Judith Butler Parody

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Recommended: Essay on gender social construction

How effective are strategies of parody and performance in addressing the nature of identity?
Judith Butler argues in her essay ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ that “gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo” (Butler, 2003). Butler suggests that in no way is gender a stable identity but rather instituted though acts. She suggests that gender is constituted in the mundane acts of the body and so the performative acts constitute gender. What butler meant by this is that, we did not start off with gender as it is and identity that as been constructed repeatedly through time. Identity as Butler puts it is a “compelling illusion, an object of belief”. Identity is always constructed though the body. One does not have gender first, then performs; rather, gender is the creation of the performance. The performance is enlightened by the historically constituted idea of gender and thus performed by the individual though acts. …show more content…

Dan Harries says in ‘Film Parody’ that parody as a critical tradition is ‘…lauded as an anti-canonical, incongruity-generating mechanism by obliterating conventionalized codes through disruptive disunifying techniques.’ (Harries, 2000, p. 6). Furthermore, Judith Butler explains in her other essay ‘Subversive bodily acts’ that overall ‘gender is open to parody and improvisation in modes which undo the dominant ways of perceiving male/female’ and that ‘parodying and mimicking corporeal styles (drag) becomes an act of sexual

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