THE IRRECONCILABLE VOLATILITY OF BLOODY BETTY & THE ONLINE ARCHIVE

Abstract

This project investigates volatile portrayals of rape and sexualized violence in gorelesque performances by Vancouver-based troupe Bloody Betty and the Deadly Sins, as well as the digital YouTube archive that preserves those performances. Through examining how both the work of Bloody Betty and the manner in which that work is preserved maintain mutually exclusive contradictions, this project offers performance scholars a feminist theoretical framework for approaching similarly volatile contradictions in Fourth Wave feminist aesthetics and the online archive. This project proposes that both those objects of study require a feminist reconsideration of the gaze (live and online) that does not neutralize the volatility of sexual objectification, but rather accepts its inevitability in service of more effective feminist praxis.