Snatching an archive: Gay citation, queer belonging and the production of pleasure in RuPaul’s Drag Race

Abstract

Abstract Since its 2009 debut, RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–present) has been a site of contact between the worlds of subcultural performance and media industries. Of particular interest to critics has been its uneasy placement of queer networks of belonging within the competitive, individualist space of a reality competition series. Building upon recent scholarship on reality television and affect, this article analyses the transfer of pleasures among RuPaul, her queens and viewers by focusing on Snatch Game, a recurring challenge in which competitors impersonate gay icons. It argues that, through these performances of queer citation, Snatch Game makes a case for the continuing importance of queer mediations of dominant culture – often in ways that are at odds with the show’s neo-liberal ethos. In doing so, Snatch Game documents not only a canon of gay icons but also the networks of pleasure and belonging fabricated through their queer circulation.