Mockery or fantasy? Transvestite characters, cross-dressing and subaltern sexualities in sketches in French talk shows

Abstract

For the past 30 years, French comedians have resorted to cross-dressing as a key comic mechanism and have used subaltern sexualities as objects of mockery. In this article, I analyse the extent to which these sketches denaturalize sex–gender binarisms. While cross-dressing by male humorists such as Elie Semoun and Antoine de Caunes results in failed visual imitations of femininity that underpin the binary sex–gender system, the performance of masculinity by female humorists such as Julie Ferrier and Florence Foresti relies on body language, embodiment, gestures and speech that suggest the possibility of blurring the causal chain between sex and gender. Through this analysis, I question the signifying power of gender parodies in a contemporary France dominated by masculine white heterosexual hegemony.

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