‘We're all Born Naked and the Rest is Drag’: Spectacularization of Core Stigma in RuPaul's Drag Race

Abstract

How can organizations capitalize on core stigma through spectacles? In this paper, we adopt a performativity perspective to address this question. Specifically, we analyze how an assemblage of different actors within and around an organization contributes to the spectacularization of stigma and thus brings a new reality into being. In this new reality, rather than stigma being concealed, it is normalized, and the organization capitalizes on it to enhance success. We focus on RuPaul's Drag Race as a stigmatized organization that has built its success through the active spectacularization of its core stigma. In our analyses, we identify three mechanisms (i.e., reiteration of transgressions, awakening of social consciousness, and language modelling) the organization strategically uses to spectacularize the transgressions associated with the social deviance of drag queens. Through these mechanisms, a new reality around the stigma of drag queens is constructed and stigma is normalized. Overall, we contribute to a better understanding of how organizations can capitalize on their core stigma through spectacularization; we also explore the role of audiences in co-creating organizational realities around stigma.

Organizational Stigma: Taking Stock and Opening New Areas for Research

“…We hope this special issue and this editorial can help consolidate existing research on organizational stigma, and open new areas for contribution, both conceptually and empirically. From more traditional contexts – international business operations (Tsui‐Auch et al, 2022) or banking (Frandsen and Morsing, 2022; Roulet, 2015) to less traditional ones – television reality shows on drag queens (Campana et al, 2022), martial arts (Helms and Patterson, 2014) or kink associations (Coslor et al, 2020) – studies of organizational stigma have shown the polyvalence and theoretical usefulness of the concept. While the literature is still evolving, it is beginning to reach a maturation phase, with stabilized definitions and links with other relevant areas of research and connate concepts (Pollock et al, 2019).…”

“…Studies in this special issue very much flesh out those links between internal and external audiences (Campana et al, 2022; Frandsen and Morsing, 2022; Tsui‐Auch et al, 2022) in all their multiplicity and complexity. Their approach relies on an effort to delimit audiences and unpack the situational drivers of their reactions to explain the outcomes of organizational stigma.…”

“…Meanwhile in Campana, Duffy and Micheli's paper '"We're All Born Naked and the Rest Is Drag": Spectacularization of Core Stigma in RuPaul's Drag Race' (Campana et al, 2022) the authors adopt a performativity lens to examine RuPaul's Drag Race. The authors find that these actors strategically sought to 'spectactularize' core stigma associated with drag by performing and actively promoting public spectacles.…”

“…First, these studies generally provide more nuance to our understandings of the reactions to stigma and processes through which stigma is dealt. Second, two papers in this special issue show how stigma is leveraged and used by actors as an asset (Campana et al, 2022; Cowden et al, 2022). Such work diverges from existing work on the benefits of stigma (Helms and Patterson, 2014; Roulet, 2020; Tracey and Phillips, 2016) by explicating agentic and strategic efforts of appropriation.…”

“…Three of the studies (Frandsen and Morsing, 2022; Goodrick et al, 2022; Kvåle and Murdoch, 2021) unpack micro‐level dynamics caused by organizational stigma, but also unveil core outcomes and reactions to stigma. Finally, the papers connect organizational stigma with other core mechanisms and concepts in and around the social evaluations literature, such as location (Cowden et al, 2022), disapproval (Piazza and Augustine, 2022), spectacularization and performativity (Campana et al, 2022), as well as managing multiple sources of stigma (Tsui‐Auch et al, 2022) and multiple sources of support to manage stigma (Piazza and Augustine, 2022). Those studies illuminate new contexts that were often understudied in organization theory such as US cities, or television shows.…”