video is Transmisogynistic. / Into (one paragraph later): Ariana's backup dancer is in a dress and wig and that's for giRLs oNLy...)
JakeyonceTV, an internet personality and noted drag commentator, responded to Into's initial tweet of the article by mocking the argument. While the Into author argues that, in the context of the video, a cis man performing femininity is transmisogynistic, JakeyonceTV's tweet implies that critiquing a cis man's freedom to perform femininity is just as reprehensible. We'll put a pin in that too. 4. Comparisons of Drag and Blackface.
Arguments like the Into author aren't new by any means. For a very long time, people have been comparing drag performance to blackface minstrelsy. There are more academic works of feminist theory like Kelly Kleiman's bluntly titled essay "Drag = Blackface" published in the Chicago-Kent Law Review.
And there are more pop / hot-take articles like Meghan Murphy's 2014 article "Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community?" published on the Feminist Current website which has received criticism for anti-trans and TERF messages.
What becomes very delicate in this discussion is that it is entirely intent based, and the intentions of one drag performer are going to differ from that of another drag performer.
But to summarize to the point of oversimplification, both pieces argue that, in the same way blackface minstrelsy is performance of race with the intent to mock, drag performance is performance of gender with the intent to mock. Kleman gets more nuanced than Murphy, pointing to two different kinds of drag, comic and glamour. She equates exaggerated and comic drag like that of Trixie Mattel to minstrelsy, whereas glamour drag like that of Miss Fame is a sort of power-grab or form of cultural appropriation.
"The point of glamour drag is not to tell jokes but to perform the feminine. The only reason to hire a man for this purpose-when there are plenty of women available, by definition more experienced and better qualified-is to give men the continued right and privilege to determine the content of the feminine" (685).
While Kleman may have accidentally predicted the influence of drag makeup on the YouTube makeup guru community, I disagree with the notion that drag performers are trying to prescribe their feminine performance to cis women. In fact, many are doing quite the opposite.
5. Men in Wigs and Drag Theses
I think the fundamental difference of opinion is seeing drag as punching down on women, or punching up at the expectations of women. Take for example notable drag queen Violet Chachki's personal philosophy on her drag. In the video i-D Meets: Violet Chachki she says "I don't look like a woman, I look like a drawing of a woman." Chachki's drag aesthetic is based off of artistic depictions of women, especially those in comic books, that are physical embodiment of the male gaze. Chachki is not dressing as a woman and saying 'look at how dumb women are', she is dressing as male expectation of women and saying 'look at how dumb these expectations are."
There are many other drag theses. You have queens like Lady Bunny saying things like "I'm not dressing as a woman; I'm dressing how I like to dress." You also have RuPaul himself stating on multiple occasions that he is not dressing as a woman, he's dressing in a drag, emphasizing that 'real' women don't wear five foot wigs and six inch heels.
However, the internal motivations of individual drag performers means nothing if this is an argument of optics. We are not looking at the intent of why someone does something. We are not looking at the optics of how that intent is expressed. We are going a third step and looking at what intent one might assume based on presentation. Which brings me to what I am going to call: 6. Clown Theory.
If you forgot, we were originally discussing this image before I got side tracked.
And while I agree with JakeyonceTV's idea that a man in a wig isn't inherently transmisogynistic, with this instance here, I don't think it has the intent of critiquing the construct of femininity. This is the kind of drag where I reluctantly start to agree with Kleman and Murphy. This just looks like it's a dude mocking women. This is what I would call a Clown.
I will use Clown here to mean an individual who impersonates an individual outside of their own personal demographic for the purposes of mockery, ridicule, or comedy. Blackface minstrelsy would fall under this category. This doesn't have apply to just gender or race performance. Take for example representation of characters with disability. There is a big difference between Tom Hank's portrayal of Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump and David Sheridan portrayal of Doofy Gilmore in Scary Movie. Both are actors without disabilities portraying characters with disabilities, but it's very obvious based on the look alone which one is meant to be a Clown.
It's the difference between the man who throws on a Caitlyn Jenner Halloween costume for some laughs and the man who devotes his life to celebrating Cher's iconography.
A Brief History Sidebar:
I am discussing the current state of popular drag and its history as a feature of the queer community. Drag has different meanings to different cultures, and it was actively used to suppress female talent before women were allowed on stage. So much has happened in even the past 18 years that it might even be inappropriate to engage with a critic from 2000 who doesn't recognize that cis women, trans women, and nb people also participate in drag. I completely understand negative readings of drag performance. It's pretty hard to redeem trash-drag artists like Divine who identify as living embodiments of filth and obscenity who were created with the sole intent to offend people and make them uncomfortable. 
What I disagree with is the boiling down of drag to "men in wigs pretending to be women." To treat drag as a monolith is to ignore the diversity of the art form. Drag, like any art form, can be used for good and can be used for evil, and even though the personal motivations of each performer aren't written out cleanly and given to audience members in a program before viewing, it's clear to me based on optics alone that the Clown in Grande's video is doing something different than the traditional drag artist. 7. Conclusion
I agree with the Into author that the above image is being played for laughs. Does this constitute misogyny or transmisogyny? At the very least I think it constitutes a Clown. The image does not encourage us to think "wow that is glamorous," or "wow, such a nuanced critique of femininity." In my opinion, the image encourages us to think "lol, dude in a wig."
Where the Into author failed, I think, was brevity. This is a tricky nuanced topic that doesn't read well when condensed to two sentences. But, as we know, that's what the internet wants, and maybe in that way the Into author succeeded. I doubt the article did any serious lasting damage to the Into brand, and it sure as hell got them a lot of clicks and ad revenue. Or at least Into succeeded in using inflammatory content to get clicks. I doubt the Into author was looking to get death threats. It's a catch 22 of internet media. Politics get clicks, but politics can be nuanced, and nuance doesn't get clicks. Frankly, I'm excited to the response I get to this mess of an essay, so before you leave, I'd like to drop that Lindsay Ellis quote one last time.
"I hope this doesn't come across that I am trying to make a grand sweeping statement about how "thing bad" (even thought that does seem to be the most effective way to get popular on YouTube) but rather "thing exists" and "thing is part of a system that you may not even be conscious of."
-Lindsay Ellis, icon.
I'm not looking to moralize. I'm not looking to prescribe behavior. I'm simply looking to say "hey, this exists," and "hey, look at how these things look similar but function differently."
If you're looking for a poppy brutal hot take cancelling a large group of people, just wait a few weeks. I'm drafting an article about why I hate those people who think they're hipster for watching murder tv, even though the murder tv industry wouldn't exist if there wasn't mainstream demand... Have a great day!
Post-Essay Ethics Question To Chew On:
If a drag performer knowingly and intentionally performs female Clown minstrelsy, but - through purpose or accident - this leads to the betterment both queer people and women, is the initial action still bad? Answer in the comments below! (must be 5K words or more, standard MLA format, submitted in person and as a PDF).
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