RuPaul's Drag Race: Masquerade & Discourse Analysis Bekah Hubstenberger



What is RuPaul's Drag Race?

RuPaul's Drag Race is a competition reality show, currently on its sixth season. The show airs on the Logo network, self described as, "entertaining a social savvy audience of gay trendsetters..." as well as attracting "a straight audience that wants to be ahead of the curve." The premise of the show is that 14 contestants will compete for the title of America's Next Drag Superstar as well as a prize package, which this season includes $100,000. Each week the contestants perform two challenges, a mini-challenge, and a main challenge. Winning the mini challenge can give a contestant an advantage for the main challenge. For example, on Episode 10, Season 6, "Drag my Wedding" the main challenge was for the contestants to makeover a straight man into a drag queen for their wedding. The winner of the mini-challenge was given the power to assign the men to the contestants. To culminate every episode is a fashion show, and creating the outfits are sometimes part of the challenge but is more often just themed. For example on Episode 11, Season 6, the queens main challenge was to create three main looks and debut them on the runway as well as perform a group lip sync with choreography for the judges. The categories were, "Banjee Girl Bling", "Platinum Card Executive Realness", and "Dripping in Jewels Eleganza". Each week there is one contestant who wins the main challenge and two contestants who did the worst at the challenge are up for elimination. Elimination is ultimately decided in a "Lip Sync For Your Life", where the two bottom contestants do a lip sync performance to the same song, and whoever performs better is granted a reprieve and stays another week and the loser, "sashays away".


Contact Me: Bekah Hubstenberger

 

 


This Webpage was produced in COM 784: Visual Communication,

a class taught by Bob Bednar in the Communication Studies Department at Southwestern University