Occupying the intersection: RuPaul’s celebration of meritocracy

Hermes, Joke; Kardolus, Michael

doi:10.1177/1749602019875864

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 12 publications

(8 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Some essays also discuss belonging within drag communities, within the US (Brennan, 2017) and abroad (Castellano and Machado, 2017; Chronaki, 2017; Villarreal et al, 2017). Additionally, several articles investigate inequality on RPDR (Brown, 2018; Collins, 2017; Edgar, 2011; Hermes and Kardolus, 2019; Uphadyay, 2019; Wilson, 2018) as well as capitalism and industry as it is reflected on the show (Chetwynd, 2020; Hankins, 2015; Vesey, 2017). Notably missing from these works is the question of what kind of impact this visibility has for drag communities outside of RPDR, and the broader landscape of drag as a collectivity or “scene” with its own norms and codes.…”

Section: Drag Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mainstream novelty: Examining the shifting visibility of drag performance

Zaslow

2022

Sexualities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This mixed-methods analysis seeks to understand the shifting visibility of drag performance in the wake of RuPaul’s Drag Race and increasing mainstream exposure. Using a publics/counterpublics framing popularized by Michael Warner, this work argues that RuPaul’s Drag Race has become a drag “public,” while drag at the local level has shifted from insular subculture to counterpublic. This shift is marked by both a new and different hierarchy of drag performance that has altered the drag scene on all levels. This hierarchy imposes standards and expectations about how drag, as an embodied art on the local level, “should” look which influences drag’s reception.

show abstract

Section: Drag Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mainstream novelty: Examining the shifting visibility of drag performance

Zaslow

2022

Sexualities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Drag culture is the subject of extensive literature (Goodwin 1989;Newton 1972;Warren 1974;Zervignon 2009;Hermes and Kardolus 2019). While RuPaul would say that "we're all born naked and the rest is drag" (Charles 1996), drag is generally understood as a tradition of men dressing up and performing as women.…”

Section: Camp Drag Culture and Drag Racementioning

confidence: 99%

TheRupaulParadox: Freedom and Stricture in a Competition Reality TV Show

Hermes¹,

Kardolus

2021

Javnost - The Public

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Drag culture in the 1990s seemed to signify emancipation and liberation of enduring and stifling definitions of gender and sexuality. The uptake of drag and camp in mainstream culture were felt to usher in an era of gender freedom coinciding with new appreciation for popular cultural forms. A quarter century on, popular culture no longer connotes bad taste. The realignment of taste and cultural capital has not coincided with decreased social inequality however, and popular media culture appears to have remained the training ground for what Miller (1993. The Well-Tempered Self. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) called "the daily organisation of fealty to the cultural-capitalist state." This paper will inquire into how today's neo-liberal governmentality and its defining form of offering freedom and stricture at the same time is exemplified by the show hosted by drag queen, singer and television presenter RuPaul (RuPaul's Drag Race Logo, VH1 2009-today and available on Netflix). Taking as our point of departure our own double-edged sentiments about the show and its host, and the ways queens are divided into role models versus underperformers, we will discuss how race, gender and English proficiency are policed.

show abstract

“…The occasional hopeful reading of e.g., RuPaul's Drag Race, as an emancipatory moment that queers gender conventions and offers a highly diverse range of ethnicities in competitors on this television show, also points to host RuPaul's deeply neoliberal convictions. Fans and viewers combine their love of the show with the criticism that it discriminates against darker-skinned queens and trans women as contenders (Hermes & Kardolus, 2019). All of these changes within popular culture and in its users as well go a long way in explaining "the loss of the popular."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Loss of the Popular: Reconstructing Fifty Years of Studying Popular Culture

Hermes

Teurlings

2021

MaC

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article starts from the observation that popular culture resides in a contradictory space. On the one hand it seems to be thriving, in that the range of media objects that were previously studied under the rubric of popular culture has certainly expanded. Yet, cultural studies scholars rarely study these media objects <em>as</em> popular culture. Instead, concerns about immaterial labor, about the manipulation of voting behavior and public opinion, about filter bubbles and societal polarization, and about populist authoritarianism, determine the dominant frames with which the contemporary media environment is approached. This article aims to trace how this change has come to pass over the last 50 years. It argues that changes in the media environment are important, but also that cultural studies as an institutionalizing interdisciplinary project has changed. It identifies “the moment of popular culture” as a relatively short-lived but epoch-defining moment in cultural studies. This moment was subsequently displaced by a set of related yet different theoretical problematics that gradually moved the study of popular culture away from the popular. These displacements are: the hollowing out of the notion of the popular, as signaled early on by Meaghan Morris’ article “The Banality of Cultural Studies” in 1988; the institutionalization of cultural studies; the rise of the governmentality approach and a growing engagement with affect theory.

show abstract

Occupying the intersection: RuPaul’s celebration of meritocracy

Cited by 4 publications

References 12 publications

Mainstream novelty: Examining the shifting visibility of drag performance

Mainstream novelty: Examining the shifting visibility of drag performance

TheRupaulParadox: Freedom and Stricture in a Competition Reality TV Show

The Loss of the Popular: Reconstructing Fifty Years of Studying Popular Culture

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About