Core Post V -JAE-

 Core Post V     

    

    Originally I was going to write about the TV show Glee (2009-2015) and link it to this week’s readings. I was 21 years old when the show premiered, but found resonance with many of the happenings that the fictional high school cast was experiencing. But then this phrase popped into my head, “Racers start your engines, and may the best drag queen win!” At that moment, I realized that RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009-present) might be even more ripe for this week’s themes as well as readings. 

    Drag Race launched on Logo, a Viacom subsidiary geared towards gay & lesbian audiences, with little to no content considering other gender and sexuality minorities. In these respects, as Caldwell noted with BET for Black audiences, Viacom was once again superficially buffering the content portfolios against accusations of lacking diversity. Logo was a premium cable channel, a competitor with Here TV, whose content was not syndicated onto Viacom’s more prolific channel offerings. Thus, limiting access to these diverse contents to the affluent who could afford to buy the channel, in addition to being privileged to know of its existence. Viacom was trying to capitalize on gays and lesbians being demographics stereotypically imbued with excessive expendable income. But, Drag Race would garner enough global attention that it was moved networks to VH1 during its eighth season as Logo was being phased out. 

    But the legacy of convergence strategies employed on Drag Race long preceded the network transfer to VH1. On seasons 1 & 2, the show enjoyed a sponsorship deal with Absolut vodka, where the top three or four queens would present outfits on the runway, representing flavors of Absolut vodka. Afterwards, the same queens filmed official Absolut vodka commercials that ran on Logo. Analogous deals were made with cosmetic brands, furniture brands, travel brands, and more. Additionally, the audition processes for early seasons (at least in Southern California) involved producers going to clubs and inviting local talent to submit audition tapes that meet specific criteria, and then promising queens would be invited to an in-person audition in LA. The contents from those queen’s tapes would be spliced together for a special “RuCap” recap episode of the queens that almost made the cut (I’m proud to say that footage I filmed for a friend’s audition is in the season 3 RuCap episode). 

    In some respects this cherry picking of content to get people excited for future audition cycles is arguably a form of textual poaching. Furthermore, since the network transfer to VH1, Drag Race has become increasingly responsive to fan criticism and demands, while requesting fan participation and promotion through hashtags and remix cultures. Not to mention, the show has international spin-offs without RuPaul, and international counterparts with RuPaul, two drag conventions (LA & NYC), an official podcast, streaming app deals beyond Viacom/Paramount+, and other productions which converge in ways other shows could only hope for. These developments echo and reflect many of the concerns Prof. Jenkins states about the media needing to embrace convergence opportunities to differentiate themselves and create more avenues to pursue longevity. In the end, for this particular show currently, more is more, but where does the line of fan fatigue and spreading too thin begin to emerge?