The Effects of Rupaul's Drag Race and Image Sharing in the Perth

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Chapter 11 Instagram and the Transmission of Drag Culture: The Effects of RuPaul’s Drag Race and Image Sharing in the Perth Drag Community

Claire Alexander

This chapter is an ethnographic exploration of the uses of Instagram and atti- tudes towards the application (app) within the local drag community in Perth, Western Australia. This work, through examining a number of conversations and interviews about the social media platform, presents some major themes for consideration in relation to drag, Instagram, and the use of the platform in the current drag climate. In a time when drag culture is being heavily influ- enced by the reality tv show RuPaul’s Drag Race (rpdr), and with the show revolutionising the transmission of drag culture itself, it seems pertinent to examine Instagram’s impact on these processes, as it is one of the most popular and accessible gathering places for image sharing in the drag community. I include interviews with five Perth drag queens, a cross-section of artists who all belong to the local drag scene and have participated (as contestants or judg- es) in the local rpdr-themed contests at queer venues in arguably one of the most geographically isolated drag communities in the world. The in-depth in- vestigation into Instagram in this chapter allows a detailed look at how the platform is used by local Perth drag queens, and uncovers important concerns and themes on the topic, including: the growth and calibre of Instagram followers, fame by association, the trickle down effect of recruiting followers, and the practical implications of a surge in drag fans. In their groundbreaking work RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Shifting Visibility of Drag Culture, Brennan and Gudelunas (2017) aptly suggest that ‘…We have arrived at a more crucial juncture than ever to address the program’s social, cultural, and political implications’. As an ethnographer and photographer, my immersion into drag culture internationally led me to photograph the contestants, winners, and Michelle Visage and RuPaul themselves, and with the rising visibility of rpdr in the Perth scene, many of my conversations with local Perth queens started to revolve around the ways in which rpdr has impacted this relatively small city’s drag scene. rpdr is widely watched amongst the queens in the Perth drag community. A reality show in which contestants compete against each other in a variety

Instagram and the Transmission of Drag Culture 135 of structured challenges, Brennan and Gudelunas (2017) liken rpdr in a broad sense to ‘longer-running, more “earnest” reality/competition series like America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway’, only drag themed, and note that rpdr has ‘made drag queens and drag culture infinitely more accessible to American and global audiences’. RuPaul Charles presides over the series, and as is common in many reality/competition programs, some contestants pre- vail while others fail, and ultimately the winner is awarded with $100,000 usd. Brennan and Gudelunas (2017) note that ‘The ultimate effect of the program is one of queer-friendly intensity, or, better yet, fierceness fused with a sense of queer community’. The general consensus amongst the Perth drag community of the time is that rpdr fever took off in Perth around the same time that Sha- ron Needles was crowned winner in 2012. Sharon was wildly popular among Perth viewers of the reality tv show, who had no real way to watch the series easily, and so were finding alternative ways to access the content from this relatively remote location.

1 The Instagram Platform in the Context of Drag

Instagram was released exclusively for iPhone on October 6, 2010. A free mobile photo (and more recently, video and live video) capturing and sharing ser- vice, the app can run independently from, or be linked to share to other sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Writing in the field of Digital Humanities, Hoch- man and Schwartz (2012) describe Instagram as a ‘mobile location-based social network application that offers its users a way to take pictures, apply different manipulation tools (“filters”) … and share it [the output image] instantly with the user’s friends on the application…’ According to Instagram (2013), since its launch three years earlier, it had attracted more than 150 million active users, with an average of 55 million photos uploaded per day, and more than 16 bil- lion photos shared to date. Rainie, Brenner, and Purcell (2012) argue that the extraordinary success of Instagram corroborated a recent Pew report that stat- ed that photos and videos have become the key social currencies online. Gudelunas (2017), notes that the queens of rpdr are practicing the art of drag during a unique time, and they ‘come to the show … with … a social media following and the desire to achieve greater fame’. He writes that ‘all of the queens stand to benefit from the exposure provided by the show’. I expand upon these ideas in this chapter by examining the ways in which Instagram is perceived by local queens, and how Instagram can benefit Perth’s relatively isolated drag community through rpdr queens’ established Instagram followings.