ABSTRACT

This essay explores the mediagenic drag style of Willam Belli, a contestant from Season 4 of Ru Paul’s Drag Race (2012) and a YouTube performer, as a set of reflections on navigating the ‘demotic turn’ (Graeme Turner) in contemporary celebrity. I propose that Willam’s drag foregrounds the work (labour) and working conditions that lie behind the ‘werq’ on Drag Race. His drag both exemplifies and comments upon the feminised ‘labour of visibility’ (Brooke Erin Duffy’s concept) and practices of self-commodification that the contemporary attention economy demands, particularly of girls, women, and feminine/femme/feminised subjects. Taking up Judith Butler’s (1990) suggestion that drag reveals the processes by which gendered identities are constructed, I argue that Willam’s drag seems to reveal how the ‘labour of visibility’ is currently constructing contemporary femininities. His output constitutes an embedded, enmeshed, and complicit commentary on the construction of a commodified, hypersexualised version of femininity in the contemporary economies of reality television, social media, and digital self-entrepreneurship.

摘要

本文探讨了Ru Paul的Drag Race（2012）的第4季参赛者和YouTube表演者Willam Belli的媒体拖动风格，这是对当代名人中“ demotic turn”（Graeme Turner）的思考。我建议，威拉姆（Willam）的拖曳将拖曳赛中“ werq”背后的工作（劳动）和工作条件作为前瞻。他的阻力既体现了女性化的“可见性劳动”（布鲁克·艾琳·达菲的概念），又体现了当代注意力经济尤其是女孩，妇女和女性/女性/女性化主体所要求的自我商品化实践。采纳朱迪思·巴特勒（Judith Butler，1990）的关于阻力揭示了性别认同建构过程的建议，我认为维拉姆的阻力似乎揭示了“能见度劳动”目前是如何建构当代女性气质的。他的作品构成了在现实电视，社交媒体和数字自我创业的当代经济中，女性化的变态，性欲过剩版本的构建的嵌入，陷入和共谋的评论。