Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Celebrity Studies on 20/05/2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19392397.2020.1765101
Accepted author manuscript, 320 KB, PDF document
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘No one is trash, no one is garbage, no one is cancelled’
T2 - the cultural politics of trauma, recovery and rage in RuPaul’s Drag Race
AU - Ferreday, D.
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Celebrity Studies on 20/05/2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19392397.2020.1765101
PY - 2020/10/1
Y1 - 2020/10/1
N2 - Historically, Drag Race has mobilised stories about homophobia, family violence, racism and femmephobia that produce drag as a technology of recovery: a means of rising above trauma, in line with media scholarship on the centrality of personal trauma narratives in reality TV. Queer scholars have argued that this imperative to tell positive stories silences more melancholic, ‘negative’ voices; of the tension between the need to speak of ‘damage’, and a ‘related and contrary desire to affirm queer existence’. Seen as the embodiment of the histrionic, dramatic drag queen villainess and dubbed ‘the whistle-blower of the season’, Season 10 queen The Vixen subverted familiar trauma narratives, engendering an opening up around narratives of trauma, racism and transmisogyny. This paper examines The Vixen’s absence and her re-emergence on social media, reading her viral tweet declaring ‘no-one is cancelled’ as a provocation that unsettles dominant accounts of mental health, survival and trauma. I argue that in speaking up for the ‘trash, garbage and cancelled’ subject, The Vixen speaks to Heather Love’s call for a queer politics that consider injury as something that might be ‘lived with, not necessarily fixed’. In this sense, her flawed star persona resonates with a mad scholarship that constituting a productive mad and queer politics of vulnerability.
AB - Historically, Drag Race has mobilised stories about homophobia, family violence, racism and femmephobia that produce drag as a technology of recovery: a means of rising above trauma, in line with media scholarship on the centrality of personal trauma narratives in reality TV. Queer scholars have argued that this imperative to tell positive stories silences more melancholic, ‘negative’ voices; of the tension between the need to speak of ‘damage’, and a ‘related and contrary desire to affirm queer existence’. Seen as the embodiment of the histrionic, dramatic drag queen villainess and dubbed ‘the whistle-blower of the season’, Season 10 queen The Vixen subverted familiar trauma narratives, engendering an opening up around narratives of trauma, racism and transmisogyny. This paper examines The Vixen’s absence and her re-emergence on social media, reading her viral tweet declaring ‘no-one is cancelled’ as a provocation that unsettles dominant accounts of mental health, survival and trauma. I argue that in speaking up for the ‘trash, garbage and cancelled’ subject, The Vixen speaks to Heather Love’s call for a queer politics that consider injury as something that might be ‘lived with, not necessarily fixed’. In this sense, her flawed star persona resonates with a mad scholarship that constituting a productive mad and queer politics of vulnerability.
KW - RuPaul’s Drag Race
KW - black rage
KW - personal trauma
KW - queer existence
KW - celebrity damage
U2 - 10.1080/19392397.2020.1765101
DO - 10.1080/19392397.2020.1765101
M3 - Journal article
VL - 11
SP - 464
EP - 478
JO - Celebrity Studies
JF - Celebrity Studies
SN - 1939-2397
IS - 4
ER -