RuPaul’s Drag Race is viewed by many as responsible for popularizing the art of drag around the world. Remakes have appeared in diverse national settings, including Australia, Denmark, the Philippines, and the UK. Formats have been seen as evidence of growing globalization in the television industry. The concept of “glocalization,” a portmanteau term developed in the 1980s to signify the modification of products and services to suit local audiences, is a more appropriate framework through which to view TV formatting. This article considers the combination of glocalization with queer caricature (drag comic impersonation) via a regular feature of the Drag Race formula: the “Snatch Game” in which drag artists compete by impersonating celebrities. Taking RuPaul’s Drag Race UK as its main case study, it explores how Snatch Game performances evidence differing layers of “glocalization,” in its parody of figures from the local/national to the transnational.
Hannah Andrews (Fri,) studied this question.