Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Becoming Queen: Voice and Identity in Drag Lip-Sync Performance

Becoming Queen: Voice and Identity in Drag Lip-Sync Performance

Bird, Jacob Mallinson

Hardcover

General DramaPerformance ArtWorld Music

PREORDER - Expected ship date October 28, 2027

ISBN13: 9798765127506
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Oct 28 2027
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.00
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Exploring the academically uncharted domain of drag lip-sync performance through ethnographic research with five London-based drag queens, Becoming Queen theorizes lip-syncing both as a unique performative medium and as a mode of self-construction for the performing queen.

Popularly reviled and publicly ridiculed, lip-syncing is most often associated with inauthenticity, fakery, and deception: why then has it become the ne plus ultra of drag performance? Far from the criticism of stars like Britney and Milli Vanilli, drag queens have elevated lip-syncing to the apex of their craft, praised for their skill, ingenuity, humour, and heart. Becoming Queen asks how this came to pass and interrogates why lip-syncing is such a powerful art form, focusing on the lives and work of five London-based drag performers. This text approaches lip-syncing with two questions in mind: 1) what is lip-syncing? and 2) why are drag queens so drawn to this mode of performance, over any other?

Drawing on voice studies, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and queer theory, Becoming Queen dissects lip-syncing as a mode of voicing. Jacob Mallinson Bird argues that lip-syncing is, in fact, not dissimilar to many of our more quotidian acts of speech: unveiling lip-syncing reveals more about the strangeness of voice than it does the fallacy of lip-syncing.

Moreover, rather than an alienating act of deception, lip-syncing in such contexts can be a self-affirming performance, one in which the performing queen speaks alongside her own queer idols and pop stars, stitching together multiple bodies and voices into a patchwork of polyvocality. It underscores the stakes of lip-syncing in London's contemporary drag scene: what lip-syncing is, and why it matters.

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