This volume explores drag in global online spaces as a distinct departure from the established success, and limitations, of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Centred around discourses of LGBTQ+ visibility and political mobilization, the volume 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 underresearched areas of the world.
Offering new insights into the rise of drag in a global digital public sphere, this volume 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.
Part I: Introduction; 1. Post-RuPaul’s Drag Race: Queer Visibility, Online Discourse and Political Change in a Global Digital Sphere; Part II: Drag Visibility and Politics in Global Online Space; 2. Post-Drag Race, Post-Trans, Post-Pandemic Contestants: Affecting Political Realness in Social Media and (in Return to) Reality Television Space; 3. “Boys Wear Blue, Girls Wear Pink”: Drag Queens, Fake News and Gender Controversies in a Conservative Brazil; 4. Pabllo Vittar, the New Drag Sensation and Embodiment of Resistance in Digital Media Space; Part III: Drag Influencers, Advertising and Labor; 5. All those Glamazons We Subscribe To: Mapping a Network of Key Influencers Spreading the Art of Drag on YouTube; 6. Drag Dollars: Making Room for Queens in Advertising; 7. It’s a Drag: The Televisual Exploitation of Labor in RuPaul’s Drag Race; 8. Werq the YouTube: Changing Collective Practices in the Brazilian Drag Scene; Part IV: Drag Remix, Translation and Online Fandom; 9. Giving Face (Shields): The Recirculation and Rearticulation of Drag Race in a Global Pandemic; 10. Reading is Fundamental: Ru-Capturing Narrative and Drag Race Herstory Through Remixed Episodes, Fan Dialogue and Hypercamp Culture; 11. Do You Speak Drag? An Analysis of RuPaul’s Drag Race Jargon Translated and Subtitled by Brazilian Fans; Part V: Drag by Global Extension(s); 12. The Exploration of Liminal Identities through Drag in Online Space; 13. Mr Gay Namibia: Publicity Maven, Social-Justice Defender and Former Altar Boy; 14. The Shumang Lila Performers of Manipur and the Pursuit of the Perfect
Niall Brennan is Associate Professor of Communication at Fairfield University, USA, where he teaches and researches on gender and sexuality, popular culture, visual culture and consumer culture in the media. David Gudelunas is Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at The University of Tampa, USA, where he also serves as a professor of communication.
