Date of Award
2-10-2009
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Shirlene Holmes - Co-Chair
Second Advisor
Dr. Kameelah Martin Samuel - Co-Chair
Third Advisor
Dr. Chris Kocela
Abstract
In this thesis project, I investigate the drama of Perry and introduce his dramaturgy into the academic landscape. As the critical discourse is shifting towards the realm of popular culture, we must begin to locate several discourses at work in the drama of quite possibly the most popular, visible, and financially successful African American playwright of the twenty-first century, if not of all time. Drawing on gender and queer theory, I offer a theoretical discussion about subversive and non-subversive drag acts, and I question the degree to which Perry appropriates drag in a politically liberating or constraining manner. Moreover, I examine the gender and sexual politics in Madea’s Family Reunion to illustrate the ways in which I read Perry as offering a very conflicted dialectic between activist aspirations and oppressive tendencies, particularly in regard to questions of safe feminist spaces, motherhood, female self-sufficiency, female self-definition, domestic violence, and homosexuality.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/1059508
Recommended Citation
Lyle, Timothy Scott, ""Check with Yo' Man First; Check with Yo' Man": Perry Appropriates Drag as a Tool to Recirculate Patriarchal Ideology." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2009.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/1059508