Megan Volpert

Hendrik Kempt

The first truly philosophical exploration of the drag queen in the context of this ground-breaking reality TV showAs RuPaul has said, this is the Golden Age of Drag-and that's chiefly the achievement of RuPaul's Drag Race, which in its eleventh year is more popular than ever, and has now become fully mainstream in its appeal. The show has an irresistible allure for folks of all persuasions and proclivities. Yet serious or philosophical discussion of its exponential success has been rare. Now at last we have RuPaul's Drag Race and Philosophy, shining the light on all dimensions of this amazing phenomenon: theories of gender construction and identity, interpretations of RuPaul's famous quotes and phrases, the paradoxes of reality shows, the phenomenology of the drag queen, and how the fake becomes the truly authentic.Among the topics covered:? How the show's controversial contestant The Vixen was able to proclaim her own truth by challenging the conventional stereotypes of reality TV.? If, as RuPaul has taught us, all social roles are equivalent to drag, what justifies the show's almost exclusive focus on the classical drag queen?? Nietzsche's insight that the self is plural rather than singular, divided rather than unified, helps us construct a new kind of self - the "drag self."? When two fan subcultures meet: The interpenetration of RuPaul's Drag Race and Twin Peaks in "Fire Werk with Me."? The lip-sync is the final challenge of the glamorous gauntlet of RuPaul's Drag Race, a game without rules or clear expectations that forces us to think about the meaning of play.? New technologies of surveillance analyze and classify us in order to fix our identities; we can defend ourselves by creating our own masks, to preserve our privacy and define our own identities.? Drag queens and mall Santas as performances of gender roles.

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