Jolly Fellows (2009): Russia, Drag, and the Question of Acceptance

• In Event: Subtext or Text?: Queer Temporalities and Popular Culture

Abstract

With the queerphobic rhetoric of the Russian state bleeding into active censorship and the ban on transition, there are precious few films focusing on the lives of queer people in Russia. Jolly Fellows is based on accounts from people on the drag scene in the 1990s—the film serves as an artifact of Russian culture at the time of its filming, specifically before the adoption of a 2013 censorship law in Russia, offering an insight to the view of queerness and drag in the 2000s through the film itself. I intend to analyze the ways in which the film shows both tolerance and intolerance of the queer experience in the Russian Federation, both in the 1990s, and the 2000s.

Author

• Helen Liběna Jade Marhoul, McGill U (Canada)