The drag subculture is one among many that benefits from the increasing visibility and acceptance of homosexuality over the past decade. The reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race brought increasing mainstream interest to this previously underground subculture. This show, which premiered in 2009, features 10 to 14 drag queens each season who compete to become “America’s Next Drag Superstar.” This year the show announced its first ever RuPaul’s DragCon, a convention featuring many of the major queens from the past 7 seasons of the show, workshops on learning drag, and appearances by the queens. This project will be an audience study and participant observation of the incorporation of the now mainstream practice of the pop culture “convention” (another form of “affective labor” and investment) into the drag community. Conventions have become a mainstream platform for a variety of geek and media subcultures. These gatherings offer a unique opportunity to observe the variety of practices and diverse personal identities that make up a fan community. Based on my own previous work on neoliberalism and drag television, I hope to expand my project to also examine the audience’s perception of their role in the fan community. This audience interview study hopes to specifically account for the increasing variety of the show’s fan demographics. One of the most interesting observations in my initial study was the variety of individuals who attended the show’s Battle of the Season’s Tour. I found that drag performers appeal to a diverse audience that includes many straight cisgendered women, including mothers who attended shows with their daughters. Based on my previous textual analysis of discourses about family, LGBT acceptance, and self-love in the show and the way that drag plays with feminine expectations, I hypothesize that these discourses speak to female audiences differently than male or genderqueer audiences.
About the presenterChelsea Daggett
Chelsea Daggett is a second year Doctoral Student at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She recently received her MFA in Film Studies from Boston University. Chelsea has presented papers on popular culture at several regional conferences, such as NEMLA and NEPCA. Chelsea’s research focuses on adolescents and young adults in media. Her Master’s thesis discusses the U.S. adaptation of the U.K. television series Skins and Broken Britain. She is currently awaiting publication of a bullying content analysis. Her current research focuses on freedom of speech in higher education and mass shootings in public memory.