‘Tens, Tens, Tens Across the Board’: Representation, Remuneration, and Repercussion – RuPaul’s Drag Race from Screens to Streets Max Mehran A Thesis in The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Film Studies) at Concordia University Montréal, Quebec, Canada January 2020 Ó Max Mehran, 2020 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Max Mehran Entitled: ‘Tens, Tens, Tens Across the Board’: Representation, Remuneration, and Repercussion – RuPaul’s Drag Race from Screens to Streets and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Film Studies) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final Examining Committee: ________________________________ Chair Luca Caminati ________________________________Examiner Haidee Wasson ________________________________Examiner Glyn Davis ________________________________Supervisor Kay Dickinson Approved by ________________________ Graduate Program Director Luca Caminati ________________________ Dean of Faculty Rebecca Duclos Date: January 20th, 2020 iii ABSTRACT ‘Tens, Tens, Tens Across the Board’: Representation, Remuneration, and Repercussion – RuPaul’s Drag Race from Screens to Streets Max Mehran Since its inception, RuPaul’s Drag Race (Drag Race) (2009-) has pitted drag queens against each other in a series of challenges testing acting, singing, and sewing skills. Drag Race continues to become more profitable and successful by the year and arguably shapes cultural ideas of queer performances in manifold ways. This project investigates the impacts of exploitative labour practices that emerge from the show, the commodification of drag when represented on screen, and how the show influences drag and queer performances off screen. Through systemic content analysis, interviews, and observations, this thesis investigates the impact of the show and the evolution of Drag Race as a corporate empire. Aided by literature on television, labour, representation, and commodification, this project analyzes how Drag Race’s particular distortion of reality, undertaken as a generic norm of reality TV, not only commodifies and corporatizes drag for the benefit of the producers of the show, but also does a disservice to the art form and impacts upon the lives of the types of queer performers the show purports to capture. iv Acknowledgements I would not have been able to complete this project without the support of Kay Dickinson as a supervisor. Her perpetual trust in my work, constant encouragements, insightful feedback, and swiftness allowed me to continuously push my critical thinking further and produce the thesis. I would also like to thank Haidee Wasson, who, from the origins of this project, helped me shape a vague idea into a convincing proposal. I am grateful to some of my peers who heard me present this work at 2019 Film Studies Association of Canada Graduate Student Colloquium, Concordia Graduate Symposium, and the 2019 Film Studies Association of Canada Conference at the Congress 2019 of the Humanities and Social Sciences. To those and my classmates who were part of the Fall 2019 Master Thesis Workshop, I appreciate the feedback I received from our discussions, which has contributed to the development of this work. Furthermore, I would like to thank Marina Miller, Daniel Blanchfield, and Natasha Michaeloff for their wonderful and crucial proofreading. I also thank my family and friends who have been nothing but supportive and encouraging throughout these tumultuous writing sessions. Thank you, Dale, for always making school a priority for me. Finally, and most of all, I would like to thank my best friend and partner Matthew Perks for hearing me talk about drag every day for the past two years, silently enduring me as I watched RuPaul’s Drag Race’s seasons again and again as, to quote myself, “this is work now,” and for helping me through my moments of doubt. Thanks to my cats, Tyra and Leia, for providing me with constant love and endless caresses in my loneliest times. For that, and so much more, I am forever grateful. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: Screening Drag: Between Ecology, Representation, and Consumerism……….10 Ecology: Acknowledging the history of drag on and off the screen……………………..10 Representation: The mechanisms of depicting queerness in television………………….15 Consumerism: Capitalist modes of consumption, commodification, and homogenization…………………………………………………………………………..21 Querying the streets: Ethnographic studies, interviews, and ethical concerns…………..24 Chapter 2: It’s a Drag: The Televisual Exploitation of Labour in RuPaul’s Drag Race…..31 Running Out of Time.……………………………………………………………………31 Drag Value.………………………………………………………………………………34 Reality Television’s Realness.…………………………………………………………...42 Reality Television and Labour (Exploitation)…………………………………………...48 Chapter 3: The Drag Race Model: Tensions between Representation, Homogenization, and Corporatization…………………………………………………………………………………58 A Star is Born?.…………………………………………………………………………..58 Lack of Diversity in the Drag Race Model.……………………………………………...60 Homogenization of drag, but at what cost?.……………………………………………..68 Capitalizing on the Drag Race Model……………………………………………………71 Chapter 4: Corporate Screen versus Democratic Streets: The Gap Between Screen and Street Drag Identities…………………………………………………………………………..82 The New York Magazine Controversy…………………………………………………...82 Commodifying the Drag Race Model…………………………………………………...85 Constructions of Standards………………………………………………………………88 Corporate Screen versus Democratic Street……………………………………………..92 The Impact of Mainstream Drag on Audiences………………………………………...100 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………..108 References……………………………………………………………………………………...118 1 Introduction: “Gentlemen, start your engine and may the best woman win!” – RuPaul on every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, ever. What is it that contestants on a television reality show win? What is the price of instant fame and recognition of one’s work? How are competition shows formatted in order to ensure entertainment value and maximize profit? What does it mean to represent queer art on mainstream television? How does what we see on screen affect what we want to see in the streets? From screens to streets, this thesis tackles these questions that deal with the discrepancy between reality television shows and real life. In order to analyze a mechanism through which all this occurs, I turn to the successful reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race (Drag Race) (2009-). The success of the show has made the world fall in love with drag and revolutionized the art form by shining a positive - yet I argue restrictive - light on a historically marginalized practice. Drag Race has launched the careers of over 140 mostly American drag queens and unveiled conventionally inaccessible practices of the art form to the world. After fifteen seasons, the show continues to promise entertainment for viewers through renewals and chapters in Thailand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Drag Race has made it possible for drag queens to enter mainstream media outlets, but also relegates certain performers from enjoying similar attention. I wonder, what is the price of mainstreaming drag? In 2019, at the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards, Drag Race took home four awards out of nine nominations, including Outstanding Host and Outstanding Reality Competition Program. The year before, the show achieved five wins. In total, Drag Race has received twenty-nine 2 nominations and a total of thirteen wins at the prestigious award ceremony since 2015.1 This monumental achievement celebrated the art of drag and confirmed the show’s position in mainstream media as a pillar in the genre of the reality competition show and in the representation of queer art on television. As Drag Race continues to become more profitable and successful, the show arguably shapes cultural ideas about queer performances. This project investigates the impacts of exploitative labour practices emerging from the show, the commodification of drag when represented on screen, and how the show widely affects drag performance, televised and live, in North America. Drag emerged from theatre and is the acronym for ‘Dressed Resembling A Girl,’ or men portraying women on stage (Sandoval, 2018, p. 100-101). However, the type of drag represented on Drag Race is more closely tied to vaudevillian acts and the pageant circuit (p. 104-5). Drag is now generally hosted in nightclubs where entertainers of all gender identities freely explore their expressions of masculinity and femininity (Rupp & Taylor, 2003). As Drag Race transforms drag from an expressive art form into a commodified product of culture based on feminine visual appeal, it obscures certain complexities. Through the exploitation of labour for entertainment value and financial gain, the standardization of drag in the show replaces a form of ‘democratic street performance’ of gender with a ‘corporate representation’ onscreen. By the former, I mean a space where performers can explore their femininity and masculinity free of conventions. A ‘corporate’ screen aesthetic refers to the hyper-feminine and marketable drag aesthetic tailored by the producers in search of ‘America’s Next Drag Superstar’, the title awarded to the winner of each season. In turn,