"She Is Not Acting, She Is": The conflict between gender and racial realness on RuPaul's Drag Race

• Published in: Feminist media studies 2014-09, Vol.14 (5), p.822-836
• Main Authors: Strings, Sabrina, Bui, Long T.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Asia; Automobile racing; Conflict; Cultural Identity; drag queen; Ethnicity; Gender; Programming (Broadcast); queer; Race; Reality programming; reality television; RuPaul; Semiotics; Sex; Sexuality; Stereotypes; Television; Television programs
• ISSN: 1468-0777; 1471-5902
• DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2013.829861

This essay examines the popular television show RuPaul's Drag Race to reveal the ways drag performance provides an ambivalent, contradictory space for wrestling with contentious issues surrounding cultural identity and authenticity in reality TV. Focusing on the show's controversial season three, the authors demonstrate how drag queens subvert and play with ideas of gender "realness" but find an impasse in open discussions of race. The racial minstrelsy of some contestants we observe created antagonisms between black/brown characters and their white/Asian counterparts, exposing a rift in ideas about racial play despite the general acceptance of flexibility in gender bending. Recognizing that reality TV exploits and uncovers these tensions, we demonstrate that while drag performance enacts a subversive mode of queer performance, it provides a contested site and complex semiotic space for dealing with sensitive matters of race/ethnicity, especially when certain forms of stereotyping are rewarded over others.