The Ru of Law: how legal systems, principles, and aesthetics are queered and ‘dragged up’ in RuPaul’s Drag Race

This paper explores the jurisprudential concepts of the reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race (RPDR): how legal norms and aesthetics are intrinsic to the show’s structure, and how in turn RPDR queers, or ‘drags up’, legal language, symbols and concepts. We consider the jurisprudence of RPDR across three frames: (1) the structuring of its legal system through the framework of the reality competition, its rules, and the role of RuPaul as judge, jury and executioner; (2) legal and moral principles: how values including liberty and equality are represented in RPDR; (3) RPDR’s court system: how law is performed, and its aesthetics and culture parodied and reproduced. Through RPDR, concepts of legality are queered, manipulated and reproduced in ways that both reinforce and reproduce those legal concepts and aesthetics. We argue however that RPDR is unable to realize its potential for radically queer, transformative, counter-normative change.