“Songs are like tattoos.” In the hours after news of David Berman’s tragic death swept across social media in August 2019, I found myself remembering Joni Mitchell’s memorable line about…
Contemporaries Essays
Introduction
David Berman — musician, poet, accidental comedian, non-accidental philosopher — released seven albums, one book of poetry, a collection of cartoons and a handful of EPs. He didn’t tour his…
Drag is the Medium [Outro]
In the lightly edited interview that follows, Ian Morrison — who performs as Brittany Lynn, and is the Don of Philly’s Drag Mafia — says his priority is for folks…
Piñata Drag: Crystal Methyd and The Pleasures of Quirky Latinx Aesthetics
It’s not simply that the couch juts into the camera’s frame, but that it is a bronze couch. Bronze with a garish sheen. A glossy bronze befitting a vintage 1970s…
Drag Queens Everywhere
There is an unobvious potentiality in Drag Race’s travels, one that sits alongside the negative and more obvious impacts of exporting “Americana on steroids” and invites us, perhaps, to approach…
“I Love You Dearly, Bitch”
RuPaul’s cultural impact in the Philippines is unmistakable. This past Fall, Drag Race Philippines released its first season and announced the winner, Precious Paula Nicole. Following the first season’s success,…
Queer Childhoods and Drag Race
RuPaul’s Drag Race cares about queer kids. Drag queens in the final episodes give advice to their younger selves. The show recites “drag family values” of accepting LGBTQ+ youth and…
Drag Queens in Stars and Stripes
The prerequisite for RuPaul’s form of queerness is nationalism. As many queer theorists from Judith Butler to Jack Halberstam to Jasbir Puar have noted, the horizon of LGBTQ liberation has…
Bijuriya Chamke!: Curating my Drag Sound
Intro: Choices! Creating a drag persona involves making countless aesthetic, artistic, conceptual and political choices.1 In the early stages, as drag performers, our first choices might be circumstantial, random, or…
Can I Get an Amen? or: Citation and the Speech of Fantasy
Though it marks the end of each episode, RuPaul’s request for “an amen” is where I want to start because it distills, for me, the fundamental fantasy that animates the…