Ethnography Paper

Well, it had to come some time. Yay, research paper. Alright, well the main discourse community I’ve been tossing around in my head is the drag community, namely the one here in San Diego that ranges from the smaller, less polished community here on campus to the more professional, cleaned up drag bar community. I love drag and I love drag queens; it’s a world that I have come to admire and respect and I want to know more. I want to give them the respect and notoriety they deserve while deepening my own knowledge of their world as well. Drag has always intrigued me, especially really well done drag. Some of these men are absolutely beautiful! And the nice thing about drag is that it’s always done with a huge amount of respect for women; they understand the price of beauty and all the scrutiny women are put under and celebrate what makes women special. I know a fair amount about the drag community, although there are a few things I could stand to learn about. Most drag queens, especially some of the queens who’ve been doing drag for a long time, look up to queens like RuPaul and Divine because they paved the way for modern queens to be more prevalent in movies, on TV, and in mainstream media. Queens also pull form famous divas like Liza Minelli, Whitney Houston, Madonna, etc. as well as cult classic movies like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Too Wong Foo, and Showgirls. I know that drag queens are usually gay men who consider dressing up as women an art form and spend most of their lives perfecting it. Some are dancers, some are comedians, some are master seamstresses/ makeup artists, some are pageant girls, the list goes on. They have their own language, slang, and other communicative practices that my friends and I use on a daily basis. If you’ve ever heard anybody say, “YAAAAAAAAASSSS QUEEN!” that’s a drag thing. I’m headed toward providing a deeper understanding of the drag world and sharing that with my classmates. I will research some of the movies, the origins of drag, and the current drag scene. I’ve also been considering maybe the world of RPGs (role-playing games), such as Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder. Why? Well my boyfriend was really into it for a while and I tried to play a few times but didn’t really understand it much. However, creating storylines for quests and stuff I found to be pretty cool and I know there’s still a pretty large community of people who still play on a weekly basis. RPG communities definitely have their own language and communicative practices that I’m actually eager to learn about. I’ve always been interested in wizards, magic, mythical creatures, all that jazz; I love Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings which is basically just a really long D&D quest. RPGs are kind of like live action video games and they can teach one how to strategize. I also like that you can create your own character and give it its own little personality and you can have magic and all that good stuff. I was an elf the last time I played and the entire time I was picturing Legolas just kicking orc ass and taking names. I know that most RPG-ers are young men (usually single unless you’re my boyfriend) that enjoy spending time creating imaginary worlds, playing video games, and things of that nature. RPGs take up a whole day and sometimes the quest will take a whole week or longer to complete. Each character has certain levels of magic, strength, charisma, etc. that change as the game goes on. There’s a dungeon master who creates the quest and decides what happens and what other players can and can’t do. There are usually a variety of dice used to decide on the success of a turn or an element of a character or whatever else the DM deems necessary. Sometimes players draw their course out and mark their characters with figurines, like a board game. I’m also headed for a better understanding of the games, how they actually work, and the effort that goes into making quests. I will research the origins of the game as well as the people who still play it and how it’s changed over the years.