Russian Bodies We Can Laugh About?
- Autor(en)
- Maria Katharina Wiedlack
- Abstrakt
This article problematizes ethnic drag in the popular US-American reality TV-series RuPaul’s DragRace. Building on prior works that address the racialization of Black contestants and Contestants of Color, it critically investigates the representation of white female Russianness through the Drag Race season seven and Drag Race AllStar season two contestant Katya. It makes visible how Russian femininity becomes meaningful through performance, style and mannerisms. Reading Katya’s embodiment of Russianness against the context of RuPaul’s Drag Race and liberal gay progressive discourses around the concept and artistic form of drag in general, the article aims to demonstrate that although Katya’s performance is a form of ethnic drag that could have the potential to unmask racialized signification as cultural construct, it ultimately fails to do so. Moreover, by employing the concepts of orientalism and racialization as well as homonationalism the case study of Katya shows the covert racialization of (female) Russian bodies as one aspect of homonationalism that depends on the very visible and widespread critique of Russian homophobia.
- Organisation(en)
- Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
- Band
- 1
- Seiten
- 69-88
- Anzahl der Seiten
- 20
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111013435-005
- Publikationsdatum
- 06-2024
- Peer-reviewed
- Ja
- ÖFOS 2012
- 602005 Amerikanistik, 605004 Kulturwissenschaft, 508021 Medienwissenschaft, 504014 Gender Studies
- Link zum Portal
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/russian-bodies-we-can-laugh-about(3f4d11c1-9dea-4597-b3d3-7c339023f091).html