Super Troopers: The Homonormative Regime of Visibility in RuPaul’s Drag Race

If the regime of visibility is the set of norms governing the representation of certain subjects, RPDR contributes to the development of a “homonormative” and “homonationalist” regime of visibility. The chapter analyzes the tradition of the Houses of Drag Queens, kinships not based on biological bonds, but on reciprocal care and voluntary affiliation. The show’s repeated references to families and family roles (mother or sister), in fact, though not obviously referring to the traditional family, over-emphasize the notion of family and consequently blow up its very meaning, challenging the symbolic order of our society. At the same time, however, the series shows a “domesticating tendency”, namely, the attempt to adapt the notion and the practice of Drag family to rebuild national community through the assimilation of queer subjects.