Drag Beyond the Body: Trixie Motel and Spatial Identity as Performance
Abstract
In this paper, I analyze how drag queen Trixie Mattel utilizes fantasy themes to push the limits of drag performance based on overlapping performative principles of art, comedy, gender, and popular culture. I explore the deeper rhetorical implications of the eight-episode docuseries Trixie Motel in relation to how social understandings of artistic drag can be broadened according to the four performative dimensions. I start by examining the rhetorical and artistic composition of the Trixie persona for interconnecting relationships between art, comedy, gender, and popular culture to ultimately understand Trixie Mattel as a living mastery of comedic references to camp femininity. Next, I assess how this assumption unfolds throughout the documented creation of the Trixie Motel, a project that continues the Trixie rhetorical fantasy through spatial identity rather than the usual medium of bodily art. I then analyze the underlying implications of the project according to predecessors in RuPaul’s Drag Race challenges. I conclude with a discussion on what the Trixie Motel project means for drag at large. Trixie’s newest business venture into the motel renovation scene suggests two new ideas: first, she has exemplified a way in which drag can be performed without a presence of the body, and second, the definition of drag can now include a wider range of exaggerated performances. Before now, drag has typically been understood as a gendered performance of a persona. The Trixie Motel now broadens that definition to be any performance by any entity that uses fantasy themes to elevate the intersection of art, comedy, gender and culture.
Subject
Identitydrag
fantasy theme
rhetoric
performance
home renovation
LGBTQ+
gender identity
interior design
bodily art
burlesque
popular culture
Trixie Mattel
Citation
Kim, Lora Christine (2023). Drag Beyond the Body: Trixie Motel and Spatial Identity as Performance. Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /200173.