![]() Although cabaret has often been marginalized in favor of mainstream cultural productions, like film, it is precisely its peripheral nature that affords these artists the creative means to enact more tolerant visions of the sexual, racial and gender spectrums that exist within Mexico’s borders. ![]() Employing a framework that blends literary analysis with Performance Theory, Queer and Gender Studies, Dance, Ethnomusicology and Film Studies, I focus on how Tongolele, Tito Vasconcelos and Las Reinas Chulas use music, dance and drag aesthetics in their cabaret to challenge deeply entrenched definitions of mexicanidad, proliferated by Mexico’s Golden Age Cinema (1930-1960) and its on-screen idols. Hence, this dissertation examines models of subversive communication by mapping a genealogy of performance. Moreover, Mexican cabaret is a unique example of the nation’s tolerance of dissident voices artists have not faced violent oppression like in other Latin American countries such as Argentina or Chile. Since taking root in Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century, cabaret has flourished by enabling artists to communicate socio-political critiques in overt and covert ways to their audiences. In this paper, the genderplay of masculinity and femininity is discussed with respect to intersectionality in addressing both the black queerness of RuPaul’s identity, male privilege and resulting transphobia that RuPaul has been critiqued for by academia and popular audiences. In doing so, he strategically performs, engages and exchanges between representations of the gender binary in a musical, visual, and symbolic format as a tactic for authority within drag culture. Upon analyzing a series of music videos seen on both RuPaul’s Drag Race and songs released on his 2016 album “Butch Queen”, this paper explores how RuPaul interchangeably performs both masculinities and femininities to portray himself as an iconic figurehead in popular culture. As the only drag queen to maintain an active career as a recording artist, this paper explores how RuPaul uses his cisgender male privilege within visual media to legitimize and uphold his reign as the leading figure in drag artistry. This medium provides RuPaul the outlet to self-identify him/herself as idol, icon, leader, matriarch and transcendent drag mother. In these, both queer and non-queer consumers and audiences are entertained by a seven foot tall, high-heeled RuPaul who commonly preaches love, acceptance and understanding. Of particular importance are his collection of music videos to accompany his numerous hit singles and albums. With escalating fame in the mid-90s and in 2009, along with the development of the popular reality television show, “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, the commercialism of RuPaul’s “drag empire” has elevated the visibility of drag culture into larger public arenas. Since gaining international recognition as the most globally recognized and celebrated drag artist, RuPaul, the self-proclaimed “Supermodel of the World”, has used dance music as a platform to express his/her drag persona, gender expression and identity as a queer person of colour. Instead of subverting gender norms, the show's capacity to create and disseminate legitimate and illegitimate modes of embodiment both reinforces and continues to shape already existing social hierarchies at the intersection of race, class, sexuality and gender. It is our contention that through the manipulation of physiology, the contestants in RuPaul's Drag Race render corporeality a form of costuming that simultaneously etiolates drag and commodifies the body. Our examination of RuPaul's Drag Race will draw on these insights by putting them into conversation with Catherine Rottenberg and Matt Sparke's work on the embodiment of neo-liberal market ideology in a way that speaks to Ali MacLaurin and Aoife Monks' conceptualization of the everyday through what Marcel Mauss refers to as techniques of the body. ![]() This brings into stark relief the continuing relevance of both bell hooks and Judith Butler's early theoretical interventions into the world of drag. Drag Race commodifies the body through performances of drag that simultaneously attempt to subvert as they reify and fetishize hegemonic expressions of white, ruling-class femininity. In appropriating the political history of drag culture as both social commentary and activism, RuPaul's Drag Race silences the resistance to hegemonic gender binaries that is characteristic of the origins of radical drag. This article explores the spectacularized commodification of the queer body that takes place in RuPaul's Drag Race.
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