Got to be Real: Queering Reality, Identity, and Audience Affect on RuPaul’s Drag Race
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The meteoric rise of RuPaul's Drag Race in popular culture has given the extravagant subculture of drag a mainstream platform through reality television. Drag Race constructs queer identities and drag performances to make them palatable for both LGBTQ+ and cisheterosexual audiences alike. To understand how audience members consume and understand queerness and drag, I interviewed self-identified fans of Drag Race and recollected my own connections with the show. Coupled with queer and affect theory, these interviews inform my analysis of Drag Race and how it depicts queerness and the impact it has on viewers. Audiences are endeared to RuPaul's drag reality through the queering of the reality television genre, the onstage/offstage/backstage depictions of gender and sexuality, and affective relationships they build with the show. RuPaul's Drag Race invites fans behind the curtain of drag performances to be entertained by personal narratives of queerness beyond the spectacular drag persona.
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Copyright © 2021 the author(s). Theses may be used for non-commercial research, educational, or related academic purposes only. Such uses include personal study, research, scholarship, and teaching. Theses may only be shared by linking to Carleton University Institutional Repository and no part may be used without proper attribution to the author. No part may be used for commercial purposes directly or indirectly via a for-profit platform; no adaptation or derivative works are permitted without consent from the copyright owner.
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- 2021
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mcharge-gottoberealqueeringrealityidentityandaudience_r.pdf | 2023-05-05 | Public | Download |