Meet Rita von Hunty, the drag queen who teaches sociology on YouTube

With so many quotes from works of literature, theater, sociology, anthropology and politics, the channel’s videos drag seasoningon YouTube, could even be accompanied by a list of bibliographic references in the best academic molds. William Terreri28 years old, is responsible for the meticulous selection of content, but the one who appears on the screen is the drag queen Rita von Hunty, created and performed by him. Dressed in a costume reminiscent of fashion from the 1950s to 1970s, Rita offers witty capsule classes on contemporary (and possibly tense) debates such as monogamy, class consciousness and hate speech.

Created in 2015, the channel was initially used to teach vegan recipes with a high load of humor and sporadic touches on denser subjects. The inspiration was the fun and eccentric cook Julia Child, which for decades hosted culinary shows on American TV. “In the beginning, Rita still had characteristics common to Brazilian society. She was a middle-class housewife, with a conservative outlook, who treated her employee badly,” says Guilherme. Over time, however, the man from São Paulo began to question whether the public understood that Rita’s distorted opinions were a satire. Then the characterization changed. He also felt it was urgent to address issues that had nothing to do with vegan cuisine or food. And so Rita’s expressiveness came in handy for tackling thorny issues. “There is a magnetism around the drag queen. She is visibly provocative. It arouses interest and revulsion, which are two poles of the same energy”, says Guilherme. For him, a drag queen talking about intellectual topics attracts much more attention from the public, who are used to seeing straight white men making speeches.

With the success of drag seasoning, which has more than 160,000 subscribers, Rita was invited to be one of the three hosts of the program Drag Me As a Queen, on the cable channel E! Entertainment Television. In the attraction, which is already in its second season, the drag queens help a woman in crisis, transforming her into a queen. Men dressed as women in artistic activities are nothing new; there are records from antiquity. However, the term drag queen only began to be used a few decades ago, when it gained definitive space in the LGBT+ community. In Brazil, the scene has been gaining strength in recent years, until drag artists, such as singer Pabllo Vittar, reached the general public. It should be noted that the fact that a man characterizes himself as a drag queen does not mean that he understands himself as a woman – unlike what happens with trans and transvestites. “It’s doing a performance that destroys gender norms, contradicts what is expected of the behavior of men and women”, explains Guilherme. “It’s pretty magical when someone tries to explain that they’ve watched a video of Rita and stutters when defining whether she’s a teacher or professor,” he says. Although the LGBT+ audience represents an important part of the channel’s audience, another large part is made up of people from outside the community.

Before starting on YouTube, Guilherme had already performed Rita for two years, usually assuming burlesque airs that referred to the universe of pin-ups. “But I don’t like to stay up all night, going to events in bars and clubs. So it was a big crisis to keep riding,” says Guilherme. Unsatisfied, he asked a friend for advice, and that’s when the idea of ​​putting Rita in the role of teacher was born. “It would be my way of not abandoning the wig or the taste for teaching”, says he, who has been teaching since he was 14.

As a teenager, he served as a tutor in Ribeirão Preto (SP), Your hometown. Afterwards, he went on to teach English to foreigners who were also unfamiliar with the Portuguese language, which forced him to look for new teaching tools and improve his techniques. However, it was in the graduations in performing arts, at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Unirio), and in letters, at the University of São Paulo (USP), that Guilherme secured the foundation that allows Rita to discuss so many topics in depth. In addition to staging and theater, which gave her the material to embody the drag queen, she studied disciplines such as art history, cultural anthropology and translation of classic medieval texts. With so much complex knowledge, he decided to pass it on to the public that doesn’t have the patience or proximity to the academy. Since October of last year, he has been offering the Revolutionary Course by Rita von Hunty, which has already been to Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. “Using bibliography and not guesswork, I try to make the academic debate more accessible”, explains Guilherme, who is also preparing a book for Editorial Planeta, scheduled for release next year.

By leaving Rita’s burlesque and culinary phase behind and going deeper into the themes of her day to day life, Guilherme saw the line between him and the character become more tenuous. “I usually say that, now, the opinions are Guilherme’s, and Rita is the way to present them”, he says. He further explains that the drag queen works as a persona that he adopts when he feels the need. “She has the strength to build sensitive bridges, which make us realize that we are different and need to live together”, he says. Amid the difficulties for Brazil to overcome hate speech and intolerance, the intellectual drag queen Rita von Hunty is a breath of fresh air when she deals with complex issues with lightness.