Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Copyright?: Character Copyright on RuPaul's Drag Race

• Author: Olivia Roche
• Position: Georgetown University Law Center, J.D. expected 2023; Senior Notes Editor, Georgetown Journal of Gender & the Law; Barnard College of Columbia University, B.A. 2020
• Pages: 637-657

Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Copyright?:

Character Copyright on RuPaul’s Drag Race

OLIVIA ROCHE*

RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR) has catapulted the art of drag into the

mainstream and changed the lives of numerous drag performers in the

process. Queens often sign on to participate in the show with little more

than a well-defined, unique drag character and a dream. They fail to re-

alize what rights to their own original drag personas are relinquished to

RPDR producers when they sign the show’s Participant Agreement. This

Note discusses how ambiguity in U.S. copyright law related to character

copyright can affect drag queens and how the RPDR Participant

Agreement’s failure to explicitly address who owns what when it comes

to drag characters could force queens to kill their own characters to

appease producers. Finally, this Note proposes codifying character copy-

right within the Copyright Act to delineate how drag queens can protect

their own characters prior to signing up for the show and suggests a

default provision that treats visual characters within audiovisual works,

such as drag personas, as contributions to collective works.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638

A. TERMINOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638

B. A BRIEF HISTORY OF DRAG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638

I. CHARACTER COPYRIGHT AND DRAG QUEENS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641

A. CHARACTER COPYRIGHT OVERVIEW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641

B. ILLUSTRATION: DRAG RACE STAR KATYA AS A COPYRIGHTABLE

CHARACTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644

II. THE RPDR MONOPOLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 647

III. WHAT QUEENS AGREE TO WHEN SIGNING UP FOR RPDR. . . . . . . . . . . 649

* Georgetown University Law Center, J.D. expected 2023; Senior Notes Editor, Georgetown Journal

of Gender & the Law; Barnard College of Columbia University, B.A. 2020. © 2023, Olivia Roche. I

would like to thank Professor Jeff Schneider and Professor Andrew Gilden for their helpful comments

on earlier drafts of this Note. I would also like to thank Abigail Johnson for always being willing to chat

about all things RuPaul’s Drag Race with me and for reigniting my love of the show during 1L. Finally,

I would like to thank my mom for taking me to Provincetown when I was ten and exposing me to drag

and for instilling in me a deep appreciation for all forms of art.

637

A. THE EXCLUSIVITY PERIOD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649

B. COMPENSATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 650

C. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 650

IV. THE CASE FOR CODIFYING CHARACTER COPYRIGHT: MAKING IT CLEAR

WHAT PORTIONS OF DRAG PERSONAS ARE SIGNED AWAY TO THE

RPDR EMPIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 653

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656

INTRODUCTION

A. TERMINOLOGY

Female impersonation has been a part of theatrical performance since ancient

Greece and has served as an act of theatrical resistance and commentary on the

anxiety and fluidity surrounding gender roles in society.

1

The drag of today has

come to represent much more than just female impersonation, however. For this

reason, throughout this Note, the term “drag” will be used to refer to the art of

drag performance, which is a multidisciplinary art form involving “costuming,

makeup, and performative skills” (including, but not limited to, dance, lip-sync-

ing, acting, and comedy).

2

Carlos A. Figueroa, Comment, “OH [YES], SHE BETTA [SHOULD]!”: Dolling up Drag Queens’

Intellectual Property Rights, 28 UCLA ENT. L. REV. 127, 129 (2021) (citing Jordan Fraser, What Is a

Drag Queen?: Getting a Better Idea of the Art-Form That’s Sweeping the World, MEDIUM (Aug. 9,

2019), https://medium.com/be-unique/what-is-a-drag-queen-eb1e2d768a46).

An individual of any sexual orientation or gender iden-

tity can participate in the art of drag, but this Note will focus on “drag queens”—

performers with female-coded personas whose history is tied to LGBTQþculture

and politics.

3

Appearing on RuPaul’s Drag Race is the height of many drag

queens’ careers and opens doors to mainstream fame for members of historically

marginalized groups.

4

Fame within this multidisciplinary art form raises ques-

tions about queens’ intellectual property rights—particularly who owns the abil-

ity to publicly perform a drag character.

B. A BRIEF HISTORY OF DRAG

In East Asian theater traditions, such as Noh and Kabuki, female impersona-

tion was part of an expression of an idealized version of femininity and was not

inherently tied to homosexuality.

5

In the West, theatrical drag performance

became tied to acts of queer resistance, becoming synonymous with “mock[ing]

1. Jorge Sandoval, The RuPaul Effect: The Exploration of the Costuming Rituals of Drag Culture in

Social Media and the Theatrical Performativity of the Male Body in the Ambit of the Everyday, 26

THEATRE SYMP. 100, 100–01 (2018).

2.

3. Id.

4. See id. at 145–46.

5. Sandoval, supra note 1, at 101; Figueroa, supra note 2.

638 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 111:637