Bleeping Deluxe: Staging Self-Censorship and the Limits of Excess @ Gender Studies Forum

Claire Maree will be speaking on her current work that emerges from the “Writing Identity onto the Screen” project at the Gender Studies Forum on August 3, 2017.

“Bleeping Deluxe: Staging Self-Censorship and the Limits of Excess”

The use of ‘bleeps’ is a common trope of censorship in entertainment television that facilitates the image of personalities and comedians speaking candidly. In this presentation, Dr Claire Maree examines the practice of overlaying ‘tennis grunts’ to ‘bleep out’ speech acts performed by queer/queen personality Matsuko Deluxe in the late-night television show Matsuko no heya (Matsuko’s Room).

This staged self-censorship supports Matsuko’s image as a sharp-tongued, honest-speaking and entertaining personality. At the same time, the reflexive bleeps and mouth-overs effectively regiment queer/queen talk and position the style as excessive and already exceeding the limits of respectability. The editing of bleeps and mouth-overs into audiovisual media is one example of the intensive ‘language-labour’ performed in commercial editing and writing.

More details here.