THE THEATRICALITY OF THE EVERYDAY THROUGH COSTUME EXPRESSIONS OF FANDOM AND DRAG

Abstract

This article-based dissertation, comprising six published research texts, investigates the ways the male costumed body performs theatricality in non-theatre settings. It does so by looking at costume as a means of expressing non-normative gender, researched through two distinct perspectives: the costume expressions of fandom and drag. More specifically, the dissertation uses as cases studies: (i) the regalia of fans of the Canadian football team the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and (ii) drag display in both professional and amateur situations in Canada and Finland. My research draws from theories such as Peter Boenisch's (2012) concept of relational dramaturgy, Alan Read's (1993) concept of theatricality and the ambit of the everyday, John R. Suler's (2016) idea of performance and identity in social media, Eric Anderson's (2005) and Amir-Ben Porat's (2010) research on masculinities and fandom in sports, and Rachel Hann's (2017) concept of normative dress and conscious othering. These voices inform my understanding of the theatrical and emblematic potentialities of the costumed material body in real life and the immaterial body in virtual spaces, through acts of 'costuming' the self. The study explores two research questions: 1) how does the performance of the male body create a space for theatricality through costume expressions off the stage? 2) how does the consideration of the queered male body in social media platforms advance new paradigms for theorizing the notion of costume in the context of the everyday? These questions form the basis of the thesis by researching three lines of enquiry: a) costuming expressions outside conventional theatre spaces; b) the queered male body, specifically, the male body in drag in real life contexts; and c) the theatricality of the everyday, understood here as an action emanating from an 'everyday event'. The thesis examines dressing up in everyday situations as an act of 'othering' by means of adornment through individuated sartorial expressions, generated by creative whim, fashion, and similar systems of commodification (Hann 2017), that [re]gender the male body, transforming it into a theatrical instance. Using a qualitative ethnographic research methodology grounded in two perspectives—the sartorial expressions of football fans and drag display in professional and amateur everyday situations—and based on case studies, I examine representations of gender performed through acts of 'costuming' in a variety of spaces, such as football stadiums, the street, social media platforms and reality TV. This dissertation's findings present the body and costumed expressions of gender, within the ambit of the everyday, as the signifiers and producers of a process, rather than a specific event; this stimulates new knowledge regarding the way we spectate and employ theatricality in regards to non-normative gender expressions and societal assumptions of gender off the stage.