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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until May 05, 2026

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RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Canceling Culture & the Digital Disposability of its Disrespectable, Non-Homonormative Subjects

Alkhalifa, Ali M
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1712931572937755

Abstract Details

2024, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
One recent internet phenomenon that has ignited discussions on social media and in academic circles is the topic of cancel and call-out culture. To bridge this gap, I map a cultural and theoretical lineage of digital activism and cancel culture, which intersects with black feminist studies, racial capitalism scholarship, and feminist media discourses. Within this lineage, I examine the tensions between respectability politics, homonormativity, and Foucauldian panopticism to contextualize the disproportionate policing and hate speech lobbied at black and brown queer bodies online, alongside their popular representations in the media. Furthermore, I conduct a digitally ethnographic case study that collects and analyzes instances of fan cancellations involving various contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race as evidence supporting my claims that the show encourages the fanbase to act as “cancellors,” regulating how queer individuals are allowed to express themselves on the reality television giant. Interrogating respectability further, I consider how RPDR devises its own canceling culture, funneling a homonormative and white supremacist gaze that year after year, season after season, profits from and perpetuates the social disposability of disrespectable queer persons of color. By analyzing how Drag Race constructs a “canceling culture” through its mise en scéne, construction of on-screen power dynamics, and fan-polling, I intend to demonstrate that RuPaul and production company, World of Wonder, invite fans to evaluate and eliminate queens alongside the show’s panel of judges, depoliticizing the transgressive potential of the camp representations the show platforms by encouraging the disposal of and minimization of its queer talent.
Mytheli Sreenivas (Committee Member)
Linda Mizejewski (Advisor)
75 p.
Film Studies; Gender Studies; Womens Studies
RuPaul's Drag Race; cancel culture; homonormativity; respectability politics; panopticism; disposability; reality television; digital media studies; television studies; fandom studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Alkhalifa, A. M. (2024). RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Canceling Culture & the Digital Disposability of its Disrespectable, Non-Homonormative Subjects [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1712931572937755

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Alkhalifa, Ali. RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Canceling Culture & the Digital Disposability of its Disrespectable, Non-Homonormative Subjects . 2024. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1712931572937755.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Alkhalifa, Ali. "RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Canceling Culture & the Digital Disposability of its Disrespectable, Non-Homonormative Subjects ." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2024. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1712931572937755

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1712931572937755
© 2024, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Canceling Culture & the Digital Disposability of its Disrespectable, Non-Homonormative Subjects by Ali M Alkhalifa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.