Niall Brennan

David Gudelunas

This book identifies and analyzes the ways in which RuPaul’s Drag Race has reshaped the visibility of drag culture in the US and internationally, as well as how the program has changed understandings of reality TV. This edited volume illustrates how drag has become a significant aspect of LGBTQ experience and identity globally through RuPaul’s Drag Race, and how the show has reformed a media landscape in which competition and reality itself are understood as given. Taking on lenses addressing race, ethnicity, geographical origin, cultural identity, physicality and body image, and participation in drag culture across the globe, this volume offers critical, non-traditional, and first-hand perspectives on drag culture.

The Boundaries of Reality TV

RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Shifting Visibility of Drag Culture

This volume explores drag in global online spaces as a distinct departure from the established success, and limitations, of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Centered around discourses of LGBTQ+ visibility and political mobilization, the book addresses how these discourses have moved beyond the increasingly limited qualities of the television series to reconfigure the parameters of drag in emerging communities and spaces. By reconceiving of drag in new settings, this volume uncovers the crucial social and political potential for community-building in an increasingly fragmented and isolated global space. Chapters by a diverse team of authors delve into the recognition of new articulations of LGBTQ+ visibility and political mobility through drag in online space; the implications of drag celebrity for issues such as labor and profit in the digital sphere; the (re)appropriation of mainstream drag in emerging online environments and communities; and the reverberations of drag in underrepresented and under-researched areas of the world. Offering new insights into the rise of drag in a global digital public sphere, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of media studies, cultural studies, digital media and cultural studies, critical race studies, gender studies, sexuality studies, queer theory, film, and television studies.

Niall Brennan

About

Books

Join the club