Normativity and Subversion: RuPaul Drag Race across Power Relation and Contemporary Media Processes

Abstract

The present thesis aims to analyse the concept of binarism, its origin, characteristic and motivations for establishing normative standards in Western society, and its social, political, and economic impacts on people. It also examines the limitations of binarism in explaining contemporary realities, highlighting philosophical movements that helped in the creation of significant paradigm shifts. These shifts result in a series of reconsideration about language, history and the subject, which lead to discard and transcend traditional discriminatory practices, aiming at embracing an intersectional perspective that recognize everybody rights. The study is augmented with an analysis of the foundational structure of technology, in the effort of both revealing its inherent bond with institutional normative and trying to understand whether digital practices can serve as tools to overcome these barriers. Then, it scrutinizes the dynamics between institutions, which create and sustain norms, and individuals, who try to subvert them, through a study concerning their action within the digital media landscape. The goal is to uncover power relations that influence individuals and the capabilities and strategy they build to resist them. The case study of "RuPaul Drag Race" is presented to show the persistence of binarism even within characters and contexts originally born as subversive movements. The transition of the drag queen from a subculture phenomenon to mainstream television demonstrates how binary concepts are imbricated in both traditional and new digital media and how it managed to redesign and align visually, emotionally, and linguistically the basic foundations of drag queens’ image and objectives. The study is enriched with an in-depth study of the dynamics and how is structured the reality, contestants’ behaviour in both social networks and TV show, judges, RuPaul’s figure and the scenic apparatus that surrounds the studios.