By Alan Lechusza
In the era where banned books are up 30-40% nationwide overall (1,477 situations of banned books affecting 874 titles, PEN America 2023), the importance of contemporary cultural language – its use, dialectic and multi-media reference – becomes important. Pop cultural language transgresses the growing divide between academia and the modern lingua franca. In this age where print media is being swept under-the-rug, the performative linguistic acrobatics of drag queen extraordinaire Trixie Mattell brings to life the living articulations of contemporary pop language. Through her expressions, videos, music and drag queen identity – dragxplotation – Trixie Mattell challenges the status quo of formal language through her performance expression of linguistic pop cultural slang. Sociolinguist argue, through their academic works, for the compartmentalization of pop culture. As a counterpoint, Trixie Mattell provides a parfait d’ experience on how to flip-the-scrip, manipulate, reframe, and perform the contemporary canon of social linguistic terms.
Trixie Mattel is the drag queen name of Brian Michael Firkus. Trixie Mattell has a flourishing career as a singer, actor, and highly regarded drag queen personality. After winning RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars (season 3), Trixie Mattell gave American pop culture a dramatic inoculation to the current bloodline of the modern social fabric. Trixie Mattell thrives beyond the margins of post-modernism and takes a firm performative hold of assumed representations of sex, gender, and power. According to Robert H. Fiske, pop culture language has historically focused upon, “the active process of generating and circulating meanings and pleasures within a social system.” (Fiske 2011) By the outlandish expose of self – in this case the identity of a drag queen, a dragxploitation – Trixie Mattell forces circulating meanings and pleasures of pop vernaculars to be rescripted through the performative lens of queer and drag culture. The lexicon of pop culture thrives upon stability for its survival. To begin to understand the depth and breadth of the expressive arts of Trixie Mattell it becomes necessary to indulge in the glamorous delicacy of queer politics. No longer can a blind eye be turned away from Trixie Mattell’s active social dialectic statements. Pop culture is, as Fiske states, “…witnessing a turning point.” (Fiske 2011) Trixie Mattell ruptures the epistemology sociolinguist have used to define pop culture. Her caricature persona uncovers institutional fears that straddle, cross over and rupture socio-political borders. Highbrow linguistic academics find themselves in a loss for words to address, define and deal with the glaring limelight of Trixie Mattell. Exit, stage right for standard English literature, and enter center stage the discourse of Gen X, Y and Z.
Girl’s Life magazine cites the comic character Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), who states that, “[t]here is no normal. There’s just us and what we do with what we’ve been given…And if what you’ve been given isn’t like what the people around you have been given, do the world a favor and make the most of sharing everything that’s uniquely you with the rest of us.” (Roberts 2022) Trixie Mattell is the embodiment of this statement in more than the proverbial nutshell.
A recent conference held by the Sociolinguistics of Pop Culture (March 30-31, 2023), state “pop culture…in its diverse manifestations, is a ubiquitous phenomenon where the linguistic sign interacts with other modes of communication.” Trixie Mattell herself is a “diverse manifestation,” an “ubiquitous phenomenon,” and a living “linguistic sign,” that not only “interacts with other nodes of communication,” she talks to – or, rather yells at! – historic standards of scripting-the-self that forces the gazing audience to directly and without apology contend with identity signifiers in an ambivalent space outlined and colored by her glamourous lipstick.
Kian Bakhtiari states that the,
[a]nti-social algorithms,…[t]he abundance of [digital and media] information creates a poverty of attention. Finite time makes attention the most valuable commodity in the world….Social media is no longer a social experience, we have migrated into personal entertainment bubbles. There’s no shared space for public discourse and healthy disagreement. The outcome is deep divisions within democratic societies….[there’s] no room for collective memory because unlike traditional media we are not all experience the same thing at the same time. (2023)
More than a social phenomenon, Trixie Mattell is a dialectic pop icon re-writing the homogenous linguistic platform in a dynamic performative context. The lingua franca of Gen X, Y, and Z provide the necessary sociolinguistic tools to teach those who do not know what they need to know about their own discipline and its interconnectedness with social cultural expression.
