When the Margin Reaches the Mainstream: A Case in Drag

Abstract

American culture represents a good example of the contamination of mainstream literature, cinema and television with historically marginalized contents. This bigger presence of underground themes in products intended for mainstream consumption indicates progress, but also entails a shift in content. The paper focuses on this dynamic in the context of LGBTQ+ culture, which contaminates and is contaminated by the mainstream. I will observe the implications of marginality reaching the mainstream through the case of on-screen gender-non-conforming portrayals, discussing the progress and problematic results generated by contaminating the mainstream with the marginal through on-screen representations of drag and drag culture, exploring how the element of drag has appeared in mainstream and not-as-mainstream films and TV series.