Ground Level: RuPaul's Drag Race and Globalisation w/ Helton Levy and Mariya Levitanus

Shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race have brought queer TV into the mainstream of global media. Scholars of everyday political economy highlight how both producing and watching television shape global queer identities. Dominant media channels promote specific, standardised ways of being queer, often celebrated as victories of LGBTQAI+ visibility, yet at the cost of erasing alternative expressions. 

Global media tend to privilege urban, Western narratives, marginalising rural, local, and Global Majority experiences. Queerness is often framed as progressive only when detached from place, tradition, or indigeneity. Popular formats, particularly in drag, have commodified queerness, smoothing over linguistic and visual differences for global appeal. 

Still, alternative forms of queer expression continue to surface across TV, art, digital platforms, and community spaces, offering more grounded and resistant modes of visibility. 

Concepts discussed: commodification, globalisation, queerness, visibility and invisibility, resistance. 

Host: Dr Frank Maracchione, SOAS University of London. 

Speakers: 

Dr Mariya Levitanus is a Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Edinburgh, as well as a queer activist and psychotherapist from Kazakhstan. Her earlier research explored the everyday narratives of queer individuals in Kazakhstan, while her current work focuses on Russian queer and trans* migration to Central Asia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

Dr Helton Levy is a London-based journalist, lecturer, researcher, and visual artist. They work as lecturer in digital and visual media at London Metropolitan University. They are the author of Globalized Queerness, and The Internet, Politics, and Inequality in Contemporary Brazil: Peripheral Media. They have published widely on digital activist cultures, social media discourse, queer media, and Latin American studies. 

Reading list: 

Butler, J. (2015). Notes toward a performative theory of assembly. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 

Levitanus, M., & Kislitsyna, P. (2024). “Why wave the flag?”: (in)visible queer activism in authoritarian Kazakhstan and Russia. Central Asian Survey, 43(1), 12–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2023.2234955 

Levy, H. (2023). Globalized Queerness: Identities and Commodities in Queer Popular Culture. Bloomsbury Publishing.

N-ost - border crossing journalism. (2023). Behind the Mask: Contemporary Drag Culture in Kazakhstan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtgXoysv5Tw 

Pereira, P. P. G. (2019). Reflecting on Decolonial Queer. GLQ, 25(3), 403–429. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-7551112

Schramm, C. (2012). Queering Latin American coloniality and the cross-cultural production of racialised sexualities. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 33(3), 347-362. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.673476 

Sultanalieva, S. (2023). ”Nomadity of Being” in Central Asia : Narratives of Kyrgyzstani Women’s Rights Activists (1st ed. 2023.). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5446-7 

Corrigendum: In the episode, we incorrectly mentioned January 2026 as the signing date of Kazakhstan’s anti‑LGBTQ law. The correct date is 30 December 2025. 

This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Chris Saltmarsh, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Frank Maracchione with support from Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.