Condragulations: How RuPaul’s Drag Race Brought Drag to the Masses
When RuPaul’s Drag Race premiered on February 2nd, 2009, no one could have predicted the global phenomenon it has become today. With eighteen franchises (two more rumored to be on the way) as well as over ten spin-offs and countless webshows and short series, it is clear that drag is no longer the underground culture it once was. Drag has become mainstream, evidenced not only by the wild success of the show, but the growing number of drag queens, contestants or otherwise, who are creating careers as celebrities, influencers, and musicians with incredibly large followings. This drastic change has in many ways been accredited to the show itself and the way it has shaped social norms around the art form and its acceptability.
The art of drag and the concept of performing gender existed long before 2009, it originated in the Shakespearean era where men would play the roles of women, who were not allowed to act. It later moved into vaudeville acts and as society grew fearful of queerness it evolved into drag performances as we know them today, a staple of the 70s ballroom scene that was at the heart of the Gay Liberation Movement. From the 70s to the late 90s only a few drag queens were recognized by the mainstream media, names like Divine and RuPaul could be named by many but the art form and the thousands of queens across the country went largely unnoticed and unseen. The premiere of Drag Race marked the beginning of a new journey for drag and drag artists. Although a handful of drag queens had made names for themselves as actors, dancers, and musicians, the show was the first time the mainstream media industry had acknowledged the art form itself.
Adorno and Horkheimer detail the process of incorporation saying “Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in. Once his particular brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the industry, he belongs to it as does the land- reformer to capitalism.” (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944). I believe the premiere of the show marks the notation by the industry they describe. Prior to this, drag may have been featured in movies and music but was never a part of the mainstream. These efforts existed on the fringes, known by a select audience. It was culture, but had yet to become popular culture. The show’s first season was the closest to mainstream the artform had gotten, and although its defined place in mainstream culture would take years to form, this is when I believe the start of the commodification of the art form by the culture industry.
Throughout the first 8 seasons of the show Drag Race skyrocketed in popularity and quality. The latter evidenced by the obvious increase in budget and scale by which the show was produced. Over time, gone was the poor quality filming (often referred to by fans as the “vaseline filter”) and the sets became bigger and bolder. The main stage where the main challenge of an episode was filmed was upgraded and so was the “Werk Room” where contestants completed mini challenges and prepared for the weekly runway. Then season nine premiered, and suddenly drag was everywhere. This season notably is when the show changed channels, from the queer-targeted LogoTV to VH1, a channel without a distinctive queer audience. There have been varied interpretations of the impact of the show, both positive and negative. While some believe it has brought about enough positive representation to the art form to outweigh its critiques, many maintain the position that the show’s generalizations and stereotypes have created a whole new set of problems for drag’s perception by the general public.
The representation of drag on the show is incredibly interesting and has evolved right along with the sets and seasons themselves. RuPaul’s Drag Race has not only brought drag to mainstream audiences but also altered the stereotypes surrounding drag and queer culture. As the show at the forefront of drag representation, it has had the power to shape public perception of it. A major critique of the show is that it has lacked diversity, in gender, sexuality, and even in art style. These early seasons also featured almost exclusively cisgendered contestants performing in the southern “pageant queen” style who identified as homosexual. Stuart Hall defines stereotypes saying “Stereotyped means ‘reduced to a few essentials, fixed in Nature by a few, simplified characteristics” (Hall, 1997). The pageant queens of the early seasons started to form one such stereotype. One that many drag queens who did not fit into it had to push back against. This has changed over the years with newer seasons of the show featuring a spectrum of queens with diverse gender identities, sexualities, and styles. Modern winners of the show feature queens like Yvie Oddly and Willow Pill who pride themselves on their uniqueness and rejection of traditional drag styles as well as queens like Jaida Essence Hall who comes from a pageant background.
Despite this improvement many believe the show still has a ways to go. It feels important for Drag Race to be both inclusive and diverse. I credit this to Drag Race’s monopoly on the “regime of representation” it has on drag. This concept, which Hall describes as “The whole repertoire of imagery and visual effects through which ‘difference’ is represented at any one historical moment”, is something it seems Drag Race encompasses for the art form to a certain extent. Although other mainstream representations of drag do exist (for example The Boulet Brothers' Dragula) it is Drag Race that has the largest audience with which they can influence public perception of drag queens and in some ways, the LGBTQ+ community as a whole. This places the show in an important position. When one has the power to control representation, it should be used to represent the minority group with accuracy and without bias.
Works Cited
Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1944). Dialect of enlightenment.
Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Newbery Park, CA: Sage
World of Wonder. (2013-2020). RuPaul's Drag Race. stills.
This blog post was so interesting! As someone who is a casual and not an avid Drag Race watcher, this post provided a lot of enlightenment about the background, history, and cultural context and impact of Drag Race. I particularly appreciated your commentary on Drag Race's relationship to incorporation, and I also got a lot out of your delving into the various styles of drag and the overrepresentation of pageant drag on Drag Race. These are aspects of the show and of the subculture that clearly are incredibly important in ways that casual viewers such as myself or even people who just know that drag exists but don't engage with it would not know anything about if not for your considerate and well-thought-out explanation of the nuances of these facets of the drag subculture and of Drag Race as a mediated representation of that subculture. This blog post made me think about the reading we read written by Fiske, about the different interpretations that can be drawn from the same thing. Though Fiske delves into the nuances of the different ways that jeans are worn and torn, this blog post got me thinking about the different ways that drag and deviance are both expressed and accepted/not accepted. Additionally, Fiske's musings on the different interpretations of the semiotics of ripped jeans within the context of capitalism made me think a lot about what it means to profit off of mainstream consumption of subculture the way that Drag Race arguably exploits queens and their subculture and puts it on a digestible, consumable, and overall acceptably palletable platform for more mainstream (more cishet) audiences. Would be curious to know your thoughts on the fine line walked between acceptance and assimilation! - Isaac Pollock
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