Parody as subversive performance: Denaturalizing gender and reconstituting desire in Ellen

Abstract

While Judith Butler identifies parody, particularly as manifest in drag, as an example of performance that effectively exposes gender as performative, interestingly, she does not discuss parodic performances of femininity by women or of masculinity by men. Study of these sorts of parodic performances deepens our understanding of what makes subversive parody distinctive and possesses important implications for the matter of agency in gender performativity. This essay analyzes scenes from three episodes of the situation comedy Ellen where Ellen DeGeneres' character enacts parodic performances of femininity. Focusing on the strategies of conspicuous performance, contextual incongruities, and excess, the parodic performances are assessed in the context of two audiences, one presuming DeGeneres' and her character's heterosexuality and the other presuming her lesbianism. The essay argues that the strategies function collectively to defetishize the feminine and that, in so doing, the Ellen parodies succeed in denaturalizing gender and reconstituting desire.

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