“Boobs, Barf and Bloody Asses” charts the  changes in gender construction and performance in the television show South Park.  Over ten seasons, the show has methodically confronted and violated preconceptions and taboos regarding sexuality and gender, and has mounted a series of harsh critiques of neoliberal and neoconservative conceptions of identity and tolerance.  Through an examination of developments in the show’s rhetoric and a deeper textual analysis of two episodes in particular, this paper will discuss the ramifications of anarchic and aggressive critiques of reified gender identity.  The analysis draws primarily on Haraway and Butler for a theoretical backdrop, but engages gender precisely through its performative or blasphemous potentials for political activism and oppositional culture.  It suggests that scholars consider mass media as locations for hyper-allusive discourse and as transgressively polysemic, even in productions some would consider to be juvenile or “masculine.”  More importantly, it suggests ways in which radically (and institutionally) transgressive cultural productions can force open previously closed topics or rhetorical binaries, making room both for alternative discourses and for future exploration (i.e. the rise of youtube or Sarah Silverman).  The episodes discussed, “Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society” and “Marjorine,” demonstrate the possibility for a fluid conception of gender and a highly intertextual approach to gender development.  Rather than asserting a coherent worldview or political position, South Park examines and disrupts gender norms precisely through its multiplicity and fragmentation, and demonstrates an emergent paradigm for social activism.

presented at the annual National Communications Association conference, Chicago, November 2007