Trixie Mattell’s revolution of dragxploitation is not a negative view of queer or drag culture. Rather, dragxploitation is the dynamic epicenter of drag culture that re-positions previous cultural norms. Dragxploitation is a constructed expressive realty that embodies a positive light, an accurate articulation of how performing identity touches grass (read: grounds the attention of the moment) by reframing contemporary slang and pop vernacular. It’s giving (read: just great or an awesome vibe) to realize how Trixie Mattel has broken through the firm socio-political wall smashing politically correct ideology and draws attention to the currency of queer and drag culture. Trixie Mattell scripts an era (read: modern era) through her performative representations and updates definitions of previous unspoken cultures – drag, queer -and the sexualization of the body politic. There’s no denying that Trixie Mattell slays (read: takes advantage of a situation and restates by one’s own definitions) pop culture assumptions of gender. She provides a counter to the American culture eye of queer politics, and further slays even the broadest incorporation of drag reality, all with those whipping eyelashes.
Trixie Mattell is not one who fell off, (read: left out of the public view) resides as a gatekeeper, (read: functions in control of the knowledge and reference of culture) or does a bad take, (read: presents an issue or reference that is assumed to be inconsistent with standard cultural norms) in producing a positive – and quite loud – reference of queer and drag culture and identity. She flips-the-script on being private not secret (read: one who is secure being alone, while displaying references of themselves in a voyeuristic manner). Embracing the exclusive norms of a patriarch social society, Trixie Mattell plunges her style into this cultural pool, not being secret, nor private, but, rather is upfront, direct, serious and firm about who she is, what she states and what she presents. Inverting assumed masculine signifiers, Trixie Mattell resituates contemporary pop culture into a situationship (read: an uncomfortable in-between zone where the references are not certain of their time-honored positions). These current sociolinguistic Gen X, Y, and Z terms are not the lone epistemologies of youthful discourse. Trixie Mattell exemplifies the pulse of these phrases and how they each talk back to structured language. Trixie Mattell is someone who is rizz (read: has great charisma…super engaging…[with a superstar] knack for charming others).
“Slang…[is understood as] words or phrases that have a cultural definition that is different from the literal definition.” (Shorelight 2023) Current sociolinguist remain wedded to historic literal definitions of words and phrases. Through academic re-reading, and forced rhetorical re-structuring, sociolinguist make a bad take (read: miss the mark or understanding of a point) when it comes to modern slang. “[S]lang changes constantly…where the meaning of certain word combinations are…different from their literal meaning.” (Shorelight 2023) This is the necessity of grasping the vast character traits and dynamic array of Trixie Mattell, as exemplified through her drag queen identity. Trixie Mattell’s works insure that Iykyk (read: If You Know, You Know) and if you Dkwydk (read: Don’t Know What You Don’t Know). There’s no literary middle-ground within Trixie Mattell’s performance expose. Through she may appear to be just another outlandish drag queen, it’s through her work, representation and dragxploitation that Trixie Mattell captures the core relevance of what modern sociolinguist have been trying to do with their understanding of slang vernacular. By review of any image or work by Trixie Mattell, it’s obvious to see how she eloquently points to a necessary discourse, the need for updated knowledge and direct open attention to embrace her extravagant glorified persona, regardless of the words she does, or does not speak. Trixie Mattell disturbs and dismantles the American pop lexicon one hip twist and blown kiss at a time. Ya feel me?
Sources:
Bakhtiari, Kian, 7 Cultural Trends That Will Share 2023 And Beyond. Forbes, April 30, 2023.
Fiske, Robert Hartwell. Dictionary of Unendurable English, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2011.
Mattell, Trixie, http://www.trixiemattell.com
Meehan, Kasey and Jonathan Friedman, PhD. Update on Book Bans in the 2022-2023 School Year Shows Expanded Censorship of Themes Centered on Race, History, Sexual Orientation and Gender, PEN America, April 20, 2023, https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercharge-book-suppression-in-schools/#:~:text=1%2C477-,Banned%20Content%20and%20Titles,books%20on%20race%20and%20racism.
Robert Kayleigh,, Pop-culture approved rules to live by in 2023. Girl’s Life, December 31, 2022.
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, Season 3, January 24 – May 2, 2011.
Sonja, 10 English slang terms you need to know in 2023., Go, Education First, 2023
Alan Lechusza, PhD defines his works through a critical philosophy of pop culture aesthetics and expressions. Research topics and projects produced by Dr. Lechusza reside within the areas of critical theories which strive to dismantle, deconstruct and redefine aesthetics, hermeneutics of socio-political power and ideological epistemologies through dynamic dialectic interactions of pop culture and the lexicons of power.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 