MONA'S REALNESS: EXPOSED! BROUGHT TO YOU BY TWISTED TEA
Channel: Dani Loose
Date: 2016-06-09

“I was a child of television. … I instinctively knew just how to turn the volume up, how to pitch myself, and how to speak in sound bites. In short, I knew how to speak the language of television. Fluently.” —RuPaul, Lettin It All Hang Out

This video was made for the TESC program "MEDIAWORKS: Power and Difference on Screen(s)" 

My video is an attempt to deconstruct and critique the cultural institution of "RuPaul's Drag Race", questioning what happens when drag moves from the gay bar to national syndication. I assert that the RuPaul empire seeks to reinforce hegemony instead of subverting it, commercializing an otherwise radical medium of queer art, and exotifying the queer subject. I seek to parody the plight of a particular contestant, Laganja Estranja, a drag queen in season 6 who gets called out for her lack of authenticity in the face of the cameras on the spinoff "RuPaul's Drag Race: Untucked" which catalogs the "behind the scenes" drama of the show. This confrontation inadvertently points out the skeletal system of the program, illustrating the paradoxes lying within the show's logic as Laganja has created her entire persona for total efficacy of the RuPaul brand. LaGanja's call out raises questions about "authenticity" reaching outside the bounds of the show, ultimately leading us to question how anyone could ever the "real" them in the face of the apparatus, financial incentive, and in the performance of an alternate drag persona.
I was greatly inspired by Joan Braderman's "Joan Does Dynasty", in which she chroma key's herself into the show "Dynasty" while reading a comprehensive feminist critique essay of the show. Despite Braderman's biting analysis, her appreciation for the show is still very apparent. RuPaul's Drag Race holds a deep place in my heart, however, the show has had a tumultuous relationship with responding to criticism regarding issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality to the point where RuPaul has explicitly states on the show not to contact  her when she plays into problematic ideology. RuPaul has a very large responsibility overseeing what essentially has become the be-all-end-all drag competition, bringing queens from all different scenes inevitably works at many intersections of identity, yet Drag Race rarely critically engages with this.
Like the infamous Laganja Estranja call-out of season 6, I critique Drag Race not because I hate it, I critique it because I love it and want to see it do better within the larger context of queer culture and in the pop culture canon. As queer media rises higher to the surface to the hegemonic mainstream, aspects of our culture become commodified by media conglomerates and corporations and thusly lose all meaning and "radical" energy. If queerness is a function of operating outside the hegemonic mainstream, how do we keep aspects of our culture intact through larger visibility without exotifying the queer subject? With the emergence of the RuPaul empire, I fear that drag (and the particular brand of performative faggotry that Drag Race has capitalized upon) sometimes becomes a medium for unaccountability, a safe conduit for transmisogyny, racism, and sexism excused under the guise of alternate persona. Drag is a medium that holds unbridled radical potential, but this will never be achieved within the commercial realm. 

STARRING
MONA REAL AS HERSELF
DANNY LOOSE AS EVERYONE ELSE